My Sunday Updates Will Mostly Be Free To The Public Now

I quit social media again the other day, so to let people know what I'm up to, I'm going to try to get over here more. Also, my Sunday Updates on Patreon will be free to the public now except for occasional bits. You can read today's here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/sunday-update-156013477. You can become a free member in order to get the Sunday Update in your email.

Fresh Mangoes!

The two latest episodes of Beware the Patronizing Mango are waiting, free of charge, for anyone who wants to click!

Episode 156 is Trowel Those Trousers wherein a woman tries to make a house out of pants and accidentally becomes a witch. It happens.

Episode 155 is Nobgoblin, about a potentially inappropriate game of D&D. Oh, my.

Once you're there, click on the "free episode" tag for more free Mangoes, or support me at https://www.patreon.com/matthewsanbornsmith and get even more episodes plus other goodies!

Tales From the Hairy Mango #2 - Origasmi

 

Tales From the Hairy Mango #1 - Cat on a Hotcake Roof

 

My Short List Of Ridiculous Goals For 2022

Happy New Year! Here are my brief but ridiculous goals for 2022:

1. Write 365,000 words. That, of course, is 1,000 words a day. Thank Christ (or, more appropriately, Pope Gregory XIII) it’s not a leap year. I’d never make that goal! So, this is over three times what I wrote in 2021, but I will have more time in 2022. I only have one class this year, as opposed to three last year, and I won’t be working a part-time job, which I did for nine months of 2021.

2. Finish Hive Five. That's my novel, by the way. It would be about damned time. If I’m writing all those words, this goal will work nicely with my first goal. However, at some point, there’s going to be more editing than writing, meaning working on the book will be in addition to the writing.

3. Read 104 books. The more I read, the better I’ll write. And since I’m focusing on novel writing, I should be reading books rather than short stories. Not that I’m forsaking shorts, but the novel is the priority. However, I’m pretty sure I’ve never read 104 books in a year in my life. If I have, it was when I was a wee lad, and the books were much thinner with many more pictures. I think I usually average between 40 and 50 books a year. Soooo... yeah. There are also some specific books I want to read, but I won’t bog you down in details here.

4. Have 50 patrons (at the same time). I have 22 as of this writing. Here’s a goal you can help me with. I absolutely suck at getting folks to join my Patreon at patreon.com/matthewsanbornsmith. Hint, hint. This year I’m going to try YouTube, doing very short videos of myself reading Mango stories, with the Patreon link for all to see, and a quick pitch at the end. I wanted to start this a month ago, but projects and people in the house tripped me up. I plan to get the first one out on Monday. The one that’s two days from now. I’ll post it for you and ask you to share.

5. Weigh 225 pounds (and don’t get heavier after I do). I’ve gained weight over the holidays and I’m currently at 237. (I’m 6' 2" if anyone cares.) Weight is harder to keep down since my full-time retail days when I was walking constantly (Once, on a double shift, I walked eleven miles in a day just inside the store. I got depressed and put aside my pedometer after that.) So, exercise a little more. Try to restrain my eating habits a little more (one of the biggest challenges of my life).

6. Write 52 blog posts on The One-Thousand. I’m already on my way with this post! I’ve severely neglected my blog, and I need to spend less time on social media, so this will be good for me, even if no one reads it. But you’ll read it, won’t you? Won’t you?!?

7. Get my A.A. in English. Of all my goals, this is the easiest. I only have one class to go and it starts in a few days (damn it!). The bad part is, until I’m done in the end of April, it’s going to take time away from my other time-needy goals. Man, I hate school! That’s why it’s taken me so long to get here.

That’s it. I have little faith in myself to accomplish even two of these goals, so that’s a great place to start. Here’s hoping I surprise the shit out of myself. As I said yesterday, you don’t win or lose in a year. You win or lose moment to moment, with each decision you make. Too often, I cave to my animal wants (eating, sleeping, legal naked stuff) instead of doing the necessary work. All I need to do to make some progress is to overcome the animal a little more of the time. So, good luck to me.

If you’re a yearly goal or resolution person, I wish you luck too. Some people don’t even bother setting themselves up like that because they know they’ll fail, but I can’t imagine not wanting to improve things. Even if I fail, my attempts at succeeding put me farther ahead than I otherwise would have been.

