March was a busy and productive month. I got a lot done and knocked a lot of things off my lists.

Writing

I’m closing in on a good draft of The Colonel Lieutenant. I finished wargaming and writing the big campaign, and re-worked most of the subsequent scenes. Right now, I’m working through the first scenes, one by one, focusing on the timeline, specifically how fast people and news moves across the land. What was originally two days worth of events is now spread out across a week, now that people aren’t teleporting.

I’ve been focused on Book 3, so Orcfyre (the fantasy novel) and my untitled Science Fiction novel are on the backburner. I also haven’t done much with the Tales of the Templar short story collection. Sometime this month I’m going to sit down and work out what I have to do for all my projects and set a schedule for the year.

On a slight aside, I’ve had some work come in through Fiverr, so I spent some time building another person’s military background, in this case plotting out a campaign for their story. It was a lot of fun, and I’m writing out a blog post on it for April.

Movies and TV

After a couple of weekends of false starts, I finally got down to watch All Quiet on the Western Front. It was certainly a brutal war movie that captured the psychological terror of combat. And I did like it. But, I felt that it fell short of the impact of the 1930’s adaptation. There’s never any scenes of the characters returning home and failing to connect with civilians. And the sub-plot of the end of the war (between General Foch and the German leadership) seems to be written to make the French seem as if they were intransigent villains, without explaining why they might feel justified being so firm in their position.

I finished Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in March. The new, episodic series really took me back to the TOS and TNG days of Star Trek, before multi-episode and season-long story arcs became the norm. And it really worked for me. The stories were fun to watch. The characters were enjoyable (both legacy and new). And the ship beautiful. I felt the crew of the show understood Star Trek and made an effort to honor its legacy.

And in the same field, I finished Star Trek: Lower Decks, the animated humorous show. I was worried about this one, because I found the first season to be very hard to get through. I have a hard time with characters who always have to be right or always have to be wrong, and Season 1 had both (Mariner and Boimler), specially because the always right character was always provign the other character wrong. But that didn’t continue into Season 2 and 3, and I found those to be much, much more enjoyable.

Books

I finally finished Education in Violence: The Life of George H Thomas by Francis F. McKinney. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a history book of that type. Most of it was fun, but it did drag towards the end when it got away from Thomas and followed the Army of the Cumberland. Still, I’m glad I read it. I don’t read a lot of biographies.

I started and almost finished The Boleyn Inheritance, the next book in the Philippa Gregory series. This book follows several of the later wives of Henry VIII, jumping between several characters chapter after chapter. I look forward to having the book report up soon.

Also started The De Facto Duchess, Book One of the Burton House Saga, by Ashley Katharine Houghton. It’s a historical fiction novel set in the Georgian era of Britain. I’ve found it to be a comedic drama, in that the story is overall serious (as far as I’ve read), but a lot of the scenes have humorous elements. I’ll have to see where it ends up.

Games

I continue to play through Last of Us 2 and pick at Napolean: Total War. I added a new game, one I kickstarted many years ago that finally release: Ancient Cities, a stone-age city builder. I’ve enjoyed what I tried so far, but the game doesn’t have much of a manual or guide. I have so many questions I can’t answer and it bugs me. I’ll still play at it a bit, but unless I can find some answers I’m not sure how much time I’ll invest in it.

I’m happy to report I’m still playing the same RPG characters. I’ve also gotten to try a new system called Blades in the Dark, a story telling RPG set in a dark, steampunk fantasy world. If you want to try a new story-telling game, this is one to take a look.

What’s Next

This upcoming weekend I’ll have a table at Minicon 56, my first full convention since before Covid. That will be fun, though of course I’m worried about my table set up. By the end of the month I’m aiming to have at least one more event lined up. Fingers crossed.

Until next time, keep writing!

-Michael