Also, hello to people who pop in to check out this blog! How’s it going? I know it’s been awfully quiet over here since the start of NaNoWriMo, but December happened in a blink.

Wait, January is already over?

Two blinks.

…It’s almost March?

Three blinks.

Anyway. How has everyone been? I know it’s been quite a while since the New Year Holidays, but did you enjoy yours? Are you staying warm? Healthy?

Let’s just both grab a hot beverage of our choice and then we can talk about how my past couple of months have been, as well as what I hope to achieve with this blog in the upcoming months.

First, let’s talk about National Novel Writing Month! The plan to have two projects to work on was a success, and I actually ended up working on one the entire time. I’m about two-thirds of the way through an original novel idea, and I hope to finish the first draft so I can get eyeballs on it and see if it’s worth editing and sharing with humans that are Not Me. I would also like to spend more time working on the second project, as that ended up not happening at all. I’m tempted to release sections of the second project, either on this blog or perhaps a sideblog dedicated to that project alone, in order to see if people are interested in the tales I have to share. More on that later.

The world continues to be strange. Despite having zero plans for my winter holidays, I somehow ended up rushing to get things done. Making sure family and friends got greeting cards in the mail, baking goodies to share at work, arranging Zoom hangouts with people to catch up… The next thing I knew, it was January 1st, 2022.

Wild.

Once the New Year hit, yet more projects jumped into the limelight, the most exciting of which being our third volume of Kyoto Cryptids. You can read the blog post about it here, or go directly to purchase it here. This was an especially exciting volume to work on since we got a few beautiful submissions. Art, stories, photography–if you like whimsical horror and imagery of the beautiful, ancient capital of Japan, you’ll like this magazine.

Let me get off my sales pitch soapbox, here… I was pretty excited to share that.

What else?

How has the weather been in your area? Some areas have seen a lot of snow, while others have been bone dry. Every time I end up in downtown Kyoto, it feels like it’s trying very gamely to snow hard enough to stick, but peters out after a few snowflakes. I almost want to shout a, “Gambatte!” up at the sky, see if that helps.

That’s about it for what’s been happening in my neck of the woods–projects, work, sleep, wash, rinse, repeat. It’s been too cold to venture out, or the day gets away from me before I stop to think about going for a walk. But with the plum blossoms blooming and sakura blossoms not too far away, perhaps that will change.

Speaking of change (see what I did there?), let’s talk about upcoming plans for this blog.

It’s been tough coming up with things to share on here, especially with current events being what they are. But I would like to delve back into culture, writing, and perhaps studying the Japanese language as topics for this blog. I would love to share more reviews of books in Japanese I’ve read, as well, in the hopes that this will help language learners find something they enjoy. I know that I struggle with finding material that’s 1) interesting and 2) at my current level, and I can’t be the only one.

What about you? What are you interested in seeing on this blog in 2022? Are you working on your own projects? How are they going? Do feel free to share, and I’ll talk to you soon! …As in, it won’t take me four months, this time.

Take care!