I had to get an oil change at Walmart for my wife's car the other day. Since I was stuck in the store for a while, I wandered around and looked at just about everything. One of the things that caught my eye was this shirt. I couldn't think of a shirt that was more apt for Big Anklevich.
It really reminded me of my old intro to the Anklecast where I used a bunch of motivational phrases in an attempt to inspire myself and possibly others. In case you can't see it (because the picture is pretty hard to read) it says, "Believe in yourself even if nobody else does." That's pretty good. On top of that, it's a picture of Bigfoot, which makes it humorous.
My wife didn't get it. She asked me who the guy in the picture was. I was confused.
"Is it some kind of character that's well known?" she asked.
"It's Bigfoot," I said.
"Oh, I didn't realize that. I thought it was just some gorilla or something. That makes it a little more funny."
It is halfway through the month of April now. I thought I'd let my reports slack off a little so that I could spend more time writing on stories rather than writing about writing on stories. Maybe I shouldn't have waited though, because, for the first time since I started all of this, I fell short of my goal...twice.
On April second I suffered from a brain fart. I was certain that I'd hit my goal that day, but on the third, when I went to enter my word count in, I realized that I hadn't ever entered the word count for the day before. When I checked, I saw that I hadn't even made it to 1,000 words on the second. I don't know why. I thought I'd finished my writing on my lunchbreak the day before, but apparently I had not, and I'd forgotten to finish it up. Whoops!
Then it got worse, because a week later, we went west to the Texas Hill Country to watch the solar eclipse. I'd meant to write my words in the morning before we left, but instead I spent all my time packing and getting things ready, and the thought never crossed my mind. I groaned when I realized what I'd done while driving north. Now I was going to have to write my words on my phone. I could do that, and have done that many times.
While on our cruise, I took my wireless keyboard with me, and it was as easy as writing at home. I hadn't brought my wireless keyboard with me this time, though. I was going to have to type on the phone's onscreen keyboard as if I were texting someone. That's a hard way to write 1,333 words, but it was doable. I'd written more than 1,000 words in less than an hour that way already during this process, so I knew it could be done.
Then, that night, when all was dark, we were in our sleeping bags and drifting off for the night, my eyes popped open in panic. I hadn't written still. I'd completely forgotten, and now I was in bed. Should I get out and go tap away at my phone screen for an hour or so to put in my time? I decided against it, and just went to sleep. Everybody messes up sometimes. I've been virtually perfect so far, I could cut myself a break once in a while.
So, I'm about 2,000 words short on my total this month. I should be closer to 21,000 words, but I'm only at 19,000. I'm a little behind on my progress toward the goal. At half the month, I've only got 48.33% of my words written. I bet I'll still get there, though. I'll keep closing that gap, and by month's end, I'll have outpaced the meter and managed 100%.
19329 / 39990 (48.33%)
So, that was the month. How is the year coming along. Well, here is the charts for the entire time I've been at this. We're now into three images to make it all fit.
I'm officially over the 200,000 word mark. That's pretty sweet. I still haven't quite made it to the halfway mark for the year, I think that is April 27th, but I'm past the 2/3rds mark toward the goal. As you can see from this meter below:
207903 / 304475 (68.28%)
So, the train rolls on, as far as that goes.
But those aren't my only goals for the month. As I said at the start of the month, I don't want to raise my word count yet, because there are other things that I want to be working on along with writing. I've been adding in non-writing goals like publishing stories on Amazon and the like for the last few months, and I did it again for April.
My first goal was to do story craft research by watching some of these Tyler Mowery videos as working them into the outline for my story idea called, "Skeleton Crew."
I did a little of that, but precious little. I need to step it up, too, because I'm sliding into home plate with "Digital Wizards." That story is going to be done soon, and I'll have to start something else. Will I be ready when that time comes? Not if I don't get with it.
