April Fools
April 2025 edition of the Boopish Newsletter
Topics (click the link to go directly to the thing):
April Fool’s day is for the birds
Wild weather and a YouTube gameshow!
Book 3 and a million other things
New salt soap bar and name poll
I’ve always hated April Fool’s day.
Maybe it’s cute to play a little prank, all in good fun, yadda yadda. I just don’t like the idea of deception.
But Liz, you’re being over dramatic about it. It’s a day of fun and harmless pranks! It’s not like it’s hurting anyone. Maybe not… but maybe it is. I’ve been bitter on this day ever since a conversation I had with a coworker back in 2005.
At the time, I was working as a contract formulation scientist, which meant that I was paid by a third party company hired by the company I did the work for. This also meant no benefits, no time off, and typically a low hourly wage.
One day, another contract worker (I’ll call him Bob) came to me at about 8 in the morning, with pure excitement in his voice, letting me know that the higher-ups were having a meeting in the morning about whether or not to permanently hire all their contracts. I was ecstatic! I loved my job and the people I worked with, and there was a chance they’d commit to me, just as I had commit myself to them. I’d get a salary, time off, health insurance, and all the neat perks that came with permanent employment.
Throughout the day, I would go to Bob asking if he’d heard anything more about the outcome of the meeting. I mean, I would have asked my boss myself, but most of my group was indeed, in all day meetings. Bob would repeat the same response that he hadn’t heard anything yet, but that everyone was still meeting about it. Great.
The hardest part was waiting in anticipation!
Around 2 pm, I went back to Bob for one final ask, to which he responded, “Oh, I was just joking about that. I thought you knew.”
Joking about that? You were joking about a potential job offer? What kind of sadist does that? He strung me along ALL DAY to end his statement with “I thought you knew.” Lo, and behold, after being humiliated by Bob, I realize the day is the cursed “April 1st,” where fools come out to deceive. Needless to say, I didn’t talk to Bob after that… nor did he try to talk to me, or apologize for that matter.
I don’t know where Bob is today, but I hope he’s endlessly filing GMP paperwork in alphabetical order after making 12 copies of each and stamping each page for sign and date. Screw you Bob. You ruined a whole day for me for the past 20 years.
The story sounds harmless, but I was a really impressionable early career woman in STEM, duped and humiliated by a douchebag. We can never explain the things that really cement their way into our memory files, but for me, that was one of them.
All that to say, I hate April Fool’s day.
First update, we had a wild pie day (March 14th for non-U.S. folks) when an EF2 tornado ripped through our area. Fortunately, we only lost our power for about 10 seconds, whereas a lot of other people in the area lost it for the whole weekend. We did lose our internet for a few days, but honestly, that’s nothing compared to the absolute destruction we saw when driving around our city.
Hail pummeled our house, leaving the entire back side looking like this:
As of sending this newsletter, our insurance adjuster should be at our house assessing the damage. It’s a lot of damage… and I can only imagine what it’s like for people whose entire roof was blown away or caved in by 100-year-old trees uprooted like weeds.
I’m very thankful this was the extent of our damage.Second update, I was featured on a pilot episode of 6 vs. 1, hosted by Dale Roberts of YouTube! (See his channel here).
Dale has been such a helpful force for indie authors, myself included, in many aspects of the business. When he announced the launch of this pilot episode calling for contestants, of course I immediately applied! When he posts the video, I’ll be sure to share that one. I don’t want to say too much about it, but it was fun!
BOOK UPDATES
Reaper’s [_____]?
Book 3 of the Northern Roseaarde Series is my main focus right now. I’ve been plotting it using Plottr, and I wish I had done this with the first book of the series. I kinda did it with Reaper’s Bounty, but not to the extent that I’m doing it now.
Just to show you how involved everything is threading together, check out the “small” snapshot of my Plottr grid so far:
I’ve made most progress in Act 1 in case you couldn’t tell. In my processor, I already have about 13,000 words written (about 52 pages), mostly in Act 1, and I know where the story is headed, I just need to jot it all down. I hope to have this one out this year!
There’s a huge backlog of WIPs that I have as well, in addition to several competitions this year, and a cosmic horror short to be included in a third party Kickstarter campaign. I’ll send the link when that launches in July!
LH Soaps & Sundries updates
A new soap has been made, but it’s not on the site yet (and I didn’t record a video for it). It’s a salt bar with vanilla bean seeds and scented with “Karma,” a dupe of a Lush scent. Here is the beautiful picture:
I don’t have a name for it yet. However, during my craft fair at the beginning of March, it seems that people prefer the soap to be named after the scent so they know what to expect. I might do something similar to what the perfume company, Dossier, does and just name it by the dominant notes. Even if I name it “Karma,” would people know what that smells like? Probably not.
This is one of very few bars that has a patchouli base for fragrance, but it’s not overwhelming. In fact, I think it smells like hotel soap. The site describes the scent as: orange, lavender and pine with notes of patchouli, lemongrass, cashmere and musk.
So what do you think?
Latest YouTube Video(s):
I did a video review on Mickey (1)7, since I read the book and watched the movie. It’s a bit of a rant. Below is some more experimental music, but I release a video on that channel every Friday.
That’s all for now! Thanks for being awesome :)
Wow that co-worker's April Fool's prank was just straight-up cruel. Thumbs down to pranks like that. That Plottr grid is looking awesome, by the way!
Nice update. For the soap, you'd know better how it smells, but I'll throw "Wildwood Breeze" into the mix. For some reason I could not vote.