The House of Imp News Archive
Newsletter archive
[mailpoet_archive]Archived entries from the What’s New page.
January 27, 2020
We made it to 2020, who would have thunk it.
This website is safe for the year thanks to beautiful people who answered my emergency ask for financial help. I’m feeling quite humbled at the moment tbh.
Icarus Machine is working on Fragile.
i’m writing and revising a couple of novels.
Some podcasting is underway too.
This very moment, which is the only moment there is, things are not bad at all. May it stay so.
Be well always.
November 13, 2019
So, I started a fundraiser. My microphone is failing me, so I would love help with a new one. Sounds easy enough. Well, it’s not. Psychologically and practically it’s tough. I keep thinking it’s a stupid thing to do. Why would anyone care. It’s the wrong time of year to ask people for money, even if it’s a few dollars. I’m not sick or homeless or in need of… anything truly critical for survival.
Someone said to me, “It’s a shot in the dark.”
I’m not sure what that actually means. but it doesn’t feel like encouragement.
Another issue that crops up is that since I do have a microphone, I use it so clearly I have one, my ask seems unnecessary and probably feels like a simple grab for cash.
I’m not sure how to think about that. It makes me doubt myself. Grab for cash? Well, no! But I’m sure that depends on who you ask too. First world problem in a nutshell.
but then I remember my actual situation and the reason why I started the fundraiser. It’s simply because the gear I have is failing and I have problems keeping it running while I record. Sometimes it’s fine for hours, some days I just walk away because there’s nothing I can do to finish my recording. If it fails me completely, I will not have what I need to do what I do between six and ten hours a day when production is ongoing. and at that time, it’s too late. It’s important to me, it’s that simple. and there are no margins to nibble at when there are no funds to begin with. 🙂
So I want to get ahead of it.
I prefer to prepare and plan to deal with problems ahead of time. But it feels like that’s not the way to go about it.
I don’t know.
But I’m thinking that I’ll bug you until you drop me a coin. I’ll keep asking, I’ll create videos like this to make updates, I’ll stay online and do what those in the know tell me to do.
:
And in-between bouts of social-networking angst and fights with my microphone, I’ll write. My novel now has the correct beginning which I posted yesterday. I’m digging into my next drafted chapter today. And maybe, just maybe, things will work themselves out some how some way.
So cheers and be well always.
October 8 2019:
To say that I’ve been on hiatus would be generous. M.I.A, lost in a whirlwind of crap, not able to get my head beyond all the things that are going wrong, now that’s more honest. But really, I’m not in the mood to flesh it out. I prefer to look ahead. Here are a few things of interest coming up/happening now. A blog post, some fiction, and another NAG Radio podcast may be in the cards too.
Icarus machine is working now on an EP. this collection strays far from the previous story driven “Sundered World” and will certainly be different. It is very much Icarus machine, just better. “Fragile” – remember that name.
But here’s the real news, All!
Icarus machine welcomes a real drummer! Like, this is huge and a long time coming. Seven07 a.k.a Ben Theobald has joined Icarus Machine. I will talk lots on this in the near future. We are very excited and happy to be able to say it’s coming together nicely, this band. We have one track for the upcoming EP ready and Ben’s drums are simply perfect. 😀
Thursday March 14, 2019
So it is out. Corium. Icarus machine’s second album. It’s been a bit weird. Since I don’t do promotion well, any kind of attention causes equal measures anxiety and “hell yeah!”. We have received a few requests/offers from magazines and web radio stations. Even and ask for signed pictures. That is actually quite awesome. It’s just too bad I don’t know how to react to it. Never mind how to deal with the practicalities.
Oh, as a “virtual” band, it’s not really possible to have actual pictures of us, sign and send. I would love to. I really would. In my particular case, photographs are a complication all of their own. As someone without sight and without sighted assistance, such a seemingly simple thing turns into a mile high obstacle. It feels like I fail those who are interested in our music, what we do, and what we are.
I know, it’s a sucky way to look at it. But it’s how it feels.
It’s the music that counts. I know. But recognition and a sprinkling of praise feels fantastic too. There’s no denying that.
But what about connecting to the audience?
Yeah, I suck.
If you listen to our music, you rock! Thank you. Know that I want to be the confident, interesting, fan-connecting prog band front woman you want to see and hear.
