January 13, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode, I lay out what I'm planning and kinda, sorta announce a new podcast to look forward to, especially if you're a Stephen King fan.
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Support Weird Reads:
Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/jason_white
Or
Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/weirdreader
Email me: weirdreadspodcast@gmail.com
Find Jason elsewhere:
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jasonsweirdreadsFind
Join the Weird Reads book club: https://fable.co/club/jasons-weird-reads-book-club-with-jwhite-418694065870?club_type=free#books
Join the discord: https://discord.gg/RTvcHvWuXa
Twitter:
@Jason_White74
@WeirdReadsPod
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to the Weird Reader podcast, an extension of
Jason's Weird Reads found on YouTube. Welcome, Welcome to episode
forty five of the Weird Reads podcast. I am your host,
(00:32):
Jason White, and this is something I've been kind of
neglecting about doing for a little while because I didn't
know exactly how to formulate into words what it was
I was planning on doing for the year twenty twenty five.
But I knew what I was going to do. It
was just a matter of sitting down and putting it
(00:52):
into a list. And I've finally done that, and so
episode forty five here is my list the things I
plan on do doing for the channel, the Jason's Weird
Reads YouTube channel, and the podcast here, and there's also
an announce sort of announcement. I'm gonna tell you some
(01:12):
of my plans, but I'm not necessarily announcing anything yet,
so you'll get a good idea of what I plan
on doing in twenty twenty five. So I've broken it
down into a list, as I mentioned, and I've got
subheadings here for this list. So twenty twenty five involves reading,
So I have some reading plans that I want to
(01:34):
discuss some podcasts and Jason's Weird Reads videos plans, Patreon plans,
and my own writing plans. So how about we get
into it right after this small break. If you like
(01:56):
what I'm doing here and want to support the channel
without involved any money on your part, you can do
so by sharing the podcast on social media.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
You can also write a review on.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Apple Podcasts or rate the show on Spotify. I can't
stress enough to you how much I would appreciate that alone.
Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or rate the
show on Spotify. As I just said, each and every
way you can help out the channel and podcast grow
would be greatly appreciated.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
All right, So what am I going to be reading
in twenty and twenty five? Well that's an interesting question.
If you've missed my wrap up video, my twenty twenty
four reading year was absolutely fantastic. I knocked some things
out of the park for me anyway.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I read eighty five books in total.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
That's the most I've ever read in a year. Ever,
I don't know I've to be I think I've only
reached like seventy five. I think that was the most
I ever read before then, But what surprised me more
was my page count. I have never read this many
pages in a year. I read twenty eight thousand pages.
(03:15):
That's a lot for me, and quite honestly, I did
this fairly effortlessly. The only problems I had was struggling
through some of the books I didn't feel like reading,
even though I enjoyed them, But I had to do
it for interviews, and we're going to get to that
in a second.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
But I want to.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Read less this year, not because I don't want to
smash that goal that I reached in twenty twenty four.
To be honest with you, I absolutely want to go
and smash that goal and read maybe ninety or one
hundred books. But honestly, I have some other goals that
are intruding upon that, and that's perfectly fine. I don't
(03:54):
need to go read eighty five books. So I want
to read less books this year because I want to
focus on certain things.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
You'll see below exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Where I'm going with this, But right now I just
want to say, in this moment, I want to say
that twenty twenty five will be a year of looking
deeper into certain stories, a lot of short stories, so yeah,
you'll see that when I get to the podcasting and
the YouTube channel. But before I get into that, I
(04:23):
just want to mention that I want to read more fantasy,
kind of like I used to. There's so much more
fantasy out now than there ever has been. I think
fantasy has just completely blown up, and I think, honestly.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
YouTube is.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Probably really kind of responsible for that and to some degree,
but I have run into some roadblocks. I've tried reading
some books and I just didn't enjoy my experience. I
think I've chosen some wrong books. At the end of
the year of twenty twenty four, I reading The Dragon
(05:01):
Bone Chair by Williams. As his last name, I can't
remember his first name for some reason. I want to
say it's like Chet or something like that. But anyways,
I've read it before, so it was a reread for me.
