WIP Wednesday – June 21

Hey all, Sam and David back again today.

There’s something really calming about having a consistent schedule, at least when it comes to certain things…knowing when your “weekend” is, having a schedule for blogging or reading or writing or whatever. I just enjoy the regularity of it all.

Anyway, welcome back to our middle of the week check-in post. We came up with WIP Wednesday as a blog series because we sometimes get up to so much that it is easy to forget everything. Having something like this means that we can look back for a monthly or yearly overview and be able to see what we’ve accomplished without needing to dig through the archives of our memories and hope not to miss something.

All right, let’s go ahead and get started.

Sam

First up is my reading check-in, which is basically always my longest section…probably because it’s the section I actively work on the most. I probably should give a little more attention to the writing section though, but I’m really excited that my reading mood has returned and I want to embrace it and nurture it, so I don’t end up in another slump. I was basically in a huge reading slump for almost two years.

Reading: Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen, A Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth Cato, The Cardboard Kingdom #2 Roar of the Beast by Chad Sell, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo by Grant Faulkner, Raven of the Inner Palace Volume 1 by Kouka Shirakawa, The Study of Poisons by Maria V Snyder

I’m honestly a bit surprised at how much reading I accomplished in the last week. I was not at all expecting to have much of an update. But I borrowed a couple quick reads from the library, finished a couple in-progress reads, and read a light novel I’ve been wanting to check out for a couple months. On top of that two of my completed reads were non-fiction, which is pretty impressive.

Okay, I admit it…my in-progress reads section is a bit packed at the moment: Garden of the Cursed by Katy Rose Pool, The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen, Duel with the Vampire Lord by Elise Kova, Gods of the Wyrd Wood by R.J. Barker, Wolfsong by T.J. Klune, Dark Water Daughter by H.M. Long. Four of the six books here are NetGalley reads that I’m hoping to be reviewing in the next week or so, which means they are sort of high priority for me, but I’ve been trying to have a physical book or two handy as well because I’ve been juggling books at work.

Watching: “Shadowhunters” Season 3, “Big Hero 6,” “Pocahontas,” “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” Season 3 (in progress), “Star Wars: Andor” Season 1 (in progress), “Charmed” Season 1 (in progress), “Critical Role” Campaign 3, “Secret Invasion” Episode 1, and BookTube videos

Writing: So what’s really interesting is that when it comes to the writing update, what I want to do is read more…and by that I mean that I want to get myself in the mood and mindset of these magical mythical beings I want to write about, sort of do research before really working on writing.

If this is your first WIP Wednesday writing check-in, hello. I’m currently debating on which of two projects to focus on for Camp NaNoWriMo in July, so I’m trying to sort of brainstorm and roughly outline the characters and plot for both stories. If one grabs my focus more then that will be my sole project for July. But if both hold my attention then I guess I’m bouncing back and forth between them both.

The first project, with the working title Harbingers of Death follows two characters: a valkyrie and a banshee…and so of course, I want to read some books featuring valkyries as well as banshees. It’s actually been a long time since I’ve read the Soul Screamers series, but off the top of my head I can’t really think of any other books that have a banshee main character.

The second project has the working title Sink Your Teeth Into Some Good Books and is a cozy fantasy following a woman who becomes a vampire in order to read through her huge TBR and visit cozy cafes and hotels and anything else that screams peak reading atmosphere…and thankfully I’ve been reading a couple vampire books lately, so I don’t have to go searching for research…although it is really easy to find vampire stories out there.

Does this even count as a writing update? I don’t know, but I’m counting it. I’ve been thinking about both stories: the characters, the plots, and even the marketability of the stories…which honestly seems like part of the writing process.

Other: With my new work schedule, David and I haven’t been able to continue those serious lengthy gaming sessions of Diablo IV, which is a bit sad. All we can do is play an hour or two in the morning before work, or in the evening after work.

I actually don’t think I have much of anything else to include in this section, so I’ll just pass the post over to David.

David

Well I’ve been all over the place with the nerd craft stuff. I probably wont have as long a post as Sam yet again but here we go.

Painting: I am currently working on painting the canvas top for the canopy we were using with our buddy and his shop Senpai’s Treasure Trove. I have a picture of it and please don’t laugh, its still a work in progress.

I also managed to make a small amount of progress on my Ultramarine figures I am pretty confident that I am done with the highlights I only have the leader left to paint and then I am hoping to get back to doing the figures for Oathsworn.

Printing: I am working on printing more cool stuff with the new colors. Some of these prints have been fragile when printed small so I may need to make adjustments to the settings of the smaller ones or just not print small. I am hoping it’s not just the filament because I love the colors we have at the moment.

The new colors are a tri-color (Black, Gold, and Copper), a glow in the dark orange, a bone white, and a sparkly Red Gold Purple transition colored filaments. I am hoping to have a nice stockpile for fall. I have high hopes that these colors will do well enough.

I also have a large stack of prints I am currently painting all the eyes on to and am almost done with the initial painting of them. I will then be adding shines to the eyes and going over them with an acrylic gloss finish. The hope being that the eye paint doesn’t wear off as easily by doing so.

Watching: Let me think, I am trying to catch up ‘I dont want to get hurt so I’ll just max out my defense’. I think I prefer it dubbed just because I like the voices of all the characters dubbed better. Plus just hearing the characters yell out the adorable names of their animal companions. The main girl Maple named her turtle Syrup and I am in love with that.

I am also doing a bit of a rewatch of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. It is a nice one to watch since I have watched it so many times before. Since I know most of the story by heart it is nice to have a giggle at my favorite characters Armstong (Being goofy and posing) and Roy Mustang (being useless on rainy days). Do not get ne messed up though, I love the entire cast of characters of this show, but those two are my absolute favorites. Who is your favorite character?

Reading: This might be the shortest part of my post, but I recently bought some digital manga through HumbleBundle and I am glad I did. I have access to the entire collection of Rave Master manga. It has been so long since I had even watched the anime that I honestly do not even remember what all it was about. All I could remember that Plue was in it and he was always my favorite character of the show.

Which reminds me that they had Plue do an appearance in Fairy Tail on numerous occasions. I wonder what other kinds of characters I will notice from the works. I will have to keep you guys posted on that as that happens, if I even notice at all that is.

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Well, that is all from us for today. Feel free to let us know what you’ve been up to in the comments, because we’d love to hear all about it. Thanks for stopping by, and we’ll be back soon with more geeky content.