Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Our First Ever “Celebrating All Things Romantic” Event

 Celebrating All Things Romantic, My Games, My Stories, Video games, Writing  13 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Feb 032020
 

You overwhelmingly asked for it in my poll, and so here it is: our first ever Celebrating All Things Romantic event!

While I might have most of my publications in the horror genre, I do write some romance as well. One of my first fiction publications was a Christmas romance story called “A Special Present” in the anthology Love Under the Mistletoe.

It really became my niche in the indie game writing world, however. Most notably, I wrote the script for Ascendant Hearts, a romantic comedy visual novel available now on both Steam and the Nintendo eShop.

I also wrote the scripts for several of Genius’s mobile romance visual novels, the most recent of which are My Time Traveling Girlfriend, My Ninja Girlfriend, and Gossip School: Romance Otome Game.

As you’ve probably guessed, Celebrating All Things Romantic is going to be a lot like Celebrating All Things Spooky, which we do every October, except focused on romance games instead of horror games. Since this is the first time, it might not run as smoothly (can I play & review as many romance games in a month as I do horror games?), but let’s get down to the details!

2020’s Celebrating All Things Romantic Contest

That’s right, I’m doing a contest as usual, and the available prizes are:

  • Ascendant Hearts (gift sent through Steam)
  • Hatoful Boyfriend (gift sent through Steam)
  • Steins;Gate (gift sent through Steam)
  • Muv-Luv (gift sent through Steam)
  • $15 sent through PayPal
  • You pick a game for me to review!

If you choose the review option, your chosen game must be something I either own or is easily obtainable, which you can discuss with me beforehand. It must be a single game, not a collection (although the chosen game can be part of a collection). I will start playing it in March.

Rules and Scoring

  • No purchase is necessary.
  • Only comments made between February 3, 2020 at 1:00 PM EST and February 29, 2020 at 11:59 PM EST will be counted.
  • 1 non-spam, non-anonymous comment on any blog post here = 1 point.
  • 1 non-spam, non-anonymous comment on a Celebrating All Things Romantic blog post = 2 points.
  • You must use an email address or website URL (or include another way of contacting you) in your comment so I can contact you if you win.
  • You must have at least 10 points at the end of the month to win.
  • The person with the most points will get their first pick of the prizes. The person with the second most points will pick second, and so on, until all prizes have been given out.
  • The winner will be contacted by March 2, 2020.

Once again, I’m pretty much following the Celebrating All Things Spooky format. Any questions? Ask in the comments!

Now let’s see if we can make this celebration a thing.

2020 Writing Goals

 Writing  3 Responses »  Tagged with:
Jan 082020
 

It’s a new year, and that means it’s time for a new list of writing goals!

By 2021, I will:

  • Send out regular batches of queries for the novels I have in the querying stage.
  • Complete my current pulp fiction story and write at least one more pulp fiction story.
  • Revise On An Island of Oaks and send it to a beta reader.
  • Edit The Sunken Sapphire.
  • Write at least 3 more short stories.
  • Update my two side websites on at least a monthly basis.
  • Participate in an additional book signing/event.

Of these, the third goal is the one I really hope to make progress on. On An Island of Oaks was my NaNoWriMo novel this past November, and I have high hopes for it once it’s revised. However, it needs major structural changes, so it might be quite a project.

I’ll also write a new novel draft during NaNoWriMo, but since I do that almost every year, I didn’t think it should be included on my list of goals.

Do you have any writing goals for 2020? What are they? Let me know in the comments!

2019 Writing Goal Progress

 Writing  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 302019
 

Once again, I set certain writing goals for myself at the start of the year.

Now that 2019 is almost over, it’s time to take a look back at those goals and see how I did.

While I never set specific goals related to publication, since that’s something I don’t have control over outside of self-published stories, 2019 saw the publication of my first pulp fiction story, “The Domino Lady Takes the Case,” as part of Airship 27’s Domino Lady Volume 3 collection.

It was also a notable year for me as a game writer, with the release of Parachronism: Order of Chaos (the first game I was ever hired to work on), Two Till Midnight (a horror game I wrote lore and backstory notes for), and Not It (the result of an exciting Halloween visual novel jam).

Those were some good achievements, but what about my writing goals? Let’s take a look at that list from the start of the year…

  • Complete my final edits of A Prince’s Price and send it to a beta reader.
  • Edit The Nightbringer based on feedback I recently received.
  • Edit A Prince’s Price based on the feedback I receive.
  • Once they are completely edited, search for an agent for The Nightbringer and A Prince’s Price.

I met these four goals. Both A Prince’s Price and The Nightbringer have been read and revised, and they’re now in the list of manuscripts I’ve been sending out query letters for. No luck yet, but here’s hoping.

  • Edit The Sunken Sapphire.

This is the first goal I missed. I haven’t touched The Sunken Sapphire since I finished the rough draft last year. I more or less switched it out for a different goal, which we’ll get to next.

  • Create an outline for the revisions of either The Threshing Night or Mage’s Test.

Not only did I create an outline of revisions for one of these novels, I did it for both of them. Then I revised The Threshing Night according to my new outline of revisions (they’re both disasters, but I decided it was the less disastrous of the two). It still needs work, but it’s in a lot better condition than when I started.

So effectively, revising The Threshing Night replaced revising The Sunken Sapphire. I hadn’t intended to go beyond the outline of revisions, but once I started thinking about how to fix it, I wanted to give it a try instead of setting it aside again.

  • Write at least 3 more short stories.

I met and exceeded this goal! I wrote two more pulp fiction stories, to follow this year’s publication of “The Domino Lady Takes the Case,” and two new horror stories. I also pulled out an old rough draft of a science fiction story, revised it, and submitted it to an anthology.

Here’s hoping for good news in regards to all of these stories in 2020!

  • Continue to manage my two side websites and get them to a level where they do bring in income.

My side websites did bring in a fraction of what could be considered “income,” but I would consider this goal to be a failure – not just because of the tiny amount of income, but because I stopped consistently managing them. This is something I definitely want to work on next year.

  • Add an additional “event” of some sort to the three book signings I currently participate in.

While I didn’t attend an additional book signing event this year, I did find two more that I could possibly add to my list. I’ll consider this goal partly-completed.

All in all, it was a pretty good year. I didn’t meet every goal, but I did accomplish the major ones. What about you? If you set goals for yourself at the start of the year, how did you do?

 Older Entries  Newer Entries