Weekly Update 05/31/24

Weekly writing progress: 

I've edited 3 more chapters at the time of writing this. I expect it will be 4 by the time it posts, which is a pretty steady pace. I'll probably be able to pick the pace up a bit more once book 2 is out and I have all my ducks in a row for that.

Speaking of...

Book 2 preorder is up! You can find it here. The release date is set to July 5th, so you can have something new to read over Independence Day weekend. :)

The promo for pride month through SPFBO starts tomorrow, June 1st! There are a LOT of cool LGBT books in there, so you can check it out here. Not all of the books will be going on sale (mine will for a couple days, but I'll be sending a newsletter out and posting when it happens), but it's still great to increase visibility to LGBT books during pride month, so feel free to share this link far and wide!

Do make sure you sign up for my email list at mjlindemann.com if you haven't in order to get your free copies of my short stories!

What I've been up to:

TV

We've been watching Dead Boy Detectives and it's been a lot of fun. I feel like the writing/editing could use a little work because the characters will sometimes say and do things that sound as if the audience should have context for it, but instead it just comes out of nowhere. I also think they were so frantic to establish the MCs relationships that a few things feel rushed. With all that said, literally every other aspect of this show is amazing. The set design is out of this world, the acting and onscreen chemistry of the cast is phenomenal, and the overall plot is a ton of fun. I honestly wish there was a full 22 episode season, because a "case of the week" style story with a lot more content would go down well and allow the writers to spread out some of the character development.

I'm still watching Delicious in Dungeon and it continues to be charming and funny. Every episode is an interesting game of "what monster is going to end up in the cooking pot", and I'm here for it.

Books

The Lord of Chaos - I can tell I'm getting to the climax of the novel soon. A lot of things are happening and I'm super excited to see what the characters are going to do. Egwene, especially, is really getting a lot of character progression. It's nice to see her have more agency since she's mostly been relegated to "voracious learner" and little else. The romance in the novels comes off as forced and weird to me, but I do think that's just a side effect of how Robert Jordan's characters are written to all be profoundly sexist. So when they do "fall" for each other it's almost like it comes out of nowhere even when it's been hinted at, because all the women seem to hate all the men and vice versa. 

The books would benefit greatly from not having so many different POV characters, too, as it delays the satisfaction of continuing MC storylines which increases the fatigue I experience when reading. There's nothing worse than something big happening with Rand and then turning the page to read a POV section from a character who has only been mentioned once or twice in the entire series. All that said, I'm very excited to get back to reading the book today. I've been told the ending is a doozy.

Games

I've been playing a decent amount of Diablo IV, and recently picked up Granblue Fantasy: ReLink to play with a friend. Think Monster Hunter but less crunchy and with a storyline. I'm enjoying it so far, but I JUST started it, so I'll withhold my opinions for now. 

Want to chat? Comment here or email me at mjlindemann@mjlindemann.com. I try to respond to everyone :)

Weekly Update 05/24/24

Weekly writing progress: 

Top of the order! I've joined a promo for pride month through SPFBO, and there are a LOT of cool LGBT books in there. Check it out here. At least take a look at the covers in there. The promo starts June 1st!

Editing on book 3 has been proceeding at a reasonable pace. I'd like to go a  bit faster, but I fear I'm experiencing a touch of burnout. I've made it through four chapters this week, and I'll probably get another one done this weekend. I'm not worried, I've had short periods throughout this whole process where I've had this feeling and I've been able to work through it without much issue. I'll still be opening up the document every day and working on it, I just may not be able to go as fast as I'd like. 

I've approved the final cover for the paperback copy of book 2 as of this morning and I think it looks great! I'm excited to get it into my hands.

The ARC for book 2 is out. I've sent out the emails and those that signed up are able to read. If you want an ARC for my second book feel free to email me at mjlindemann@mjlindemann.com - It's absolutely no pressure, low stakes. I don't believe in hounding ARC readers. Most I do is gentle reminders around the time of release.

