Weekly Update: Somebody Give Me Some Movie/TV Suggestions!

This past week has been pretty interesting. I’ve spent most of it working (of course) on both my editing and my writing. Outside of that, there’s been quite a lot of organizing and decluttering going on over here. I’ve been in my apartment for coming up on a year now, and now that I’ve spent some time here, I’m starting to get a better idea of how I use the different spaces in my environment and have been making changes and adjusting accordingly. I’ve reorganized my kitchen and dining room so far, and I did a huge pantry, fridge, and freezer clean-out this past week, too. I think the next space I’m going to focus on is my office, since I do spend a lot of time in there.

Does anyone else get a thrill out of reorganizing a space and finally having your use of it just click, or is it just me?

A Few Thoughts

Just in case you missed it, I’m throwing out one more reminder that there’s a 50% off sale on the audiobook for book three in The Becoming Series at Audiobooks.com, courtesy of Tantor Media! Be sure to grab your copy before the price goes back up! The sale ends on 2/14!

And a friendly reminder that you can now purchase e-books and paperbacks directly from me via the shop right here on my website!

Writing

This past week was much, much more productive when it comes to my writing. I’ve been working full steam ahead on Bloodlines, and thanks to my surprising amount of focus and diligence this past week (I mean, relative to normal), I got a lot done with it.

First, the month of January closed out with me having written 28,516 words, which isn’t too bad considering I didn’t write on as many days as I’d hoped I would. But I still got much further along in Bloodlines than I expected, considering I’ve always been somewhat of a slow writer.

For this past week as a whole, though, I did manage to write 6,556 words, which was, again, an increase from the week before. And it’s not too bad considering I’ve entered the section of the manuscript where I’m having to delete and completely rewrite entire scenes because they don’t work quite as well as I’d hoped they would with the changes I’ve already made. Even with all that, though, I’ve entered the last “act” of the manuscript, the big climax, and I’m having fun working on it! And if I’m enjoying writing it, I hope that means you guys are going to enjoy reading it.

Total word count for this month so far: 5,359 words
Total word count for this year so far: 33,875 words

Editing

I got a decent amount of work done this past week. I was a little worried when my schedule, on appearance, seemed to be running short of work…at least until not one, not two, but three projects hit my inbox. Such is the way of it sometimes when it comes to being a self-employed workaholic. This past week, I edited 223,996 words, which is a lot of words when you think about it—if you think of the average novel being somewhere around 70,000 words, that’s the equivalent of over three books in one week. That’s a lot of reading!

Total word count edited this month so far: 68,527 words

Reading

I read a lot this week, but I didn’t finish much—though I’m very close to finishing at least three books that will probably end up on this list next week! In the meantime, I finished one novel this past week that I thought was worth mentioning.

A Beginner’s Guide to Free Fall by Andy Abramowitz

This was a surprisingly interesting book, and I’m kind of wondering how I managed to sleep on it so long. I got it as one of those free Prime reading books (not Kindle Unlimited, but the freebie they let you choose at the beginning of each month, though it is available in KU), like, forever and a day ago and only just got around to reading it. And I actually liked it! The beginning of it really sucked me in, and I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about the end of it, but I do recommend it for those of you who like interesting takes on literary family dramas.

Watching

I continued a little bit of my WWII movie kick this past week, along with starting a rewatch of the Lord of the Rings trilogy since I haven’t watched it in an eternity and a half. I’m eagerly looking for suggestions on movies and TV shows that you guys think are awesome that I can add to my watch list to tackle eventually!

Midway (2019) – First, just to start: why do actors who can’t do an American Southern accent worth a damn always insist on doing one anyway? I mean, sheesh, go spend some time in an actual Southern town for a while and listen to how people talk; don’t go off of what some accent coach who can’t get it right themselves tries to teach you. (As an additional note: some of the actors who have done the best Southern accents I’ve heard have, interestingly, been British.)

That tirade aside, this is a surprisingly good, very underrated movie. It’s probably a little too short with everything they want to cover, so at some points it feels a bit rushed, but they get the essentials right, which is the important bit. For those of you who would rather read about the Battle of Midway, there’s an excellent book by Walter Lord called Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway that is a good history of the battle itself that I can’t recommend enough.

Listening

I’ve done a good deal of listening this past week, maybe not as much as the week before, but I liked the vast majority of what I did listen to.

A quick rundown of my Last.fm stats:

Number of scrobbles from last week: 191 (178 tracks)
Number of artists: 24 (top artist Fall Out Boy)
Number of albums: 27 (top album The Hum by Unwritten Law)
Percentage of albums that were new: 62%

A few highlights:

1. Thrice is hands down one of my favorite bands, and one of their albums that’s always ranked pretty highly (though, admittedly, not my #1 favorite) is The Artist in the Ambulance. Apparently, for the album’s 20th anniversary, the band re-recorded the entire album and dropped it on us this past week with next to no warning. I was a little worried when I sat down to listen to it that it wouldn’t be any good, but I think my worries were unfounded. The album is actually, dare I say it, better than the original version of the album. The original was very…well, polished and clean sounding, if that makes sense, and this version is a lot grittier (in a good way) and comes off sounding more mature than the original. I can see this one being a repeat for a while.

2. My top song for the week on Last.fm was Falling in Reverse’s new song “Watch the World Burn.” I love a good genre-bending song, and that one definitely succeeds at bending music genres into a pretzel. And it was just pure fun trying to sing along. The music video is…interesting, too. I’m a sucker for a music video where it looks like the band or artist actually put some effort into them, and this one hits the mark for me.

3. In celebration (if you can call it that) of Panic! at the Disco finally calling it quits (I mean, as much as the one original member still left in the band can call it quits), I went back and listened to their first album, which was hands down the best of all their albums. At the time, it was so innovative and different from a lot of what was being released, and it’s a nice little hit of nostalgia.

For those interested in that sort of thing, you can see my entire last.fm profile right here. Feel free to follow me over there! I don’t really interact much, mostly just scrobble and track my stats, but I do like looking at my followers’ profiles for new music suggestions! (And if you don’t use last.fm, I can’t recommend it enough—I’ve been on the platform since 2008, and it’s great!)

What have you been reading, watching, and listening to this month so far? Let me know in the comments! Maybe I can get a good new suggestion or two for something new to watch on my end!