But halfway through I got really bored and I just
didn't want I didn't want to read it anymore. So
(05:21):
I DNFD it and just yesterday, as at the time
of this recording, I tried reading or listening to the
audiobook of Grace of Kings by Ken Leu, and the
names are so foreign and I just couldn't remember who
was who or which faction was which faction, and so
(05:44):
I ended up dnfing that as well. But I want
to continue with Grace of Kings. I want to try
it maybe a little later on. I've gotten into a
little bit of immersive reading, and if you don't know
what that is, or at least the version I'm talking about,
is when you listen to the audio book and read
it at the same time. I find that this helps
(06:05):
focus by quite a bit. Honestly, I'm able to uh
understand and retain a lot more information about the books
that I read. Sometimes my job really gets in the
way of that. But with the less reading goal, maybe
maybe that will work.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I don't know, so we'll see.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I think I've just chosen some some bad books I
should probably uh select for for well.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It's not really a first.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I have read some fantasy throughout the year of last year,
like The Wandering In, and there's one or two others
I think, but I should I should select something that's
maybe just a little more simple. I listen to a
lot of audio books while I'm at work now, but
sometimes your mind wanders, mostly because you're you're focusing on
what it is you're doing, and that that can be frustrating.
(06:57):
And then suddenly I'm lost and I have no idea
what's going on, so I have to backtrack, and I
hate doing.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
That, so we'll see where that goes.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
It's kind of a weird experience, though, because every time
I sit down to read, I crave reading fantasy. I
guess what I'm craving is the relation I had with
reading fantasy ten fifteen years ago. I used to love it,
and you know, back then you just read whatever's most popular,
(07:29):
a Song of Ice and Fire. But George R. Martin
was typical, you know, Lord of the Rings. I remember
reading that and really loving it. The Wheel of Time books.
Of course, there was others too, and I don't know.
We'll see where it goes. So I might try experimenting
with that. And I think that's all for the reading plans.
(07:52):
I set my goal, as I usually do, at fifty books.
I thought about setting it at forty books, and I
still might go.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Read said it.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And I'm doing another weird experiment for this year because
last year I kept running into problems with good Reads
not being able to display my books that I've read
so far in my reading goal, and that became frustrating
because I always wanted to backtrack and look at what
I was reading, especially for the videos my recent read
(08:23):
videos on YouTube that would explain or go into mini
book reviews of what I read that month. And it's
really frustrating when you can't use that feature. So I'm
experimenting with four different methods of recording my reading this year.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I am using good Reads still.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Honestly I like good Reads, except for you know, they
do have their flaws, especially when the site isn't working.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
That's the most frustrating.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
But I want to continue using good Reads. But I'm
also using the Fable app. The Fable app to record
my reading year story graph I'm using.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I'm going to use that one again. And also.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
I've ordered a reading journal and it should be here
today actually, so I'm excited to dig into that. It
seems a little ludicrous, a bit maybe tracking your reading
four different ways, but I have a goal in mind here.
I want to see what works best, or at least
maybe cut it down next year to just two so
(09:27):
I continue to use good Reads. I can't just stop
using good Reads.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
It's like ingrained in me I have to use good Reads,
but I want to back up and I want to
solid backup, and we'll see which one sticks the best.
All right, So that's it for my reading plans. Up
next is podcast and Jason's Weird Reads videos. So the
podcast obviously is the Weird Reads podcast that you are
(09:56):
listening to right now, and I have another. I don't
know if everyone's going to like this, but I want
to podcast more and do less videos. There's a couple
reasons for this one. My channel has stopped growing for
almost two years now. I've been stuck around the same number.
My growing stats that YouTube shows me sometimes goes into
(10:22):
the minus. So what that stat shows is like your
growth per month, so it's like, in the last month,
you've gained one hundred subscribers. I used to be at
a level where I was getting one hundred subscribers a
month and that has stopped. It's usually hovering around twelve
to fifteen these days, and it, like I.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Said, sometimes it goes into the minus.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Before I left working at the factory, which was a
year and a half ago, there was a period where
it reached minus twenty and I was kind of panicking
at the time, not that I really pay too much
attention to the numbers.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I used to do a.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Lot, but over the years I've decided to let that go.
