Happy New Year!

January, the Monday of Months is upon us.  And the only way out is through.  So stock up on your favorite caffeinated beverage, and jump into the breach with me.

I often use December and January to mentally calibrate a quasi-annual season for myself.  Something without a fail state like a specific goal to make some amount of widgets by a specific date.  And this year, I'm doing something a little different.

I'm refining last season's theme of intentionality and continuing it with a new flavor.  I'm on a plateau as an author.  I'm doing a decent job on the creativity side of things, but less so with the business/marketing/promotion portion.  So I'm again going to be intentional and see what I can do to hop off the plateau.

I signed up for an author business webinar from Joanna Penn later in January.  I'll possibly be giving my novel covers a refresh.  I'll keep an eye on Eleven Labs voice reader and explore releasing audiobooks if the quality gets where I want it.  I'll also continue to explore in-person events.

And I started on the "face-to-face meeting readers" part already.  Check out these pics of me at BookFest Omaha back on December 13, 2025.

I met and also reconnected with a bunch of interesting authors and other cool book-adjacent folks.  And I enjoyed the world's best burrito from Cilantro's food truck.

BookFest was the best in-person 2025 event I attended by a mile. 

But that's totally last year now.  So, I'll look to make it to at least 2 or 3 in-person events in 2026.  And I hope BookFest Omaha 2026 will be among them. 

PLUS: I have a middle-sized stack of creative output goals for this season as well.  Yes, this is technically applying a fail state to have output widgets completed by year's end, but only for a portion of my efforts.  What can I say?  I contain multitudes.

Either way, read all about it in the WIP section.

But first, I'd like you to meet a creepy antagonist who just wants to talk.

Glime just wants you to hear them out.  Listen to their syrupy words as they switch between female alto and male baritone voices.  They won't burn you.

Really.

Glime is an asexual Psyspecter in league with Corsis specializing in ultrakinesis, telepathy, and pyrokinesis.  Azure Flames of Tumult comprise their otherwise immaterial body.  Identical to the flames Ed Burnhelt vents from his eyes.  Glime has no compunction about prying into people's minds and exposing their fears.

People like Ed.  If only he'd stop running from Glime.  They could have such a nice talk.

Find out what Glime has to say in The Breakers.

I'm up to page 209 on Unseen Scars' second draft.  That's 115 pages for the month, contrasted with 94 pages for last month.  I'll take it!

And as promised above, here are the creative productivity goals for this season, complete with extra-corporatey bullet points:

• I'll aim to release the Book 4.5: Jagged Pieces bonus novel in the late summer or fall. 
• Finish up the second and third drafts of Book 5.5: Unseen Scars and Book 5.6: Hidden Fronts bonus novels. 
• And complete the outline and start the first draft of Book 6: Back to the Dark.

All realistic based on my past output.  We shall see if I can check all of them off zee multitudinous list.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Xax: "It’ll be unfiltered, and you’ll feel a little hinky and rung out. Like you hiked up a mountain huffing on funky fumes."

Dispatch

I made use of the 2-terabyte SSD upgrade I gave my PlayStation 5 for Christmas by loading it with yet another Christmas present.  An interactive cartoon dramedy taking place in a corporation that contracts superheroes with a steady paycheck.

And rife with so many HR violations.

Robert Robertson is a third-generation superhero named Mecha Man.  Basically, a mix of Iron Man and an anime mech suit.  But the suit gets wrecked beyond repair in a fight with the super villains of the Red Ring in the opening minutes.  And Robert no longer has the resources to fix it.

He soon gets hired by the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN) in exchange for them helping to restore his suit.  He will serve as the dispatcher for a group of supposedly reformed villains that ultimately refer to themselves as the Z-Team.  The game portion involves a bunch of puzzle games involving prioritization of dispatching the heroes and hacking challenges.  Fun little elements to keep you engaged.

The writing and voice acting are fantastic.  Aaron Paul stands out as Robert, but the rest of the Critical Role crew also do a great job with the other characters.

The romance options are both compelling, but I'm apparently in the minority based on the stats it shows at the end of the game.  Team Blonde Blazer 4EVA for me.  Invisigal was too much of a hot mess in my opinion.

The animation is top-notch with incredibly emotive characters.

It gets demerits for not letting you skip cut scenes and for only having one save slot.

But it's still one of the best superhero stories I've consumed this year in any medium.

Even if you aren't a gamer, watch it on YouTube at least to check out parts of the story.

Great stuff.

Galactic by Curt Pries and Amilcar Pinna

This DSTLRY comic starts off as a blatant Star Wars analogue with a Han Solo-esque bounty-hunter character.  His furry alien buddy, who's a short dog humanoid instead of a big Wookie.  And a princess who's even more feisty than Leia.

But it has a lot of originality with a concert of nations-style space opera setting rather than a monolithic Republic or Empire.

And when galactic war breaks out, it starts very close to home for one character.

The writing is snappy, and the art is up my alley.  I predict I'll be reading this comic for a while.

It pushes many of my geek buttons.

Want to know the score fast? Select Quick Recap, and Corsis will detail all his jerky skullduggery in just a few minutes.

Want to know the nitty gritty? Select Detailed Recaps to jump in with both feet and learn all the big events and character moments of the Players of the Game saga.

That's all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim