resolutions

or what to expect from this newsletter in the coming year

zelda, the queen

Resolutions are dumb and you shouldn’t do them unless you’re a real dummy.

Resolutions

1. Stop being an idiot.

Plans for this New Year

I started this newsletter when I did because I wanted to create a sort of on-ramp to my plans for 2022. Today, right here, I will outline what to expect from this newsletter for the next year.

If this sounds boring, feel free to go read something else.

Essays

I can’t guarantee when I’ll get to all of this and some of these essays may not happen until the end of the year or even the end of next year. There’s really no way to know. Like I said in a footnote in a previous essay, the first essay I wrote for this newsletter was written in, I think, May of 2021 and I still have not published it (though probably it’s coming in a few weeks).

Also, for anyone wondering: I will always use footnotes in these essays almost exclusively to humor myself. You do not need to ever click on the footnotes. You can pretend they don’t even exist.

However, you’re also missing some real good stuff down there. This is related to an ongoing project, where I intend to hide an essay in the footnotes of an essay and so I can deliver you two essays at once and you may not even bother to read the second essay hidden in the footnotes.

Yes, this is my version of having fun.

Anyrate.

I have these things planned for you:

An enormously decadent dissection of the three versions of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I have subtitled spit in my mouth but don't lie to my face.

A soulsplintering discussion of Dexter Palmer¹.

A meditation on Mario’s jump, which is, of course, a way for me to talk about fatherhood² and time.

A series of essays or maybe just one gargantuan essay about vampires, wherein I’ll be discussing my childhood, Francis Ford Coppola, Castlevania, Fury of Dracula, Anne Rice, Vampire Hunter D, a cathedral in Ireland, and a bonedeep sensation that I hope to explain.

Some more thoughts on Kanye West.

Essays on Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, and maybe X, depending on how many of these I get around to playing this year. Probably also Dragon Quest IV, V, VI, and XI.

Essays on some boardgames, like Rising Sun and Carcassonne and Obsession and Raiders of the North Sea. Probably a few others, too (maybe lots of others).

Appreciations of Yasunari Kawabata, Sally Rooney, Louise Erdrich, and maybe Steve Erickson, if I get around to rereading him.

A guide to hating Brandon Sanderson, Scott Lynch, Haruki Murakami, R Scott Bakker, and probably Robert Jordan, because I know you love to read my spite.

An essay about why covers are better than originals.

An essay about how much I hate Open World design in videogames.

Thoughts on the future of the internet.

Then, of course, all the random kind of ideas that come to me in the course of a week or month.

Various essays by other writers will also be coming on a variety of topics.

Finally, I’ll be writing about ballet in a way that, I hope, makes you understand yourself better.

Clubs

Not sure if people would be interested in this, but I intend to try out a reading series. I’ll be rereading something rather large and hope some amount of you follow along. I have an introductory post going out next month.

Along with that, I’ll be rewatching all of Wong Kar Wai’s movies again, for the dozenth time. Hopefully you’ll follow along with that as well. Also, Godzilla and Zatoichi and maybe the Once Upon a Time in China series, or just every Jackie Chan movie.

Basically, I’m giving myself excuses to do what I want to do.

Fiction

This is the real fun stuff for me. In no small part, this is why I returned from my real life to fill your screen with words twice a week.

Starting in a few months, I’ll begin releasing novellas into the world. This will be a selfpublishing venture. I could say a lot about why I’m choosing this avenue (and I may in a future essay about small press publishing), but the short answer is twofold:

• Almost no one publishes novellas.

• I have essentially never been paid for my writing, including the novels that publishers have published.

The second point there is really one of the biggest reasons. I’ve worked with many different publishers over the last ten years as an author and editor, and I don’t intend to do so again. Unless someone gives me a good reason to.

However, I am still pursuing more professional publications that have a history of marketing novels and paying their authors. So my full length novels will hopefully be coming out that way.

But back to the first point: I write a lot of novellas. It might be my favorite length to write at, but it happens to be the length that no one wants to publish. There are many venues for short stories and many places to put out full length novels, but almost nowhere to put out anything in between. And since I have a lot of inbetweeners, and I’ve had some of them sitting around here on my laptops for many years, I thought now would be a good time to start putting these out into the world.

I’ll be talking about this at length in the future, especially as the dates for release approach, but I mostly wanted to make people aware that this is coming at you!

I’ll be publishing through Amazon, which is not ideal but it’s also kind of the only game in town. I’d love for that to not be the case, but it just simply is right now. I intend to release them digitally and as physical books, and I hope to do audiobooks as well.

My goal is to release five books every year. About one every ten weeks. However, we’re going to have a new child in April, so releasing five books is probably overly optimistic. Still, hopefully three.

There will be original artwork for the covers, as well as a few illustrations within the books. I was hoping to have some artwork to share with you today, but alas!

This is my big project for the year and beyond. I’ll be releasing more of my fiction into the world and hopefully you’ll find enough interest to give these new books a chance! I’ll be talking and sharing more about this as the year goes on.

Along with my own books, though, I’m hoping to release other people’s books as well. My goal is, really, to form sort of a writer’s coop. This is also why I’ve been putting outlines up here on the newsletter. I’m hoping to inspire someone to write something!

Along with that, I’ve been coming up with a bigger idea that is designed more towards collective storytelling. More to come on this as well!

Oh, and maybe expect at least one nonfiction book from me this year.

A Few Other Things

As some of you know, I used to write frequently for a literary site called Entropy. Well, Entropy is shutting down. I have various thoughts about this that I’ll maybe share, but the important thing is that I’m going to be reposting some of my work from there before it disappears from the internet.

Mostly, my 30 Years of Ghibli column that I did in 2014. So expect those to come out gradually throughout the year.

I’ll also be revisiting some of these essays and movies this year with new eyes and words.

But, yes, expect more of what came before from this newsletter, but also expect some new things. Writing all these essays has been a lot of fun to me, so hopefully you’ve all found them interesting as well. Through this, I’ve also begun to develop a new idea about storytelling. Some early examples of this are my Final Fantasy VI and Kanye West essays.

I’ll explain more about what that means soon, probably. But if you like what I’m doing in those two essays, expect more of that sort of thing.

Also, this is a long-term thought, but I’m considering serializing a novel here. I’d give plenty of advanced warning about this, and it definitely won’t be this year. Having a newborn will take quite a bit of my time over the next year. But if this is the kind of thing people would be interested in, I’ll give it more thought. This would be a serialized story with no end in sight. As in, my goal would be to begin it and then just write it for years. Sort of like a TV show.

But, yes, look for all this and more!

Also, if you have enjoyed what I’ve been doing here, please share it around! I’ve received many kind emails and messages from people over the last few months and readership has grown somewhat steadily, but I’d very much appreciate all of you sharing these essays around the internet.

1. An excerpt:

I’m going to try to speak without artifice or winks or footnotes or little tricks.

I’m going to try to speak about love and what it means to me.

I’m going to speak about Dexter Palmer.

I’m going to speak to me about myself.

2. An excerpt:

I love us boundlessly and so I want to be there every time he smiles as he pushes that perfect button that makes Mario jump.