Why is There Always Drama (and January Thoughts)

January Books: 5/4 (Weird Parenting Wins)

No February books as of yet.

Sorry I missed my second update last week, squiders. There’s been ~*~drama~*~ with my volunteer commitments, which is always so dumb. We’re all adults, why can’t we act like it? Anyway, I was livid for like 48 hours straight and I didn’t get anything unrelated to that accomplished.

Anyway, that’s awaiting mediation and we’re moving on as best we can.

I’m tracking my goals a little differently this year. I made a spreadsheet. In theory I am noting days when I do each of my normal goals (writing, reading, art, video games, and a fifth column for word count when applicable) but in practice I’m remembering the tracker every few days and so January is a little piecemeal.

According to said tracker, I did 5 writing days, 11 reading days, 2 art days, 12 video game days, and wrote 572 words. I suspect the writing and reading are underreported, but oh well.

I did get through the theory portion of my SkillShare class, which often takes the longest (aside from video editing), and do two exercises in the Ursula Le Guin craft book I’m slowly working through.

So now we’re up to the filming portion of the class. I spent yesterday looking at my options for doing screen share with my face in the corner, since it’s been a while and my webcam no longer supports that functionality, and today I tried them all out, which, I’m not going to lie, was pretty fun. I basically talk to myself and it’s all a bit silly. Maybe I’ll make a blooper reel at some point.

But, basically, my requirements were:

Free
Easy to use
Supports the dual inputs I need for the workshop portions of the class

I came up with four options and made a short video with each (and also, in some cases, played with the editing and exportation options).

Zoom

The idea is that you go into a meeting by yourself and record the meeting. There were some pros to this; Zoom has built-in background blurring and light controls, and you can easily move between your face and screen sharing.

However, I found the video quality of the recording to be quite poor. Easily the worst of everything I tried. So I doubt I’ll use this.

Canva

Canva records screen recordings with talking heads if you download the Desktop app (which I thought I had at some point, but apparently if I did it got eaten one of the times I’ve had to reset the laptop). The image quality is nice, sound levels are good. No blurring of the background that I can see.

You can’t do just screen recording or just video of yourself, as far as I can tell. The editing suite is fairly intuitive, and it’s easy to add in text and other effects, but unfortunately without paying for a subscription I can’t control the resolution the video is exported at, which makes the whole thing kind of grainy.

ClipChamp

I’d never heard of this, but apparently it’s the built-in Microsoft video recorder/editor in Windows 11. I’m pretty sure I used its predecessor for editing before. The video quality is good, and it supports screen/face, just face, and just screen. It too is fairly intuitive on the editing (or at least, is close to what I’m used to) and also supports text and other effects.

It runs a little slow, though, and the videos it makes are huge. Plus the default is to upload everything into OneDrive which isn’t where I necessarily want a gazillion gigabytes of raw video, but I think I can make it work.

Honestly, I’ll probably go with this.

OBS

I’ve had OBS for a while, as it ties in to Twitch and every now and then I do ponder streaming video games. But one would need free time for new hobbies, and we barely have time for the ones we already have.

ANYway, I’ve had issues with sound levels with OBS. When I tried streaming some games last year, the audio for the game ended up being way louder than my commentary, to the point where you couldn’t even hear it in some cases, and I’m not sure how to fix it. It’s potentially easy, but it feels very overwhelming because I don’t understand the menus.

OBS also supports just screen or just face or both, and as an added bonus you can select where your face goes over the screen and how big it is. Video quality is good.

Audio is still so, so quiet. Part of me says that it’s fixable, and maybe I should poke at it and figure it out.

The other part says that ClipChamp basically does everything I want and just use that instead of making things harder for myself.

Wednesday

I started this entry yesterday and then had to go do productive and responsible things, so today I’ve poked around a bit on just screen recording options. Traditionally I’ve used Screencast-o-matic, which has worked well but does put a watermark on the screen. But it does allow me to select a portion of the screen to record, which is useful, because typically I teach from PowerPoint in Presenter mode.

