And with that, the first month of January is in the bag. And what a snow-filled month it’s been! For some reason, Mother Nature decided to hold back on the winter weather only to deliver it all in the span of a week. Things started out with a couple inches of snow and ice, followed by a more modest storm of six inches, then a day-long heavy-duty snowfall of fifteen inches, followed by a snow-to-ice event that ended with me shoveling snow in the rain.
It was a bit much but did provide plenty of time to write.
Before we get into that, I wanted to mention a couple more things. First off, being the start of a new year, I’ve been blogging a bit more than normal and wanted to mention a few recent posts. At the beginning of the month, I shared my top books and graphic novels of 2022. Check that out if you’re looking for something great to read. Later on, I talked about my overall thoughts on 2022 and my 2023 publishing roadmap. Those posts are good if you’re interested in learning more about my writing.
In addition, at the end of the month, my posts about my difficulties with amazon gained some traction a year after the event. So if you’re new to my blog as a result of that, hello! While I’m happy to report that the issue has been addressed, it did end up launching me on a bit of a journey as far as bringing my books wide. I’m debating whether to blog about my initial reactions to that, but have so far held back. Spoiler alert: this would be a rather frustrated post. Obviously, if you’ve seen my initial amazon thoughts, I can write about negative things, but prefer to be selective about when I chose to go to that space. So we’ll see.
But for now, let’s talk more about January.
What I’ve been working on: Website refresh and Revisions
If you read my December In Review post, you’ll know that I ended the year deep in revisions for my portal fantasy. A month later, I’m still there, but this time I’m part way through my third draft as opposed to the second draft, which is a nice amount of progress!
This past month, I’ve definitely come across some interesting complications when it comes to writing a portal fantasy on a dead planet. For example, did you know that the term “earth,” as it refers to the soil, is something unique to our planet? They don’t refer to the surface of Mars as “earth,” after all. And also, did you know that salt water doesn’t actually smell, but the unique scent is due to the living and dead things that exist within it? Knowing when to lean on science and when I’m getting overly technical and obsessive has been a challenge. Obviously, a lot of that detail isn’t that big of a deal to the average reader, but push things too far in the other direction, and the book can feel so unrealistic that people are taken out of the story.
In addition, you may have noticed that I’ve put some work into this website. The content is mostly the same, but it’s been given a facelift, and I’ve updated a lot of the links and content around my books to make things easier to navigate and understand. Let me know if you happen to come across any broken links or the like!
What I’ve Been Loving: Chill kpop and DLC
When I haven’t been working on revisions, January has been filled with plenty of fun things. First off, I’ve finally jumped on the NewJeans train. Most kpop fans have been there for months, but I’ve recently bit the bullet and have completely fallen for their music. While I absolutely love how complex, noisy, and weird kpop can be (in fact, my favorite artists often skirt the line between “brilliant” and “annoying”), the chill vibes of Newjeans have been addictive in their own way. My personal favorite song is the jazzy “Attention,” but I also really like “OMG.”
Second off, while I enjoyed the action-packed first half of season six of My Hero Academia, I’ve found the more character-based drama of the second half to be pure Nancy-bait. Any time the plot shifts to Todrokoki, I can’t stop thinking about it. Speaking of great characters, my next choice is actually a protagonist: Tress from Tress of the Emerald Sea. Writing teenaged characters can be a challenge. You want to embrace all the faults and inexperience of youth but also craft a character that won’t be written off as annoying for simply being realistic. Fortunately, Sanderson does wonderfully with Tress. With her pragmatism and determination, it was impossible not to route for her.
To finish things off, last month, I mentioned that I was really enjoying Mario Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, a humorous tactics game for the Switch. This month, I continued to enjoy both the game and the DLC. While I take some issue with how the multiple encounters with the game’s boss were handled, Donkey Kong Adventure was ultimately a great mix of goofy humor, appropriately challenging gameplay, and fantastic music by Grant Kirkhope.
What’s Next?
As you might have guessed, I need to finish up my revisions for my portal fantasy! If all goes to plan, I should be hearing back from my beta readers about Red and Black 6 in March, so I’d like to have my portal fantasy book all done and out to those beta readers by the time I dive back into the world of superheroes. And also taxes, maybe? Ugh. No, thank you.