2024-W35 EOW Report

Highlights This Week

• Final leg of Iceland trip included the Snæfellsnes peninsula with a tour guide that was actually born and raised in Iceland. Stupid kerfuffle at Sker in Ólafsvík. Ended up sitting with the tour guide, a Dane, and his Slovak girlfriend, who met in Austria while studying human rights, but now live in Belgium. Only in Europe. Monday: Hallgrimskirkja and it’s belltower. Perlan with a humanmade indoors ice cave, fell asleep during the 18m Aurora Borealis planetarium video. Final shopping. Bought ONE souvenir for myself, a raven lapel pin by Ninna Thorarindottir. Everything was just so absurdly expensive. Listened to a lot of Björk, Sigur Rós, and Sólstafir on the way home while burning through Okorafor’s Binti Trilogy (2015-2019).
• Back in the thick of work. Came home to a lot of packages. Sinless (2024) TTRPG, Academies of the Arcane (2021) TTRPG, Fever Swamp (2017), K-Pop (2014) by John Lie. And then I hit up Western Sky to pick up John Wyndham stuff: The Day of the Triffids (1951) and The Chrysalids (1955). They couldn’t find their copy of The Midwich Cuckoos (1957). Also, replaced my copy of The Vanishing Half (2020) by Brit Bennett because I’m fairly certain the Glausers’ dog peed on the other copy. Oh, and Schruti Swamy’s A House is a Body (2020), which, for the life of me, I can’t recall why or how I heard of this book. Was it Charlie Jane Anders on Bluesky??? Oh. Who cares. It’s on my TBR now.
• NERD STUFF: Bought and read my very first DC comics! Oh no! What Pandora’s Box will this open? Really interested in getting Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing (1984), Gail Simone’s run on Wonder Woman (2007), Geoff John’s run on Green Lantern (2004), and maybe Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol (1989). There’s also a Neal Adam’s omnibus of his Batman stuff. Finally – this morning, went down a Benjamin Percy rabbit hole… and wow. Literary awards, films, and a very funny socials feed where he talks about eating a lot. Hilarious.

Project Status Dashboard

The following are ongoing fiction writing projects broken down to what stage they’re in. Legend in footnote¹

Ready to start 30 minutes again where actual stories are broken, developed, outlined, drafted, and revised!

EOW Time Tracking

Three Sentences First Thing Streak

• CURRENT STREAK: 63 Days
• BEST STREAK: 63 Days (August 31, 2024)

Thirty Minutes A Day Streak

• CURRENT STREAK: 0 Days
• LAST STREAK: 10 Days (August 17, 2024)
• BEST STREAK: 18 Days (May 10, 2024)

Four Thousand Weeks

No crazy updates here. Feeling hopeful I have all the pieces locked in to start writing actual stories and not getting sucked into theory.

Book Reading

• Finished Rich and Pretty (2016) in Reykjavik. Live commentary here. Started Laura & Emma (2018) while on a day tour around the Snæfellsnes peninsula (Kirkjufell being the furthest north I’ve stepped foot on 64º56N). Finished at KEF. Live commentary here. And on the plane ride home, started Binti Trilogy (2015-2019) by Nnedi Okorafor, got almost 200 pages in.
• Burned through most of Brian Michael Bendis’ Words for Pictures (2014) yesterday as well.
• This week’s comic reading: only 29 issues this week?! Probably because I crushed three novels while wrapping up the final leg of our Iceland trip. Empyre was utterly silly, stupid, and mostly forgettable… except for Magik turning into a demon sorceress and almost made Nightcrawler her sex slave. This Swords of X event is… it’s not bad, it’s not great, it’s my 3.75 rating I give to good, solid stories. The first ten parts are a series of fetch quests, and while creative for each story, Logan in Hell Japan, Cable on a space station, Cypher with a internal struggle arc… it wasn’t something I hyper-cared for. I simply loved the nation building stories of the earlier Krakoan Age more.
• On that note, a lot of new stuff I picked up after I got back to Vancouver. I tried my first DC comics. I had no idea who 98% of the characters are, but I loved how badass Amanda Waller is. Just utter devastation of their metahuman universe. And yes, I’ll admit it. Brainiac Queen is an utterly stupid name, but goddamn if I’m not in love with her design. Cybertronic female robot with wiring, tubes, and hydraulics all over the place? Yes, please.
• Was a little wary of Cyclops’ posturing in X-Men #3, but then the last page when he’s having a panic attack delivered the dramatic emotional beat I’ve been waiting for since the first issue. I mean, Scott’s under a lot of stress. We have no idea what Rogue is doing in UXM because these things are released out of order, but Scott has to scream at her. And then his dad is half-naked around his wife in space, so screaming about that too. I can’t wait for NYX and X-Force to get on his nerves too. Finally, Wolverine Revenge was a little… I dunno. Didn’t really delivered because it’s all setup. We’ll see. Also Capullo’s first few pages with the dinosaurs and the indigenous people took me all the way back to grade 7 when Santino first introduced me to Spawn (1992).

Comic Book Issues Tracking

Archive of all EOW reports here