August '21 Update
Introduction
From mid-July to now, mid-August, a lot has been put into motion. I've hinted at a few of the projects I'm working on, but haven't outright stated what all is taking place. Well, now I'm actually putting it out there: I'm shifting my focus and putting everything I have into stories. I've long had numerous projects on my plate that I'm trying to keep my attention on, but now I'm choosing to give up a few of those extraneous projects in favor of the things that matter most to me.
What Am I Giving Up?
A lot is being put on the backburner in favor of my writing; I mentioned in my July update that my work with my game development via Rhetrosoft is being put on hold. That hold is now something I'm considering "indefinite"--specifically, I'm not going to pursue that until I can devote more time to it, which will require no longer relying on my current full-time job for support. In addition to game development, I'm putting a few other things on the backburner. Music composition, running (at least as much as I was), television, gaming, etc. Not that I won't do any of these at all, they're just greatly deprioritized.
I'm not going into too much detail about the why just yet--there's a lot to this and I actually created a video on it that will be put out in October. You can check that out here once it's up. It premieres on October 1st at 1 PM (Central Time).
What Am I Doing Instead?
Reading and writing. I'm writing a lot more and I'm reading a lot more. I read Evan Winter's The Rage of Dragons in a week and I'm currently working on The Fires of Vengeance (Rage's sequel). I have a long list of books I plan to read--a list that should carry me toward the end of next year, honestly--and I'm doing my best to stay consistent with this. I used to read a lot when I was younger and eventually just lost the time and focus that reading requires, which is unfortunate, particularly as someone who wants to write stories for a living. Now that I'm back into it, I'm enjoying it (The Rage of Dragons was awesome and I'll be putting a review out for it in October).
As for my writing, that is still going well. My current goal, which I don't think I'll have trouble meeting, is to be done with Part One of Keeping Secrets from Friends by the end of the year so that it can be sent off to the editor. I'm also presently working on getting my most recent short story ready for release. More on that later in the year!
Additionally, as you can probably tell from the YouTube link, I'm starting to create video content. This will start officially in October. I'm working on getting everything right and making it work, right now. I just put out a video of me eating chips for six minutes as an audio test (no denoise, either--it's got all that beautifully irritating background noise to make it as authentic as possible). Don't worry, I won't be eating chips in future videos and they'll be denoised.
Coming Up
August-September is going to be pretty slow in terms of visible progress. I'll keep writing and reading, I'll keep working on videos in the background, but none of this will be revealed or brought to fruition until October 1st when I start releasing all of the content I've been working on. From there, I fully expect the subsequent months to be really busy! Apart from that background work, there isn't a lot that I can put front and center, just yet. The mid-September update is going to be even less eventful than this one was, unfortunately. Well, unless I find a way to make these next few weeks really interesting, somehow. I guess I do have a short staycation coming up, so that could be fun to discuss--I'm taking the opportunity to focus strongly on writing.
Conclusion
I didn't go into too much detail with this post because I'm saving the real details for the video I linked above and for the article I'll be writing the correlates with that video. The video will dive more deeply into what I'm doing, why I decided to give things up, and what I hope to accomplish by making this shift. That first video is going up on October 1st at 1 PM Central Time, but I'm truthfully more excited for what's going to be released the following week! You'll have to wait to see what that's going to be, though.
Oh! I also had my birthday. My friends threw a great party, but I didn't take any photos. It happened though, I swear. I promise. Why don't you believe me?