The Wild Blog in the West

Happy Halloween, everyone! Maybe some day I'll work up the courage to watch an actual scary movie.  Until then, watching Republican presidential debates is enough. So what's new?  I'm steadily moving along with writing my second novel, the sequel to my Victorian novel Rage and Regret .  About 300 pages written, not as many as I'd hoped, but still steady progress.  One difficulty is that unlike the first novel, there are about 3-4 distinct plot lines I'm trying to steer to fruition, and not all of them are behaving properly. At some point soon, I will also need to refocus attention on peddling the first novel.  I had taken a break to focus on writing the second, because peddling a novel is such a job in and of itself, with all of the ups and downs that entails. I can't pretend that I will have time to update every week as I have in the past.  There's just too much on my plate.  However, I do hope to provide updates 2-3 times a month, on topi...

I really don't intend to be so sparse with my blogging every month.  Really.  I've been mainly trying to catch up on writing my second novel (now over 200 pages!) and caught up in work.  Oh, and going gaga over the latest Game of Thrones episode, but I digress. I wanted to give a taste of future posts.  As always, they will be a mixture of pop culture and personal likes and dislikes.  One big change: I am officially extending the Movie Musicals That Got It Right/Wrong to the classic movies.  Originally I was planning to wait until I had reviewed movies in the more recent past before moving on to the classics, but why would I sit through The Producers , Nine , and God knows how many iterations of High School Musical  before I could review  My Fair Lady , West Side Story , or The King and I (I said classics, not that they were all good classics).  So I'm going to switch back and forth, and I'm sure no one else cared one way or the other, but ...

Once again, with new job and lots of writing stuff going on, I haven't had time to do a lot of updating.  Next week I will be taking part in the San Francisco Lit Crawl , which I will blog about afterward, and I have various other posts in progress.  One thing I'm going to do not this month, but when it finally concludes (sniff!) is a revisiting of my The Legend of Korra post , to give my expanded thoughts not only on the series, but on the entire Avatar  universe as a whole (including Avatar: The Last Airbender ).  In the meantime, enjoy this trailer from The Legend of Korra , Season Four.

(If you don't know what I'm referencing, check out this video.  Actually, check it out anyway; it's a good song.) I don't normally go this long without posting my first update of the month.  Nothing is wrong.  The simple truth is that I have been swamped.  My business is growing, which means more time on client files and doing other legal work.  And with regard to my novel, I am in the process of chiseling it down to 120,000 words (at present, nearing 138,000... so a ways to go).  I am also still researching the sequel, and happily getting closer to feeling like I have enough research. This weekend, I realized I was exhausted.  I needed to vegetate on July 4 and 5.  July 6 I had to spend reading other peoples' works to prepare for my writers groups early this week.  This coming week is brutal, and the following week won't be fun, either. I hope I'm not whining.  I'm just letting y'all know why I haven't been posting as frequently...

One project that I'll be undertaking over the next month or so (or whenever I get around to it) is cleaning up my labels and listing them on the sidebar to make it easier for people to search my site by category.  So instead of 5,000 labels under each of my Les Miserables  post, I will have just one or two labels like "les miserables" and "musical."  Or if I want to talk about my novel, I might list it and anything related under "historical fiction."  Hopefully it will make it easier for people who have come to this site for a specific purpose to find something.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to give a quick road map of where the blog is headed now that I've finished my Downton Abbey recapping. As you saw, I recently posted an update on my novel that goes more into the storyline than any previous posts.  I will likely be posting more updates of this nature in the coming months -- more information about the storyline, the characters, the research, and the selling process.  Some of it will be tied to past posts (like any of the " Downton Extras "). Another thing I'll be doing is taking a look at other neo-Victorian novels published within the last 15 or so years to get a sense of the market. Otherwise, it will be back to the usual -- Movie Musicals That Got It Right or Wrong, Unpopular Opinions, and other essays.  I have some doozies planned.  Stay tuned!

I don't have a whole lot to report.  I've been busy for both good and bad reasons... recently bad, but I won't go into it. First, What's New With the Blog?  Well this month and next month will likely be quiet, or at least not unusual.  However, I'm toying with the thought of expanding it to three times a week -- two posts short, less than 500 words, and one post my standard long one. You may have noticed that I changed my tag at the top.  While mainly keeping the content unchanged, I want to skew the focus on this blog a bit more in the introvert and introverted section. That said, an old and welcome piece of business will soon be back: Downton Abbey recaps!  I'm sure no one will know what happened and everyone will be super surprised, right?! Second, What's New With the Novel?   I know you want to hear, right?  Well the selling part remains stalled mainly because it's the holidays.  I still have that query letter and synopsis hovering ...

