As you may recall, I mentioned that I had started to reconsider the future of this blog and my various blogging/podcasting/writing projects. The conversation preceding and surrounding that post have led me here: a post about the things I would like to do.
Obviously, I cannot do all of these things, but I know these are projects I want to complete or pursue at some point in my life. Your opinions on anything listed here is greatly appreciated. If anything leaps out at you as something you’d really be interested in, let me know in the comments. You’re also welcome to suggest things, as it’s possible I’ve forgotten something.
Blogging Projects:
- Write more commentary on WISB — less so on controversies than on genre
- Create a steady, repeatably schedule of specific things for WISB
- Star Wars Extended Universe Re-read — reading, discussing, and reviewing the entire extended universe. The ENTIRE EU. In chronological order. I feel inclined towards this because the EU is, well, gone, and I think that is a travesty.
- SFF Film Odyssey — a broader take on the lackluster feature I’ve been running. Taking a play out of Jay Garmon’s suggestion, this would involve looking at sf/f films 10/20/30/40/50+ years in the past in some kind of order I’ve yet to determine. Perhaps by week (10 years ago this week…). Reviews and discussions of significant sf/f films (housed, I suspect, at Totally Pretentious).
- Director Explorations — reviewing every feature-length film released by a single director, old and new. I’ve talked about doing this already; I think it could be a lot of fun to do at Totally Pretentious.
- Space Opera Read Along (for the Fall) — I’m teaching a space opera course in the fall. Since I don’t often discuss older books on this blog, I thought that might be a cool thing to do in the fall.
- More book reviews — in combination with new and old. I do so much “new” reading for Skiffy and Fanty that I feel I’m missing out on a lot of older stuff, and I suspect some of you might actually care what I think about books 20 or so years removed.
- International SF/F Fan Survey — to get input from non-US fandom about the Hugo Award (perception, etc.); this isn’t specific to the SP/RP thing, though a question would be directed to that. I plan to get general feelings versus specific responses to contemporary controversies; the intent is to understand what folks outside of the States think about the award.
Podcasting:
- Monetize The Skiffy and Fanty Show (yeah, I want to consider this now)
- Expand Totally Pretentious (and monetize so we can do more stuff) — David and I are talking about adding a second feature (Gap Fillers — where we alternate selecting a movie we think the other should see that they haven’t) and possibly adding more stuff in the future. Some of that would be solved by increasing the subscriber base, but the others would require funding it, I think.
- Start a writing podcast
- Start a semi-academic sf/f podcast called Opera Fantastika.
- Start a podcast about my grandmother’s crazy life (seriously, her life was full of weirdness and laughter and crazy)
Note: to be clear — I don’t mean “monetize” in the sense of “I want to make money for myself.” For Skiffy and Fanty, monetizing wouldn’t be profitable for me anyway because I share the show with a lot of other people. But bringing in revenue for that show could mean we can get better recording equipment, attend more conventions, etc.
Fiction:
- The Histories (blog novel) — a fictional history book detailing the real identity of Mike Underwood via an in-depth analysis of anthropological, photographic, and historical evidence.
- YA Space Opera Craziness — the novel I’ve been working on for a while, which I’ve tentatively described as two siblings — a tech-savvy genius and her wheelchair-using combat expert — go on a grand adventure through the universe, with wheelchair mecha, crazy technology, religious fanatics, mayhem, and wicked cool stunts.
- Camden in Nightface — “gritty” space opera which follows the leader of a revolutionary force who witnesses the total destruction of his homeworld and wages a terrorist campaign against a federation of Earth-aligned worlds. The MC is literally a terrorist, so it’s a bit of a challenge.
- Full Magic Jacket — urban fantasy about a guy who bonks his head after a drunken stupor one evening and awakes to find that not only can he see the supernatural, but also his cat can talk to him…and turns out to be the reincarnated soul of an Egyptian pharaoh.
Editing Projects:
- The Evil Anthology of Evil SFF — a collection of subversive science fiction and fantasy addressing evil in all its complicated machinations (at least two authors expressed interest in this, by the way, so I think it’s likely something like this could happen)
- The Secret Cabal — a collection of equally subversive sf/f on bigotry in its overt and subconscious forms
House Cleaning:
- Finally move WISB to its own website.
- Finally figure out what WISB will become…
And that’s it…for now.
I love making What I Want to Write LIsts. I have a giant one in the front of my writer's notebook. I have to space opera-ish projects I want to work on too. One is basically Firefly meets the Taming of the Shrew and the other is a lot like what I heard Jupiter Ascending is about, though I have to come up with a better pitch than that.
Thanks for the comment, John.
I haven't done a lot of these kinds of lists before, but I do think they are useful to outline the things one wants to do. I also hope doing this will help me find some focus 🙂