But I am not. and perhaps in the end, the music might have to speak for itself and all the rest can fall where it may. Love it or hate it, Icarus Machine will create more music. Whether I’m rock-star material or not. Whether this band ever comes together to play an actual gig in an actual physical location or not. The music will keep coming.
Sunday March 10
Yep, there’s a bit of a lull on the site. I know.
But here’s what’s happening behind the curtains:
Our new album corium is to be published on all the places including Bandcamp, this coming week.
This website is building a shop for Icarus Machine merch and more. The shop is live only for members while it is being populated with stuff.
Speaking of T-Shirts and hoodies and stuff, we will use tonethreads.com for our stuff. Our merch on Cafepress.com will remain as an alternativeplace to get stuff.
I have not been doing any writing lately and that sucks. I’m currently struggling to find a way to buy a licence for Scrivener. It will have to be paid for after another four days of use. I might have to give up on that and return to writing in some free editor. We’ll see how that goes.
The
mailing list
is however up and running. Do join.
A new HOI Now and again Radio is scheduled for March 15. I will do my best to make that happen.
That’s it for now.
Wednesday February 27 2019
and naturally, that wasn’t quite true. so mailing lists.
so the good news is that at this very moment I’m just waiting for the change on my server to kick in. That could take anywhere from 4 to 24 hours. Right now, I’m past the 4.
Waiting.
So, I suppose the bad news was that it didn’t actually work. it appeared to, but only on specific domains. Sigh.
As soon as I know it’s functioning, I’ll finish and publish the first HOI now and Again Radio show. The project that may or may. not be part of the Podcast that must not be named. We’ll just have to see.
Until next time.
Saturday, February 16 2019
It’s been a while. But for a good reason. 🙂
I have a mailing list working again. I’m working on setting up everything the way I want it. I’ll see about contacting my former Studio Chaotic subscribers who sadly were misplaced in the failed system I used to have. Anyone on that list has to be added manually again, some I have to ask to subscribe again, and some may actually be lost forever. But that will be sorted out in the coming week. But there’s no need to wait for everything to be perfect. As a House of Imp lurker, you know that nothing is ever finished or perfect enough for me. 😀
Subscribe here to let me tell you what’s new – Weekly
Fiction: Mother of Crow – The novel – is now on Chapter 9 – The after the before never changes.
You can now also subscribe to read the new chapters in your mail, if that’s interesting to you. It’s easy and that’s a good thing in my world. 🙂 You can sign up for that on
the novel page.
In-between podcasts? Is that what I am? The weekly HOI Now and again radio is still in development.
That is a way to say that I haven’t worked up the courage to launch. Also, because I can’t make a decision to save my life, I’m still wondering if the NAG radio should simply be the thing to revive the House of Imp – Podcast.
What do you think? I’d really want to know. Comment here or
contact me here.
Music…. Now that is a totally different beast. Finished recently is this:
Icarus machine news: The upcoming album has changed name.
“Mother of Crow” is now “Corium”.
The final mixing is happening right now! Eight out of the thirteen songs are ready. It’s sounding good, btw. This album will be available on Bandcamp as well as all the other places.
We still have no album art, the lyrics have not been written, we need updated images of the band members. There’s a shit ton of things to get ready. And it’s been two years or more. It’s problematic to have an album delayed like this. The songs were all written nearly two years ago and so many other things has continued streaming past. The mindset is different and it is hard to get the mind back there. It is strange how much can change in two years. But there you have it.
It is finally happening. And moving forward, Icarus Machine will not fall in that trap again. Faster turnaround, faster releases, and more intense productions is what I aim for. Singles and EPs instead of full albums seems to me the way to go.
But first, “Corium” hell, yeah! It’s coming. 😀
Friday, January 18 2019
I have still not found a plugin that will hide the bulk of a WordPress post or page until you click on “Read More”. The funny thing is that the ones I’ve tried probably work for you. But somehow my screen reader can still access the text that is supposedly hidden. And that seriously defeats the purpose because… well, damn it, I work hard to make sure all my pages and functions and plugins are totally accessible for anyone using a screen reader I.E Text to Speech, so this shit should work for me too! Sometimes I despair. But I’m stubborn as sin and I will find something that works.
I’m not your regular webmaster. I break shit and fix shit, all on a live site.
Why? Because that is how life works. You don’t get to make a draft of your day and try it out first to make sure it’s not going to fuck something up.
Ha! Take that, and like it.
Cheers.
