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Category Archives: Blog news

Three Years

Today’s my third anniversary with WordPress. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been working on this blog for the last three years, but here we are. It’s been fascinating to see the evolution of my writing over the course of those three years. I’m feeling more confident in my writing now than ever before, and it’s all thanks to you amazing readers. Those of you who’ve been around since the beginning? Thank you for continuing to believe in me. Those of you who are new? Welcome, and thank you for letting me share a bit of the crazy in my head with you. I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

2014: A Brief Preview

2014 is going to be the best year yet. I said that last year, and it’s just as true today. It’s going to be a big year, with lots of upcoming books, movies, and more. Here’s a little preview of what I’m looking forward to in 2014.

Books: Mr. Mercedes. A new novel from Stephen King hits shelves this June. King is always worth a read, and I can’t wait to hear what his latest tale has to offer.

Karen Traviss is releasing a new Halo book this year, with Mortal Dictata. She’ll be concluding the story she started with Glasslands and The Thursday War. I’ve really enjoyed Traviss’ take on the Halo universe, especially her depictions of the Sangheili (Elites) and their culture.

Conferences: I’m adding a category this year, because I’m planning (and hoping) to attend the Pikes Peak Writer’s Conference for the first time this year. Guests of honor include Gail Carriger, Jim C. Hines, and Chuck Wendig. It’s going to be an incredible weekend, and I’m hoping that some of my local writing friends, including V are able to join me.

Movies: Marvel’s Cinematic Universe continues to march into Phase 2. Following last year’s Iron Man 3 and Thor 2: The Dark World will be Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the relatively risky Guardians of the Galaxy. Winter Soldier should be a solid follow-up to The Avengers, with Cap having his WWII past catch up to him. Guardians of the Galaxy is going to be interesting, since the comic isn’t exactly the home of Marvel’s A-list characters. Still should be a hell of a movie to catch in the theatre.

Also this year, Wes Anderson’s new film, The Grand Budapest Hotel opens. I love Anderson’s style, and this looks to be a grand collaboration with all of his usual cohorts. Look for Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, and more great stars in the tale of a legendary concierge, Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes).

Television: Sherlock. It’s back, after far too long. British audiences got to see “The Empty Hearse” premiere already. American audiences should be getting in on the action by mid-January thanks to PBS (or sooner, if they’re clever).

Doctor Who celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013. Now that Matt Smith has handed the sonic screwdriver and TARDIS key over to Peter Capaldi, it’ll be heading in a new direction. Having not yet seen the most recent Christmas special, I can’t speak to Capaldi’s role just yet, but any time the Doctor regenerates is exciting.

So here we go, 2014. I’m counting on you to be the best year you can be. I’ll do everything I can on my end.

Happy New Year, everyone.

2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,600 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Trifextra Week 99: Trifecta New Year

This week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge is simple. For the site’s 99th Trifextra Challenge, we were asked to provide our New Year’s Resolution in three words. Tempting though it was to take the Chuck Wendig route and say that mine would be “Art harder, motherfucker,” I decided to be a little more original. Here it is. Three simple things I plan to do more of in 2014.

Read. Write. Love.

 

Happy New Year, everyone. See you in 2014.

Looking Forward

2013 has been a pretty amazing year. I got to continue to work at two jobs that I love. I got to meet Neil DeGrasse Tyson, William Shatner, and Neil Gaiman. I saw RUSH in concert for the first (and hopefully not last) time. I made a lot of awesome new friends at the Colorado Renaissance Festival, and got to spend time with a lot of my old ones. I got to take my cosplaying in bold new directions. I celebrated the birth of my first nephew.

Looking back over my preview for the year, I’m seeing a lot of great things that I got through. I read Halo: Silentium (and played through Halo 4 with my good friend Hugh), and Dr. Sleep. I caught Pacific Rim, Iron Man 3, and Star Trek: Into Darkness in the theatre, and caught up on a lot of other films once they hit DVD. I powered through the new season of Arrested Development and devoured the first season and a half (thus far) of American Horror Story, plus wrapped up the final season of Futurama.

There have been some rough patches this year. I’m not going to pretend that, as Vonnegut so wonderfully said, “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” It’s not true. I lost one of my oldest friends a few months ago. Lots of people are moving on to do other things with their lives, and I have felt at many times that I am being left behind. I didn’t do a great number of the things that I set out to do at the beginning of this year. However, despite all of these things, I’ve found that the good manages to once again outweigh the bad. I can honestly say now that I believe that 2014 will be even better. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks as always for reading.

