July was a fantastic month. I knocked a lot of things off my to-do list in almost every category. I did a lot of planning, organizing, and strategizing for my projects. And I feel good heading into August.
Writing
After a few chapters of work on Book 3, I switched gears to planning and organizing. I had all the scenes and plans from my first drafts, and I spent several sessions working on what scenes I still wanted to include and which ones I want to reference. It seems a lot of what I thought would be individual chapters might just be scenes. which is good, because I’m still worried about how big some of these chapters might get.
Did not get as much work on my SciFi novel as I’d had liked. That being said, what work I did do was pretty important. I figured out a few of the plot points that I had glossed over in previous efforts, so I know what I need to have happen. By my estimate, I have ten chapters to work out to have a draft ready for review.
Same thing with the fantasy novel, and the other projects. Not as much writing as I’d like, but a lot of planning and organization done.
My focus on organization and planning has a lot to do with me restructuring how I’m approaching writing projects. I’ll get into that in some future blog posts.
August Goals
- Book 3: Finish at least one of the four remaining acts
- Science Fiction: Get book to Beta Readers
- Fantasy Novel: Add 5,000 words
Movies and TV Shows
July was a good month for knocking titles off my to-watch list, both movies and TV shows.
First, I sat down to watch Glass Onion, the second of the Benoit Blanc mystery movies. I really enjoyed the first one (Knives Out), and the second one did not disappoint. It was a different kind of mystery than the first one, and used the cast to greater effect. I’ve already re-watched it twice, to pick up on all the things I missed the first time.
My sister invited me over to watch through The Last of Us TV Show. I just finished the game series in June, and she wanted to share it with me. We got through the whole series, all nine episodes. I have always been fascinated by how stories change mediums, but usually its book to screen. And the show did it well. I’m doing a blog post on it, hope to have it up early August.
After that, we started House of the Dragon, the next Game of Thrones prequal series. Now, I’m not a huge GoT fan. I read the books and watched the series. But so far I like this show. I like the king, the prince and the princess. Of course, we’re only three episodes in, and I’ve been warned it gets pretty intense. We’ll see if and when I get around to finishing it, as I don’t have an HBO subscription.
I also sat down to work through the rest of Marvel: Secret Invasion. Last month I said I wasn’t sure what to think, except that I expect Olivia Coleman to be awesome. Well, she certainly was. I’d say she was the best part of the show. The rest of it I found boring. I had a hard time getting into the story and the villain’s plan was formulaic. About the only positive thing I can say is that the ending was not the happy ending I’d expected. And, I’d add that if they use the events of the show to set up story lines in other MCU movies and shows, I think that’s great. But I did not get into this show.
Maybe August won’t be as show and movie heavy, but it will have the Ahsoka show, and that I am very excited about.
August Goals
- Watch Two Movies
- Complete Two Shows
Books
I finished The Automaton pretty early on in the month. By the last chapters I had two ideas of what might be happening, and I was partially right with both, yet completely wrong. It was fantastic. This book is one of those science fiction books in the vein of Isaac Asimov. It really feels like a science fiction story and not just a story set in a science fiction world. I absolutely recommend.
I started an ebook edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which I did not realize at the time included the first stories of the famous detective. My only real exposure to Sherlock Holmes has been through film and the BBC show. Reading these stories, it’s fun to see things I recognize, such as characters, mysteries of bits of dialogue. It’s also fascinating to see how the concept of mystery stories changed since the time they first came out. Most of the stories are extremely short, and have a ‘hah, gotcha’ style that bugs the hell out of me.
At the recommendation of a friend, I started reading a book from a genre called ‘RPG Lit’. This is a genre where players in a game get put into the game somehow. The book I started with, Critical Failures by Robert Bevan, has the players in a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons. It was a pretty decent read, though I can’t say it was great. It certainly gave me a lot of good ideas for my own RPG Lit stories.
August Goals
- Read one library book
- Read one book I own (fiction)
- Read one book I want to take notes through
Games
July was not a big gaming month. I played a few more missions in Gears of War Tactics, advancing the story a few more scenes but still within the same act as I started the month. I want to finish it off before September.
There was one game I really got into this month, and that was one called Thea: The Awakening. My friend Karl recommended it to me. It’s an RPG/Turn-based strategy game. You rule a town in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, sending adventuring parties out to find resources and defeat monsters. You have different abilities based off what deity you follow, and the deities gain abilities as you level them up. It’s immensely fun.
I anticipate that sometime in the near future I’ll be getting a Playstation 5. Therefore, I set myself a bunch of goals to complete before I can invest, including completing the last game I have on the current consoles, Far Cry 6. I believe I’ll start sometime this month, but I don’t know that I’ll finish it this month. Far Cry games can take a bit.
RPG wise, all three of my characters are still alive. One of them, Shiloh from the Delta Green game, had a fantastic event where he got possessed by an alien intelligence who wanted to end the world. I got to play the traitor for a short while, manipulating my party members to position myself to betray them. Seeing every player at the table respond to my betrayal was fantastic. Even though my possession was brief and a failure, my character survived to continue to be a part of the group, and I got a fun experience out of it.
August Goals
- Finish Gears of War Tactics
- Start Far Cry 6