Do make sure you sign up for my email list at mjlindemann.com if you haven't in order to get your free copies of my short stories!

What I've been up to:

TV

We finished Renegade Nell. What a ride! Feminism, queer representation, action, comedy, and lovable characters. I loved it. Eularia and Valerian are such amazing splashes of color on an already colorful cast of characters. I love the whole jacobites practicing dark arts thing and all the hints at Nell's sister having a connection to the fae and the costuming is extraordinarily fun and... I could go on. It's an easy watch with the family. Highly recommended from me.

I started Delicious in Dungeon and it's yet another charming fantasy. Essentially, a D&D party lost one of their members down the throat of a dragon, teleported out to escape, and now need to descend the dungeon levels to get back and save her. Unfortunately, they're too poor to afford food, and they must resort to eating the monsters in the dungeon. I commend the creator for making the food look so delicious. Makes me want a giant scorpion hotpot. Anyway, I switched to this from Vinland Saga, because Vinland's main cast are impossible to root for. I may go back to it, I'm not sure, but just like real life during that time period, there are basically no good guys, and I like having good guys to root for. 

Books

The Lord of Chaos - I think I'm just into this series now. I've adjusted to Robert Jordan's writing style and comfortably skim the EXTREMELY LONG descriptions of things, and it makes the whole story go down easier. All of the different characters are intersecting and progressing in their respective arcs and the whole thing is pretty satisfying. I'm thoroughly enjoying my time with the books now, to the degree that I almost don't want to stop after this one. (I'm going to, though. I have at least three other books I want to read between this entry and the next one.)

All that said, I know I've already said it, and I'll probably complain about it again, but I'm really sick of Rand's... honestly... the entire cast's rampant sexism. All the women think men are idiots, all the men think women are made of explosive paper mache and should be protected, sheltered, and locked away from danger at all costs. It's so tiring. I do not want to read about how Rand remembers the face of every woman who ever died for him while in the same paragraph reading how relieved he was that someone he thought was a woman turned out to be a man. It's a critique of our culture, in general, but I absolutely hate the whole "men must sacrifice themselves for women, better for a man to die than a woman" thing. It's that sneaky sexism that seems noble until you think about it for even a split second. It really dates the whole story for me, because most contemporary fantasy I've read intentionally *does not* do this.

Games

As I said last week, I've been playing less video games and just reading more. Which has been fun. I never realize just how much time I put into games until I spend it on something else. I did start playing Diablo IV again, though. I wanted to see if they actually fixed the loot system. I'm not far enough into the season to have a real opinion just yet, but it has been kinda fun to dive back into hell.

I've played only a bit of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth. I think I'm going to focus on doing all the combat challenges and beating the game on hard mode, and then call it a day. The part of me that likes checklists really wants to get all the trophies, but the part of me that enjoys happiness is telling me no. Stop. You won't have fun playing a bunch of poorly constructed mini games. 

Want to chat? Comment here or email me at mjlindemann@mjlindemann.com. I try to respond to everyone :)

Weekly Update 05/17/24

Weekly writing progress: 

I got in! - I'm now an official contestant in the SPFBO X (or spiffbox if ya nasty). This is kind of the biggest fantasy indie book competition there is, so I'm super happy that I'm even participating. My book was assigned to Fantasy Faction to review, and to say I'm excited is a bit of an understatement. 

On the actual book editing front, I've made moderate progress. I finished drafting the chapter I wanted to, and I've spent a *lot* of time retooling one of my character's arcs in my head which will eventually include another 1-2 chapters from their POV. I will likely need to go through and edit from the beginning and make the changes I want as I go in order to do a good job on those chapters, so that will take time. I have to say, I do feel like landing this plane may take longer than I was hoping, but we shall see.