Let’s all have a great year!

Forty-Nine

Well, gang, we're down to the wire. I'm forty-nine years old today, and that means there's only one year left to achieve this blog's original goal: write one thousand stories meant for publication by the time I'm fifty years old.

Let's look at the tally, shall we? Right. So all I have to do is write eight-hundred and thirty-five more stories in the next year. Okay, so much for that goal.

But if you've been following this blog for a while, you know I gave up on that goal a couple of years ago, if not longer. My goal is still to write a thousand stories,time limit or no. At the pace I'm currently going, death will come before I hit three hundred stories.

My life is super busy right now. I've got two jobs and I'm taking classes to get a better job in the library system and say goodbye to retail forever. If everything goes well, I may have a lot more time in about twenty months. In the meantime let's enjoy what we can.

My story, Stars so Sharp They Break the Skin (number 164 of The One-Thousand), comes out next week in the May issue of Apex. I'll post a link when it's up. The issue will also feature an interview with me by Andrea Johnson.

Over at https://www.patreon.com/matthewsanbornsmith the mangoes are still coming out, slowly but steadily, as well as new stories, video and audio extras, and some terrible, terrible art by yours truly.

No matter what happens, I'm always moving forward. Even when I'm moving backward. Because I turn around.

2017/2018

Happy New Year!

2017 wasn't great, but a couple of things happened that were good enough to give me some hope for the future. One major thing was getting a part-time job at the library which pointed the way out from a death at the hands of retail.

I had a goal of writing twelve new short stories in 2017. I only completed six, but I thought five of those six were great. Two of them were the longest pieces I've written in years, technically novelettes. I'm excited about the story I'm currently working on, but that will be one for 2018.

I had only one story published this year, but some people really dug it. It's called The Wardrobe and you can read it here: http://www.metaphysicalcircus.com/the-wardrobe-fiction-by-matthew-sanborn-smith/

After peeling out of a terribly stressful job, I started a Patreon in June that helped me reconnect with some awesome fans, raise Beware the Hairy Mango from the dead, and cover some bills during a very lean summer. It also got me to blow the dust off my failed Kickstarter project, Hive Five.


2018 is the year of biting off more than I can chew. On top of my two part-time jobs, I'm going back to school to get an Associate's degree in English, and then an even better library job. But the degree and job are for late 2019. Classes, or at least eight of them, are for 2018.

On top of that, I've packed more (mundane, but important to me) goals into the year than I could possibly have time to achieve, but so what? Among those goals are another stab at twelve stories and finishing Hive Five, though that will likely be a novella, rather than a novel. There's also creating content for the Patreon, probably moving, and consuming a lot of stories, books, comics, and movies.

I'd better get moving.

163 and 164

I've been my usual lax self here. Forgot to mention I finished a flash piece in July called Outvasion (that's 163) and a 5,000 word short story in October called Stars so Sharp They Pierce the Skin (that's 164).

I've had very little time for writing the last month, between two jobs and life outside of those. I've mostly been working on Mango scripts for the Patreon and a little bit on "Hive Five."

My netbook, which has been pretty good to me for the more than seven years I've had it, is now causing me enough problems that I went and ordered a refurbished desktop, just so I can write and podcast without wanting to kill things and smash objects. I should be getting the other machine in a couple of days. I really hope it works and doesn't crap out on me.

I'm On Patreon!

I've got a Patreon going! The eventual goal is to replace the need for a second job so that I'll have more time to write. In return for your pledges, you get stories and podcasts from me!

If you loved the defunct Beware the Hairy Mango podcast, you'll definitely want to get in on this, because, for just a dollar a month, you'll get to listen to it's latest iteration, Beware the Patronizing Mango. You also get weekly writing updates by me and the occasional sneak preview of things I've got coming out before the public gets them.

Kick in more and you'll get more goodies, like an episode a month of the old subscription show, Beware the Elitist Mango, flash fiction, and short stories. Take a look at the site and if this isn't the time for you to commit, do me a favor and tell your friends about it through social media, or old-fashioned human being talking. Thanks a bunch!

https://www.patreon.com/matthewsanbornsmith