Weekly Update - 3/20/25

Yes yes, weekly update should've been yesterday, but I got hipdeep in writing the next drop, and while it's mostly finished, I'm having a few people look at in the writer's room for dialect coaching. That said, expect a drop tomorrow, pretty much guaranteed, and a little bit longer than normal. The first draft clocked in at 6.5k words rather than our usual 5k target, and I may add a little bit more in there when I'm doing edits to incorporate the dialect corrections and tweaks. What IS it? Oh, now, isn't it more fun to speculate? Ha! You'll know soon enough.

I will tell you that I'm coming around to the idea of moving back to a much more fluid schedule, and when something's in my brainpan, just let it come pouring out, and then fall back on the schedule if nothing's pressing there. This thing just hopped from my brain pretty fast, and so clearly it was ready to be written.

Next up? I'm not quite sure. Maybe circle back for Pack, maybe QTUM, maybe try and get QTSS off to its commissioner. I'm currently leaning towards Pack, but we'll see how it goes. I'm writing this newspost in a little bit of a rush, as I'm off in about half an hour to head into the city to see Timecop1983, a synthwave artist with heavy retro vibes, who I've been trying to catch live for years, but simply never had the chance. And late-night Saturday, I'll be seeing British comedian Nish Kumar up in Berkeley.

What's still technically "on deck" for this month: Pack, QTUM, QT2, QTSS and BP. That seems like a lot, but I've got 11 days, and I'm actually making pretty good progress and headway on things. The Pack chapter for both alpha readers and everyone else is already done, so I can drop that whenever, but I'd like to have the next one to its commissioner before I do that. Of course, that chapter's starting to fill my brain already, since the one getting dropped for alphas feels like the first half of a two-parter, really. (And technically, I'm still waiting on the approval from Pack's commissioner.) So sure, yeah, let's say Pack will follow our mystery drop, and yeah, maybe 2-3 drops before Sunday, which could be exciting. Technically, I wrote a QTUM chapter last month, and this'll be the second Pack chapter I've written this month, and that means I'm getting closer to being back on track. (Waiting for the QTUM commissioner's notes as well before I post that one.) Oops! And I need to cram in a QT:PT in there somewhere if I'm able to. Yikes! Time to keep moving.

I also got tickets to go see Sleep Token in October in Oakland. I typically don't like doing big arena shows, but Sleep Token's last album "Take Me Back To Eden," was on pretty heavy rotation for me for a while, simply because of their utter refusal to adhere to a singular style, and I've never seen them live before. There's something incredibly ballsy about how they'll hop between post-metal, prog and like R&B/funk. The whole 'faceless/anonymous' schtick is a bit much, but hey, if the music's great, that's all that matters. They just dropped a new single called 'Emergence' last week that's great, so hey, every so often, even I can get suckered into a giant stadium show. I was going to see Rage Against the Machine with Run The Jewels opening for them back in 2020, but Covid happened, and then by the time they got everything back together, RATM's lead singer apparently suffered a severe tear to his Achilles' tendon, with only 8% of it holding on, and the tour was cancelled. So this'll be Sleep Token's chance to prove to me they're worth me enduring arena shit for. Not a lot of people have passed that test. I think U2 and The Cure are it. (Well, and the Stevie Wonder show I saw, but C'MON.)

Anyway, that's where I'm at. I know it seems like you haven't seen a lot of content from me, but that's just because people are looking at it first to make sure it's up to snuff. And I think you'll all be very happy once it starts dropping. So expect things to start popping up as soon as late tonight or midday tomorrow (depending on how much adjusting I need to do to the thing that's in review) and I appreciate everyone being patient as we get the wheels back in motion. Nearly there, I promise!

To wrap, as always, here's the upcoming public schedule for the next month or so: 3/22 - QT2:29; 3/29 - QT:UM 4; 4/5 - Smokeland Slumdance 1, QT:PT 21; 4/12 - Neon Stonehenge 10.