I tried ClipChamp here and discovered that if I put it in Presenter mode and share my screen, it will just do the presentation, but it puts the presentation controls on the screen, and doesn’t have an option (that I’ve found, anyway) to remove the cursor. Perhaps if I recorded the video it could be removed after the fact. Who knows? Not me!

Canva doesn’t seem to do just the screen without a talking head.

Apparently you can also record directly in PowerPoint, which may be the easiest thing to try. And if it doesn’t work, well, Screencast-o-matic still exists.

But I think I’ve done all the research and playing around that I need to, so the next step is to start filming. That’s for next week, I think.

I’ll let you know how things go!

Hope you’re doing things that bring you joy, squiders. See you soon!

Always Pondering

January books: 4/4 (Love’s a Witch)

You know how long I’ve had this blog, squider? 15 and a half years. That’s an insane amount of time to do anything, really. This blog is older than my children. Ha!

Like any longer running project, it’s gone through cycles. I definitely spent a long while writing more authoritative posts–here’s how you do this, here’s what this means, here’s a long write-up about some aspect of writing. (My character archetype posts are still some of the most popular posts I’ve done to this day.) I spent some time doing a lot of Landsquid related things–drawings, short stories, guest posts from other writers. I’ve shared story aspects and vulnerabilities, good times and bad, write ups about conventions and conferences, written parts of my nonfiction books here first.

There’s always an aspect of “is this working” that runs in the background when I post. Do people like when I share stories? Do they appreciate when I share my hardships or successes? ARE YOU ENTERTAINED and whanot.

I haven’t shared a lot of work, traditionally, aside from the Landsquid things, because of a couple of reasons: 1) I’m not always brave enough to put something out for other people to see, especially if it hasn’t been edited and beta’ed, and 2) the idea of writing stories for the blog sometimes feels…unfocused. Like, it’s taking away from other projects that I should be focusing on.

But I do revisit the idea from time to time. Would people like stories? Or would it be like shouting out into the void?

I feel like the blog has been a bit of a downer lately. Yes, the world sucks and terrible things are happening everyday, and it is hard to create in such an environment, and I’m not in a place in my life where I can create as easily or as much as I have done in other times, but when even I am sick of my own moping, that’s saying something.

So maybe it is time to try something new.

Nothing’s clear yet, but the wheels are turning. Maybe we take the best of the morning pages for the week and add a little sketch to go along with them. Maybe we do a prompt challenge once a month.

We shall ponder. But let me know what you think, squiders, if you have opinions. Has there been cycles here at the blog you’ve liked better than other ones?

See you later this week! Maybe with answers!

Creative Vibes

January Books: 3/4 (Five Golden Wings)

Hi ho, squiders, you’ll be happy to know I haven’t touched video games since my post last Thursday, which follows established trends and is not surprising in the least.

I wish I could say I was getting other things done, but aside from a bit of painting and some work on my class, most of my time is still being spent on Scouting work, so I may need to think about my expectations on myself until we’re past this point of the process.

Last week I finished reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. It’s one of the writing books I inherited from my mother and was published in 1986. It consists of a series of short chapters talking about different aspects of writing, but unlike many of the writing books I’ve picked up recently, it was about the feeling of writing. The vibes. The act of being creative and being open to the world around you.

It felt, to be honest, like a breath of fresh air.

Someone in one of my writing groups recently expressed how writing to publish changed their whole outlook on writing, and how she wished in many ways she could go back to that earlier creative work, where the creative part was the point. Writing without worrying if it was any good, if the plot made any sense, if it was marketable.

And she’s 100% right. I feel like many writers–and creative people in general–go through a process. They start creating as children or young adults for the love of the craft, for the fun of it. But people reach a point where they feel like they should do something with it, and everything changes. And as far as I can tell, you can’t really go back to before you knew about story structure and rising arcs. Some innocence has been lost.

And many people give up on their creativity altogether.

