I Tried Those Velvet Hammer Elixirs

 

Like many of my friends, I've recently been seeing a lot of ads for Velvet Hammer on social media. The brand is (at present) a trio of sparkly elixirs that can be mixed into water, cocktails/mocktails, and/or each other. They're targeted at romantasy readers, which isn't necessarily my bag, but I'll never say no to something that makes reading/writing time a little special.

That said, I'm also very wary of supplements. I've been around my fair share of people who tout powders as cure-alls, and I've also tried several hydration powders that just taste awful. Fortunately, Velvet Hammer didn't present itself as a magic fix so much as a little bit of whimsy in your day: it's pretty, it's got good ingredients that might help you feel a little nicer, and it comes in gorgeous packaging.

So I figured that was worth testing them out. To be fully fair, since these things take time, I've waited a couple months to weigh in and let them actually do their job. (These are also paid for out of my own pocket and, while I do have a discount code, I'm not sponsored.)

Honest opinions away, from someone using these while she writes more than when she reads.

Elixir of Inner Light

Of the three, this is the one I was most interested in. The powder, with a hint of blood orange flavor, includes hefty doses of vitamins B and D, as well as reishi and ginseng. I know that adaptogens are still very much in flux research-wise, but as a medicated individual I know the power of those two particular vitamins.

In regular water, the blood orange flavor is very light, and I only recommend drinking it this way if you're a fan of "water with a hint of flavor." But this is by design, since this and the Elixir of Serenity are meant to pair well with the Elixir of Hydration.

I've found that my favorite way to have this is with my first morning cup of tea. It goes well with nearly everything, since I tend to go for bold black teas or teas with a bergamot and/or floral flavor. And the orange sparkle looks gorgeous in those really dark steeps.

As for effectiveness? I'd be lying if I said I was perfectly cured, and when I was first getting used to having this daily I didn't really notice a change. But when a shipment was delayed and I went a few days without, I noticed I didn't have quite the same level of early-morning pickup. This is my favorite of the three, for its versatility and for the vitamin B and D.

Elixir of Hydration

I mentioned above that I don't like hydration drinks. They're kind of icky and they're either too sweet or too salty. But this one is pretty darn all right.

I will lead by saying I'm not a huge fan of really tart lemon flavors, and this is a really tart pink lemonade flavor. So if that's your jam, you're going to love this. Flavor-wise, it doesn't quite do it for me; however, I've heard that they're considering making different flavors, so I'm looking forward to trying those.

This has a lot more flavor to it than either of the others and can hold its own in water. However, I prefer it in unsweet iced tea, just because it mitigates some of that tartness. In terms of hydration, I think that's down to whether you need those extra electrolytes. I take medications that knock mine out of whack, so it doesn't hurt to have that little boost. I'm a little more ambivalent about this one, but I really think that's because of the flavor profile.

Elixir of Serenity

This one is, by my reckoning, the prettiest of the three. It's another "hint of flavor" one, this time in dark cherry. And it's got ashwagandha, L-theanine, GABA, and butterfly pea flower. I mix this into a decaf tea, usually a floral, an hour or two before I want to go to bed.

This isn't a knock-out drink, but that's a good thing. I keep coming back to my medications on this, but anyone who takes them will know that you have to be thinking about contraindications with things like this. My favorite thing about the Elixir of Serenity is that it hasn't been loaded down with things I can't have. A lot of the teas I like have St. John's Wort in them, which takes them right off the table for me. Ashwagandha has some mild interactions that people should look out for, but the dose is about half the RDA.

I'll admit that this one is mainly for the vibes and flavor. It would probably go really well in one of those dark cherry bedtime drinks I see people talking about on TikTok and Instagram. It's nice and it's safe, and it encourages me to stick to decaf drinks before bed.

