Hey all, Sam and David here.
We are having some wonderfully nice weather right now, and it is fantastic. We fixed the screen on our front porch, and our cats are really enjoying the fact that they get some time to run around outside without really being outside.
Anyway, welcome to WIP Wednesday, our weekly post where we go over what we’ve been reading, watching, writing, printing, painting, crafting, playing, and doing over the past week. And we invite you to share what you’ve been up to with us as well. It’s a pretty fun time.
We have a few series here on the blog: Manga Monday, Tabletop Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Weekend Writer. It’s pretty fun to have regular content, and it makes planning and scheduling so much easier, which is really nice. We hope you’ve been enjoying our content as well. There’s plenty more to come. It’s gonna be great.
All right, let’s jump into today’s post.
Sam
It’s actually a pretty jam packed weekly recap this time around, and that’s very exciting. I don’t want to waste a lot of time with this intro, because there is a lot to discuss, so I’m just going to get started.
Reading: Campaign Builder: Cities & Towns by Kobold Press, specifically Richard Green, Tim Hitchcock, Sarah Madsen, and Sebastian Rombach, Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee
Okay, so not a big reading week, but I did get through a couple books, which is nice. And a lot more of my focus has been on hanging out with my mom and then writing, so I’m sure the reading total will jump up next week.
Oh, and it’s a little early to talk about it, but I am planning on participating in Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon, which takes place April 29th. It starts at 8am Eastern (which is now 7am Central since I’ve moved to a different time zone), which means it will end at 8am Eastern on April 30th. I’m starting to plan out a TBR and so far it is mostly novellas that I’ve been wanting to read but haven’t gotten around to yet. I imagine that I’ll read at least a few volumes of manga. Any novels I pick up will depend on what I get finished before we get to the readathon. But I’ll keep you posted.
Watching: “Bones” Season 3, Season 4, and Season 5 (in progress), “The Marvelous Mrs Maisel” Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, and Season 4, “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves”
A lot of the “Bones” watching was done because my mom wanted something on, and since we watched this particular show together years ago so I figured it was a safe bet. And Mrs. Maisel is a re-watch because the fifth and final season is coming to Amazon Prime this week, and I wanted a refresher before jumping into it.
And, seeing the D&D movie again is because I was hanging out with a friend and she thought it sounded interesting, and so David and I agreed to go see it again with her, because it’s a good movie, and I really don’t mind watching it again and again. Plus, we still have a couple weeks before we talk about it as a Tabletop Tuesday post, so this time I’m making notes.
Writing: We’re about at the midpoint of the month and Camp NaNoWriMo, and I’m still writing every day. My goal is to write 25,000 words on Tale of Blood and Mourning, which equates to 833 words per day. Currently I am at 17,985 words, which is incredible. A couple thousand words from this month’s word count are on different projects, but since I’m definitely going to end up writing far more than my original goal, I’m okay with that.
So I felt the need to write a few hundred words on the sequel to Tale of Blood and Mourning, a project titled Adventures of Faith and Wonder. Both books are a part of my Courts and Guilds series, and once I’ve gotten the series more in hand, and am ready to start publishing and such then I’ll talk more specific details about them, but for now I’m going to hold things a little close to my chest.
I guess what I can say about the series is that it is technically considered a romantasy series (that’s romantic fantasy). I’ve written fantasy with some romance, but this series is supposed to have a bit more of a romance focus to it…so I’m trying to write something different. I’ve been trying to do some research on writing romance, particularly steamy romance. I’m reading romance writing craft books and romance books, so we’ll see how well I do with it.
I also wrote a few hundred words on Harbingers of Death, and I don’t know if it’s going to be more of a YA or Adult fantasy story. I guess I’m just going to write the story and see how it goes. Then after the rough draft I can adjust it to whichever age category and writing style it would best fit in during edits.
Other: Okay, so no video gaming for the past week, so nothing to update on that side of things, but we did still do a lot of stuff. When my mom came to town, we went to play putt putt golf, because the local place just opened up for the season…and that was a whole lot of fun. After that we went bowling, and over the three game series I actually mostly kept up with my mom, so that was great. It was a lot of fun.