Something to think about. Is there a way to reclaim more of that freedom that I used to have? Some way to find joy in the art of writing without wondering if it’s any good? I’d like to restart the morning pages and see if that helps, though thus far I haven’t managed to get them back into my routine. Hopefully by the end of the month.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just write the most inane, self-fulfilling story I can manage, but I do worry that I wouldn’t be able to manage it anymore, that my brain will tell me I’m wasting time I could be spending on more “serious” projects, or that I’ll try to self-correct in the middle.

On a semi-related note, the friend who I sent my November story to (if you recall, I started a new story for November to write just to write, with mixed results) said it was super intriguing, and how mad she was that the story wasn’t done. That was nice to hear! So I’ve added the story into my project list for the year, to return to when it makes sense.

But yeah, I don’t know. It feels like I should be getting more done, that I’m letting my career slide, that forward progress must be made. But maybe I do need to spend more time with just creating to create.

I just wish I was as good at it as I used to be.

See you next week, squiders!

Actually, Let’s Talk About Those Video Games

January Books: 2/4 (Writing Down the Bones)

Since my post on Tuesday, I have:

Beaten A Building Full of Cats 2, which kept my save data the second time around.
Played the demo for Strange Antiquities. I played their first game, Strange Horticulture, a while ago, and Strange Antiquities seems to have a lot of the elements I liked about the first game with some new mechanics. I went to put in on my wishlist and discovered it was already there.
Started playing Mask of the Rose, which I Kickstarted who knows when, but only got about half an hour in.
Managed to rally enough of my old Among Us friends to play for two hours earlier today, which was excellent and reminded me of why I loved the game so much.

It’s a lot of video games, like I noted on Tuesday, and it’s continued to be a lot of video games. So I got to thinking…is this a sign of something? Stress? Avoidance?

I suspect our relationships with gaming, much like our relationship with food, is created when we’re children. My mother did not allow video games in our house, which she always said was because they rotted your brain, but looking back, I suspect it was actually a money thing. My cousins lived across the street and had a NES or SNES or whatever was out at the time, and she never seemed to mind when I went over to play games at their house. Additionally, computer games were always okay. Mostly we had access to teaching games (my favorite was Super Solvers Treasure Mountain, which taught you grammar and word definitions. I could not tell you how many elves I caught with those silly nets), though at my grandparents’ I also had access to arcade classics like Asteroid, Centipede, Tempest, and whatever that game with the rendered tanks was.

I got a GameBoy when I was 12. I’ve never owned any consoles myself. (My husband grew up playing consoles and has continued to buy new generations as they come out. We as a family own a Switch and a PS5.)

As such, while I do occasionally console game, I still, to this day, mostly computer game. (And a lot of the console games are more active games, like Just Dance, and Dance Dance Revolution before it.)

I’ve never been someone who plays, oh, half an hour of a game a day and then moves on to other things. I either spend a couple hours on them or don’t touch them at all.

Which brings me back to this week. Am I stressed? Am I avoiding something? Or is this just part of my normal binge/don’t touch for weeks or months pattern?

I think it is, perhaps a combo of one and three, with a side of “this is on my goals so technically I am getting things done” productive procrastination. My spouse is out of town on business, and I’m going to be honest, he helps a lot with my day to day executive functioning. Am I functional adult? Generally yes. But it’s much easier when he’s around.

And I’ve found in January, especially, I tend to go out the gates full steam ahead on a goal, and this year just happens to be gaming. I’m sure in a few days or a week I’ll wander off and not play anything until February.

What probably also helps is that because my video game goal exists to help me get through my backlog of Steam games, I tend to pick games each month that have been sitting around but that I don’t especially have an urge to play, but this month I bought games off my wishlist and then played them immediately.

So, yeah. Should I do other things? Maybe! But maybe it’s okay too. It’s not like other things aren’t getting done.

Anyway, happy Thursday, squiders. See you next week, when we shall see if my shenanigans have continued.

Mid-January Check-In

Little early, but hey, why not.