Short version? These are nice. If I had to pick one to stick with, it would be Inner Light, simply because it's the one where I can actively feel a difference and because it has the most proven ingredients (i.e. massive daily doses of two vitamins that keep me from crashing out). Serenity is a close second and, while I appreciate having a decent hydration drink, I'd love to have one in a less tart flavor.

If you think this is the sort of thing you'd enjoy, use my link for a discount! And, as always, be sure to check these against any medications you're currently taking to ensure you're getting something that supplements your routine.

Every Creative Person Should Watch Akane-banashi

 

Sometimes, a series comes along that seems to have a lot to say about your life. For me, that series was Yuki Suenaga and Takamasa Moue's manga Akane-banashi, about a teenager studying the traditional storytelling art known as rakugo. The anime adaptation kicked off this season, and it's everything I hoped it would be and more.

Besides just being a damned good series with gorgeous art and interesting storytelling, it's a series that hits hard when it comes to its messages about creative careers. As my friends know, there have been moments when I've read the latest chapter and immediately gone to rewrite something in a manuscript in progress. It's that influential and inspiring when it comes to creative fields; in particular, our place in them.

The series is extremely easy to watch, with new episodes released in multiple languages on YouTube and a Netflix run now underway. And, for what it's worth, here are just a few of the things I've personally come away with while reading and watching.

Everything you do is experience.

A great early episode shows Akane working at an izakaya (basically a Japanese pub/diner) as she's beginning her unofficial apprenticeship before high school ends. One of her seniors have noticed that she's so entrenched in her style that she can't change course when performing for different demographics. A week doing fast-paced customer service helps her get her head around what it means to read a crowd and respond to their needs, even from the stage.

As creative people, we're going to work a lot of uncreative jobs. Beyond my work as a writer, I've been a cashier, a tour guide, a bank teller, a journalist, and a medical school writing advisor. But each of these fields teaches me something new, and not just because I "can write about it someday." We tend to have a bad habit of limiting non-creative experiences to things we can "use," like an actor dealing with a bad day. But every creative job requires us to know many different things.

Being a cashier and a bank teller taught me to keep a keen eye out for details. Being a tour guide got me accustomed to establishing setting quickly. Being a journalist has increased my research skills to the point that I know where to go and who to go to for information. And damned if teaching medical school applicants how to express themselves briefly but interestingly hasn't tamed my tendency to write overlong. Every experience builds a skill set. And while you can absolutely mine them for creative inspiration, that doesn't negate their other values.

Seek your strengths, not perfection.

Perfection is overrated, impossible to achieve, and it would be boring if we did achieve it. A recent chapter of the Akane-banashi manga depicted Akane nailing a story down to near-perfection. However, she was told this wasn't enough. "It's like listening to a recording." Did she want to tell the story letter-perfect, or did she want to find her telling?

(This was, for the curious, the chapter that made me start an entire short story over.)

The traditional rakugo canon comprises approximately 500 stories, which sounds like a lot until you realize that every rakugoka working will be dipping into this same pool. This means, by default, people will perform the same stories, much as many actors have performed Shakespearean soliloquies. And so, like those soliloquies, it's important for each storyteller to find their version of the story. By and large, they find this in two ways: by targeting their strength and by bearing in mind why they took up rakugo in the first place.

For example, Karashi values making rakugo more accessible by remixing traditional stories into more contemporary tellings — hence turning the traditional "Tenshiki" into the modernized "BM." Voice actress Hikaru wants to be seen as a legitimate performer, but she also acknowledges that her strength is in compelling character work. So her telling of "Shibahama," in which the main character's wife has very few spoken lines, centers the wife and gives her an emotional monologue. And Kyoji, Akane's senior in the Shiguma school, excels at serious work and isn't good at comedy. So, he's advised to play his comedy extremely deadpan to get those laughs.

Finding the intersection of what you want to accomplish and what you excel at isn't a one-and-done thing. I've had my fiction published for more than a decade now, and I'm still rethinking what that intersection for me is every day. But in a future where human voices in creativity are more valuable than ever, finding who you are within your own work means a lot.