I've been letting myself get distracted with other things...they're also writing-related things, but they weren't the goals I made at the start of the month. For example, I put together and published a second collection of my short stories this past week. This past few days, I've been struggling to remember how to go about formatting the book for its paperback edition. I'm almost done, and then I'll have that available for purchase as well.
On top of that, I've been helping Rish Outfield get covers made for his stories so that he can publish them. I've also been going through and redoing all of his really shitty old covers so that they match with the new style and don't suck so bad that people will click away rather than buy. There are still about twenty more of those covers to finish, but for now I'm focusing on the paperback manuscript. When Rish catches up, getting all the stories I've given him covers for republished, then I'll see about making some more.
I also plan on helping Rish get paperback and hardcover versions of some of the things he's published. He's putting out a few story collections right now as well, and I'm in the zone as far as manuscript formatting goes, so I could pop them out really quickly, I'm sure.
So, I'm getting a little distracted, but I'm doing things that are really worthwhile, at least.
My other goal for April was to get the audio for Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies published. I haven't been slacking on that one. I recorded and edited one of the two stories that was missing, as well as formatting and uploading all of the files that I already have. Now, I just have to get the title story, "Kingdom of Flies" recorded and edited, and I'll be totally done with that. I think I'll probably make it, though I'll be competing with my Anklecast episode for editing time.
Things are still humming along really well, and you can look forward to a lot of stuff coming at you from old Big Anklevich. Once I finish with this collection, I'll get the last collection out. Then I'll get going on the novels that I have already written. Then...well, by the time I'm done with that, it'll probably be 2025 and I'll have several more novels to publish. I guess it'll be a constant race from here on out trying to publish what I write. Should be interesting. Maybe if some people actually start buying stuff, I might even be able to get somebody to help me and win that race, but I'm not expecting it.
We ended up last week and began this week with our trip to see the solar
eclipse as it passed through Texas. During that particular road trip, I
indulged a little too much. It left me in a pretty bad place to start
the week. Could I fix it? Was it possible to turn things around before
the week came to an end and I'd gained weight again? Watch and see
whether I pulled it off or not.
Yesterday, a package came for me in the mail. I saw the light on our Alexa, and asked it what my notifications were.
"A shipment has arrived, including Blood of Elves."
I couldn't help but laugh. That made it sound like a much more ghoulish shipment than it actually was. It might be a lot neater if it really was something like that. I might be a much more interesting person in that case. Instead, it was referring to this:
Yup, I listened to the audiobooks of those books back in 2023, and I've been meaning to amass the books on my shelves. Now I've managed to get most of them. Just one more left, Season of Storms...the post-finale prequel book.
Maybe I ought to do that on my blog as well. I talk about all the new toys I get in my collection, but I suspect there are more book nerds that see my blog than toy nerds. Maybe I ought to start talking about the books on my shelves too. There's way more of them than there is toys, I think. What do you think? Should I try it? We can discuss the books if you'd like...
Okay, after last month's frenzied publish fest for all my short stories, the time has now arrived to get the collections of those stories out. Phase one of that process is the publishing the eBook version of A Battalion of Ideas: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two.
I put it together over the last little while and just published it yesterday afternoon. You can find it on Amazon and get seventeen of my stories for the price of...well, not one. It's about what it something like two of them would cost on their own.
Next up will be to make the paperback and hardcover versions. Lastly, I'll get the audiobook done. Some of the stories are already recorded for the audiobook, but only about five or six. That's a pretty low percentage of seventeen, so I've got plenty of work to do on that. Of course, the audiobook version of this book will have to wait until I've finished the audiobook version of Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume One. Shouldn't be that bad. I only have to record the audio for "Kingdom of Flies" to finish up that one. So, things are rolling along.
So, if you are interested, pick up a copy of A Battalion of Ideas: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two. Also, when you read it, give the book a review or at least a rating. It doesn't take much, but it makes a big difference on how visible my books are to people. Unreviewed and unrated books might as well not exist on Amazon.
