Week 51 of 2023
Greetings all
I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas or a wonderful time at whatever holiday you celebrate. I had a great time, especially since we got grandbaby time. The kids go back today, but I had a great moment of the grandbaby falling asleep on my lap.
We’re winding down on 2023 and I have to say it was a far more eventful year than I ever anticipated. We took this right turn at Albuquerque and I’m so glad we did.
Along the way, I tallied about 387,000 words according to my formula. This was less than what I aimed for in January (500k), but I didn’t expect the opportunity.
To break that down, there was a full length novel (Farewell, My Ugly), three regular short stories (Hyarkeen in Thirteen Stories of Horror, Dust Devil Courtship for my reader magnet, The Ruriksaga, and I Smell a Rat for the upcoming 4HU Bureau 42 anthology), nearly 30k in Okkorim, 5 Postcards stories (2 accepted), 15 riddles, about 40k in blog posts, and nearly 800k edited. Really, given that from April 11 we closed on the new house, closed on the old house, built up the new place to have stores laid out, and had our grand opening, I have to see it was a year of many achievements.
Oh, yeah, we got a grandbaby too!
What’s up for 2024? Well, I’ll talk about that next week. I would specifically like people to chime in at rob@robhowell.org what they like about this mailing list. One of my goals for 2024 is to improve this list, both in the content and the mechanics. Let me know anything you like, don’t like, or want to see. I want to make this list serve you all better.
As for the rest of this week, I have to finish the Bureau 42 story and a chunk of Okkorim stuff, but there’s little to do there. Next week, I’ll be doing a couple more chunks of Okkorim and rolling into consistent work on The Feasting of Vengeance.
2023 wasn’t the great year I expected, it was the great year I needed. Here’s to 2024 being the same.
What I’m Listening To
We’re watching Colombo tonight. Peter Falk is so great.
Quote of the Week
Happy 101st to Stan Lee, a great inspiration to creators of all stripes. As a writer, though, he often sees to the heart of the matter, like here.
“To my way of thinking, whether it’s a superhero movie or a romance or a comedy or whatever, the most important thing is you’ve got to care about the characters. You’ve got to understand the characters and you’ve got to be interested. If the characters are interesting, you’re half-way home.”
– Stan Lee
New Mythology Works in Progress
I had an incredibly hard time choosing the winners of this year’s open call for Paladins of Valor. So many stories I wanted to publish, but here are the four I finally selected as the best.
- Chris Hepler with High Water Mark
- Nathan Balyeat with Welcome to Detroit
- David Birdsall with The Passing of the Mantle
- Chad Boyer with Apprentice in Trouble
Rob’s Works in Progress
- Sowing Spring’s Wrath (3,213)
- Rick Blaine (8,845)
- The Feasting of Vengeance (3,405)
Upcoming Events
- Planet Comicon, March 8-10, Kansas City, KS
planetcomicon.com/ - GaryCon, March 21-24, Lake Geneva, WI
garycon.com/ - FantaSci, April 19-21, Durham, NC
fantasci.rocks/
New Releases
This week we have Broken Trust, third book in the Rise of the Automated Empire series by Dennis M. Myers. Get it here: amazon.com/dp/B0CKVRTSQQ.
Your pre-release this week is book 8 in the Last Marines series by William S. Frisbee, Jr. It’s entitled Wolf Emperor and you can get it here amazon.com/dp/B0CR1TXG61.
Tracked Items
Today’s Weight: 358.8
Updated Word Count: 387,112
Firehall Sagas Archives: 758 entries
Have a great week, everyone.
Rob Howell
Creator of the Firehall Sagas Universe
- Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/-/e/B00X95LBB0
- Website: robhowell.org
- Blog: robhowell.org/blog
- The Firehall Sagas: firehallsagas.com/
- Facebook Author Page: facebook.com/robho
well.org/ - Twitter: twitter.com/Rhodri2112