Not EXACTLY writing related, but I was informed this week that I'm a dunce for not having a linktree, which... yes. Yes, that's just true. SO anyway that's up and running -  linktr.ee/MJLindemann 

If you're on my ARC list, I plan on sending out ARC sign ups for the second book today if possible, so look forward to that!

Do make sure you sign up for my email list at mjlindemann.com if you haven't in order to get your free copies of my short stories!

No other news on the writing front!

What I've been up to:

TV

We finished The Bad Batch and it was soooo good. Action packed finale with some noble sacrifices and excellent character development. I loved the little epilogue they had. Loved the show from start to finish!

I finished the first season Hell's Paradise. Definitely a fun season finale with a really cool fight sequence at the end, and an interesting (if a bit cliche) twist that should pay off in the second season. 

We started Renegade Nell and we both are really liking it so far. The lead actress, Louisa Hartland, has a truckload of charisma, and I've been genuinely impressed with *most* of the fight scenes (of which there are many). 

Other than that, we've just been watching Abbott Elementary which continues to be cute and entertaining. They have such an amazing cast of characters on their hands it's hard not to love them.

Books

The Lord of Chaos has managed to keep my interest pretty well. I like that there is a lot more time spent on characters that actually do magic in this one so far. I feel like despite having some really cool battle sequences in the first 4 books, Robert Jordan held back a bit too much on the "fun" part of his world until book 5. It still has some pacing issues and the sheer number of named characters is... I mean I literally can't keep up with them, but overall I'm really liking my time with this book so far. 

Games

Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth - I finished it! Just over 100 hours of my life spent on this game. It was amazing. I really liked the ending even though I'm NOT  a huge fan of timeline hopping stories. I think they've managed to thread the needle on this one so far (mainly because there isn't much timeline hopping for the main cast). My issue with timeline hopping is that a pervasive feeling of "nothing matters" ends up happening to me, and I hate, HATE, having "replacement" characters from alternate worlds. It's a double whammy by cheapening sacrifices while also giving me a really gross feeling that now there is this weird impostor walking around with the main cast. With that said, I think they are gearing up to converge all the timelines into one in the third installment, and that's something I'm ok with. I'm really quite excited for the next game. Now to play through the game on hard mode! Which I will do over a long while and probably not be updating anyone on.

I'm not sure what the next game I'll play is yet. I may take a break and spend the extra time reading. We shall see!

Want to chat? Comment here or email me at mjlindemann@mjlindemann.com. I try to respond to everyone :)

Weekly Update 05/10/24

 Weekly writing progress: 

Two major things:

Everyone signed up (or signing up) to my email list should have a copy of The Princess sent to them today at 3pm CST. (Yay!)

I signed up for the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off (SPFBO) contest today! It's a 24hr sign up period, after which 300 novels are randomly selected to take part. For self pub fantasy, it's a pretty big deal to make it into the finals of this competition, but I'm just hoping I make it through the random lottery. 

The only other news I have on the writing front is that I'm doing edits on book 3. I have a bit of drafting I'm doing because I'm adding 2 chapters and doing a full rewrite of another. After that, I'll be going methodically through the book several times to make sure everything is consistent before I get into sentence level editing. My first round betas are chomping at the bit to get their hands on this, so I'm hopeful I can have it all done in a couple months here.

Do make sure you sign up for my email list at mjlindemann.com if you haven't in order to get your free copies of my short stories!

No other news on the writing front!

What I've been up to:

TV

We continue to watch Bad Batch on disney plus, and it continues to be amazing. We've got about four more episodes and I'm excited!

I'm still watching Hell's Paradise. Not much more to report on it that I haven't already said.

With the weather being so nice, I haven't watched much else in the last week. We've been taking the dogs on extra walkies instead. 🐕

Books

Welp, I finished The Fires of Heaven. Easily my favorite Wheel of Time book so far, and the climax was super cool with a lot of bombastic set pieces. The characters all landed in very interesting places in their development, and I'm looking forward to what's going to happen in the next book. Speaking of...

