Well, this is another blog post subject from the list I got that’s pretty much a defunct question, but let’s go with it anyway.
Aside from the fact that FB is no longer really worth much of my time, I was never a huge participant in the “following pages” practice of social media. That said, I do have an official page: A.F. Grappin Fans that, to be totally honest, isn’t particularly active. I do post weekly updates about these very blog posts, but that’s about it.
In short, I don’t do much Facebook anymore.
Generally speaking, I’m a few years out of having a large writing community I’m involved with. Covid and my own burnout removed me from a lot of the writing podcasts I was a big listener to, and it’s possibly some of them aren’t even active anymore today.
But, when I was very into them, here are the writing podcasts and resources I was a big fan of:
Writing Excuses https://writingexcuses.com
The Drabblecast https://www.drabblecast.org
Podcastle/ Escape Pod / Pseudopod (Escape Artists) https://escapeartists.net
I Should Be Writing https://murverse.com/podcasts/isbw
And there’s always the backlog of the writing podcast that I did for five years with my other writerly friends, The Melting Potcast https://themeltingpotcast.podbean.com
There are plenty of other resources out there. Go see who and what you like, if that’s your jam!

Oh, you’re going for the interesting questions, huh? Well, fine.
I’ve talked before about how I was an odd child. I really was. When I was growing up, there were a bunch of books called something like the Great Illustrated Classics. They were exactly what they sounded like: abridged, illustrated versions of classic books. From Robin Hood to Treasure Island to The Three Musketeers. They came in two sizes: big hardcovers and tiny, fat paperbacks. I think we had maybe one or two hardcovers, but mostly I had the small fat ones. And when I say small, fat paperbacks, these weren’t even the size of trade paperbacks. They were as thick as fantasy paperbacks, but these were maybe half the height of a trade paperback. These were square and flimsy. They were 2 for $1.
I ate them up as a kid. As a result, I was the 10-year-old who knew the plots of a lot of Dickens and Dumas. I knew Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Heidi, and Jekyll & Hyde. That was just for starters. Being overly familiar with these books had me going into more advanced reading and English classes as a teen. I’d already read the 9th grade classics for the year— granted, I knew the abridged versions, and class was reading the unabridged— so when my teacher gave me a basic plot pop-quiz on the two books for that year, I had no problem answering. Great Expectations and The Count of Monte Cristo were favorites of mine. I knew the stories well. So my teacher, Mr. Dodd, had me read along with his 12th graders at the time: Les Miserables and Ivanhoe.
In short, as a child, the classics were my favorites. I discovered The Hobbit at age 10 or so and read the entire The Lord of the Rings trilogy by the time I was 12. I even tried The Silmarillion around that time… yeah. No. I’m 41 now and just tried that one again like last year and STILL no.
As a kid, I’d say Dickens and Dumas were my favorites. The Count of Monte Cristo remains one of my favorite stories to this day, and I just love Dickens anyway. I think David Copperfield was one of my favorites.
But I don’t know that I’d have called any of those classics “my favorite book as a child.”
No, that honor goes to a book I randomly picked up at a Scholastic book fair when I was around 11 or 12, maybe. It’s a book that was published in 1993, so I was 9 when it came out. I might have gotten it pretty quick on release, but I doubt it.
Anyway, the book was Gemini Game by Michael Scott. It was a middle-grade-aged sci-fi novel set in the early 21st century, centered around a pair of teenagers who created VR video games. One of their games started causing people to go into comas, and the police were after them. To prove their innocence, the two teens— twins named BJ and Liz— had to go into their own game and find out what the problem was.
Keep in mind, this again was in the early 90s. Mainstream video gaming was still in its early years, with the SNES and Sega Genesis ruling the roost. The N64 and PlayStation were still a few years away. I, however, had already become very video-game obsessed. That started young, when we got our first Nintendo Entertainment System. By the time Gemini Game appeared in my world, I was hungry for books about video games. And this one, where players went inside the game, was a dream book made real.
I want to say I reread it at some point in my 30s. It’s not long, but thing is, I read it so many times in my youth that I remember a great deal of it even now. I even still have my original copy of it. The cover has been taped back into place where it came off, but it holds a very special place on my bookshelf.
How fitting that I’m finally writing a LitRPG story of my own. Only took 3 decades.

This is a silly question for me. I am notorious about putting myself and my friends in stories. Sometimes, it’s just for the thrill of using their name, or a variation of it. More often than not, that’s it.
Second-most frequently, I’ll use their description as a basis for a character. I know a lot of people of wondrous variety, so why not put their visages in books? It keeps me from getting too lazy when it comes to describing characters, if I have a living reference to draw from. I’ve done that for ages, but it turns out I had a good reason why I couldn’t just imagine people on my own. Turns out I have aphantasia to a very high degree. If you’re not familiar with aphantasia, well, I wasn’t either. In short, it means I have no mental visualization. I legitimately cannot visualize things in my head. Ask me to picture a red apple, and I could absolutely describe one to you, but I’m not “seeing” it. For so long, I thought people were just being metaphorical about “picture this in your mind.” Or the concept of “the mind’s eye.” I don’t have those. It was kind of a blow to find out people actually CAN see things in their heads.
So I’ve always needed to think a little differently, which is fine. I can describe things well. Call it a coping mechanism.
But I absolutely do fully base characters in books off people I know. As I said, I’m the most common inserted one, but it’s been getting less and less as time goes on. Most likely, you’ll find the me-character in a supporting or even cameo role. Sometimes the name might be reminiscent of mine, like my character in The Deadly Studies. Oh yeah, I’m there. And I die. It’s great.
I’ve also stuffed my best friends into a few stories. It helps to be able to lay out a situation to my friends and say, “How would you react?” or even to possibly play out some dialogue. My best friend is a pro at that. They’ve helped me far more times than I can count. I’d be lost without my best friend.
Anyway, the short answer is yes, I do this A LOT.
If you’re not careful around me, you might end up in a book. 