January books: Still 1/4

Reading

As we can tell from my usual count, it doesn’t sound like a lot is getting done. But I’m still working through that Weird Parenting Wins book (and I’m in a section about teenagers, and there’s a few things I might want to try) and I’m about a fourth of the way through Six of Crows, which has been on my TBR probably since it came out. I bought this copy five years ago (the receipt was still in the book) but better late than never.

I’m also slowly making my way through Writing Down the Bones, which I started at my writing retreat at the beginning of June. It’s not a terribly long book, but I find that I need to digest each section (which tend to run 2-4 pages).

Video Games

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been spending perhaps more than I should here. I bought three games at the beginning of the month at the winter sale, and I’ve since beat two of them, Tower Wizard and Digseum. Both had idling elements so they could run in the background while I did other things and check on them periodically (Tower Wizard more than Digseum, which needed more hands-on grinding), but I appreciated that neither went on forever like other idling games I’ve tried. Both games were under $3 and I definitely got my money’s worth.

The third game I bought was A Building Full of Cats 2. I’ve previously played A Building Full of Cats and A Castle Full of Cats and they’re all essentially hidden object games, where you have to find the cats in various locations. However, I’m having issues where it’s not saving my progress. It takes a long time to do each level so I’m pretty annoyed about that, especially since the end game stuff won’t unlock unless all the other parts are done, assuming it follows the same format as the other games.

Today I also re-downloaded Among Us, which I played copiously during the pandemic. (According to Steam, it’s been two years since I last played.) I spent a little bit of time today playing Hide and Seek mode, but my hope is to be able to get my pandemic Among Us friends together and play in the near future.

I also played a game called Lost But Found where you’re the lost and found at the airport, and you’ve got to correctly return a stream of items to people. I found this one frustrating, and generally I’m really good at these types of games, so I would not recommend. Some aspects of the game were not well explained (and I never did figure some of them out) and it was also a little buggy. Not worth it.

Art

I thought briefly about it.

Writing

My class is actually coming along pretty well. I outlined everything and am about halfway through creating the slides for the theory portion of the class. I find the slides typically are the most infuriating part of creating the classes, so it should be smooth(ish) sailing once that part is done. (I think it’s because while outlining the class is all well and good, when you actually start to create the class you find areas of repetition or missing information, and then you have to fix things as you go.)

I am slightly worried about filming the workshop portions. I bought a webcam in COVID times that would do multiple inputs, so you could screen share (and film it) and put yourself up in the corner, but somewhere along the line the company removed that functionality. I might be able to use the software I use to stream on Twitch to do more or less the same thing, but I was having issues with the volume last time I tried (the game audio was wildly louder than my commentary audio). Now, the writing screen shouldn’t have any audio of its own, but I think there is probably an issue with the microphone audio.

So that may or may not be an issue when we get to the filming portion.

I’d like to restart my morning pages, which I haven’t gotten around to yet, but all in all I’m not too worried about how things are going.

Do I need to stop playing so many video games? Yes. Will I? Maybe! See you later this week, squiders!

Goals and So Forth for 2026

January Books: 1/5 (Rose/House)

Now that we’ve got last year’s reading stats out of the way, we can talk about 2026 and goals and whatnot.

As you guys know if you were here over the last year, 2025 was rough, from a writing standpoint. Part of that was a bunch of life stuff and volunteer requirements (and I’m already running into some volunteer issues this year) so really I should give myself some grace, though that’s hard.

(Thus far, a week into 2026, I have finished a short story, gotten two query rejections, and did not get into the two mentorship programs I applied to in November. A mixed bag.)

I also have my normal yearly goals: reading 50 books (going to retry the 1 off my TBR and 1 I own requirements this year. I read a lot more of my own books than normal last year, and I hope I can continue that trend), working through my Steam games (though I bought 3 more last week…but I have started all three of those), and attempting some art periodically (still about a year behind on my sketch journal, which makes me think I should perhaps try something else as that’s not working how I wanted it to). I’d also like to start up archery. My family bought me supplies for my birthday two years ago and I haven’t even put the arrows together yet.

