Statii Update

It's time once again for another Statii Update!

Band Update:

We finished tracking three more songs for Glorified, our upcoming third album. The video for "Liberty's End," one of the songs from said album, was released. The production of the graphic novel/comic book to accompany Glorified is well underway, as is the recording of the story outline for our second album, Nobody's Hero, which is scheduled to be re-released by Portland's own No Pants Records (thanks Matt!) Super stoked!

Book Update:

I had the pleasure and privilege of being a mentor at SCBWI Oregon's Great Critique this past Saturday (thanks Kim!) This is a biannual event where you get to have your work reviewed by a published author or illustrator. I met some really cool people while reading and critiquing some very promising works. If you're an author and/or illustrator in the Portland/Vancouver area, I highly recommend checking this out the next time it comes around.

Next up, I'll be at the Portland Spring Home and Garden Show on Friday, February 23 from 6-8pm (thanks Ros!) Although that'll be my only appearance, the Northwest Independent Writers Association booth - staffed by awesome local authors - will be there for all four days of the show.

Speaking of four, the first draft of Joel Suzuki, Volume Four - which, as predicted, ended up around 80k words (80,874, about 323 pages) - should be back from my editor any moment now (EDIT: it's back!) When that happens, I'll take a deep breath, make some hot tea, and then dive into the rewriting process.

In the meantime, I've actually started on - gasp - Volume Five! I'm 8000 words into it and so far I'm having a lot of fun. As an early sneak preview, I'll tell you that it's going to be quite different from the first four volumes, but that's all I'll say for now...

TV Update:

As I said a couple of weeks ago, I finally signed up for Netflix. Does Netflix count as TV? I'm not even sure anymore. I guess it does, since I included shows from other streaming services (Handmaid's Tale, The Tick) in a previous edition of Statii Update. Anyway, on "regular" TV I've been keeping up with The Good Doctor (still terrific) and season 3 of The Magicians (also still terrific). Oh, and there are only seven more episodes of Star Wars Rebels left, starting next month. Who will live (besides Hera and Chopper*)? Who will die? We shall see.

Video Game Update:

When I did a full Video Game Roundup in December, I was waist-deep into Skyrim and Fire Emblem Warriors, and I said that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was sitting in my stack of games, still unopened. My, how times change. As I predicted, XC2 finally got opened during the winter break, and I haven't looked back since. So far, it's been just as good as its predecessors, making the hours simply melt away. I also did get Super Mario Odyssey for Christmas, which, to be honest, my daughter was more interested in playing than I was. Once she started, however, I saw that it looked pretty cool, so I decided to give it a go. And yes, it's good. Really good. I'm loving the whole possess-other-characters-with-your-hat thing. So now I'm splitting time between that and XC2. Not sure when I'll ever get back to Skyrim, although I do intend to return to it eventually.

Movie Update:

Normally I don't talk about movies in these Statii Update posts, as I like to save them for the semi-regular Movie Roundups. But Felicity and I watched Please Stand By this past weekend, and she couldn't wait for the next Roundup to say a few things about it. So take it away, Ms. Smith.

Felicity here. Okay, so as I expected when I saw the trailer, this movie is totally about me. The main character, Wendy, is a blond girl on the autism spectrum who loves Star Trek. She even has an older sister she doesn't get along with, and both their parents are gone. She's smart, tough, creative, and resourceful - just like me.

Admittedly, there are differences, like:

- She's twenty-one years old, while I'm nineteen. Or twenty-four.
- She's five-foot-four inches tall, while I'm five-foot-six-and-a-half.
- Both of my parents died, whereas only her mom died. For sure, anyway. Nothing is said about her dad.
- She lives in a care home but wants to live with her sister. I lived with my sister and hated every minute of it. Oh, and her sister is married with a kid, whereas Vicky is single and childless.
- Also, she's from California, while I'm from Washington state.
- She doesn't seem to play a musical instrument (aside from plinking out "Hey Li Lee Li Lee" on the piano), whereas I totally shred on guitar.
- She's never been to Spectraland. Not as far as I know, anyway.

Okay, so maybe it's not really about me after all. Still, you should watch it. Right, Brian?

Right.

* Not a spoiler, they were both in Rogue One