A little rivalry is a good thing.

I don't mean we should be going full Salieri; don't do that. (I might eventually write a similar piece to this about the Blue Blazes TV drama, which has a one-sided rivalry at its core.) I mean more in a Shonen Jump way: acknowledging what you want to accomplish, acknowledging the skills of others in your field, and aiming to catch up to them.

For much of the series, Akane is driven by what happened to her father: her need to show others that rakugo is a legitimate art form, her desire to ask Issho Arakawa why her father was expelled. But during this journey, she meets trained rakugoka who are good and know they're good. She can see what makes them tick, and she can view them as benchmarks on her journey.

Despite all she's been through, Akane has some of the healthiest and least toxic responses to criticism and rivalry I've ever seen in fiction or real life. She may be self-assured as hell, but she'll swallow advice and use it. She'll greet rivals with a smile and treat their competitions as something to be excited about, not something to dread or something that will mark one as the "loser."

In creative fields, it's so easy to feel defeated by people who are where you want to be. I fall prey to that a lot. But watching and reading this series makes me want to be different. Maybe instead of being jealous and then swallowing that jealousy, I look at the person who's achieved what I want and see what they've got. Can I see myself getting there someday? How can I improve myself to push forward and stand next to them?

Whether you're a writer, an artist, a filmmaker, some other creative career, I promise you'll get something out of this show. And even if you're not, you could watch far worse things than Akane-banashi.

On Generative AI

 

It is, to say the least, a hot-button topic. And it's one that, as someone who works in a variety of fields affected by the arrival of generative AI, I have to write out my stance on clearly and accessibly. Because, as time goes on, it is going to be more and more essential to draw that line.

So first off, I should be clear about what this blog post isn't. It is not an attempt to change your mind, to make you understand that generative AI as currently utilized and marketed is bad for our brains, bad for the environment, bad for business, and bad for human creativity. If you were unaware of any of these points, the hypertext in the previous sentence will help you learn, and I encourage you to check those links out. But if these are all things you are aware of and you still champion large language models as "progress" (or even as "harmless" or "not great but"), then one middle-aged nerd in the U.S. is not going to change your mind.

If there's one thing this blog post is covering, it's my bases. Because I am a writer. I have books coming out, I review books, and I write for magazines and news websites. Every field I work in is being invaded by large language models, and people are being less and less open about their use thereof, or more and more slipshod with their admissions of use of it.

To that end, I want to be very clear about my stance, if I haven't been already. While I acknowledge the concept of artificial intelligence as useful in research and data processing and figuring out whether Freddy Fazbear is going to jumpscare you, I will never knowingly associate with a project that makes use of generative AI.

"But," say some of you, "you're going to be closing off a lot of creative venues." I sure am. And honestly, I'm probably going to have to step back from several things in the coming months and years. And I'll be sad to do so. But I am more committed to ensuring that I am never involved in the abuse of someone else's copyrighted creative work than I am in maximizing my income streams.

So, breaking it down:

I will never knowingly work with a publisher that allows the use of generative AI in their written work, in their covers, or in their press.

I will never knowingly attend a convention that employs the use of generative AI in its advertising.

I will never knowingly review or promote a book or project that uses generative AI.

I will never knowingly be a part of a project that uses generative AI, and if I discover too late that the project has employed generative AI without my knowledge, I will speak to the people in charge and discern whether they plan to continue using it. If they do, I will part ways with that project, and I will be open about why if asked.

Note that I put "knowingly" in every case. This is because I have ended up seeing generative AI integrated into projects after my portion was done, and without my knowledge. These happened at a time when I wasn't aware just how pervasive this would be, to the point that I would need to establish a stance and write it into any future agreements. Lesson learned. Going forward, this is going to be something I check regularly.

If you discover that a project I am currently active in is currently and actively employing generative AI, please don't hesitate to let me know. Because odds are I don't know about it and I'll want to be told.

