April '24 Update

NEWSLETTER 2

Hello again, and welcome to the next edition of my newsletter! It’s the end of Ramadan, and it’s Eid today, so Mubarak to all those celebrating! May all our efforts this Ramadan have been accepted.

Let’s get to it.

WRITING:

So, writing, I’ll be honest with you, took the back seat over the last month. Between Ramadan and work, I was swamped and didn’t get a chance to write as much as I’d like. I did make a start on outlining time travel wip (Affinity) in more detail. I think this will be the next project I will focus on properly.

That, and revising artifacts wip (or, A Convergence of Souls), of course! Reading Convergence back, it’s not as terrible as I remember when I was bashing out the initial draft. I do like the characters in the book a lot. It’s my first time writing a Muslim character in a long form novel, and you’d think that would be easy, being Muslim myself, but no. It wasn’t.

THE CONSUMPTION

As for all the media I’ve consumed since February, it’s fallen off, sadly. I’d made such a good start to the year powering through a number of books and so on, but through March and into April, I was focused on other things.

That being said, I did get through some things. I finished Schwab’s Gathering of Shadows, and also read Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. Really eye opening stuff. I also started R. F. Kuang’s trilogy The Poppy War. I really enjoyed Babel and Yellowface, and I’m about 100 pages into this new book and hooked.

On the TV, my brother made me watch a Japanese horror movie, RE/Member. It’s a groundhog day type horror, and I gotta say, I’m a sucker for loners making friends. I watched the Kdrama Happiness, which was a new take on zombies and class issues in Korea. Really enjoyed that.

Continuing on the theme of zombies, my mum and I started watching The Ones Who Live. My Richonne heart is both overjoyed, and can’t take it. Here’s hoping they get the happy ending I’ve always dreamed. We also watched Netflix’s Avatar: the Last Airbender. I’m gonna be real with you and say I went in preparing to hate it. I was pleasantly surprised. The cartoon is top tier and irreplaceable, but I think there’s room for the adaptation, too.

Adaptations continued, Netflix also released the Three Body Problem, adapted from Cixin Liu’s trilogy of the same name. Anyone who has read the books knows how ambitious this endeavour was, especially in the hands of D&D after the fiasco that was GOT’s final seasons. I went in tentatively, but seeing all the threads they’re weaving for future seasons, and the story itself… it gave me the feeling of existential dread we all crave sometimes, albeit to a lesser degree than the books. Really hoping this gets renewed. For anyone struggling with the book or the series, I recommend Quinn’s Ideas on YouTube. He breaks everything down so well!

On the lighter side, I’ve also been making my mum watch the American version of The Office for the first time. Always a laugh.

For music… it was Ramadan, so no music for me. That was one of the things I gave up this Ramadan, and it really helped me with my spirituality. Now that Ramadan’s over, however… Taylor' Swift’s new album is out soon, so I’ll probably be adding that to heavy rotation.

And games wise, I’m still playing though Assassin’s Creed 2!

LIFE

So it was Eid today, and I spent the day with relatives, which is always nice. It’s my grandparents’ 50th anniversary soon, and we’re celebrating that over the weekend.

Levi (white tabby) and Koda (more tabby) say hi. They’re both very happy with the soups we got them for Eid (Koda usually steals food from Levi’s bowl, but today how the turntables as Levi raided Koda’s bowl thrice.)

I need to order Levi some his next prescription of heart meds, so I’ll be doing that imminently.

I also redesigned my website, so go check it out HERE.

Just need to get through this week of work, so I can do some more writing! Wish me luck.

Until next time!