February 2025 News
It snowed in Georgia twice in January, which is fairly rare.
Pls forgive out enthusiasm. We don’t get much snow down here.
I hate cold weather and am usually glad to see winter go but I sure have been getting a lot of words written while sheltering inside from the cold.
Kayaks
We had rentals this year in December and January. That’s rare but welcome. Looking forward to spending some time with my new plastic welder and improving some birth defects on some of our new boats once it warms up.
Writing
I’ve been averaging over twenty-thousand words a month since November. Since drafting V&V, I hadn’t been sure I could return to such a pace (for no other reason than self-doubt, surely). It’s nice to rediscover the joys of drafting. Way nicer than if I’d discovered I hate it now. Speaking of hate, the majority of the words I’m writing are garbage. To paraphrase a sentiment of Kailee Pederson, who I met during TBR Con, “I’m a dung beetle, and this is my ball of dung.”
It’s in rewrites and edits that this huge pile of triceratops shit is transformed into the timeless art it will become.
What is TBR Con?
I’m glad you asked.
TBR Con
is a yearly virtual conference for fiction writers and readers, by fiction writers and readers. There were a ton of great panels and they’re all now available on YouTube (here’s a landing page).
I was in two panels, Religion in Fiction and The Debut Experience. I met awesome people in both of them and was inspired by all their different journeys. I linked the vids in their title up there, and here are a couple of pics.
In The Debut Author Experience we discussed all sorts of things, from how we’ve continued writing after publishing “book 1”, to how our debut met our expectations (or failed to!), to the accomplishments we’ve experienced since publishing. Great talk that honestly made me feel less alone in some of these writerly struggles.
Religion in Fantasy is not nearly as light-hearted as The Debut Author Exp but was perhaps deeper in theme. The above screenshot is right after Sarah said “I’ve always liked the tragedy of religion” which intrigued us all. It was an insightful talk (and my very first, so I probably rambled and lost the question more often than not!)
Podcast
The Four Beardsmen of the Bookpocalypse streamed but one podcast during January. It featured special guest JCM Berne, author of the Hybrid Helix series. Here the link be.
We have more streams in February so subscribe to our channel to not miss ‘em!
Next Month
Possibly renting some kayaks. We had some business in the Februarys of 2022 and 2023. None in 2024 because it was a colder one. In fact all of spring was cold last year. Here’s hoping for a warmer one this year.
dtl