With all that said, I'm very happy to say that two publishers I work with regularly - Obverse Books and 18thWall - are both of the same mind. Obverse makes a note of their commitment to human creativity in every book they publish now, and MH Norris of 18thWall spoke out about NaNoWriMo's misguided stance on generative AI and accessibility. I am proud to work with them and honored that they count me among their regular contributors.

I will continue to vet the projects I review, support, and in which I participate. There will be misses along the way, but it's more important to me to stand firm on this. Once this post goes live, I will link it prominently so it's always accessible.

To those of you who continue to value human creativity, thank you. You're keeping something really beautiful alive.

My Three Favorite Cozy Places on the Peninsula

 

It would be nice if I could always travel to my favorite places in the world—but that gets expensive. To that end, I've tried to be a little more supportive of my own hometown and find places nearby where I can get out, get away, and have a relaxing afternoon or evening. And fortunately, I found several, all relatively close to where I grew up.

As I write this up on a particularly rainy day, I'm thinking about these lovely little places: places where I can do some reading or writing, shop for books, or otherwise enjoy myself in the kind of atmosphere I crave. And it doesn't hurt that everything on this list is a small business, and I am all about shouting out small businesses wherever I can!

Busy Nothings Coffee

All I have to say to my friends is "Jane Austen themed coffee shop" and no further context is needed. Busy Nothings Coffee is tucked away in the shops of Port Warwick, right where Discover Teas used to have their Peninsula store. The inside is bright enough for reading but dim enough for calm, and the seating is separated out so you can have just about as much privacy as you want. Some networking groups use it as a meeting place, and for good reason! Just be sure to avoid lunch hour if you're aiming for peak quiet time.

The menu features coffee and tea (including Chapters teas!), blended energy drinks, and a variety of sweet and savory meal and snack options. Literary fans will love the Jane Austen, Bridgerton, and Outlander-themed selections. My go-to is a Daphne and the Duke (rose cardamom tea latte) and an order of their pimento cheese with crackers. The staff are super friendly and helpful and the shop itself is welcoming—pretty much everything I have coming out in the near future will issue in whole or in part from a series of writing sessions there.

Paperbacks Ink

In the other direction is Paperbacks Ink, a shop that's been around for a while but is under new management as of a few years ago. This purveyor of new and used books is a godsend, whether you're an avid reader or a local author.

Thanks to their business model, which runs largely on donations of used books, Paperbacks Ink can offer both new and used books at consistent, affordable prices. They also host events, rent out event space, and have great deals for local authors looking to showcase their books. It makes me extremely happy that there's a non-chain bookstore nearby, and one that's looking to spotlight local talent!

In the back, there's Tastefully Philly Cafe, right near some well-placed tables and outlets. While I haven't had everything on their menu, what they do offer is fantastic. I'm a big fan of the chickpea salad sandwich. And when they say they have "the best banana pudding" (a bold claim not far from a certain barbecue restaurant famous for theirs)... they're not kidding.

Styx & Stones Moon Market

If you like outdoor markets but don't like the push and shove of larger locations, the Moon Market hits the perfect balance. Set along Main Street in my beloved Historic Hilton Village, the event is hosted by Styx & Stones and takes place on the first Friday evening of every month (weather permitting). Artists, crafters, food and drink vendors—and yes, local authors!—can grab a table outside the Village's historic shops.

Though I've only just started attending these, I've already seen a broad span of goods at the stalls. New books, soaps, scents, cookies, accessories, knickknacks, and artwork are all on display. There was even a tabletop gaming vendor offering some really gorgeous 3D-printed terrain, and a trailer serving up coffee.

Wander down between 6 and 9 pm on the first Friday of each month. Heck, I might even sell some books there someday in the future.

While I do travel a lot, and London is probably my favorite city in the world, these little corners of Newport News mean a lot to me. If you're ever in the area, be sure to give them a look. And wherever you are, it's always a good idea to support small businesses. They're the places that make us feel the most welcome.