But when it reaches numbers like that, I start to
get concerned again. Now I know that a lot of
this is my fault. I haven't been putting out the videos.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Like I used to.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
I used to do a lot of top ten lists
that really draw people, but I kind of stop doing that.
I just I just kind of lost interest in doing it,
though I do continuously plan on getting back to it
at some point.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
One thing I think if you look at.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I have a playlist on my YouTube channel, and I
have I think I have like over seventy videos of
top ten lists. I kind of exhausted myself doing that.
But like I said, I will get back to it
at some point. I just don't know when, and I
can't guarantee that that will be in twenty twenty five.
But I want to shift my focus more into podcasts.
(11:58):
As you see here, this isn't a video. If you
go to YouTube, you'll see a lot of book tubers
doing their twenty twenty five plans for the channels and their.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Reading and whatnot. And I'm doing it here on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
I have absolutely no plans on making this into a video,
but I'm not going to stop making videos. I don't
think I can stop. There's other reasons too why I
want to cut back on the videos. The editing time
is so much more longer in my opinion when making
a video because of all the pictures that you put
into the videos and how long you want them to
(12:33):
last up there. I don't want to get rid of
the videos or the pictures within pictures on the screen
that you see so you get like book covers and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I don't want to stop.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Doing that, but I do want to cut back on
my time, and for some reasons that you'll see coming up.
I also want to interview less or maybe more to
the point, more constructively. And what I mean by that
is instead of I would get an email from an
(13:05):
author during twenty twenty four, and they were sometimes very
exciting authors, people who've worked with like George R. R, George R.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Martin, George Romero.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Peter O'Keefe worked with George Romero and I was doing
some research on him and I was like, oh my god,
I got to get this guy on the show. But
there was others that just seemed like to pop at me.
I was like, I got to get them on the show,
and I'm going to read their book and then get
them on the show.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I did that with the.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Majority of my interview people last year, and that kind
of dragged into that really interrupted my mood reading. There
are these all these books I want to read, but
I can't because I'm stuck reading this book even though
it's great. But I really want to go to that
book over there, And this is something I've done pretty
(13:56):
much my whole life, and so I just want to
get back to that. So I will be doing interviews,
and there's some that are planned already. I've got a
couple more interviews on the horizon.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
One should be easy.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Because I've already read the book, but I do have
to read one and a half more because I'm not
gonna I'm not going to announce them just yet because
you never know. But I have some plans regarding interviewing authors,
but to get back to the being more constructive about it.
(14:29):
So I want to read books by authors and if
one really strikes me, then I want to say, oh,
I'm going to try to get this guy on the
on the podcast. So this will free up some some
mood reading time for me. I'll be able to say, Okay,
I really enjoyed this book. Now let me go see
if the author will come on the on the episode
and chat about it with me, instead of me having
(14:51):
to read the book and then and then talk to
them about it and having all that planned before I
even start reading the book. If if you were to
start interviewing authors, unless you're able to stick to a
TBR not worry about the books that you really want
to get to. If you're not a mood reader, then
(15:13):
then that would probably work for you. But if you
are a mood reader, I would maybe suggest approaching talking
to authors in this manner because you know, sometimes you
don't even enjoy the book that much, and so it's
better I think for me anyway, if I enjoyed the book,
so I definitely want to go into more constructive to
(15:36):
my needs and desires for interviewing authors. So that's what
you're going to see in twenty twenty five. There will
be less interviews but more focused interviews. So if that
makes sense, If everything here making sense, so yeah, definitely
(16:00):
don't don't look at seeing the Weird Reads interviews going away,
there's others. There's also something else I want to incorporate
into the Weird Reads podcast. I want more bookish content.
