Category: Musings

October Wrap-up

Hello,

Thanks for the likes and follows—I hope we’re all doing well!

October is almost over, and many writers are gearing up for November writing challenges. Unfortunately, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has fallen from grace, and other writing communities are stepping up to fill the void.

Sarra Cannon and the HeartBreathings community are hosting the Rough Draft Challenge, while ProWritingAid has created Novel November. I used to be a member of ProWritingAid and really enjoyed using the service, though I couldn’t afford to renew this year. I’m confident Novel November will be run well by them.

I’ve participated in the Rough Draft Challenge before and haven’t won yet, but I’m staying positive and looking forward to trying again.

A brief format switch-up: first, the media recap. I’ve completed season 1 of Vampire Academy, streaming on Peacock. Unfortunately, it wasn’t renewed. My interest was piqued again, so I started listening to the series on Audible.

Richelle Mead is a great storyteller, and I can easily get back into the series, even though I’m well past the target demographic—I was 30 years old when I first read Vampire Academy. Interestingly, Richelle Mead and I are about the same age, so she was also writing it in her 30s. The TV show updated some of the more problematic elements from the books for modern audiences, which I appreciated.

I also watched the animated series Supernatural Academy on Peacock, which is another book adaptation that only got one season. Interestingly, the show features main characters (Jessa and Mischa) who aren’t even from the Supernatural Academy books by Jaymin Eve—they’re from her Supernatural Prison series. The animation also aged the characters down, which I think affected its audience. In the West, animation is often seen as content for younger viewers, even though Jaymin Eve writes primarily for New Adult audiences. I did hunt down the audiobooks—Supernatural Academy Year One, Dragon Marked (book 1), and Broken Compass (book 4) from the Supernatural Prison series—to compare.

With both Vampire Academy and Supernatural Academy being one-hit wonders, I got curious: why did Shadowhunters manage to get three seasons? That question led me to watch the first four episodes on Hulu and listen to City of Bones to see what made the difference. The best answer from the evaluation is timing and platform. Shadowhunters came out on Freeform, the former ABC Family channel, which offered a lot of YA content—much of which was based on popular books. Peacock was a new streaming service that had to attract an audience and build ratings. They weren’t able to do either. That’s an intriguing topic for another blog. Shadowhunters was released years before the other two shows, and by then, audiences had likely grown up and become fatigued. I believe I was one of them. It has taken me years to look back at them without bias.

Moving on to the writing updates: One of my goals was to write 500 new words daily, but I haven’t found an effective way to track the numbers. I’ve decided to use the gamified writing app/service 4TheWords, where progress is counted by defeating creatures with your word count. I also let my nearly two-year streak go, and my fire wings are gone as well.

Dead Girl Tale 2 will be on hold until November. Next week, I’ll be going through all the DGT2 notes I’ve accumulated since the beginning of the year. In the meantime, I’ve been writing Fayte/Maghnus Monogatari, a collection of connected short stories. Maghnus is a medium, and Fayte is a psychopomp with the mantle of Charon, the ferryman. Together, they navigate a bunch of paranormal hijinks.

My third writing project is an outline for a vampire romance. In this story, a Vampire Prince candidate finds his ex-human wife and demands she give him an heir—little does he know she already had the heir about five years ago. It’s a simple cookie-cutter trope: fated mates and a hidden baby legacy. At first, I wasn’t going to explore it because it didn’t feel like a challenge. Then I realized I’m not a literary gladiator. I like predictable romances, and there’s nothing wrong with writing them when you’re planning for a happily-ever-after (or happy-for-now) ending.

So that’s my October wrap-up—a mix of abandoned streaks, rediscovered stories, and embracing the tropes I actually enjoy. November is right around the corner, and I’m looking forward to diving back into Dead Girl Tale 2 with fresh eyes and seeing where these other projects take me. Here’s to staying flexible with our goals, being kind to ourselves, and others. Stay open to new opportunities—all while finding joy in the process, even when things don’t go according to plan. Thanks for following along, and happy writing (or reading, or watching) to you all!

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September Wrap-Up

Photo by Barbara Webb on Pexels.com

Hello,

Thanks for the likes and follows. I may have mentioned this before, but I’m not sure, the flowers for September are asters and morning glories. The sapphire is the birthstone. These are some of the useless facts. I like to keep in circulation. It has been a rough month for many, and I hope we are all doing better.

Quick writing update: I was having issues with chapters, so I broke everything down into scenes. Now I’m unsatisfied with word counts. I’m aware of how messed up this is. In Dead Girl Tale 2: Nox. I created pages of notes, character profiles, and world-building materials, among other things. It almost felt like it was spiralling out of control. When these feelings arise, they may lead to a loss of motivation to work on the story. My current solution is to examine the same story from a different perspective. Nox is the main character of this story. However, there is another character, Wade, who is vital to the story. His backstory is complicated and tragic, equal to Nox’s. It seems to be working. I was able to identify the direction in the scene that I hadn’t noticed before. I am also considering setting word count goals for myself. Cross your fingers.

Media update: I was able to watch The Superman movie from the comfort of my own home. I like it. I don’t know what the haters are talking about. But I understand they don’t want to be happy with anything. The C-dramas that I’m watching are called Blossom 2024 and The Blossoming Love 2025. I’m adding the years because C-drama creators really like the concept of blossoming. There is also a show called Blossoming in Adversity 2023. It looks like a year thing. Blossom and Blossoming Love both possess a supernatural aspect. However, their series are 30-40 episodes long. It is a lot to binge. I have to take them in 2-3 ep pieces. After writing about what I’m reading, I also paused on that. Real life interfered, and there are only so many hours in the day.