This will probably be my shortest update yet.  I know that I usually have a post up by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, but I have been slammed with work this week.  It has been spilling out every which way, and it is all I can do to stay on top of it.  I should have something up by the coming weekend, and I think it will be really good.  So I'll check back in then. In the meantime, feel free to speculate about Downton Abbey  Season Four!

Even though I officially began the Wild Blog in the West on February 20, 2012, I published my first real blog post on September 1, 2012... one year ago. I had never kept a blog before.  I had done lots of ghost writing for other blogs, but the style of writing was very different.  I also wrote recaps for reality shows several years ago, but that was different -- a set subject matter, defined parameters.  What would I do with a blog?  How often would I update it?  What if I ran out of things to talk about? Thankfully, the fears that I would run out of things to say never came to pass.  If anything, the number of topics has expanded over the months -- the only thing that's contracted is time.  This blog has given me space to be a massive fangirl about things like Les Miserables , the musical, or to rant about things I hate, like leaf blowers.  Despite the fact that the Wild Blog in the West has no major theme or niche, the number of page view...

Those of you who regularly tune in may have noticed that I've not been posting as frequently.  That is because over the past month or so, my life has been incredibly busy... in a good way for the most part.  It's all I can do to post once a week, which I do vow to continue doing.  Once things slow down a little, I will go back to posting twice or more a week. One bit of good news: the "publishing person" I referenced a while back is now reading my novel and likes it a lot.  She will refer it to editors in her company, and even though I don't think her company is quite the right fit, it is still awesome to hear.  In the meantime, I am working on my query letter and preparing to send it to agents. But what's new for this blog?  The Movie Musicals Series will be back, along with some media critique posts (I have one for Game of Thrones  up next) and some more Unpopular Opinions .  I don't have any new series planned for the next month or so, tho...

First, thanks for giving me my biggest month of web traffic since I started!  And in February, no less.   Here is what is happening, or will be happening, with this blog: We Have Twitter!   I've joined that strange new (or maybe not-so new) phenomenon of stating my thoughts in 140 characters or less.   My Twitter account is here for anyone who wants to be informed of a new post, or for anyone who wants to read my random thoughts on random things. Movie Musicals Series Will Continue.   I have several more entries planned for the Movie Musicals That Got It Right/Wrong Series, which will be sprinkled about in the coming months.  The first one on the agenda is that musical you either love or hate, RENT . Before There Was Downton ...   I am also planning to look at a series that I briefly mentioned in one of my Downton Abbey recaps, Manor House .   Manor House  presents a far less benign picture of the Edwardian upstairs/downstairs rela...

Just thought that I would give a brief update about my plans to blog Downton Abbey to those who are still interested in reading.  My intention is to have a general post about the show up sometime tomorrow, and then post a critique of each episode the same day the next episode airs.  I don't have enough speed or time, unfortunately, to post a critique soon after each episode airs. That is my plan anyway.  The reality might end up being a little less organized, owing to two things: an unexpected spike in my work load, and the fact that I'm in the final important chapters of my novel and have had a difficult time writing them.  It is only a draft, but I want everything to be good and believable.  So both of these things might take me more time than expected, which means that I might not get my blog posts out like clockwork.  However, I still intend to critique every episode of Downton Abbey Series Three, and I still intend to post content at least once a wee...

For the three people who don't read this blog for my Les Miserables posts, I want to let you know that the Les Miz monopoly is finally over.  While I will still post here and there about the movie and musical, I am now back to writing about other things as well. So what is in store for this blog's future?   First , I intend to post more than once a week.  No!  It was always my plan to post at least two or three times a week, but that proved to be surprisingly difficult with my day job, my other (law-related) blogging, and writing the draft of my novel, which I will discuss more in the coming months.  Right now, the novel draft is about a month away from completion, provided there are no unforeseen problems.  Then there is the always-fun revision period... Second , I will continue to write about various media, from TV to movies to music(als).  I will also write more about social/cultural things, by which I mean customs, habits, assumptions in today'...