Hello folks! It’s time once again for the Weekend Wrap-Up, in which I blather on at length about whatever I’ve been writing, reading, and doing. It’s not really a complicated or a novel concept.

Anyway, let’s get to it, shall we?

What I’ve Been Writing

I haven’t written as much as I’d liked this week–at least, not on my fiction. I spent most of last week working on the first session of my new D&D campaign. Intros to adventures are really important to me because I feel like it sets the tone and gives everyone insight into major themes of the adventure, and I think it’s especially important to nail if you’re DMing for a new group. I wanted to make sure everyone had time to shine and RP and get to know their characters and each other, which left me scrambling until the last minute.

My game was on Wednesday, so what did I do with the rest of the week? Not much. It’s been pretty busy and stressful at work, and I’ve got Other Things I’ve been trying to focus on and juggle at the same time. Between work, Other Work Things, and D&D, it’s been pretty full. I’ve come home pretty wiped and haven’t wanted to do much beyond that. That said, this week, I’m going to try to re-up my efforts–partially because the next short story deadline is approaching, and partially because I think, with a few tweaks, I can right my course.

The trouble I’ve had with plans in the past is when I first come up with projects or plans, I’m very enthusiastic and I will stick to them rigidly. However, after a couple weeks when life intrudes and interrupts my schedule, or if I get stuck on a project, my interest will wane, the shiny wears off, and I have to be practically strapped down to keep at it. That’s where things like these tight deadlines come in, and how I was able to complete NaNoWriMo back in 2017. So I’m hoping resetting my schedule and getting back into the habits will help.

What I’ve Been Reading

I’m around 80% done with Zeroes. It took a surprising turn that was silly and great and reminded me a bit of one of my favorite moments from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I’m a little disappointed in myself that it’s taken me so long to finish it, but it’s certainly not from lack of interest. I’ve just been very busy and too tired to read in the evenings.

Originally, I planned to jump into Blackbirds and start re-reading the Miriam Black series so I can catch up to Vultures, but I don’t want to read only white men, and I don’t want to read only Chuck Wendig, so I went ahead and grabbed K.C. Alexander’s Necrotech and Nanoshock because they look badass and fun and I’ve been meaning to pick them up forever.

I also grabbed Dreadnaught on ebook and Audible because the audiobook in particular was massively marked down if you bought it in a bundle with the ebook and I love a good audiobook. I may try to start listening to that at work as I have time.

Side note: I really miss my Audible subscription. I read so many books that way, but we had to cut it a while back to save on expenses, and I just haven’t been able to square away the consistent funds to get it back.

Someday…SOMEDAY…

What I’ve Been Watching

We’ve made it to season 4 of Brooklyn 99, and I’m consistently impressed with how much heart the show has. They haven’t been afraid to explore some of the darker aspects of police and their relationship to the public. It’s been at times in little flirting asides, but recently they had a subplot about Terry Crews’ character having a run in with a racist cop, and it was a serious but very well done episode.

The biggest way B99 is able to address these issues is by making the 99 a fictionally ideal district — very diverse, very progressive, and stacked with good cops just trying to do their jobs. It could be easy to take the cynical view and say that because of that, they only have to pay lip service to these issues, for example, the racist cop could be chalked up as just one bad cop rather than a systemic problem, but I think it works more as aspirational and demonstrates how things could be if we put in the work to make them so.

I hope to see even further exploration of these these types of topics.

Beyond that, we really only watched one movie this week: Happy Death Day 2U.

I was nervous about this one because I love the first one, and my appreciation of it has only grown with time. It’s “slasher Groundhog Day,” and it’s as fun as that concept sounds and executed incredibly well. It’s simultaneously a heartfelt character piece, a send up of the slasher genre, a clever sci-fi high-concept, and an almost throwback 80s romance–but without it icky gender stuff of that era. It manages to check, like, all of my boxes.

A sequel could easily fall into either rehashing the first movie, undoing or worsening character development, or over explaining and over complicating the mythology, sucking all the joy and fun out of the original. Thankfully, it didn’t. It doesn’t quite work as well as the first film, which was such a perfect and simple concept that it can’t really be repeated. That said, instead of regressing Tree’s character growth so they can rehash the first movie or doing the same thing but with a new character, they go with something far more fun and interesting.

MILD SPOILERS MILD SPOILERS MILD SPOILERS

SKIP ON TO THE NEXT SECTION IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANYMORE

Rather than simply rehashing the Groundhog Day loop of the first movie, Tree learns that her boyfriend’s roommate, Ryan, is the reason the time loop happened at all — a school science project gone haywire. Ryan meanwhile, causes even more chaos when he fires up the machine to try to fix what he broke before. In the calamity that ensues, Tree gets knocked out of her dimension and into a parallel one where things are similar…but also different, including different relationships with characters from the first film, and a very enticing extra wrinkle that doesn’t negate her character’s growth from the first film, but adds new dimensions to it and examines it from a different angle.

Mostly abandoning the slasher spoof concept in favor of a more Weird Science, Back to the Future, Bill and Ted fun 80s sci-fi take works absolutely perfectly and keeps this from feeling like stale wheel spinning. There were characters and ideas that could’ve been explored a little further, but overall a super solid and very fun movie, and a great little Valentine’s Day flick. Absolutely give it a watch.

What I’ve Been Doing

As I mentioned above, I’ve been doing Work Adjacent Things that have been keeping me busy. Beyond that and watching Brooklyn 99, the thing that I’ve been doing the most is playing Pokemon: Alpha Sapphire. My wife got me a Nintendo 2DS for Valentine’s Day, and I love it so much. I haven’t played a handheld system since the Gameboy Color, and I haven’t played a Pokemon game since Pokemon: Silver, so it’s been wonderful and very nostalgic revisiting the franchise.

Since she got me the 2DS and Alpha Sapphire, I got her Pokemon: Omega Ruby so that we can play them together. She’s never played anything Pokemon before, and it’s been so fun sharing this experience with her. I’ve been giving her tips that I can recall from the old games, and she’s been sharing tips she’s figured out so far since she is at this point quite a bit ahead of me.

As I mentioned above, we had our first official session of the new D&D campaign. I’ll have a campaign diary up on Wednesday to recap how things went down. Since my wife and brother wanted to keep playing the same characters, I decided to keep the old story going and just time shift ahead slightly to give everyone a fresh place to start. I’m proud of what I’ve got so far, and I can’t wait to play with the new group again in 2 weeks.

In health related news, I’ve lost around 9 lbs so far this year, and I’m feeling much better now that I’m pulling out of the tailspin of Garbage Holiday Eating. Going vegetarian has been actually pretty easy so far with only a couple of exceptions so far.

Limiting my calories through sugar intake reduction, increasing veggie intake, and watching my portions has so far yielded better results than eating strictly low carb while also being much more enjoyable. I’ve been able to have most of my favorite foods because it’s pretty easy to swap out meat in favor of beans or squash. Plus, I’m feeling fuller and snacking less.

I’ve tried to work in exercise as much as I can, but it’s been tough with the weather bouncing back and forth between rainy spring and icy winter. As we slide into March I’m hoping I can start leveraging that more.

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And that’s the wrap up for this week. How has your week been? Done anything your proud of and want to share? Watched or read anything you want to chat about? Comment below! Or, if you’d prefer, you can drop me an email or hit me up on Twitter. I’d love to hear from y’all.

I’m still on the lookout for beta readers/critique partners, so if you’re interested, especially if you read horror, reach out.

‘Til next time!