Pride

Tomorrow, my older sister will receive her Master’s Degree. I’m very proud of her, and thrilled that she’s accomplished so much. It’s great inspiration to me, since I’m planning to start my own Master’s program in the next year.

My apologies for not writing more of late. It’s one of those nasty side-effects of working in a retail job during the holiday season. I swear there are stories in progress.

Another Mini-Milestone

I’ve passed 12,000 views on the blog! Thank you, dear readers. You’ve been amazing.

A Cunning Scheme

I told you I wasn’t going to be doing NaNoWriMo this year, and I told you why. That was a clever lie.

Here’s the truth. In less than two weeks, the fiftieth anniversary special of Doctor Who will be airing worldwide. I can’t possibly be expected to be productive in the days leading up to that, especially with Thor: The Dark World premiering last week (and starring the 9th Doctor, Christopher Eccleston as the villain!) and Catching Fire hitting theatres soon. Too much to do, boys and girls. Too much to do. Back to rewatching Matt Smith’s run of Doctor Who and do some writing.

Why I Won’t Be Doing NaNoWriMo This Year

It’s nearly the end of October, and as you may be aware, my favorite holiday is rapidly approaching. Hallowe’en is less than a week away, and I’ve been making some arrangements for upcoming events. Looking at the way things will be falling into place over the next month has left me no choice but to say this. I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo this year.

I’ve done NaNoWriMo for the last two years. When I first started I was couchsurfing and working one job, nineteen hours a week. I had plenty of time to tackle the project, and I was giving Scrivener a go at the same time. It seemed perfect to me, and I managed to crank out over 30,000 words in the course of the days leading up to Thanksgiving. Then my car almost died on my way home for the holiday, and my ability to focus went out onto the highway along with all of my coolant.

Last year, I was back to two jobs (actually, the same two that I’m doing now… I feel somewhat accomplished for that in and of itself), and decided that I wanted to tackle a totally different genre for me second attempt. I changed my mind partway through, and told myself I was going to edit my NaNo project from the year before instead. I was still apartment hunting. I was convinced that NaNo would bring the structure that my life needed. It didn’t. I got essentially zero progress done on any fiction writing. I was disappointed, to say the least. So this year, I’m going on NaNo Hiatus.

This doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be writing. It definitely doesn’t mean that. In fact, I’ll probably be writing more than usual. However, I’ve got multiple small projects that I’m going to be working on that are going to be taking priority over an attempt to cobble 1600+ words together each day. I have existing stories that need fleshed out. I need to place focus on them.

Damn straight, Jean-Luc.

My favorite part of this meme is the look on Jonathan Frakes’ face.

Not that facebook is the biggest distraction I have from writing, but you get the idea. Writing’s not the only thing I’ve got to focus on right now either. Whether I like it or not, I’ve still got two part-time jobs that keep me occupied. The bookstore job in particular is only going to get more intensive as the holiday season approaches. It’s the nature of retail, and as much as I dread the thought of another Christmas in that field, what I do is all about helping people find the right book.

So yeah, there’s the whole job thing kind of interfering with writing, but honestly, I’m not certain that NaNoWriMo is the right route for me to take through it, at least not right now. Maybe, if all goes well, I’ll have full-time employment by this time next year, and I’ll be able to drop all of my accumulated vacation days on November, and just take paid time off to write. That would be amazing.

Until then, I’m going to work on a couple of longer pieces that I plan to submit for publication, and whip together a few microfiction pieces for the various writing challenges that pop up throughout the month. To those of you who are tackling NaNoWriMo in a couple of days, I wish you the best of luck. It’s great for certain people at certain times in their lives, and can be spectacular simply to get the words out of your head. Those of you who won’t be doing NaNo are more than welcome to join me at the bar on Hallowe’en and toast to the crazy people who are hunkering down in the writing bunkers for the next thirty days. Cheers!

Labor Day

I feel very productive today.

I spent most of Labor Day weekend at work, but it was definitely worth it. The days at the bookstore when I can help a customer find just the right book or gift are the best days, when I can’t help saying how much I love my job.

On top of that, though, I spent a lot of time working on my current cosplay project for NDK. It’s down to the wire, now, so there’s a bit of pressure to get the last bits of fabric cut out and sewn together. I’ve been a cosplayer for about five years now, but this is the first time I’ll have made the whole costume myself. The con is ten days away. So, if I don’t write a lot between now and then, it’s because I’m a wee bit occupied with that.

Anyway, I hope you all had a lovely Labor Day. I’ll be back soon, so that I can allow my hands to cramp from typing instead of sewing.