Dear internet,

Today has started off swimmingly, in which I mean I woke up at 10:24 a.m., forgetting I run a writing sprint on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. I immediately open Google Meets and announce in the writers’ group I run them for the that door is open! Let’s hope someone shows up!

(No one showed up by 12 p.m. so I closed the room. I, however, was writing, so it was not a total waste.)

The fucking commitments are done! (Part one)

Well, internet, there was nothing more breathtaking than feeling the huge sense of “thank fuck it’s over” last Saturday after my presentation at RWA. All the commitments I’ve been working on over the past two months have been completed, submitted, and approved.

And three of those commitments were due last week while I was at the RWA conference in Niagara Falls.

One of my commitments was the mini-course on The Edwardians, which I gave for FrugalCon on Thursday, and I rounded that up in the last issue of Lisa Writes a lot of Stuff. Commitment #2 was a video I created for Virtual Jane Con on “Merchandising Jane: 21st Century Consumerism of Jane Austen.” The video is below. The video was completed earlier and scheduled to go live on Sunday.

(If you do not want to spend 31 minutes watching me wax poetically on about Austen and merch, Issue #33 of Excessively Diverting gives a bullet point list of my talk.)

Then, finally, I had an in-person talk on research beyond Google and AI, which I gave Saturday morning to about 15 or so people. I didn’t expect a lot of people tbh. I was the last presentation of the conference, and I was competing with pitch talks with agents and editors that were happening across the hallway.

For those who attended, I received a lot of positive feedback about my talk! One woman said her roommate, who attended, couldn’t stop talking about it.

I included a QR code for attendees to download the presentation, as it has a lot of information and links to resources I mentioned. I also asked for feedback on my talk which…crickets. Not a single review has come in. I use the reviews to revise the talks to make sure I’m covering what the attendees want.

I have no idea what the response rate is to surveys. With newsletters, I know having above 10% open rate is great. (AMUN has, on average, 31% open rate so I don’t want to fuck with my Substack formula; Excessively Diverting has, on average, 35-55% open rate, so will not fuck with Substack.)

The thing is, I’m using these talks/webinars/classes/presentations to drive business to NGI. Not having an idea of stats makes me nervous because right now, I’m blindly throwing stuff up against the wall to see what sticks for advertising.

I also had my ad in RWA’s program, and they also had a table of signs for sponsors.

The prez of RWA is shipping mine to me, which I can use if I ever do a table at a con or something. I thought that shipping it to me was very kind.

New Class Over at SavvyAuthors

Also, this week, my cybersecurity course over at SavvyAuthors went live! Mr. Lisa, who does cybersecurity for a living, helped me put it together. Titled “Digital Hygiene: Cybersecurity for the Rest of Us,” it’s geared for those who:

• Are concerned about digital breaches

• Clean up their online presence

• Understand cyberthreats, how they work, and what they mean

• Be proactive in protecting themselves and their devices

• Improve online safety

I cover:

• Social engineering

• Phishing/smishing/vishing

• Ransomware

• Password cracking

• VPNs

• Creating strong passwords

• Using password managers

• Best practices for backups

• Multifactor Authentication

• Social media hygiene (how to protect yourself, downloading data, and deactivating accounts)

• Data removal services

• Freezing your credit

• And more!

I have visual examples, recommendations, links to those recommendations, and more.

If you’re thinking, “Wow, I really need to know how to use that stuff and I have no idea where to begin,” (yes, I’m shilling for myself), reach out to me at [email protected] and I’ll give you a deal on the cost of the class. The class can be taught in groups or one-on-one, either in person or via recorded sessions. (In-person is better since I can answer questions on the fly.)

You can alternately take the class over at SavvyAuthors if you wish.

I’m also teaching this class for two writers’ groups, one in August and another in January 2026. (I tend not to link to those classes as they are geared for members of that writers’ group!)

My apologies that the pricing will vary from place to place, and I have no control over that.

I’m contracted over at SA for another nine classes that I need to video produce and submit! I’ll also be teaching these to groups, one-on-one, and having them available on NGI’s website for instant access. I’ll also be selling them on Udemy, and I need to look into SkillShare and LinkedIn Learning.

It’s about creating passive income!

The fucking commitments are done! (Part two)

What I’ve been working on for the last 2-3 months is now done and I’ve been able to breathe again. I’m super proud of myself for having completed everything as promised (even if I did push the limit on the due dates), and everything (so far!) has been well received.

When my talk ended on Saturday, I just felt this huge sense of relief, and I felt my body relax. I was not only working on these commitments but also picking up hours at Library B and Library E, household chores, and basic living day to day since late April.

