I did say I wanted to update 2x a month, didn’t I? Better get on that before the month is gone. Hah. (note: I started writing this a week ago. Yeah.)

Happy Lunar New Year! It’s year of the Snake, which is one of my favourite animals, so I’m very happy with all the snake imagery around right now. This year apparently is about things like growth, renewal, and adaptability, which definitely fits in my personal life as things I desperately need right now.

I’m still in recovery from taking on too much. My body has made it known, in no uncertain terms, that I am to Take It Easy. I might also be fighting off something; Mr. Katje has had some similar symptoms and there are illnesses going around at the moment. Plus add on that Mars Retrograde…nap time all the time?

(Also Mr. Katje ended up in Urgent Care again this week for continuing infection problems with his leg wounds, so now he’s on 2 heavy duty antibiotics–and I’m supposed to go up to Powell River on Monday so Mom can come down here for a surgery and I can watch Sirius, who still lives with her, for 10 days, which is adding to my stress…. There’s just A Lot going on.)

Despite all this–I have managed to keep up my writing streak (424 days in a row now!) and have started work on my secret project, which I’m going to reveal a little more about to you today….

Title: TBD. I have an idea but I’m not quite sure I like it yet.

Setting: The Aradian Universe, aka the huge universe in which both Elemental Chemistry AND Chosen of Zarqon take place. More specifically, on the planet Grezhymel, located in the Sunna System in Sector 4.

Timing: Contemporaneous with book 2 of Elemental Chemistry, more or less.

Genre: okay, this is the part I’ve really been sitting on, because so far as I can tell I might be doing a completely new niche subgenre? Still not ready to reveal what it is but I will say it’s a subgenre of sci-fi romance.

Progress: just under 14K words in and have yet to write the meet cute, so it’s probably going to be another chonker.

This week I have been struggling to write quite a bit, both because I’m exhausted and because something in this story is a completely new thing for me to write about, so there is some resistance there–fear I’m not going to get it right, that I can’t do it. The same resistance I had when I first started writing explicit sex scenes, so I know I just need to suck it up and keep going, but. Yeah. Hard.

2025 Goal-Watch

Couch to Bellica: I’ve made it to the gym once so far this year. It’s been a rough month, healthwise. But I have continued to do my daily protein shakes and taking my supplements, so…. Just going to have to step up my gym-going in coming weeks.

Writing: yearly word count (fiction only) is currently 21,385. Total word count, which includes everything I write for these updates, my long-form blogging, newsletters, social media, etc, is 27,694 (not counting this update, obvs).

I still haven’t decided if I’m reporting fiction only numbers for Get Your Words Out this year or if I’ll do all of them. Last year I only reported fiction numbers and I think I might stick to that. It’s my focus. If I let myself report all the numbers, then I’ll start using working on things that aren’t my fiction as an excuse to get my word count up.

Publishing: Stolen Fire is going to be pushed. I can’t get it out by March. I mean, this was probably obvious when I announced I’d get it out by March but I hadn’t realized it yet. Hoping for an April release now. We’ll see how much my physical health allows me to do. The publishing half of putting out a book is much more energy-draining for me than the writing half of it.

Reading/media: I finally watched Warm Bodies, which had been on my “To be watched” list since it came out, basically. I’d just never gotten around to it. It was good. Had a lot of quietly funny moments and one or two spots where I laughed near-hysterically. 

I finished A Court of Thorns & Roses—it wasn’t until about 60% through that I was actually invested/interested in the story, and once I hit that point it became hard to put down. Still, once I reached the end, I felt very little drive to read the rest of the series save that my friends love it and I still want to know why.

So when my hold on book 2 became available this week I downloaded it and started reading, and in 3 days I’m 75% through. A Court of Mist and Fury is way better than the first book, and much more interesting right off the bat.

However, I think my reaction is perhaps coloured by how many spoilers I had seen before starting book 1. Knowing certain things about the series made it very hard for me to be invested in book 1’s story, which was heavy on the romance plot and light on the fantasy plot. Romance is plot, of course, and usually I love a romance-heavy plot…except when I already know certain things about it later in the series. Then it becomes less interesting.

Anyway, I’m trying to explain my feelings without spoiling it, because on the completely off chance you haven’t been completely spoiled for most of the events in this book series like I have (and was unable to avoid b/c of how saturated bookish spaces are with it), I don’t want you to have the same sort of reaction I did if you decide to pick it up yourself.

With book 2 I am starting to see why people hype it up so much, even though I’m unlikely to have that same reaction myself–because I read The Black Jewels Trilogy waaaay back in the day and can see the heavy inspiration SJM took from that series in this one. Even if she hadn’t said as much herself, it would be obvious to me.

So a bit harder for me to go all in on the “omg this series is amazing!” when I already had those feelings for BJT a quarter century ago.

Other reading I’m doing right now is the book Beauties: Hockey’s Greatest Untold Stories by James Duthie. The foreword from Luongo had me laughing really hard.

(I also have a bunch of other hockey books on my Libby app, and a paperback copy of Never Boring that I intend to read soon–actually was my Xmas gift to Mr. Katje, though it’s kind of really for both of us/the family library.)

Crochet/Knitting: I’ve been crocheting more often! Haven’t started Project Destash yet but I will…once I have the brain to do it.

Email: let’s not. It’s still bad. XD

Tome

A new social media site just launched that’s all about books and bookishness; it’s called Tome. It was originally going to be fantasy-focused but has definitely spread beyond that already.

The way it’s structured is sort of like tumblr, except it’s entirely focused on books. And honestly it might come to replace Goodreads for me as a spot to review books I read. Not that I review much these days, but.

There is an app but so far it’s IOS and US only–international or Android users need to use the desktop version. I believe they’re working on doing an android/international app.

I’m on it and so far I really like it! And have spent far too much time customizing my profile.

If you’re on there, give me a follow! https://tomebooks.com/user/katje

And this update ended up super long again! What a non-surprise!

Hope you’re doing well, and I’ll see you in February!

<3

Katje