On the writing front, I talked briefly last week about how I was having difficulty finding cohesive writing goals for the year, and I can’t say I ever did. I’m going to focus on a single project at a time and let them take the time they need, and then move on to a new one based on the circumstances that exist at that time, rather than a prescribed list I’ve made at the beginning of the year. So we’ll see how that goes.

For my first project, I’m going to work on the interconnected short stories set in my Trilogy universe, which I believe I talked about briefly in October. As part of that, I’m going to make a SkillShare class based on how to write interconnected short stories, so hopefully effectively killing two birds with one stone (which is an awful metaphor, if you think about it).

So, wish me luck.

Have any interesting plans of your own for the new year, squiders?

2025 Reading Stats

Happy new year, squiders! I hope you’re off to an encouraging start!

It’s time for my yearly reading stats post, which is interesting to me and maybe no one else, but I like numbers and so here we are.

Books Read in 2025: 53
Change from 2024: +3

Did a lot of reading in December. And not much else. Onward!

Of those*:
13 were Fantasy
8 were Mystery
6 were Science Fiction
5 were General Literature
5 were Nonfiction
2 were Historical Fiction
2 were Horror
2 were Romance
2 were Thriller
1 was an anthology
1 was Biography
1 was a short story collection
1 was Folklore
1 was Gothic
1 was Magical Realism
1 was Memoir
1 was Science Fantasy

*Some genre consolidation was done here. YA or MG titles went into the general genre. All subgenres of fantasy or romance, for example, also went into the general genre. And things like Mystery Romance or Fantasy Mystery went into Mystery or Fantasy respectively.

New genre(s)**: Nonfiction, Biography, Anthology, Folklore, Gothic, Science Fantasy
Genres I read last year that I did not read this year: Ghost Stories, How To, Mythology, Self-Help, Steampunk
**This means I didn’t read them last year, not that I’ve never read them.

Genres that went up: fantasy, science fiction, general literature, thriller, historical fiction
Genres that went down: mystery, horror, memoir

Fantasy has regained the top spot for the first time in a while, and I also did decent at reading science fiction this year as well. Horror wasn’t great (though I suppose the Gothic is technically horror, and the short story collection was also horror, so maybe we’re fine). Otherwise the normal genre spread as I read whatever catches my interest.

22 were my books
30 were library books
1 was a book I picked up at a hotel and so belonged to neither me nor the library

!! This is the best I’ve done in years! Good job me.

43 were physical books
10 were ebooks

Average rating: 3.5/5

We went back down a bit. There were a couple books this year that I only rated 2, so I guess the rest of the books kept the average up.

Top rated:
The Burial Tide (horror – 4.5)
The Teller of Small Fortunes (fantasy – 4.2)
The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2024 (anthology – 4)
The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen (magical realism – 4)

Honorable mentions of 3.9: Haunted Ecologies (horror short story collection), Rest in Pink (mystery/romance), For Duck’s Sake (mystery)

Most recent publication year: 2025
Oldest publication year: 1899 (The Legend of the Treasure Seekers)
Average publication year: 2011
Books older than 1900: 1
Books newer than (and including) 2020: 28

Again, I think the increased focus on reading books I own has pulled the average year published (and the number of newer books) down a bit. We’re five years newer on the average than last year, though.

The first book I read this year was The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong (fantasy) and the last was The Burial Tide by Neil Sharpson (horror). Interesting note is that both made it into my top books of the year.

I’ve started the year with Rose/House by Arkady Martine and a book I bought forever ago but lost somewhere (and refound during our yearly winter break cleaning spree) called Weird Parenting Wins. I’ve also been reading a manga called The Promised Neverland and am currently on volume 9 of 20.

What were the best books you read last year? What books are you looking forward to in 2026? Any reading challenges you’ve set for yourself?

Not-So-Liminal

Howdy, howdy, squiders. My coffee shop is so full that we’ve had to sit outside, even though it’s only 40 degrees out. Adventures!

