Happy belated April Fool’s Day, my lovely people!
To say I plan these newsletters in advance would be a misnomer, but I do give a little consideration to what I’d like to write about. I’d given some thought as to whether I wanted to look at April Fool’s Day in retrospect, since this is posted/sent out/however you discover it on 2 April. But that’s Australian time, and when it goes out, I imagine it arrives with most of you on the first. So there was the temptation to pack this edition full of shit in the name of April Fool’s humour.
This won’t be that newsletter.
Not from any newfound sense of maturity or responsibility, mind you, but this edition will be somewhat of a sombre affair. By the time you read this, it will be right on a week since we discovered our beloved cat, Ghost the Cat, passed away. Or more accurately, since my son was the first up that morning and made the discovery. Since I write these in advance, it’s a few days out, and the loss is still fresh. The family’s struggling with the loss, and Ghost will be sorely missed.
And no, this isn’t a dark April Fool’s joke. I really wish it was.
My edits for Till Death Do Us Party have ground to a halt (though I’m sure they’ll resume soon), with my creativity at the tail end of the month extending as far as starting April’s book reviews. Outside of providing the standard updates, I’m at a loss as to what to include in this newsletter, so it’ll be a little shorter than usual.
So before we dive in, I’ll leave you with this photo of Ghost the Cat, taken a number of years ago, when he wasn’t the grumpy cat he grew into. It’s the funniest thing you’ll see in this.
Finally, I feel it pertinent to add a last-minute addendum, and that’s in regard to Donald Trump becoming the first former President of the United States to be indicted. You can certainly make the argument that it’s funnier than the photo I shared, but with Trump’s propensity for inspiring rage—as demonstrated by the Capitol riot—my thoughts are with you. Stay safe.
Writings
As predicted last month, I finished Till Death Do Us Party’s latest draft. But not content to let it rest, I finished it up with starting Draft 4.2, another iteration. The major driver behind this isn’t because I thought of all-new edits as much as it is ProWritingAid’s tendency of getting confused when I make edits upon edits upon edits, and merging all my edits together in the odd paragraph. So this latest round is about finding and fixing those, and picking up on any little typos I made along the way.
Not that I’m picking up on every typo. When I find an editor, they’re going to have to do some work, right?
I managed to streamline Draft 4.1, removing 2,655 words from it in total. With ten chapters done in Draft 4.2, I’ve reduced it by another 19 words so far. So, it’s a light edit, and one I should get through by the end of April. The word cloud above is another display of the love these things bring me, with a breakdown of chapters 1 and 2.
All in all, with my focus on editing, it was a fairly light month of writing, with 1x,xxx words written. But I dedicated four hours and xxx minutes to editing, so it evens out, even if I didn’t match March’s totals.
Saturday snippets
With yesterday being the first day of the month, it was also the first Saturday of the month, meaning March’s Saturday Snippets are now up. I have fourteen of them for your viewing pleasure, so why not check them out for a peek into Till Death Do Us Party’s progress? They’re all taken from Draft 4.1 in the name of anal retentive consistency. Next month, they’ll be from Draft 4.2, which is essentially Draft 4.1, but they’ll be new. Probably
And as always, I’ll point you to my Twitter, where I push these out at every opportunity I get.
Writing quotes
Over on Twitter—again (it’s a wonder I get any writing or editing done)—I was the hashtag leader for the March Writing Challenge, where authors are challenged to either write 500 words in a day, or spend an hour editing. If you’re a writer and you’d like to get involved in these, March may be over, but you can join in for April with the #AprWritingChallenge hashtag, and logging your output here. It’s a fun way to interact with other writers, while remaining accountable to yourself and build good writing habits (or forgo sleep).
If you’re wondering what this has to do with writing quotes, I put one in an image for each day of the month, where people—usually, but not always, authors—talk about writing. I’m quite partial to these, so I’ve posted them all on my website.
Book reviews
I published eight book reviews over the month, so be sure to check them out if you’re looking for your next read.
If you recall last month, I mentioned my review for a book called Endgame. It loses its impact in this newsletter being a month apart, but I wrote back-to-back reviews for books blending science fiction and religion/spirituality. The second of these is Einstein in the Attic, by Dana Dargos and Said Al Bizri. It’s an entertaining tale involving time travel, spirituality, and some of the greatest thinkers of all time, including Einstein.
I also wrote four reviews for an eclectic mix of books by Davi Mai, stretching from the introspective and contemplative to the outrageously transgressive, as well as those in between. So may I present my reviews for Defying Gravity, Mother’s Little Angels, Ravenous and Proxima Bound.
If you’ve been following my website or this newsletter, you may know I’m a fan of S.M. McCoy, and I reviewed her Kingdom of Acatalec in the last quarter of 2022. While not book two of the series, I did read and review its prequel novella, My Abett.
Finally, I reviewed two books by Rashidul Huda: For Our Soul and AI. Both books touch on facets of spirituality. For Our Soul tells the story of characters after their deaths, and AI tells the story of what happened following an artificial intelligence taking over the world.
Did I get through a newsletter without mentioning Batman?
I did, but not by design. We have extenuating circumstances to thank for that.
The time has come for me to say goodbye. I’ll see you next month with a newsletter that should have a little more fun than this one.
TTFN,
Was