March 2018 Month In Review / April 2018 Projects Update

Welcome, one and all, to the monthly round-up/look-ahead post! I actually have some new things to talk about this time, at least in the month ahead section. First though, let’s have a look at what happened in March …

MARCH 2018 – TOP 5 Posts

5) The Neat Blog Award: It always surprises me when these tags hit the top 5 because, while fun to do, you see a lot of them around. So, the fact that this did make it in is quite nice.

4) Manga vs. Anime – Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin: I love doing these comparison pieces. Which makes it a shame that the next one isn’t due until May. Still, exploring the differences between the two versions of the story was really cool, as it made me really think about which version I prefer.

3) OWLS Blog Tour: What do you do when someone doesn’t like you? Recess vs. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: That’s one mouthful of a title, isn’t it? The great thing with this one was that it was an article that I’d had in mind for a while, and the March topic for OWLS was the push I needed to get it done. I’m glad it was so well enjoyed.

2) Sasuke 35 Predictions: This was a pretty late post in terms of position in the month, so I find it amazing that it grabbed so much attention. Of course, my predictions were way off in the end, but still. It was a great tournament.

1) Digimon Adventure Tri: Our Future Speculation: Once again, my Digimon speculator post made it into the top 5. It’s actually almost half a year old now, but with the movie coming in May, I suppose it makes sense that people are still reading it. It’ll be interesting to see how close I came to predicting the story.

Of course, there were other posts in March too. The full list is here:

APRIL 2018 – WHAT’S A-COMING?

The usual rules will apply here in terms of content themes. As a summary though:

WEEK 1 – RANDOM STUFF: I’m behind on the X -Files re-watch, so that’s a no-go this month, unfortunately. What I do have though is a three-day blog tag, and a guest post. Plus something else that I’ll go into later in this update.

WEEK 2 – ANIME: A nice, packed week will start will the next Crunchyroll of the Dice posting, move onto some anime challenge bits, and finish with a Top 5 and an anime review.

WEEK 3 – BOOKS: All being well, there’s going to be a good variety going here, with a guest post, a spotlight, some interviews, and hopefully a review too.

WEEK 4 – GAMING: Gaming challenge stuff aside, I’ve got a Retro First Impressions, the continued gaming diary, and a hedgehog related posting to come.

OTHER POSTINGS: If things fall apart in one way or another, I will of course be looking to do some replacement posts for the above stuff. Assuming my deliveries don’t get delayed, I’ll be doing a weekly review of the first month worth of IDW Sonic comics. There will potentially also be a cosplay post plus video, though that may get delayed until May, because time-and-stuff.

A QUESTION: Out of interest, do you prefer me theming weeks then having the odd post here and there that doesn’t fit with the weekly theme, or dod you prefer when I jsut post whatever I want whenever I want like I used to?

SITE NEWS

So, some general site news. Honestly, things are really looking great here. I am so grateful for all the continued support from people, and it’s awesome to see more and more people dropping by too. When I started making a point of hitting on as many subjects as possible without focusing on one particular thing, I was actually pretty worried that it would turn readers away, but it seems to have had the opposite effect. So, phew! That all being said, some minor changes are coming.

The first thing to mention is that I’ve been getting offers for some sponsored posts. As it is, the only one that I’ve committed to is a tech-focused thing, as that fits with the geekier end of the site. That particular post will be coming later today. What I wanted to say about this was two things: First, I’m being a little selective on what I take on as I don’t really want to start posting things that don’t fit at all with what I like to write about. Quite aside from sticking out like a sore thumb, if i’m not interested in the subject, I won’t be able to do a good job with it. The second thing to note is that it makes no difference to how I already collaborate with people. If you’re an author or another blogger who wants to appear on the site in any capacity, I’m keeping to my normal policy with that. Or in other words, I certainly won’t be charging people when it comes to interviews and the such-like. You will potentially see a few posts pop up here and there that I’ve been paid to write though. The thing with it is, I want to make money writing. Whether it be books, blogging, or both, if I can make a regular income from it, I’ll be happy. So, yeah. I hope that the odd piece of sponsored content doesn’t both anyone.

The second thing to note is that the sponsored content means that I’ll soon be looking to upgrade my account. That’ll potentially mean an eventual site overhaul to a neater theme. I want to tidy things up a little really, and finally get around having the listing pages running automatically so that I don’t have to worry about forgetting to update a month’s worth of posts on them. Hopefully doing so won’t be a complete disaster, eh?

WRITING

This has been an incredibly busy time writing wise. Things kinda feel like they’re over-flowing at the moment. Cassie Tam 2 is still in the preparatory stage, but I’m working on getting some more attention for Cassie Tam 1 while we edge closer to it being ready to release. On top of that, I only need to do one more round of personal edits on Cassie Tam 3 before I send it off to the publisher. That starts this week, so I expect to get that moving pretty quickly.

Once that’s done, I’ll be diving back into editing The Spark Form Chronicles 4. The long-term plan there is to re-edit the earlier books a little too and put together a big anthology edition with a nice, new cover to boot. I’m also looking to work on doing some pixel art for the card game so that I can get that out there too.

I have a short story called Dear Sis in an upcoming anthology. That’s in editing right now. I also have a few other stories under consideration in various places, hence the lack of short stories being posted straight to here. There are also two more in the works that I need to finish up before sending them off to places.

Once time allows, I have some novellas planned too, but I really need to finish edits first. Plus, Cassie Tam 4 is calling to me. So, we’ll see how long that all takes. The main thing is that I have some potential publishers in mind for the novellas if I ever get them off the ground.

VIDEOS

As mentioned above, I’m working on a video. My latest cosplay was built under challenging circumstances, but I managed to film some clips during the building process, so I thought that it would be interesting to edit it all together and put up a ‘making of’ video. It will not feature particularly high production values, mind you, but it’ll at least show what I did.

I’ll likely work on a proper trailer for Cassie Tam 2 when I have a release date too, as I quite enjoy book trailers myself, and they’re fun to mess around with.

Also as mentioned above, I want to make some proper headway on the Spark Forming card game.

And that about does it for this month’s update! Thanks again for sticking around everyone. I hope you continue to enjoy what I’m doing, and I’m looking forward to reading through everything everyone else is putting out too.