I know it’s a cliché, but this year has flown by. It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating Christmas, and now it’s July. I think that’s mostly because of lockdown, and only recently being able to leave the house to do stuff. Anyway, here I am again with another update.

I mentioned last time that I had a short story finished, well that will be going up tomorrow morning. I’m going to be editing it throughout today to get it ready. There will be a warning beforehand as it’s dark. It’s called ‘A Knock at the Door’ and it’s around 5000 words. I hope you enjoy it and if you have any feedback, please send it my way.

My new short story is coming along nicely. Nearing 2000 words at the moment. It will probably end up around 5000 as well. I’ll keep you updated on that one. Both are horror based, like a lot of my short stories.

It’s been one month since I started writing daily film reviews. Other than being a fiction writer, my other ambition was to be a film critic. I’ve always loved films and apart from a few reviews I’ve put up on here from time to time, I haven’t ever taken it very seriously. That all changed just over a month ago. If it’s going to happen, I’m going to need to make it happen. I feel like the quality of the reviews have been improving and I’m getting a nice amount of feedback as well. Thank you to everyone who’s liked reviews, followed and left comments. I appreciate it so much. Any feedback, let me know. Along with any recommendations. I’m always looking for new favourites.

I have 2 projects on the go at the moment, in relation to film reviews. One is a follow-up of sorts on the franchise catch-up I completed for Fast and Furious. I thought it was a fun challenge and started thinking of other franchises to catch-up on. I’m half way through The Purge series, and have a few more lined up that I’ve never seen before. John Wick, The Hunger Games, Taken and Final Destination, to name a few. I haven’t seen any of the films from any of those series and thought it would be interesting to binge them and share my initial thoughts. If there are any film series that you love, please let me know. It doesn’t matter which genre or how old they are, if I haven’t seen them before then It will definitely be added to the list. Let me know in the comments.

My other project is writing short reviews for my 50 favourite films. This one will be more challenging as I still haven’t settled on the 50 to be included. I’ve already made the decision not to put them in any order, as that would change on a minute by minute basis, instead I’m going to upload 10 posts over 10 weeks, every Friday morning. Each post will be 5 films, just short informal writing about each one. It’s another challenge. I want to push myself, and I can assure you that while it sounds easy, it’s not. I’ve been putting it off for the whole month, so next week I’m going to upload the first one. I imagine by post 10, I will have changed and demoted some films from earlier posts.

On to reading, which is the other thing I do with any spare time I have, when I’m not watching films, writing about them or writing fiction. I’m going to do another Book Pile post soon about what I’ve been reading recently. I’ve read Demon Seed by Dean Koontz which I thought was good and ahead of its time. I’ve been re-reading the latest Darren Shan series in prep for the new addition, which was released today. I’ve got the new one ready to go. Quintin Tarantino’s first novel, the adaptation of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood also came out this week, so I’m looking forward to getting into that. I’m not sure when that post will go up, but it will be soonish.

Thank you for sticking around and I hope some of the above sounds interesting. Thank you for reading, and until next time,

Ashley