Author Journey (September 2020)
So, September has been interesting, to say the least. There have been ups and downs, more time and less time. The whole month has just been one giant paradox, much like the world right now. Can we all just calm down already?
Got any big announcements?
The big news is that schools and daycares reopened here in Ontario and my kids were pretty excited to see their friends. I’m not going to lie, it’s a fairly stressful time what with the ever-present threat of COVID19, but we’re all just trying to get on with things and stay sane at the same time. We did manage a full week before cold and flu season raised its ugly head. Someone got a sore throat and we all got tested and had to isolate until the results were ready. Thankfully, it was just a cold and normal-ish life has resumed. I’ve even managed to do some work on the Black Death trilogy.
How’s the writing going?
That’s right, I have resumed work on the Black Death trilogy. Before the lockdown, I had edited book one, fixing the chronological issues, adding more scenes, and cleaning up the edits. This month, I have been able to get back to that and have started the same process with book two. I’m currently halfway through and hope to have that all finished some time in October. That will then leave book three which I plan on finishing off before the end of the year. This will put us in a position to be able to release all three books in the New Year. I think it’s likely that we’ll wait until February, but it’s starting to look really promising.
Have you done anything interesting?
I’ll tell you what I haven’t done, and that’s playing Pokemon Go! It’s crazy to think that I haven’t even opened the app in almost three weeks, but I decided that I need to focus on the things that will move my author career forwards and playing Pokemon Go was not one of those things. It helps that the kids aren’t playing it. I don’t have any regrets about the time spent as most of it was walking with the kids, but now that they’re at school, I need to make my dreams become a reality.
I have been listening to podcasts about writing and that’s been a big help. Not necessarily for advice, but hearing others talking about it always gets me pumped up and I can really use some motivation right about now.
What have you been watching?
I only covered three shows at an episodic level through this season and all of them have now finished. One thing that I’ve always enjoyed with doing episodic reviews is that it engages the community, especially with others watching and reviewing the same shows. That said, I am going to slow things down even further this season. I had always planned on doing season three of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? and will do so, all be it with a bit of a delay. The only other show I’m thinking of covering is Iwa Kakeru!: Sport Climbing Girls.
My A to Z Anime Challenge posts have continued and that’s fun revisiting, especially as I get the chance to grabs some new images and refine the text. I have been watching some more shows and will have the season reviews out for them in the very near future. There aren’t any prizes for guessing which ones, but I welcome your guesses in the comments.
Do you have any plans for next month?
For next month, I’m planning on doing a lot more editing, less episodic reviews, and I plan on finally finishing off my series of posts for Akame ga Kill which kind of fell to the wayside when I was overloaded with episodic reviews. I’m also going to slow down the tag posts for a little while as I did so many that I tagged just about everyone.
I’m really looking forward to catching up on some more shows that I have been holding off on and it’s going to be nice not writing up a review for every single episode. Expect more season reviews going forward.
Anyhow, stay safe and thanks for reading.
Good to hear you’re working on your triology thats really exciting! 🙂
Also pokemon go- I havent touched in years, but after watching the pokemon direct, they mentioned we’ll finally be able to transfer pokemon go creatures we’ve caught to pokemon home and then to sword/shield at some point! So I might start playing again so I can move those old pokemon to Shield.
Idk if you have sword/shield but lots of exciting stuff is happening for that game! 🙂
I still need to see Akame ga kill but heard its good. I was thinking of finishing up Another and reviewing that or Skull faced Bookseller for october!
Yeah, it feels good to be working on it again. In truth, I really want to get it finished so I can get back to working on my fantasy series which I’ve had a lot of ideas for in the almost two years since I last did any work on it.
I have Shield, but haven’t done much with it. It’s more my son’s game. Might have a play around with it at some point.
I’ve not seen either Another or Skull Faced Bookseller but heard good things. Should be fun. I’ve already started binge-watching and it’s great to back to that. I love diving into the series completely without the weekly breaks.
That’s great! I should get back to working on my stories too but college has been taking up more of my time xD . A fantasy series sounds really fun to be honest!
Ah, that’s okay! I’m glad he’s enjoying it at least!
I miss binging anime haha. Weeklys are mainly what Ive been watching and it does get hard waiting for them to update! It kind of gets repetitive constantly updating episodes on myanimelist and whatnot. Binging definitely helps them get completed faster but its hard to allocate time to sitting down and doing it >_<
Yeah, I’m going to focus on more season reviews and less episode reviews, giving me more time to write fiction. Think I’ll just do episodic stuff when I’m revisiting a series that I think needs that level of analysis.
“This will put us in a position to be able to release all three books in the New Year. ”
That’s exciting!
Do you plan to release them in rapid succession — maybe a few months apart? Or all at once? I’ve been reading that releasing them a few months apart is helpful, but I don’t have any experience with that yet.
It is… I’ve just got to keep the work up and we should make it…
We have completely finalised the plans but I’d assume we’ll look at having them all one month apart at the most. They’ll all go up for preorder at the same time so people will be able to see that it’s a complete trilogy.
Then, at some point later on, we bundle them up and release a boxed set at a discounted price.
It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to seeing how we do.