The Lord of Chaos is the next book (6) in the series, and I've already made a bit of headway in it. This book is an absolute doorstopper at 395k words, and the prologue alone is 30k. I'm 56k into the novel which would be a little over the halfway point for most novels. After this one, I'm going to be taking a little break from the series to cleanse my palate. There are some standalone books I want to read before I dive back into what is affectionately referred to as "The Slog" of the series which, depending on who you ask, starts at book 7 or 8 and goes until 10. Luckily, the word counts for those books are about 30% less, but I'm still not exactly looking forward to it. Regardless, I WILL do it, because I'll be damned if I'm going to quit now. 

Games

Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth - still good. It's so long. I had no idea it would be this long. Some day I'll play another game again. Someday I'll be released from this extremely fun prison punctuated by moments of horrible frustration due to poorly designed mini-games.

Want to chat? Comment here or email me at mjlindemann@mjlindemann.com. I try to respond to everyone :)

Weekly Update 05/03/24

 Weekly writing progress: 

My read through of the rough draft of book 3 is done. I already stated this last week, but I will just reiterate that the third book will be taking a bit longer. I have at least two chapters I want to add along with a whole host of other changes. I'm still hopeful I'll have it done and out by the end of the year. 

The cover for the short story, The Princess, is almost done! So make sure you sign up for the email list at mjlindemann.com if you haven't in order to make sure you can get a copy :)

No other news on the writing front!

What I've been up to:

TV

We've been watching Bad Batch on disney this last week and loving it. The Star Wars animated series have never failed to impress me. Crosshair's character progression from amoral loyalist to this sort of surly, begrudging father figure has been really cool to see. To say nothing of all the other characters, including Omega. Another home run for the Star Wars franchise in my opinion. I'm excited to watch the rest of the series (we've got about 6 episodes left)

Hell's Paradise continues to be a fun, gorey, island adventure of an anime. Lots of sword fights and weird plant magic that reminds me a lot of Jeff VanderMeer's writing. Not thematically, but the surreal/weird plant life from the show is very similar to how I imagine Jeff's Area X from the Southern Reach trilogy. 

Movies

We watched Poor Things this last weekend. It was sort of breathtaking. Yorgos Lanthimos had such a unique aesthetic for the movie that with every other scene my jaw was just on the floor with the visuals. I will say that the movie isn't the most accessible thing in the world. The soundtrack is bizarre, the amount of nudity and sex could be off putting, and the plot comes in fits and starts... but if you want a lovingly crafted, beautiful, expertly acted movie with a strong point of view. This could be right up your alley. I *need* to watch more of his films now.

Books

The Fires of Heaven - I'm a little over 80% through the book and something big just happened (IYKYK). I'll try to be vague enough to avoid major spoilers. I gotta say, this continues to be the absolute best book in the series. I'll have to eat my words about a critique I had regarding Rand knowing too much. Robert Jordan (RJ) definitely made it very explicit that his knowledge/intelligence is being heavily influenced by his past lives. I'm still annoyed by the sheer amount of sexism from every character, but I'm granting it some grace for the time period (in real life) that these were written in. I'm sure this was all quite progressive to someone like RJ at the time. The big thing that just happened worries me, though. This was easily my favorite character, so we'll see how the books carry on without them. On one hand I'm kind of excited to see, and on the other hand I'm annoyed this individual didn't have more "screen time" before their exit - though who's to say they'll be gone forever?

Games

Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth - Nothing too much to say about it, other than that I am very impressed they've managed to expand so much on the story and it still doesn't "feel" like they added too much filler. It feels like the FF7 from my childhood only gave me impressions of the characters whereas these games are giving me a full picture. The voice acting has been absolutely amazing with some genuine laugh out loud moments that would NOT have been possible with a less talented cast. 

Want to chat? Comment here or email me at mjlindemann@mjlindemann.com. I try to respond to everyone :)