Then we spent a couple days checking out some of the local bars. We had a couple bars that we’ve been to before, although we tried food at one of them that we hadn’t eaten at again, and then we tried three new-to-us bars, and now I’m not sure which local establishment is my favorite. I mean, obviously the closest one is only three blocks away, so that one will always sort of hold a favorites spot, but the wine & whisky bar is incredible and the menu is enormous, so I might take David to it over the next couple days while he’s off work.
Oh, and this little town where we now live has not one but two disc golf courses in the same park. That is 36 holes of disc golf, and so we’re going to go try that out today too. We’re starting to really explore our new hometown and settle into it. Overall it’s pretty exciting. I’m going to get us summer pool memberships too, because it might be nice to enjoy the pool when the weather is nice.
David
Reading: I have been reading a manga called Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything With Low-Level Spells. Long name I know but that seems to have been a slightly weird trend with some of these isekai mangas as of late. I’m not going to hate on that I just find it silly.
Anyway a classroom of students are summoned to another world to be heroes by a goddess. Immediately after being summoned everyone finds out that Momori is of the lowly E-Rank of the heroes and when the goddess suggests whisking him away for “disposal” his classmates are all for it except one.
The goddess renders the classmate unconscious and then sends Mimori to a place where no one is meant to survive and the goddess send everyone she has deemed a ‘problem’ to. The Ruins of Disposal. During his time inside the ruins Mimori finds that there are more to his abilities than meets the eye, and in fact they are absurdly strong and escape becomes his top priority.
Writing: Yes technically I am writing, big shocker I know since that is usually Sam’s thing more than mine. I am working on creating the world which my players will be most likely wrecking once we get the ball rolling. I have started to develop the ‘home’ countries government and NPCs which the characters could have a chance to interact with depending on how they proceed with everything.
I am actually hoping for plenty of shenanigans and with me allowing a lot of homebrew and heroic level PCs I am sure it is going to be a lot of fun. I will try and post a basic map of the small continent they will be starting play in and unless they decide to really go off board they will be one this continent for the entirety of the campaign.
We are actually planning on doing a podcast for this campaign and I am sure it will be a challenge figuring everything out with it, but we have friends who stream who should be able to provide a good amount of insight into what sort of equipment we should get and editing software to use. I even made sure I have access to royalty free background music that we should be able to use as well.
Gaming: So I have taken it upon myself to start playing a bunch of games for a minimum of 10 hours and taking notes as of late. I am actually planning to start leaving reviews for all sorts of games both old and new since there are so many that I have never even heard of let alone played.
The games I have tried playing so far over this last week are 11-11 Memories Retold, Dragon Quest Builders (1), No Heroes Allowed, and have started the original God of War. I will be posting the reviews for these soon but I will most likely spread them out a bit so I have time to try and play other games as well.
I think I might try playing some games I have played already and placing reviews up. Some of them I have not played for so long I am having trouble remembering the story enough to do a proper review. I realize some of them will have a bunch of reviews already and people have probably played them through a bunch enough to know what the games are, but I feel like since I enjoyed them I would not be doing them justice to not leave reviews for them like I am these ones I have never played.
Printing: Progress has stopped on the Goblin Slayer cosplay for now. I need to figure out how to print the larger pieces in smaller pieces. If anyone has any ideas on that please do leave a comment or send a message.
I only have one of the resin printers still running for the moment. I am going through all of my 3d files from Loot Studios and trying to figure out where I was when I was printing a bunch of their stuff before, since I plan to use a lot of it for the upcoming campaign. I have not been able to get any painting in, but with the weather being so nice where we are I have been trying to do some outdoor activities. Looks like today will be Frisbee Golf.
I think that is it everybody. Hope you all have a wonderful day full of nerd and general geekery and that you all take care of yourselves out there doing whatever it is you do!
Well, that is all from us for today. Thank you so much for stopping by. Feel free to tell us what you’ve been up to in the comments, and we’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
Free State of Geek 