Historically the week between Christmas and New Year’s has been a weird, liminal time, where the old year is mostly dead yet it’s not the new year, and days tend to run together. Where calories don’t matter and time means nothing.

Except…I’m not feeling it this year. Days and time have meaning. Days have purpose. The liminality has not come.

Weird. But productive, I guess.

Yesterday I cleaned my areas of the office. My space includes a 4×5 IKEA Kallax shelving unit (it’s a 4×4 on top of a 1×4), half of a long desk up against a bay window, and then half the bay window.

In theory the bay window is lovely, but in reality, since the tornado killed the large ash tree outside the front of the house, it’s too bright. Sun right in the eyes. So mostly the blinds stay closed. And since the computer monitors mostly hide the bay window, it has become a depository for stuff, mostly things that need to be dealt with but don’t fit on the desk.

(Which, ironically, means they get lost and not dealt with. Out of sight, out of mind.)

I do go through the bay window piles periodically (though I found some mail which was over a year old, so, uh, whoops) but apparently I’ve never gone through the Kallax before.

(We built this set-up at the beginning of 2020, as documented here.)

A lot of old kid stuff, from when the kids were much younger. Flashcards and sight words and whatnot. (My youngest is 10, so I suspect these are left over from when we had to do home school during COVID.) Eight things of lotion, four things of hand sanitizer, six things of lip balm, two roll-on aromatherapy sticks. A 2020/2021 planner that I used not at all. Art supplies everywhere which I have mostly consolidated.

Productive! And they say an organized space makes for an organized mind, or something along those lines, though I recently read something by a poet that says you should never trust a creative with a clean space.

(And, to be fair, I didn’t go through everything. But I did hit 50% of the sections and it is much better. And the bay window is 90% better and there are no papers back there to get lost at the moment.)

I also did my Christmas puzzle. Typically I pick out the most fiendish 1000-piece puzzle I can find, but I bought myself this puzzle earlier in the year because it was cute and didn’t have edges, and it was very satisfying but also too easy so I may do a second puzzle here.

I spent some time over the weekend pondering my writing goals for this upcoming year. They…lack focus. Like, for the past few years I’ve specifically been working on the Trilogy, because it’s my dream to get it traditionally published and out into the world. But I finished the revision in late 2024, and I’ve been submitting it all 2025, so there’s nothing specific to do there. And at some point I have to move on. Like, what would my goal be if it that dream comes true?

And I’m not really sure.

Other years I’ve picked a broader goal. Education, or practice, or something. My education year I tried to read a writing book each month, but there does come a point where you can only absorb so much theory, and everyone’s writing process is different anyway, so half the time the book is useless. My practice year I picked three random Pinterest prompts (one each from my character, scenery, and writing prompt boards) and wrote a short story each month. Not sure I got anything good out of that, but it was fun.

I do get anxious about hoarding prompts and not using them, so it does help with that.

And so I could do another broader goal, but I’m not feeling it. 2025 was not a good year, in terms of actually finishing, well, anything. So focusing on just making stuff with no clear end goal is not appealing.

I’m also feeling a little disconnected, community wise. With Turtleduck Press I had regular deadlines I needed to hit, and I was getting stories published on a routine basis. And all my writing forums are essentially dead. I could use some place active, with regular challenges or anthologies or something, to keep me connected and meeting small goals. So I guess if you know of any, point me in the ~~write~~ right direction.

So I think we may piecemeal things for a bit until a bigger picture comes along. Finalizing focus and order on those here. Waiting to hear on whether I got a mentorship. Stuff along those lines. I’ll let you know when I know.

Anyway, squiders, enjoy the last few days of 2025, and I’ll see you in the new year!

Christmas Movies Now and Then

December books: 6/4 (A Wonderful Christmas Crime and Writing While the World Burns)

The other night we watched the Christmas Chronicles, which, while not a new movie (it came out in 2018), was a new movie to us. This is something we go through each Christmas season, where we look for new Christmas movies we’ve never seen, and I try, mostly unsuccessfully, to sneak my favorites in.

