Goodreads

29th December 2016

Peter Germany Audiobooks, Reading, Writing , , , , , ,

Right, today I’ve knocked out 819 words. A few hundred was written during my lunch break and rest were this evening. Although I am finding it easier to write I’m still finding myself quite distracted as I am writing but I’m getting better.

Some of this evening was writing a book review for Justin R. Macumber’s Fragile, which I recommend people check out as I really enjoyed it. As I was posting the review to Goodreads I checked out how I was doing on the reading challenge for 2016 and out of a target of sixty books that I’d set myself to read at the start of the year I’ve read thirty. Now some of those were comic books and a fair few were audiobooks, but what made me laugh was the fact that Goodreads said that I still had two days to go and could read thirty books in two days…… yeah that isn’t going to happen. Even if I was a faster reader I very much doubt I could knock out thirty books in two days. My grandad was quite a voracious reader when his health allowed him to be but I doubt even he could smash through thirty books in two days.

Anyway, I do have an audiobook and a comic book that I’d like to have wrapped up by New Years Eve. The audiobook is vN by Madeline Ashby and the comic book is Day of Chaos: Endgame (Judge Dredd). I’d like to get those two wrapped up so I can go into the new year with a fully clean slate reading wise. I know the next three to four novels that I want to read and I’m looking forward to the three that I’m definitely going to delve into.

I am chuffed I’ve consumed thirty books this year, I didn’t think it was anywhere near that to be honest. Come 2017 I’ll be setting that goal of sixty again and be much more proactive in hitting that target.

The Reading List

Peter Germany Books, Reading , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Although I am not setting myself targets or making any grand plans for this year one thing I am aiming a little more attention to is reading. I felt last year I didn’t make enough time to read and this is something that I need to change. one piece of advice that I’ve heard successful writers give is that to write we need to read.

I have just finished Shadows of the Realm by Dionne Lister and I have just started Embedded by Dan Abnett. Shadows of the Realm has been on my Kindle App for a couple of months and I really enjoyed it. I’ll admit that I was not sure how I would do with it as I’m not a huge fan of fantasy but if I’m honest I’ve never really tried to read a fantasy novel. I’m glad I did read Shadows of the Realm as it is not only very well written but it is also one of those stories that gets more and ore addictive as you read it. After I finished it I went straight over to Amazon and downloaded the second book in the series. I’m holding off reading it though until the third is out and I’ll read them back-to-back when the time comes.

Tracie got me Embedded for Christmas but it’s been one that I’ve wanted to read for some time. I’m only thirty or so pages into it but already I’m at the point of eagerly turning the pages to see what happens.

This year there are a lot of books I want to read. Scott Sigler has Pandemic and The Champion out, as well as a number of novellas and short stories in various anthologies. Christopher Stocking has The Rotten Apple out and Jordanna East has Blood in the Paint out soon as well. Justin Macumber will also hopefully be releasing a couple more novels this year.

Then there are the novels on my iPad and book shelve I want to read this year. Doing a quick count I can see twenty three on my shelf and twenty eight on my Kindle App. Damn that’s a lot of books, and I know I’ll buy more during the year. Of course I’m not expecting to read all of these this year, my Goodreads goal is thirty five books. That is the same as last year but I didn’t hit it… hopefully I will this year.

Here are the website links to the authors I mentioned:

http://danabnett.com/

http://scottsigler.com/

http://jordannaeast.com/

http://dionnelisterwriter.com/

http://mentalsweatshop.wordpress.com/

Project Apollo Update

Peter Germany Editing, Writing , , , ,

Is anyone else feeling groggy this morning? No, okay. Right well I just wanted to give a quick update on my Project Apollo. I’m not doing what I’ve done before and set myself daily, weekly and monthly word count targets. Neither am I just sitting at my computer typing away constantly after I finish my day job. Like last night I knocked out 500 words, give or take, and edited through a couple of big chunks of text which did not need any heavy work on. Then I tidied my book shelve and finally logged all of my books on it onto Goodreads.

I’m doing this because although I love a word count, I’ve learnt that my head does not like trying to hit a target and after a while I impose a lot of pressure on myself and I run out of steam. This time though I like the pace I’m working at and I’m still leaving time for other bits that I want to do in my evenings.

One thing that I am trying to do is to do a little bit each day. Once in a while myself and my dear friend Cinta Garcia de la Rosa (http://cintascorner.com/) talk about this because she said to me that to pick up a habit of something all one has to do is do that thing for 21 days so that’s the only target I’m aiming for at the moment.

I’m not going to put too many details of word counts and progress of Project Apollo up here but I am making progress, me and Owen are keeping in contact more on this one then we have ever done before which is helping, both on the creativity but also on keeping me motivated.

If we can keep this pace then I will be more then happy with it 🙂

20130508-072745.jpg

A Quick Update

Peter Germany Movie Review, Writing , , , , , , , , , , ,

Most of the last week I have been fighting an irritating cold. Nothing serious but when I do get a cold it gives me a fuzzy head and doing anything creative is thrown out of the window. This annoys me because I had a little momentum going from last week and that’s just gone out of the window. I’m past the worst now so ill be back on creating soon. Probably after the easter break as I seem to have a lot on this weekend.
A lot of today has been spent trying to get a blog post written or a little bit of fiction done but that was not happening so most of it has been spent on Facebook, Twitter and over here at WordPress and watching a lot of TV!

So have you seen that Amazon have brought Goodreads, I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing just yet. I’m willing to wait and see how it all plays out. Tobias Buckell wrote a very interesting post about it, here’s the link http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2013/03/29/amazon-has-acquired-goodreads-huh/

I’m going to change how often I write my Movie Monday posts. They are not getting the response I was hoping for so I’m going to change it to a monthly post as opposed to a weekly one.

If you’d like to Follow me on Twitter or Like me on Facebook you can find the links on the right hand side of the page 🙂

To end tonight’s post I would like to say a few words in the memory of British actor Richard Griffiths. He passed away last night and I, like many around the world, will miss seeing him on our screens. I remember him mainly from the TV series Pie In The Sky and the movie The History Boys. Mr. Griffiths was an outstanding actor who also came across as a intelligent and good person as well.

R.I.P. Richard Griffiths