January was a pretty great month for me. I’ve accomplished a lot, but I think the most notable things that have happened have been markers of what is to come. For one, I’m excited to tackle three stories right now, all of which unfortunately will require some more preparation.

First and foremost, I can’t wait to start writing the third novelette in Aftermath of the Rupture (the new, tentative title of which is Rise of the Riftguard). I have the opening scene, but I still need to find a place for it in the overarching story of the anthology, because as of yet the characters/events have nothing to do with The Rupture and its consequences.

Second, Lisa Stenton has been getting a lot more love recently. I just finished her third short story, and I really want to keep writing her stuff, but the stuff I have fleshed out is too far in the timeline for me to write it just yet. I love the character and the style of writing I get to use when I’m telling her story because its so different from everything else I write, but if I’m too hasty I’ll risk giving too much or too little intrigue in what needs to be handled carefully.

Lastly, I am still going to write a longer story set in the Spark universe. “A Big Discovery” gave all of us working on the game a much clearer view into this world, and as expected it made us ask questions we need to answer as we work on the project. So, going beyond this, if I write a longer story with more characters, worldbuilding, and background, we’ll find more questions and, necessarily, more answers.

I have no idea what I’m going to write next, honestly. All three of these projects are going to be longer than the conventional one to two thousand words, which means working on any one of them in earnest will occupy a few weeks of time. The best part about this is that I’m excited to write all of them, and me getting excited about writing is a luxury I rarely have.

Moving on from my writing projects, I’m making a few minor tweaks to my blog. Most prominently, I’m planning on making the Thursday Learning! posts focused on writing. That topic seems to get the most traffic, which isn’t surprising. I’ve studied writing for a while now (I’m an English major after all), so if I can use that knowledge to another’s benefit, that’s what I’ll do. Not every Thursday post will be about writing, but I’ll start making that the norm. Another change that I’m making to the blog is that I’m moving the publication of the audio recordings to Sunday rather than Monday. It makes more sense to provide the link to fiction at the preface to fiction rather than a post like this, so that’s where it’ll go.

On to everything else that’s going on with my life. Nothing super exciting is happening anywhere else. I’ve been playing a lot of Overwatch, Hearthstone, and, as of lately, Minecraft. I finally hit platinum rank in Overwatch, so I haven’t been playing it as much, and for the January season in Hearthstone I managed to get all the way up to rank three, which is apparently in the top one percentile in the region, and the highest I’ve ever gotten to. (It’s sort of ranked from one to twenty-five, one being the highest*). As far as Minecraft goes, it fills the same hole as Stardew Valley: the way my brothers and I play it is primarily for relaxing and building stuff. We’ve been playing it a few weeks, and I’ve got so many ideas for things I want to do, and I know I’ll get bored with the game way before I achieve most of them, but it is what it is.

While I’m playing, I’ve been listening to the Wheel of Time series again. I just finished Hero with a Thousand Faces, so I thought it was time to give it another shot, since I’ve never made it past book five. I’m on the third right now, but I don’t expect to have a whole lot of time to devote to reading (or gaming) in the next week or two.

As far as classes go, there isn’t much to say. I’m really enjoying my social psychology class, because I love the subject, but two of my classes still haven’t even started yet (they begin on the seventh), so it feels like I’m taking a light semester right now, when in reality the fun hasn’t really started yet. So, great start to the year, and I’ve got a lot of optimism for the future!

*There is a rank above One in Hearthstone, the “Legend” rank, so it’s kind of difficult to accurately explain how the ranking system works in a concise manner.