It’s a difference in media consumption in general. Nowadays you can stream basically ever movie ever made somehow or another. Why settle for the familiar when you can try something new? There’s so much out there to see!

I tried to explain this to my kids last week, how we used to re-watch the same things over and over, because that’s all we had. Your movie options included the videos you yourself owned and whatever the local video rental store had in stock. I was rather poor growing up, so trips to the video store were limited, and we definitely didn’t have HBO or another service where you could watch newer movies.

In fact, for most of my formative years, we lived in a small mountain town (it’s still quite small to this day, despite massive growth in many mountain towns), where our video rental options were the Safeway three towns over (cheaper, and we were there fairly regularly because it was also the closest grocery store) or a store in town which I remember renting from maybe twice, so I can only assume it was wildly more expensive.

Christmas feels like a time for tradition, and one of our traditions growing up was our Christmas movie marathon, which my sister and I did each Christmas Eve after dinner to whenever we fell asleep for as long as I can remember. I can’t remember the exact rotation of shows, but it was Rudolph and Frosty, the Grinch, and my personal favorite, A Muppet Family Christmas, which includes not just the Muppets but the Sesame Street characters and the Fraggles.

(They never released A Muppet Family Christmas on video. Our copy was taped off a broadcast. I have found it on YouTube in its entirety, complete with 80s commercials, if one is so inclined.)

So, each Christmas, I find myself trying to watch my favorites in direct competition with everyone else’s urge to watch new movies. But it’s something I run into in general, as well. I want to show my kids the movies that I enjoyed as a kid, and generally I can get away with that, but rewatching something we’ve already seen? Oh, no, we can’t have that.

Sometimes you just want a comfort movie, you know?

Which camp do you fall into, squiders? Are you a rewatcher of favorites, or an only new movies person?

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a merry one, and I’ll see you guys next week.

Okay, Maybe We’ve Overdone the Mysteries

December Books: 4/4 (Edited Out and It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Mischief)

Howdy, squiders. We’re a week out from Christmas, so that’s a thing. I could probably use a few more stocking stuffers, but we’ve reached a point where anything shipped won’t get here in time, and I hate braving real retail spaces in December in general, so it may be what it is.

I’m most of the way through my fifth mystery of the month, and I’m flagging a bit. To be fair, this book is annoying me content-wise (It’s A Wonderful Christmas Crime, and the author has taken things in a direction, character-wise, that I do not like and if she doesn’t change things by the end of the book, I may be done with the series. Alas, and after I talked it up last week too). But in theory we’re also going to get Five Golden Wings (now I’m #13 in line on 8 copies, so that’s not moving quickly) AND I bought myself The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries which was perhaps a little ambitious, and maybe we’ll just keep that for next year.

My eyes, they are bigger than my stomach.

I don’t tend to read the same genre in a bunch, so I suspect I’d get sick of anything eventually. Genres have genre conventions, and they tend to get repetitive after a while, so that makes sense.

Anyway. It’s been a LOT of mysteries and maybe I should have paced myself, especially since two of them weren’t even Christmas themed.

I have a horror novel ready for pick-up, and the manga series I started is science fiction/horror-adjacent, so mixing those in may help. Or not, because mystery can be horror-adjacent as well. Maybe I need to read some romance or cozy fantasy.

On the writing front, we’re making some baby steps. I’ve written 1000 words on a short story that came down from on high. Been a while since we’ve had a fully form story fall out of our brain ready to go, and I’m choosing to see that as a promising sign. I’ve also started to outline some of the horror shorts we talked about. And I’ve been poking a couple of writing books I’ve been in the middle of for months.

At some point here, I need to sit down and do some soul searching and put together a long-term plan for January and onward. That, I think, is something for that weird liminal week between Christmas and New Year’s, when time has no meaning.

How’s your December going, squider? I hope that whatever holidays you celebrate are going well! We may get back here before Christmas, but I make no guarantees.