Oh, and I have one more question. When I came up with the idea for the title of the collection, it was a play on the story "The Battle of the Ideas," which we did on the Dunesteef years ago. That story was about a writer whose story ideas had grown tired of being trapped inside his head, and threatened to kill their creator in an attempt to escape and land in some other creator's head that would actually write the stories. So, there's nothing about a battalion of space marines marching down a road in a futuristic city that pertains to that story, nor is there anything like that in any other story in the collection.
So, my question is, do I need to change my cover or is it okay? The cover refers to the title, and not to any particular story in the book. Is it misleading? Might people buy the book expecting sci-fi space warrior stories and grow angry when they don't get them? I'm just curious what y'all's opinion of that is.
...but I missed my chance to get this published when the time was right back in November. It was my goal to get my first audiobook published back then, but I effed around for too long and found out that it just wasn't possible. I've straightened up since then, and managed to get all the stories for Christmas Creatures: A Twisted Christmas Story Collection recorded and edited, and I got an email from ACX the other day to tell me that the audiobook is now available on Audible, which is Amazon.
This is the square version of the cover, because it's audio, and that means...a CD? A record album?
It's exciting for me. I've published my first audiobook ever, now. Surprising to consider, since I made my name (what little name I have) doing an audio podcast. I probably should have had audiobooks up ages ago, but it's better late than never, I guess.
So, if you are one of those who wanted the book, but only wanted it if it was in audio...and there was at least one person who specifically requested that...then you can pick it up now...or you can wait until November when the time is right, I'd definitely understand if you did that.
Algar Van Cluth suggested that I should wait until clearance for the Vintage Scarlett from the GI Joe Classified line. I had to ignore that advice, because I'd already pre-ordered the figure.
Maybe I still could have, but truthfully, I didn't want to. This is the Scarlett figure that I've wanted ever since they announced this six-inch line. This figure is the third version of Scarlett that I've bought. When the line first began, I bought every figure they offered, including the updated-for-modern-audiences version of Scarlett.
I guess Hasbro didn't believe that modern collectors would like a Scarlett that wore the same old tan bathing suit-looking outfit that she wore back in the eighties, so they gussied her up with a bunch of extra colors and highlights and a goofy new face and hair color.
I tried a few things to make Scarlett more like the one I'd loved as a kid, and considered a full-on custom version. I'd seen some really good repaints of the figure, but I suspected that, like the Baroness that I built for myself, as soon as I finished the custom repaint, they'd announce their own classic version of Scarlett that I could have gotten without putting in all the effort and still coming up with something that was only "pretty good."
So, even though I gad the origninal release and the movie release of Scarlett...
I waited, and lo and behold, they announced that classic vintage look Scarlett. Now she's hitting stores, and I've got her in my grubby little mitts.
I have to say that I absolutely love the figures. It's exactly what I always wanted. It comes with a literal crap ton of accessories, including two different pony tails, so you can give her a more action-packed hairstyle if you'd like.
When you compare it to the old Scarlett that I had, which I'd enhanced by giving it the head from my Black Widow to make it closer to the character I wanted it to be, it towers above.
Although that might have been poor phrasing, because in the picture the old one looks a lot taller. I think they're basically the same size as far as that goes, though. The new one looks shorter because she's crouching a lot more.
Now, I can give Black Widow her long hair back. I've been using the short-haired-version on that shelf for a while, but I definitely prefer the long hair.
And Scarlett can join her compadres on the Joe shelf.
With Scarlett and Gung Ho made vintage, the only non-vintage looking guy there is Duke. He's still got the stupid golden shin guards and futuristic gun in his hand. The vintage Duke was released in the same wave as Scarlett. I didn't pre-order it, but I saw it in the store the other day, and I'm sorely tempted to buy it. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will very likely be able to get it at clearance in a few months, but will I have the fortitude to wait? Probably not, to be honest. I'm sure I'll have a post about adding him to the bunch in just a week or two. See you then.