Monday, January 14 2019
So there’s one more chapter to read in my novel in the making. Check that out below. 🙂 At the moment I’m pondering various audio options for making this place more interesting/more enjoyable to browse. I’ve checked a few plugins for text to speech. Amazon poly is probably great but it would cost me something, and I’m not clear how much. gSpeech is another one but it doesn’t seem to do what I want. Responsive something something TTS has an awful female voice and I’m quite picky. Sigh. So, what I want to do is to have a button to speak outlaid the post in question. These days it is not a big thing, but navigating plugins to find the stuff I’m going to be happy with is an entirely different can of worms. There’s of course the option of converting the posts I want to have spoken myself and use a standard audio player…. Uh, is that really something I want to spend my time on?
Uh, no.
So I’ll keep looking. While I do that, I write, I revise, and I wait for something to happen on the music front. Seems a bit slow at the moment.
Until next time. Cheers
Saturday January 5 2019
Happy new year… I guess. 😀 So what’s happening? I am currently revising chapters, rewriting some, writing others. I am talking about Mother of Crow, the novel in progress. Up for publishing are chapters 6 through 8. I’m just about to do some revision on chapter 9 – Smoke and ashes and a crazy clerk.
Other than that, just getting through January could be tough. But no matter how I think about things, time moves on in a steady pace. That’s just how it is. At some point, on a day and a time sometime later, I will look back at today, tomorrow, and all that happened.
Something like that. 😀
Revision, editing, studying, keeping warm.
Cheers.
Monday December 31 2018
And this is pretty much the end of this year. I can’t say it was a good one. So I won’t. But I’m not delusional enough to think that changing one number on the calendar will change things. Happy new year, You, if you care to celebrate it. Have fun. 🙂
Other than that, I’m adding revised drafts to Mother of Crow. There are three more in the queue for posting. So I’m ahead of the game somewhat.
Take care and don’t make promises you know you won’t be keeping.
JennyK
Thursday December 20 2018
So, there’s another chapter posted in my novel in progress. And I tried the new editor in the latest WordPress update and I hated it. I had to say something so I did that here. But the big thing this week is the conversion from http to https. This means the site is not labeled as insecure by Google Chrome anymore. Because it’s not insecure anymore! That is nice. 😀 On top of that, House of Imp is now GDPR compliant, although I have a few threads to tie up. So that makes it good on security as well as privacy.
Oh crap, that shit is so boring I’m going to stop right there. It is done. Better late than never I suppose, and hopefully there will be no issues with broken links or other strange problems with this update.
Check out the new Mother of Crow chapter 4 – Mundane things. And water. instead. Who wants to be bothered with WordPress particulars? I sure didn’t want to.
Until next time, this is House of Imp and that’s where I’m at.
Cheers.
Sunday
New music on the collaboration page. I’m not done yet adding tunes, but it’s coming along. I try to get most updates done before my trial of mars Edit (Fantastic desktop blogging app.) runs out. I learned recently that I won’t be able to buy a licence for it. Scrivener is another app that I really want to keep using. They make my life so much easier. But I suppose easy costs money. Sigh. Yeah, sorry for the complaining today, but a Canadian government agency that I won’t even bother naming, has decided to kick us in the teeth just before Christmas. That is their way after all. 🙂 What bothers me the most in all of our financial issues is that agencies in this government don’t treat people like humans. and that’s that. i don’t know what more to say about that. We are not human because all our worth is define by the money they can rip from our grocery budget.
I should stop there. It’s too depressing. Sigh.
Better days ahead.
Cheers.
Wednesday
Update! And it is out! Dissonance – New from Icarus machine – Check it out. This is the first song I have written that has become an Icarus machine song. That is very cool! It will not be the last. 😀
*** .
Yeah, I’m updating the website, changing things around. Organizing stuff. Cleaning out crap.
someone said recently, and I’m paraphrasing here, that he cleaned and reorganized his studio for stress relief. Yup, I feel you, Man! , I do that. And like my friend, i do that far more often than i like to admit.
Cleaning is therapy.
In other news: Hell yeah, Icarus machine is releasing a brand new single. Possibly today. Patrons at The choices of butterflies
In other news, I had a good rant going but my machine decided it wasn’t having it. So into the void it went. I sincerely hope the Void Goblins will enjoy what I wrote because I won’t try to recreate it.
I’ll be back.
