the website of author and local favorite blake michael nelson | about | contact: theblakeshow@gmail.com
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NEWS AND VIEWS - JULY 2021
WRITING NEWS I'm getting pretty close to finishing the latest Signalverse novel, The White Ribbon and the Heart of the Night. It's shaping up to be the shortest Signalverse novel yet, at only about 40,000 words, but I think that's okay; it's not a very big or ambitious story. Ordinarily it only takes me about two and a half or maybe three months to write a book of this length, but I've been working on this one since the beginning of April -- now that I'm back to work full-time, I just don't have as much time to write. At this rate it's going to take me forever to finish the final Chemical Empires novel -- I didn't think I'd have too much trouble getting that one out by March of next year, but that's looking very optimistic now. Anyway, I'm hoping to release The White Ribbon and the Heart of the Night sometime this fall. * * * * * * * * MORE VISTAS Due to popular demand (not really), here's some more rural, rustic scenes from western Minnesota, which is where I live and work (see last month's update). I'm not much of a photographer, but I've been trying to keep an eye out for interesting scenes and landscapes. 
That's a mailbox there, in case you couldn't tell. 
The grass is brownish in some of these pictures because we've been stuck in a pretty bad drought for the last couple of months. * * * * * * * * WHAT I'M PLAYING After finishing Tales of Berseria earlier this month I finally started in on the GeoFront's fan translation (actually an official translation now) of Falcom's Ao no Kiseki, or Trails from Azure. It's a fantastic localization; the work they've done here is absolutely top-notch. And the game itself is a blast, with great characters, an engrossing plot, an engaging battle system, and a great little world to explore. I wish this game had been localized years ago, though, so I could have played through the whole series in the correct chronological order. As it is, I started with the two Trails in the Sky games, skipped ahead to the first two Trails of Cold Steel games, went back and played Zero no Kiseki, and just now started Ao no Kiseki (and after I finish this one I'll be jumping ahead again to the latter two Trails of Cold Steel titles). Playing the games out of order, and often years apart, I'm sure I'm forgetting/missing all kinds of nifty story details, but I guess that's just how it goes sometimes. |