Oh, geez. You’re really going to make me talk about this, aren’t you?
Okay. Well, it was in middle school (~ages 11-13 for those not familiar with US public school in the 90s) that I really started writing, and it was in maybe 7th or 8th grade when I wrote my first novel.
It was a weird parody/homage to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was trying to emulate farce movies I was fond of as a kid, movies like Hot Shots! and Robin Hood: Men In Tights. But it was a TMNT homage in that the main characters were four guys who knew martial arts.
The Kung-Fu Cockroaches.
I honestly don’t remember a whole ton of the plot. None of it, actually. I don’t even remember the Cockroaches’ names, even though I know I finished one book about them and started the sequel. Then again, this was all handwritten, and I have no idea what the word count was.
I do vaguely remember one of their weapons. At the time, since I was obviously finding my voice, learning techniques and storytelling and all, I was very hell-bent on the “subvert expectations at the end” lists of things. So I want to say the first three had somewhat expected weapons. Maybe not actual nunchucks, more like… a single throwing star. But I very strongly remember the last Kung-Fu Cockroach’s weapon was “a seed wrapped in a band-aid.”
It’s pretty obvious I was a weird kid.
The only other thing I really recall about it was that I was changing narrative POV every chapter, cycling through the four protagonists.
As for where the book is now, I’m sure it’s long been incinerated. I can’t say I’m upset about it. There’s probably a great case to be made that reading it will show the roots and foundation of the writer I’ve become now, around 30 years later, but… no. I honestly don’t want to be cringing at that mess. It feels embarrassing enough admitting to that silly-ass weapon.
I had a lot to learn about humor.
But, while on the topic, I’ll briefly discuss a few other projects I recall from around that time:
My Best Friend Exploded Last Week - This was a “book” I wrote that was probably around novelette length, and it was definitely all about the title. I did the narrative technique of starting the book with the KABOOM of the friend exploding, then explaining the whole store until it repeated the explosion with all context at the end. Again, I don’t remember much of plot, characters, or anything, but I do remember there was a whole thing with a mad scientist who was making human-animal hybrids, a la Dr. Moreau (I saw that movie way too young). And I do recall one of the characters being told their DNA would be merged with that of an amoeba.
Weird kid.
The Dough That Ate New York City - This was a short narrative poem, and I actually do wish I still had this one. It was maybe 15-20 stanzas long, simple rhyming quatrains, talking about a lump of dough— like bread or pizza dough— that grew so out of control it… well, it ate New York City.
In those days, I was fairly prolific, but it’s very true you need to get a good million words under your belt before you really start getting a good feel for the craft. I’m glad I started that young, but holy crap does it make me cringe!

I wasn’t wrong about August being a huge change. With the full-time job again and all, time is a crunch, but the great thing is that I do get some time to write there if the shop’s dead and I’ve gotten my inventory projects done for the day. So there has been progress!
Dungeons & Dragons: Bard Campaign - Session #7 fully planned. No new update. We haven’t played session 7 yet. In short, no update.
D&D Single Adventure - No progress, which hurts, but I said last month I was kind of waiting to see how modules run for me so I can get a better grip on what others would expect from a written adventure. My first session is behind me now and the second comes up tomorrow, so I’m getting that exposure I’ve been wanting.
Criminal from Birth sequel - Guess what! I finished the second draft pretty quickly into August! It’s currently with my editor!
LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - I am getting SO FREAKING EXCITED about this project. I’ve been through a main overarcing outline, as well as 7-pointed the character arcs of 4 main characters (1 protagonist and 3 supporting characters including a secondary antagonist), and I’m into my full outline now, which is my Draft Point Five that I’ve mentioned before in my outlining series of blog posts. I have a long way to go, but I have a strong sense of the ending of this book, which is a first for me. Not just the actual end, but the climax. That’s not normally something I have figured well. But right now, it’s the details of the first half of the book that are sparse. I have an easy time building up, so I’m really hoping this will all go smoothly!
Current chapters in Draft Point Five: 8
New Short Story (My Stories) - Same as last month. I got some work done on it, but not enough. I kinda got obsessed with Subscription Life.
I did get one writing prompt done in August. Not as much as I wanted, but I also did pick another I plan to write, so there’s that. I need to do more exercises, like I said last month. In fact, I've done one already for today's Patron post!