Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Valentine Video Games Festival 2022 (New Name!)

 Celebrating All Things Romantic, My Games, My Stories, Video games, Writing  9 Responses »  Tagged with: , , ,
Feb 022022
 

Welcome back to another… well, last year it was called Celebrating All Things Romantic, but in light of the fact that we do not in fact celebrate all things romantic, only romance-themed video games, I’ve renamed it!

The celebration’s tentative new name is Valentine Video Games Festival, but if you can think of an exciting v-word for the end, do let me know.

(I considered Valentine Video Games Vacation, but “vacation” just didn’t seem to fit. …I was calling it Visiting Valentine’s Day Video Games up until about five minutes before publishing the post.)

Anyway, this celebration is not quite as exciting yet as our annual horror celebration yet, but it still includes a month of reviews and prizes to win!

My work in the romance genre is still growing, and includes a short story in the Christmas romance collection Love Under the Mistletoe, the isekai visual novel Ascendant Hearts (PC/Switch), the supernatural otome The Last Act, and other visual novels you can find on my list of games.

Contest

Moving on to this year’s contest, some things have changed since last year, so be sure to read everything carefully.

The available prizes are:

  • LoveKami -Divinity Stage- (Steam code)
  • LoveKami -Useless Goddess- (Steam code)
  • Ascendant Hearts (gift sent through Steam)
  • The Last Act (gift sent through Steam)
  • Nekopara bundle (gift sent through Steam)
  • Adventure of a Lifetime (gift sent through Steam)
  • $15 sent through PayPal
  • You pick a game for me to review!
  • …and possibly more game prizes to be added throughout the month!

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:

  • No purchase is necessary.
  • Only comments made between February 2, 2022 at 12:00 PM EST and February 28, 2022 at 11:59 PM EST will be counted.
  • 1 non-spam, non-anonymous comment on any Valentine Video Games Festival blog post = 1 point.
  • Comments on past Celebrating All things Romantic posts also qualify.
  • 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.
  • 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, 2022.

Valentine’s Day might be partway through February, but you’ve got all month to enjoy reviews, leave comments, and earn points to win a prize at the end! Let’s have a great festival focused on romantic games!

2022 Writing Goals

 Writing  3 Responses »
Jan 052022
 

A new year brings new writing goals!

The outcome of last year’s goals was mixed: although I met my first two goals, I opted to revise On An Island of Oaks instead of the next two novels I’d intended to focus on based on my prioritized list, and since that one was in much worse condition, it left no time to get around to those two.

And while I did write a new pulp fiction story, I only completed two other short stories in addition to that. My website traffic didn’t quite meet the goal either, although one came close.

So let’s set some goals for this year!

By 2023, I will:

  • Send out regular batches of queries for my novels in the querying stage.
  • Revise Mage’s Test.
  • Revise The Sunken Sapphire.
  • Send On An Island of Oaks to a beta reader.
  • Write at least 5 new short stories, any genre.
  • Regularly update side websites and increase traffic to 500+ visits per month.

Once again, no book signing goals until things settle down… and of course, I’ll write a new NaNoWriMo draft in November!

Do you have any writing goals for 2022?

A Different Month of Horror With NaNoWriMo 2021

 My Stories, Writing  4 Responses »  Tagged with:
Nov 012021
 

Original image by brands amon from Pixabay

November is here, this year’s celebration of horror games is over, and the contest winners are being contacted!

We’ve got a lot of things to talk about, including a couple of games I finished in October that didn’t quite fit the spooky theme.

Before all that, however, NaNoWriMo has begun!

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a yearly challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.

I got started at midnight, and so far I have 5,300 words written of a new supernatural horror novel. So even though our focused look on horror in video games is at an end for this year, I have another horror-themed month ahead for me in my writing. This year’s novel is partly inspired by Silent Hill 4, so I’m looking forward to getting into it!

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? If so, what sort of project are you working on?

And this was the first year that the Celebrating All Things Spooky contest had slightly different rules, so if you have any thoughts on that, please share those in the comments as well.

Here’s to a fun and productive November!

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