Howdy, friends! I hope everyone’s doing well.
It’s summertime, gang! Which is good (mostly) because that means it’s time for summer shenanigans! I say mostly, though, since the summer also gets kind of gross sometimes, and I hate bugs. But I’ll put up with all that for a while in exchange for a few beach days and just more of a general excuse to take a breather.
After all, it’s been a crazy first half to 2023. Between writing, working, and all the other general life nonsense, I feel like it’s been kind of hard to find any legitimate time to relax. Of course, May offered plenty of time for fun excursions, and June was much the same, but still, it’s hard to escape that overarching sense of, “Boy, I sure have a lot of shit to do.” With the conclusion of June, we’re now onto the latter half of the year, and there’s certainly a lot to look forward to. But we’ll get to all of that in future posts.
As for now, I actually don’t have much to talk about for June. If anything, I’m just going to use this post to reinforce all of the writing stuff I did lately. Cuz there was a lot of it.
First off, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse released in June, and it’s easily the best film of the year so far. Like, holy shit, if you haven’t seen it yet, I really don’t know what to call you other than crazy. Go see it, and then go read my review for the film!
But before you do any of that, you absolutely have to go read my latest short story, “Scars.” This story serves as part two of my recent revamp for my Blood Sisters series, and I think this one turned out great. So far, I’m having a blast with this whole endeavor. Be sure to check out “Recoil” before reading “Scars,” though. The two aren’t directly related, but there is plenty of connective tissue to be found between the two stories. Plus, I’ll just be happy to know people are reading!
And, of course, you can all keep an eye out for the newest Blood Sister story, “Vial,” this month! It’ll be dropping on July 19th, to be precise. This will be the first proper new story I’ve released for this series in three years, and I’m beyond excited! I’ve had plenty of time to rework the first draft that I finished a while back, and I like the direction it’s going in now. Thankfully, as of the posting of this blog, I’ve got a little over two weeks to keep working on it, so I’ll be sure to deliver the best story possible.
And after that, I’m taking a break. At least, kind of. I’ve still got a few other writing endeavors I need to work on, like editing my short stories from the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge and submitting to more magazines, but other than that, more of my other immediate projects are getting put on hold for a bit. Between August and October, I’ve got a lot of big events coming up, and I want to just be able to enjoy all of that without getting in over my head with a lot more work than is necessary.
But rest assured, I hope to at least drop Blood Sisters story number four before the end of this year. Maybe as a Christmas gift or something. We’ll just have to wait and see.
To quickly rewind to NYC Midnight for a second, though, I feel I should also note that I got to participate in round two of their 100-word Microfiction Challenge on June 24th! Similar to round two of the Short Story Challenge, I had to write a comedic piece, which was really tough for me, but I’m actually really pleased with what I was able to come up with in the end. I’ll know about the results for this second round come the end of this month, and I’ll be sure to provide an update about that on social media and in next month’s blog post.
Otherwise, life is good. I don’t want to sound like I’m getting full of myself, but I like where I’m at lately. Not that everything is smooth sailing, of course, (I mean, the world is kind of a shambles right now), but personally, I’m feeling a lot happier than I have in a while. Between what’s been going on and everything I’ve got to look forward to in the coming months…I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting lucky. Which means the luck will run out eventually, but that’s a problem for later. For now, I’m just going to enjoy what I’ve got going on and see where it takes me.
So, until then, I hope everyone enjoys the start of their summer, and I’ll see you in the next one. Peace!