New Bloggy Update 8/25/22

Some fun and cool pictures from the Dark History and Horror Convention (’22). It was a great time, and honestly, the nine hours went by fairly quickly. I saw “old” friends, made new ones, was pretty taken aback by the cool costumes, met some famous folks, and made some sales! Charlie was, again, a wonderful help (as husband, as roadie, and as “hey, could you get some paper towels from the bathroom?” person. I’m already looking forward to next year. (and a big, juicy shout out to Brian Ward and his crew who run an amazingly organized and smooth convention)

So…nine chapters. That’s how many are left in Draft #3 of Sanctum. I’m wanting to finish by the end of August, but I suppose if it goes into the first few days of September, I won’t dissolve into a puddle of goo. (lol) After I finish (and Charlie reads it – yep, he’s never read it ), I’ll set it aside until the middle of October. Then, it’s time for Draft #4. This is where I’ll go in deeper to make the smaller corrections (punctuation, spelling, getting names and specifics correct). I’m always on the lookout to clean up the prose or make changes in dialogue if it needs it, but after Draft #3, the story proper is pretty much done.

September will bring the first installment of ALL BUSINESS! I’ve written the inaugural piece and I’m excited to share it with you. As a reminder – ALL BUSINESS is the new segment of the blog that focuses on authorship from a number of angles. It’s a short, monthly offering from myself (and others) about topics such as marketing, swag, editing, running a table at an event, cost of being an indie author, and more. (If you want to share an experience of your own on these topics or others, send me an email at srovens@yahoo.com) So, keep an eyeball peeled!

The next event I’ll be at is Printer’s Row Lit Fest in Chicago on Saturday, September 10th. I’ll be under the Chicago Writers Association Tent from 3pm – 6pm. I’ll have the info on the Events page of the blog very soon. In the meantime, here’s the website: https://printersrowlitfest.org/

Whew.

And as to what we’ve been watching?

Pieces of Her (2022) – Just finished this 8 part series last night. It was good…until it became confusing and I had to keep asking Charlie things like “Wait. Is that her from before?” and “So he’s doing what now?” There are many time jumps and secrets and bits of partial information given. Some of the characters are not reliable at all, so I was never sure what was true or not. Having said all this, it was a good show and kept me interested, but honestly, if it went on much longer, I’d need a scorecard to keep track of everything. It’s based on a book by Karin Slaughter, so perhaps that’s the way to go. I’d give it a recommend, but remember to pay strict attention and take a map with you.

Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020) – Full disclosure. We DNF. It’s not that we didn’t give it the ol’ college try, but we just couldn’t get through more than the first 25 minutes. Maybe it was us. Maybe it tried to hard to be what the original was from years ago. Either way, we found it trite, forced, unfunny, and flat. I know that 80s/90s nostalgia is in right now, but it wasn’t even firing on those cylinders. You might see it differently, but both of us gave this a hard pass.

There it is. Please remember to share the blog with folks, check out my books (suspense/thrillers), read the many interviews from ALL the wonderful contributors, and have the grooviest of Thursdays.