Its The End of the Year as We Know It
...and I am feeling alright. I have been away a few months, and things have been happening. Its been a lot of work related busy but also a fair bit of creativity and reorganizing the workflow. I am making achievable goals starting today. .
Before writing this I got in 1430 words on River of a Thousand Teeth. That is the most words that I have written with purpose in months. It feels good to be doing this thing that I am good at and I need to keep up the pace for my own sanity. I have a total of five projects I want to do this year, aside from putting out short stories and shit like that. The year of writing? Maybe.
Publishing The Language of Skeptics this year was both good and bad, mostly good. The bad part can be attributed to poor planning and a malaise that hit after finishing it and marketing it and all sorts of other bullshit. Changing jobs being one of those. For the last two months I have been figuratively lying awake in bed planning on writing more. Today I woke up and did that. I Am talking about it so that I do not backslide and pretend I didn't. Three weeks to a new, good habit? That's about 21k words baby, if I manage to get about 1k words a day on average.
New Dr Who
I have not watched the Fifteenth Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa yet. I plan too, perhaps tonight. Definitely sometime this week. My excitement for this new Dr. Who in no way diminishes my appreciation for the 13th Doctor, who I think got a bad case of overwriting and overthinking from the show runner. I did not watch Tennant’s return as the “14th” Doctor. I have no intention of doing so. I do not blame Tennant, even though he is far from my personal favorite Doctor. To be fair, I think he was a fine Doctor and is a good actor. But this is a slap in the face of Ncuti Gatwa. And is a reaction to fans who just don’t understand Dr. Who. Change is the only constant. Do better. Tell better stories. Be okay with changes your media makes to better the whole.
Rebel Moon
I am also choosing to never watch Rebel Moon. I feel like this needs a statement. I choose not to watch a lot of movies. Some of them good, some of them popular. But my stance on Rebel Moon is that I was never going to watch it. Yet plenty of smart, articulate people have done so. Why? You could see it was no good. Or more to the point, could see it would not reach its lofty expectations. The trailer told you that. Anthony Hopkins voice over told you that. But like one of my favorite movie reviewers, I feel compelled to tell you, constant reader, I have no intention of watching this movie. Because it sucks. Also because I am tired of prestige directors phoning it in. Zach Snyder can make a good movie. He just chooses not to.
My Projects for 2024
Okay, to wrap this up lets take a look at my projects for 2024
River of a Thousand Teeth: 2700+ words of ~55k
The Lute Box: 24 words of ~70k
Cannibal Row: 0 - Second Draft of ~55k
Collab Project: 500+ words (rewriting my portion) of many words. Like this is epic people
Vacuum of Battle: 10k+ good words, I cut some crap recently of 80k words
Christmas Evil: 0 - planning stages 12 stories 40k to 60k - coming Christmas 2024!
Plus an assortment of short stories that might go into the prequel collection, The Sea is Also Salt or end up being sent out to magazines and anthologies.
Next week I will have more news about a story of mine being published this coming summer.
Happy Holidays. Stay Safe. Be good to one another.
SMH