Had an opportunity to sleep in. Didn’t happen. As things go, 5AM wakes me and I’m awake. Craving coffee. Wishing I could sleep longer won’t make it so. Sigh. So I tweaked the front page. Now I’m wondering why allowing comments on pages doesn’t work. Annoying. The rest of my to do list will have to wait while I enter the rabbit hole of WordPress trouble shooting.
I shall return later with Mother of Crow Chapter 1. 😀
Finally Friday. That’s what I’m supposed to say, right? Heh, we’ll just leave it at that. So my favourite plugin failed me and I had to do a workaround on the front page. A hack I don’t really like. but it will do for now. So I got started with publishing my novel in progress. The prologue is now available. I’m in a bit of a rush so you’ll have to find it yourself. 😀 And I got posting on Facebook. Ugh. If you know me, you know I am not a fan of that place. but it has its uses I suppose. Like fanpages and… Um, fanpages. I am seriously sore after running a hand sander for far too long this past week. My arms even complain about me typing this.
Currently all I want is:
A beer, a nice hot meal, a pillow and a bunch of blankets. I really don’t like winter.
Catch ya later
So after considering my first blog post in a while, I have decided to rewrite it. I needed to write it I think. But a rewrite to something not quite as personal would serve it better. And the reader too I’m sure. So there you go. : Postponed for a little while.
In other news, I’m currently putting words and melody to this here tune:
When that becomes hard on the brain, I try to find time to finalize vocals and mix this song here:
And when my ears have taken enough of a beating, I cram as much contracted braille into my head as I can, and when that fails to fill my entire day, I have pine boards to san, floors to clean, paperwork to scan into readable digital text, and should I not do laundry? Nah, I’ll make sure I have something left to do for the time between 8:30 and 11 P.M.
And I still have to set up a page for this new “news” section of mine. A new page? Uh, we’ll see.
Catch ya later.
So I spent most of this morning tweaking a plugin to display a list of all posts and pages that has been modified recently. Why? Well, I thought it would be a good idea. 😀 And I think it is. I’m cooking up a scheme for the front page where this daily or semi daily status report will show only a couple of days of my ramble, with a “read more” link at the end. Just haven’t gotten around to that yet. This stupid list, which you now can see further down on this page was more important. Between messing with plugins and frying my brain with short-code parameters and running a sander across a pine bannister under construction, I haven’t had much time for thinking about much of anything. And that’s kinda nice. I’ll be back. Got a blog to publish after all. 😀
As I continue messing with the House of Imp front page, the back part of my mind plans for a guided tour of this place. With Imp as a not so helpful helper. It’s just for fun really. But, what the hell. So that’s coming in the next few weeks. At the same time I want to start publishing the new mother of Crow novel drafts here. It’s a work in progress and it is slow. But for you, dear random visitor, I’ll share what I have.
Icarus machine Has an album to finalize and much of that will happen in December when work slows down for a bit for the man in charge of that. Sriracha The legendary a.k.a Bill will be on it like Canuck in a pot-shop. (Yeah, that shit is legal here now so the simile is applicable if rather awful. Sorry about that.)
Deep thought of the day:
“Uh. Laundry doesn’t fold itself? WTF?”
Hated phrase of the week:
“This may be a sentence fragment.”
Surfacing… Starting with a blog post, updating the front-page, then I will try to figure out what all that Gutenberg bullshit is all about. If you’re not into WordPress, then don’t worry about it. It’s the crap behind the stuff that you see, what makes it tick, what makes it look the way it does — all that text, all those pictures, all that other stuff we usually just skim and forget. Again, don’t worry about it. Chances are I won’t bother either.
But hey, I’m alive. I miss the podcasting. I want to write blogs again. I made this place but I neglect it. Maybe that’s coming to an end. Who knows. But for now, let me just start with a simple blog titled “The JennyK comfort zone trap – How I got there and why I can’t seem to leave” To be published Wednesday, that will tell it all. Well, most of it. All of it relevant, none of it very useful.
Be good to each other. This world needs nice. Talk to you soon.
jenny
About the author
Jenny K. Brennan is a Swedish/Canadian vocalist, songwriter, and writer living in Ontario, Canada since 2002 with one husband, one dog, and unfinished projects in the thousands. Find her on
The House of Imp,
kompoz.com,
Icarus Machine official,
JennyK Productions Youtube,
and other places. She is the lyricist and vocalist in the melodic metal band Icarus Machine since 2015. She studies braille at The Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually impaired. On her free time, she learns Wordpress by trial and error, audio production using Apple Logic Pro, and carpentry by association.