Happy Friday everyone! Can't believe it's already March again - though I know I risk sounding like the typical old woman who feels like time is rushing around her while she stands in one place. But it is true. I mean, that time is rushing and I can't believe its March, not that I'm a time-stuck old woman. But anyway, let's review how the last fortnight has gone.

For the writing vlogs, we got two (because they come out every Thursday, in case you didn't know). My first is a quick look at me not only doing some writing, but also planning a few writing projects I have to do. The day was a confusing mix of nonfiction and fiction projects altogether - which, in retrospect, I think I may try and avoid in the future. Yesterday's vlog was capturing a moment of me struggling to write an academic article. I'm really out of practice with it, so I need to shake off the cobwebs and get back into the flow of things - it just may take some time to get to that point.

I also wrote a blog! This one was a quiet reflection on the role the body plays in tabletop role play, obviously brought on by some musing and research and thinking I'm doing in relation to the tabletop role playing game project.

Speaking of the TTRPG project, I'm now open for formal research interviews! If you're someone who likes the occasional - or frequent - TTRPG game, let me know! You can find out more information on the project page on the website here.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff!

What I'm Writing

You mean, besides that academic journal article that I was struggling through and still haven't finished?

On the fiction front, I've going through the process of querying the fiction novel. This can be a long process. Basically, literary agents on average get 2,000-3,000 queries a year, and out of that will only sign 1-2 authors. So its a big numbers game. This may take a lot of time, and be filled with a lot of rejection, but it's also kind of exciting to know that - just maybe - something really cool will come out of it all.

Other than that, the actual writing parts of my life are actually starting to slow down. The cosplay book is done and waiting to come out, the TTRPG book is only just beginning and therefore in very early research stages (in other words, not a lot of writing), the fiction book is in query pergatory, and the Bestiary is waiting for someone to pick it up before I start writing. So oddly, the only writing I'm doing are some academic pieces and the normal content for Incidental Mythology.

What I'm Enjoying

A slightly different thing to mention today, but my husband and I have been playing a Sherlock Holmes choose your own adventure kind of game. There have been a few of these, and we have previously played a different one, but have come back to it recently. Because there's only two of us, and we talk things out quite a bit, each case takes us about 3-4 hours, so it's a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon with tea. But it's fun to play out a mystery, starting with just the prompt, and then feeling like we can go anywhere to ask anything.

Book Recommendation

Today, I'm recommending another edited volume, Contemporary Cowboys: reimagining an American archetype in popular culture. As we know, I've been interested in cowboys previously, most notably as presented in my video essay on country musician Orville Peck. In anticipation of an upcoming episode of my podcast I'm a Fan of That, I needed to review some work on cowboys and stumbled across the book which came out last year. While it wasn't the most insightful for the podcast episode, I still ended up reading quite a bit of it just for the fun.

A lot of different representations of the cowboy from a variety of pop culture sources are found here. From Cormac McCarthy to Deadwood, a lot of different versions and takes on the cowboy is presented and studied here. But there are also a few chapters which take a more speculative approach, and question what makes a cowboy. My favourite of these was chapter 10, "The Lone Wolf and the Wild West: How Private Eyes Became the New Cowboys" by Dahlia Schweitzer. Scheweitzer not only talks about the cowboy, but how the mythos of the cowboy and its presentation becomes wrapped up in typical presentations of the private eye, especially from classic noir like Dashiell Hammett.

That's it from me for today! As always, be good to one another!

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