Photo by Ray Bilcliff on Pexels.com

That is all for now. The last week of the month will be busy preparing for October and real life. Most of the plans will be revealed next week. Part of the reason for these posts and blog/website is accountability. I am hoping that for the rest of the week, you all do well. Be aware of the best opportunities and remember to be kind.

End.

Updates Wed. May 22, 2024

Hello Everyone,

It’s been a while since my last post. There has been some difficulty keeping up to date with the JC Henry Universe. I find myself writing and posting all the positive things and apologizing like a good person but still failing at the promises I made to myself and others. Several things factor into this problem and I am not prepared to list them here.

Two months ago, I wrote that I would post more. The thing that was messing with me was handled and the writing life could begin again. That was a fat lie or misrepresentation of what was going on. The new tactic is to post every other Wednesday. The day job extends into the weekend; I don’t have the energy to post on Monday. A realization I did not want to admit. Knowing is half the battle has been drilled into my brain since I was a kid as well as “Know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. I believe I have typed this before. Then put those words aside and everything I learned from GI Joe cartoons and Kenny Rogers, the day after the post. I decided on every other Wednesday; because I was putting too much pressure on myself, to produce content every week. There were times I found those posts to be boring to write and I know they were boring to read. I apologize. A goal for the next two quarters create better reads.

As stated in the title this is an update, here it goes. The current writing project is called the Fayte Monogatari. I’m not sure if this project was mentioned previously in the other Universe entries, so here it is. Similar to Midnight Fantasy Witch Tech, it is a series of stories that make up a book. The working title is Fayte Monogatari, the main character’s name is Fayte. Monogatari is a Japanese word that means anthology I think or a collection of stories. I got the idea by listening to books by Robert Parks, the first one is titled Yamada Monogatari: Demon Gate. Now Yamada Monogatari is set in feudal Japan before the Tokugawa period. What I liked and remember about it was a set of four paranormal mysteries with the main character Yamada solving the problem. I liked the structure of the book. I wanted to try it. Again with Fayte. Midnight Fantasy WT could have been called a Monogatari but I didn’t know about the word until Yamada and the anime Bakemonogatari.

What is the story about, Fayte Devoe a human, finds herself with the mantle of Kharon, the Greek Ferryman. She is a supernatural loophole. So instead of just taking the dead where they need to be, she finds herself in paranormal hijinks, more often than not. Maghnus Knight is a medium, he is sometimes Fayte’s ally and other times a frenemy, depending on the situation of the story. One of my many dilemmas is should this story be a HEA for all or a learning lesson for some. Many may say that it shouldn’t matter but it has me stumped for days. Here is a plot twist for everyone IRL I have a deadline for this story 20,000 new words by June 1, 2024. Or there will be consequences. Normally I am not competitive and my consequences are weak. This one I think will work simply because I don’t want to embarrass myself. Sharing this with you all is another form of accountability. This dilemma may give me grief. But I will continue to the end and share in two weeks.

Meanwhile, I am listening to more books than I am reading. I have a Spotify account that has gotten more money out of me than they should. Barnes & Noble has finally decided to do an audiobook subscription and yes I signed up. I’ve been listening to Annette Marie and Kim Richardson, their books are paranormal or urban fantasy, sub-genre new adult. I found them interesting because they wrote multiple series in the same world. Some are more connected than others. They are distinctly different types of authors but their stories do have similarities. I also started to listen to various book series in tandem they make sense when everything is connected or I want to see if the author’s style has changed in any way. I have a theory that I working on and I might share later.

I have also started to watch Anime again. Strange enough, my anime-watching went on hiatus 8 or 9 months ago. The animes of interest right now are- The Demon Prince of Momochi House, The Unnamed Memory, and A Sign of Affection. I believe all of these anime were mangas previously. I have been watching them on Crunchyroll. I think there are recaps about all these anime’s on YouTube but I’ve ignored them to watch the series fresh without spoiler. Although I completely read Demon Prince three years ago, while recovering from Covid. It was worth it.

That is all I have for now, ignore the grammar mistakes, or by all means, leave a comment. I hope you all have a great weekend and following week. Remember to be kind to each other.

End

P.S. The flowers of the month are lily of the valley and common hawthorn

Updates March 06, 2024

Thanks for the likes and follows.

The flowers for March are daffodils and the birthstones are bloodstone and aquamarine.

You may have noticed that despite my protests, I have fallen all the way off. I have not posted anything new here in months. I apologize. It was a rut and none of the previous methods were working. It felt like burnout and no talent. It felt like a failure and I had to deal with the consequences of that.

For weeks now I have been thinking of ways to improve this website. I am open to suggestions, by all means, leave something useful in the comments. I want to re-spark the Quotes for Writers and I still want to write reviews on what I am reading, watching, or listening to, instead of it being one form of media, it will be like a grab bag.

The other thing, I will be trying are writing prompts or journal prompts. WordPress offers one daily, most likely I will find my prompts from other places. Not because WP’s prompts are bad but there are days I need to think about what is being asked. WP’s writing prompts change daily. When you answer the WP prompt, it is posted on your site and a WP site as well. The goal is to post on these times, Monday -Thursday at 10 am or 10:30 am. Those are the plans for being online.

The offline plans are like this. Writing has been a struggle as well. The three major stories I have been to develop are on pause. It is a mess, I didn’t want to happen but it did anyway. It is almost impossible to see or explain how things got lost. Not going into detail because this is supposed to be a short post about what is going to happen here. Hopefully next week I will have better writing news.

That is all. Remember to be kind to everyone.

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