Yeah, I know, I’ve been a very bad writer lately, but I want you to know, it’s not just you blog readers left isolated out in the proverbial cold. I’ve been just as horrid keeping folks in the loop on Twitter and Facebook, and if you think you’ve got it rough, the poor souls following me on Tumblr and Wattpad haven’t heard a peep from me in over a year. I would love to say things will change for the better for all parties soon, but I can’t quite make a promise because things here are still iffy. But with warmer weather coming, I hope my health will recover somewhat, and then I can devote more time to you lovely peoples whom I love, respect, and admire. (You’re looking very good, by the way.)
With butt smooching and apologies out of the way, I finally have the brain cells to sit down and whack out an update to let you know where I am and what I’ve been up to. First, I should explain that this winter has been pretty damned nasty to me, with several bugs tag teaming me like some kind of sadist Wrestlemania of flus and colds. I’d just start to get over one thing when I’d get something else, and so I spent a lot of time on my couch.
In theory, that should have meant another game review for y’all, only Let It Die has proved to be a lot longer than I would have expected from a free game. That’s not an issue with the difficulty, though. It’s the absolutely dreadful RNG for crafting item drops, leading to instances where I have spent whole weeks looking for one fucking item to upgrade a weapon ONE level, and then I got to look forward to hunting for that same rare item twice or even three times. I’ll talk more about this when I can finally do a proper review, but I’ll just let you know, I will not be kind to the grind of this game. Like, at all. Fucking hate it, actually.
I don’t have a book review ready yet because in the few times that I felt okay sitting upright, I dedicated to editing stuff for release in the near future. I’ve even managed a bit of new writing here and there, although not much. But this is not really a problem because I’ve got a couple books in the pipeline, giving me some breathing room before I have to start flop sweating over not having new stories to offer you.
I do have a book I’m reading and liking, so eventually there should be a review for that. I also have a fat stack on the TBR pile, so once I can get all my brain cells corralled and working together again, I should be able to post a few more reviews for your perusal and entertainment.
I also have been working on some paid editing jobs, and while this isn’t enough to get me back into a steady supply of games to review, I ought to be able to get one or two of the new releases and talk them up after picking them apart. In particular, I’m looking forward to Horizon: Zero Dawn, Nioh, Flinthook, and Rain World, and I’d also like to take a crack at The Last Guardian if I can afford it. We’ll see how it goes.
I’d hoped to have a new series completed at the end of last summer, but I hit a creative wall, and while I was waiting out my writing block, I went back to the start to read the first three books before realizing that I had to add extra chapters for one character. In the first book and partway through the second, her role was mostly secondary because I didn’t expect her to step up and become a leader the way she did. (Writing can be a fun journey of discovery like that.) Since then it’s occurred to me that she and her friends deserve just as much early time to develop as the two main characters I’d started off with. This will also help with the later books because that character will have her own “big bad” to deal with, and I think it’s better to establish why they’re fighting early on.
This will also mean that a series I’d intended to be a trilogy will blossom out into a much larger project, but I promise, I will finish the whole thing before I start releasing the story. I don’t want to leave y’all hanging on a cliffhanger like some jerky jerk. I wish I could say with certainty how many books will be in the series, but I’m not sure of that anymore. I could say they’ll be six big books, but my inner editor is suggesting it might be wiser to split them up further into smaller and more easily consumed sizes. So it might be eight or nine, or it could go as high as twelve. Again, no matter how big it gets, I will finish the series before I start the dumpening. Because I respect you and your time, and I want to treat you right. Because I love you.
And finally, I’m excited to announce that I will have a new book out sometime in the next few weeks. Wolf In the Headlights is the fourth Alice the Wolf book, and as I get closer to the release date, I’ll post some previews to give y’all a sample of what to expect. For now, I’ll just say that Alice is going to be forced into a dangerous new role by her enemies, one with earth shattering consequences for all mystical races. (If you read the last book, you already have a few clues about what’s coming, but even you might be surprised by what’s coming next.)
So that’s my update. I apologize for my lengthy silence, but these sort of things can’t be helped when bad weather and poor health gang up on me. Hopefully soon I can give you something new to feast your eyes on.