This past weekend, I thought I was having a heart attack. My heart was thudding in my chest up to 125 beats a minute, my jaw hurt, I felt dizzy – and that was all while I was lying in bed. I didn’t go to emergency until the next day (after the chemist sent me to a doctor who sent me to emergency). People say a lot of crap about public medical, but they had me through an EKG, x-ray and in a bed with an IV in my arm in no time.

They gave me something to put under my tongue to take care of the chest pain. The fact the little pill worked implied that something was, in fact, wrong with my heart, but all the tests came back clean but for one that implied I had a virus of some sort running amok.

I got to go home the same day and am scheduled for more than a few ‘fun’ tests to assess whether there’s actually anything wrong with my ticker.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Not that you came here to read what I’ve been up to. Time for a zine review!

I recently had the pleasurable experience (sarcasm) of buying ink for my printer. After the experience of posting out DA3 to everyone (not that I am complaining!), I began to think about how I crowdfunded my last two novels. With the help of friends and strangers, I was able to pay for everything from the cover art to the print copies.

I’d never thought about doing it for zines mostly because zines (my zines) don’t cost as much to produce as novels (my novels) do. Looking at Kickstarter, it looks like zine are a ‘done’ thing in crowdfunding.

So, quick question:

How do you feel about crowdfunding zines?

What’s this? This, my friends, is a visual representation of how busy/distracted/stressed I have been today. You see, I love chocolate. This chocolate is of the Toblerone variety – a particular favourite. So for me to have a bite and actually forget about a piece…

Well, this has never happened in my twenty-some years of life.

I thought I was going to have the pleasure of moving this blog onto its own domain today, but something isn’t working correctly. Alas, here we are to stay for now.

On to the zine review.

DA3 contributors have been awesome and let me know that my little loves have been arriving all over the world. What a rush. The feedback from both the contributors and other readers has been completely positive so far.

They’ve all gone so quick that I’m already onto the second print run for DA3.

Will Dear Anonymous 4 be even bigger? Even better? We’ll have to wait to find out. But 3 and 4 will be the first issues to be released within the space of one year…

It’s a public holiday here in the land of Victoria, Oz, so if I do have happy mail, it’ll have to wait until next week. (The post, anyway. I’m all over that post box come tomorrow.)

To say that I’ve dropped the ball with posting here and with zine reviews feels like a bit of an understatement at this point. I’m not into the apology posts, but I am into pictures. So here is photographic proof that I’ve been trying to organise my life:

Labelled wire baskets, people. Labelled wire baskets.

I’ll give you a moment to calm down.

…

There, there. I know.

Part of the organisation was buying a domain (that I will be applying to this blog soon) and setting up an email on that domain. That’s right – I have a zine email address.

nyx@seagreenzines.com – All zines, all the time.

I’ve had a lot of orders come in, started a new Etsy store for my digital stuff, started creating coptic stitch journals (hail the Cherry Blossom journal!), had orders for ‘baby’s first year’ journals (which I’ve never made before), so on and so forth.

So that’s me caught up. How you been? Whatcha been up to?

Oo! I did almost forget an upcoming zine… Here’s a hint…

F

Yesterday was a sick day for both me and my computer. I required a lot of rest and sleep; my computer required a rebuild. *wince* Today I’m a smidge less foggy than yesterday, so I’ve spent most of the day finishing up some cards while reinstalling all of my programs.

Very exciting stuff, I assure you.

However, just in case you are bored, this happened:

Back soon.

Here’s to my first Australia Day as an Australian citizen.

It’s interesting how quickly something can become a part of your life. While, in reality, I missed two reviews and Sunday Call for Subs (the latter not really ‘missed’, as no one had a claim on it). Not the end of the world by any means. But I do still feel a little odd when I miss a day here.

All for good reason. Wanderer had a rather significant birthday on this weekend, so I did have to dedicate some time to finding memes to plaster all over his Facebook wall. My favourite:

I was also responsible for the birthday cake. Wanderer requested chocolate cheesecake with chocolate chips. I did him one better and included a chocolate base, chocolate ganache, and chocolate chips sprinkled on top. This is what that looks like:

On another note…

The good news is that my technical difficulties appear to have stemmed (knock on wood that it remains in the past tense) from a software problem rather than a hardware problem. Also, while I have run out of some ink on my printer, I still have plenty of good ol’ black so I can finish up DA3 without a problem. I’m hitting that hard today because I *love* some of these letters so much and want to see them in final form.

A little stumble in the beginning of the year is certainly nothing new for me. The world keeps turning.

Now for zine-making!

*Chookless Head? Well… Headless Chicken = Headless Chook + switch it around = Chookless Head