Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.
Well, the new year is upon us now. I'm sort of beyond the age to make new year's resolutions. We all want to be healthier and to keep working on what we love. So, while not resolutions, the goals remain the same.
Paul and I talked about goals on our recent podcast, OAPS #332- Powers Squared 2026 Preview. Even though it says Powers Squared, we also talked about The Blade of Miracles and, of course, the podcast. You can still catch it on our twitch channel for the next week, listen to it here or wait and watch it on our our YouTube channel on Wednesday at 2:30 pm. Still trying to work out a time to have our new artist on the podcast, but the time difference makes that tricky.
On the subject of Powers Squared, this was newsletter week, which went out this morning. Of course, I'd like you to sign up for The Hound Dogs' Howl, which is free, of course. You can sign up here.
My review of Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. Prior to that, each of the reviewers on Trophy Unlocked wrote their highlights/disappointments from 2025. You can read Paul's here, Trevor's here and mine here. I also wrote a review for One Battle After Another, which I presume will show up sooner than later.
I made some progress on my own Blackmail, but not as much as I had hoped for. I'm up to just over 76,000 words as of now, which is about 2800 more than last week, but I would have hoped for more, but there were other things to work on. I did have an idea about rewriting the opening of the book, which is more of a moving the first two chapters around and getting to the action sooner.
I watched a seminar on agents and query letters to prepare myself for getting back into the hunt on those. It's depressing to be ghosted, but that's the way it is, I guess but you've got to play the game.
Well, it's back to work this week, but I still want to keep working on Blackmail and hopefully review more new pages for Powers Squared.
That about does it for me. Keep writing, and I'll see you back here next week.