I came home Sunday night (into Monday morning) about 12:30 a.m. from my trip and spent Monday and Tuesday in absolute bliss. I want to read for awhile and not feel rushed? Done. Laundry can wait another day? Absolutely. I want to roll out of bed at 9:30 a.m. and not have to rush to work? Thank fuck.

I did absolutely nothing on those two days: no writing, no project planning, no extra chores if I can help it. I can’t remember if I even showered! (I know I at least washed my face and brushed my teeth.)

When I got back to work on Wednesday, I was in a glorious mood, which was dimmed by a hair when I realised I had forgotten the staff meeting and was effectively 30 minutes late. My boss is Minnesota nice (and not in a pejorative way). I promised to set a reminder the day before, so I won’t forget!

When I told Mr. Lisa my commitments were done, he said he was proud of me for getting it all done. Then he commented that it was time to move on to the next set of tasks.

I grumbled because let me have my breathing room space, but he’s not wrong. I’ve got my to-do lists (yes, plural) broken out by topic so NGI has its own to-do list, Excessively Diverting has its own to-do list, and so forth and so on. I give myself due dates and highlight them so they are easy to find.

(I’ve tried apps such as Trello and Remember the Milk for to-do lists and honestly, I just created a section in OneNote and divvied up my lists on their own page. This is what works for me.)

I’ve got two things due by the end of July: apply for two jobs I’m interested in (one local and one hybrid but within driving range), and catch up on my article writing for various publications, which I’m woefully behind.

This weekend I had zero appointments to make and I took full advantage of it. Friday night I popped gummies and slept like the dead (albeit I had a pot hangover early parts of Saturday), read, and started a class on mastering Canva. Today, after finishing this, I’ll head back to the Canva class for a bit, hang out with Kristin to watch Grantchester, and get some reading done. I’ve changed the sheets on the bed, and I’m also doing laundry. I may bake bread today, who knows!

The only place I have to be M/T/W this week is to get Thursday groomed Monday morning, so whatever I don’t feel like getting done today, I’ve got another three days to do it.

Reading is Fundamental

I’ve been catching up on my interlibrary loans (finally). I finished Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance (Amazon | Bookshop.org | WorldCat (interlibrary loan)). Rami Targoff, the author, included a bibliography of her sources which sent me down a rabbit hole of the women she wrote about. I downloaded The Life of Elisabeth Lady Falkland, 1585-1639 (originally published in 1883) from archive.org and sent that to my Kindle to read. I ILL’d Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland : life and letters (2001) by Heather Wolfe; The literary career and legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613-1680 (2006) by Heather Wolfe; The diaries of Lady Anne Clifford (1990) by D.J.H. Clifford; Aphra Behn : a secret life (1997) by Janet Todd; Philip's phoenix : Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (1990) by Margaret P. Hannay; The queen's bed : an intimate history of Elizabeth's court (2012) by Anna Whitelock; and Lanyer : a Renaissance woman poet (1999) by Susanne Woods. Looking at the list, I had no idea I requested so many books!

The point is, when I glom onto a topic, I glom onto a topic. I want to know more! I’m in the middle of The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science (2020) (Amazon | Bookshop.org | WorldCat (interlibrary loan)), by Seb Falk and he also provided a bibliography that you can download from his website. It’s over 50 pages long! Falk also provided a partial bibliography in the book, offering recommendations for general topics (which the extensive bibliography does not as it is organized by author, rather than topic). One of the books, History of Magic and Experimental Science (1929) by Lynn Thorndike, I ILL’d and I received the first edition of the book in great condition, mostly due to the book having been rebound. The pages were clean, print was solid, and the font was easy to read. It kept blowing my mind that I was holding a book nearly published a 100 years ago. Even though the book is in great condition, I sent it back to the lending library and downloaded a digital copy instead.

The other thing that blew my mind about Thorndike’s book is he kept mentioning how “the war” put his research on hold and he was referring to WW I.

Many of the books are published by academic presses, which worries me because their tone, writing style, and vocabulary choices tend to be incredibly dense and dry. Thorndike’s book was surprisingly readable, as were Targoff’s and Falk’s (though to be fair, they were published nearly a 100 years later than Thorndike’s).

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Fundraiser

I’m fundraising for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention for a walk on September 14. As most of you know, a very beloved person in my life, the selfish bastard Brendan McAdams, killed himself on January 10, 2025. He would have been 46 this year.

My goal is to raise $1000 USD. I've got under $500 more to go. Go to AFSP’s website to donate. I'll be posting an announcement in every issue of my newsletters and regularly on my social media until the day of the walk. If you can donate even $5 or share this link (https://bit.ly/AFSPWalk2025), you will be an amazing human being and doing me a huge solid.

Thank you.