Hope all of you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day, whether you spent it with someone you loved or blissfully alone. Even if you spent it wearing all black and grinding your teeth at every happy couple you had to deal with.
In other news, I tried rearrange my schedule a bit last week.
Usually Friday is a day of all errands for me. Random stuff in the morning (post office, cat stuff, Target runs, etc), groceries in the evening, and I get to squeeze in a few hours of writing in between. Then Saturday is my mandated day off (the boss insists) when I try to work on little toy soldiers or models or what have you. Stuff that works the physical/color parts of the brain rather than the text/story/writing parts.
Sundays are for newsletters and blog posts, if you cared.
And then it just struck me last week that I usually only get four or five hours of “relaxing” time on Saturdays anyway, so why tie up a separate day with it? Slot it into that leftover time in the middle of Friday and then Saturday’s wide open for more writing. Just like that, I got an extra full day in my schedule.
Will it work? I’ve only done it twice so far, but I liked the results, even if it felt a little weird, habit-wise. Let’s see what happens after a month or so of it.
Anyway, let’s get into updates and news and all that stuff you’re here for.
The latest round of talks for the comic book I mentioned last time (I should come up with a clever name for it) went well. I’m writing up a whole pitch package now, which is new for me and a little scary. But also very exciting. Hoping to have that out by the end of the month and then… well, we’ll see again.
Still working on TOS and it’s going very well. I really like this early part of the process where I’m finding fun character moments and beats of dialogue and clever ways to do things on the page. Will you see all of it? Probably not. It’s first draft. Some stuff may get cut for space reasons. Other things seem clever now, but may not look as great by the time I come around for the next pass.
On the other hand, I’m heading into a scene of horrific violence, so that’s always fun…
But first, I’m going to spend this upcoming weekend organizing all my tax stuff. One of the many joys of self-employment. But at least it gives me an excuse to watch Stranger Than Fiction.
Okay, let me fill you in on some other fun stuff from the past month.
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching– Blue Eye Samurai is frikkin’ fantastic and highly recommended. The finale for Hilda was just wonderful. The Marvels was a bunch of fun, and probably my favorite MCU thing in a while now. Speaking of which, started watching Echo and liking it a lot more than I thought I would. Finished Ted Lasso and loved it so very much.
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading
Still more ARCs, despite the big pile of beautiful new books in the library. I read Jonathan Maberry’s NecroTek and it’s a ton of fun. Got to read a screenplay by Robert Brockway and a new novel from Autumn Christian. And I think as of right now while I’m writing this, I can just start reading completely for fun again. I mean, I enjoyed all this other stuff, absolutely, but it’ll be nice to just settle in with my new Romnibus.
Cool New Toys – I think an hour or two after I sent out the last newsletter the Marvel Legends Crystar I’d preordered appeared on my front step. It’s everything I’d hoped. When I finished that draft of GJD I celebrated by ordering a few things, including an MCU Green Goblin, a pair of Dreadnoks, and a trio of Indiana Jones figures (really, the only ones I wanted from the whole line). if you’re following me on Instagram, you’ll probably see most of these next week,