Oh boy, I have been off this blog way longer than I ever anticipated being, and that’s not something I meant to do. I went from missing one week’s worth of posts to something like two-and-a-half months’ worth of posts, which isn’t something I really wanted to do, but I got so slammed with work starting around mid-February that I’ve barely even had a proper day off since then. I’m not really complaining about that, at least not too much–the extra editing work has allowed me to put aside a little nest egg while also paying off a few bills I’ve been working on for a bit, which is always a happy little bonus!
Things seem to be spreading out a bit more now, so now that I have some time to breathe, I can take a minute to catch up with you guys on what’s been going on with me.
Even with all the editing I’ve been doing, I’ve still been getting some writing done, but a lot of it is an organizational type of writing, if that makes any sense. I’ve been playing with the loose outline for book five in The Unnaturals Series, Demon Marked, just trying to get at least pieces of it down while they’re floating around in my head. Meanwhile, I put a short pause on Bloodlines to get some organizational work done on it–I had to reconstruct the entire series’ timeline (it’d been lost in the intervening years since writing in this series) and discovered my timeline was out of whack in Bloodlines, so now that I’m aware, I can focus on fixing that as I do my revisions. I’m also adding some much-needed scenes to set up for book seven, because book seven is going to be nuts. (Let’s put it this way: if you thought Alicia Day in book three was bad…) I finished that about five days ago and put my head down on Friday to start really churning through the revisions of what’s already there, and I’m already 15,000 words into the revisions, so that’s going quickly. I really wish I’d gotten this book out in February like I’d originally planned, but I think the extra time on it will make it a better book in the end.
In the meanwhile, I’ve been trying to squeeze some reading in in between everything else I’ve been working on. I haven’t gotten as much read as I normally do, though, and most of what I’ve read has been nonfiction stuff, like Waco by Jeff Guinn (he’s a really great nonfiction writer–definitely check out his book on Jim Jones and Jonestown if you are interested in that sort of thing), and after I finish that book, I’m going to be diving headfirst into David Grann’s new book The Wager, because I really liked his book Killers of the Flower Moon (which is going to be releasing soon as a movie) and I like how he writes nonfiction. (Nathaniel Philbrick is a really good nonfiction history writer, too, if you’re into that sort of thing!)
As for what I’ve been watching lately…
I got the chance to go see Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 at the theater last weekend. Not counting the Spider-Man movies, because they sort of sit apart in the grand scheme of things, I think this was probably the best Marvel movie that’s been released since Avengers: Endgame, which probably says more about Marvel than it does about the movie itself. (My thoughts on the fourth phase of the MCU are probably lengthy enough that it could be a whole blog post in itself, and who knows? Maybe I’ll sit down and write it up sometime soon.) In short, I thought Guardians 3 was a great movie, though it of course had its weaknesses and issues (Adam Warlock, anyone? I mean, why was he even there?); regardless, it was a good, decent send-off for a batch of characters that were some of my favorites in the MCU.
What have you guys been watching/reading lately? Are you looking forward to reading Bloodlines? What sort of questions are you hoping to see answered in it? Do you want to see me do a post about the MCU and my general thoughts on it and on its very, very poor phase four? Let me know in the comments below!