Hello everyone, I’m back again with another short update since I actually have something I’m excited to share. I’ve started writing a new fiction story. It’s been a little while since I’ve written anything apart from reviews, so it feels very good to be back at it. I woke up on Monday after having an unusual dream, and thought it would make a good story so I started writing it down. I’ve written a little more each day and as of yesterday I have 4000 words written. I don’t have the whole thing plotted out yet, but I have some of the major plot points and ending in my head. I don’t think it’s going to be very long, maybe 50,000 words, but I will share more when I have more of an update. Oh, and the working title is ‘Blossoms of the Apocalypse’.

I’m also finally ahead of my reviews. For the longest time I was writing them the day they were being posted, with very little wiggle room. With work, life, and other distractions, I couldn’t get ahead on the reviews. At one point I had 9 days worth of reviews written up in advance then that number slowly crept down as things went wrong. Thankfully this week I’ve managed to get 5 days in advance. Thanks mainly to a horror convention I’m going to in October. It sparked my love of horror films again and I started re-watching the Nightmare on Elm Street series and writing a review for each one. I’ve seen them all before, but it’s been a while. To be honest they’re a lot better than I remember. I have reviews for the first four written and ready to go, but don’t want to do them on after the other, so will try to publish them on alternative days.

The other thing I’ve been doing is filling in the blanks for Studio Ghibli films that I haven’t seen. One of the things I’ve wanted to do for a while is rank all the Ghibli films, but more importantly I still need to watch a few more to see them all.

Years ago I watched Spirited Away as a little kid and ended up seeing a fair few of the studio’s output since then. Earlier this week when going through Netflix at the start of my lunch hour, I found When Marnie Was There, which I hadn’t seen so started watching it. It re-sparked my idea for ranking them, and then I made a list of what I hadn’t seen. Since then I’ve crossed off Grave of the Fireflies and Ponyo, and just have Princess Mononoke and Pom Poko left to go.

There are also a few others I need to re-watch before completing the ranking, like Howl’s Moving Castle (which I don’t remember liking that much but have a feeling I like more now that I’m older). My plan is to review the ones I haven’t seen, re-watch (and review) the ones I have but don’t really remember, and then do the ranking. I’ll probably then re-watch the rest and review all of them. It might just take a while.

Thanks for reading and until next time,

Ashley