I want to find someone who's willing to go through
and examine Shirley Jackson's short stories with me, for example,
(16:21):
sort of like what Sin and I did for the
Dark Tower series. I want to keep that bookish type
of content going because that's just that's fun.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
I love.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
I used to love just talking about books to a
blank screen or a blank microphone, but now I want
to talk about books with people because that makes it
so much more fun. I want maybe to be a
little bit more loose, because I was reading, like from
the WEEKI for the Dark Tower series. I was getting
the plots from the wiki, but I was just thinking
of maybe having loose conversations where maybe we're diving deep
(16:53):
into whatever short story it is we're examining, but we
don't have.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
To necessarily follow the plot.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
I don't know, We'll figure that out as we get there. Also,
I have plans for a brand new spank and bring
brand new podcast coming in twenty twenty five based on
Stephen King's short stories, So look for that sometime in
(17:20):
twenty twenty five, and I already have some really awesome
guests lined up for this because I don't think I'm
going to be doing any.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Solo episodes on that podcast.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I'm gonna always have a guest with me to discuss
a Stephen King short story. So that's all I'm gonna
that's all I'm gonna delve into right now. You'll have
to wait and see deeper into twenty twenty five. So
coming up on the podcast, I have three interviews planned
(17:56):
and they're gonna come out when they come out. I
can't guarantee a plan, but next up you will see
the interview I did with Richard Thomas before Christmas. There
that's going to be next and you can look for
that probably next week, and then there will be three
(18:17):
more interviews, and then you might well you might see
these podcasts come out a little less for just a
little bit because of everything I'm trying to incorporate into
my creative my creative life. It's like it, honestly, it's
(18:37):
like working two jobs. But I don't mind.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
This is like a.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Huge hobby for me and I really enjoy doing it.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
So maybe you won't.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
See a break in episodes, but I'm just warning you
there might be a break. Winter is here and and
let me if you've my channel at all, you know
how I feel about winter. Winter does not agree with
me at all. My brain literally turns to mush and
(19:08):
I really have to start rationing my energy, if that
makes any sense, because my energy levels sink really bad
in the winter. So we'll see how that goes right now.
There's there's a lot of plans and but we're in
the middle of winter, so so stay tuned. Things will
(19:33):
come out and we'll see where it goes from there,
all right. Next up is Patreon. My Patreon was never
truly successful. I'm hoping that maybe the new Stephen King
podcast will bring some new people. And there was one
thing that I was trying to do on the podcast
(19:53):
or on the Patreon that I just couldn't do. I
don't know why. I think it was because it involved
a lot of video editing and I just didn't want
to do it, but I kind of had to because
I can't stand watching a video myself. I can't stand
watching a video where people are talking about books and
I can't see the book cover. So I was like,
(20:14):
I can't just make my patreons do that, so I
would always add the cover and that you know that
takes time. You have to hunt down the covers first
of all, and then save them to a file and
then upload them all tier editing software and then place
them into the video and then put them in for
the length of time you want them to be there.
(20:35):
So yeah, I decided to x that. So you probably
won't see too many. You might see some reading updates
in podcast format, but I'm also thinking of discussing some
like adaptations of Stephen King stories on the Patreon and
maybe some other noteworthy people like Chirleie Jackson for example.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
My plans aren't exactly written out on that just yet.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
I have a vague idea of what I want to do,
but you're going to see that in the Patreon coming up.
All right, lastly, here I want to talk about my writing.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Writing is.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Something that this is where all of this comes from.
I love writing stories, and for I went through a
long period where I couldn't write because I was at
the factory. And when I was at that factory, if
you've watched my channel at all, you've heard me recount
this several times. So I'll keep it brief. I was
(21:37):
working the Continental shift, which is you switch between nights
and days every two weeks and it's twelve hour shifts.
I was exhausted all the time, so I couldn't I
couldn't write. I couldn't write anything longer in a short story,
and I couldn't even do that on a regular basis.
So I'd write maybe two short stories a year, and
(22:00):
I usually did that because I was invited to do
an anthology, So writing anything long for him went away.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
But it's back now.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
I am nearly done the first draft for a novella
I've been working on for the past two or three months,
and that that's exciting. I think I'm about eighty percent.
I think I'm entering the last twenty percent of this thing,
and it's going to be between twenty five to thirty
thousand words, so that should be about one hundred to
one hundred and twenty pages or something like that, and
(22:34):
so you could quite possibly see new fiction released from
me in twenty twenty five. Keep that, and you know,
a lot of these things that I'm backing up on
with the videos and whatnot is because of the writing.
I don't want to I'd rather write before writing took
(22:55):
first first. I planned on writing and doing everything else second,
not of course, excluding family. Family always comes first. But
when it comes to like my hobbies and my creative life,
writing always came first, and then videos. For the longest time,
doing videos for YouTube came first. And you've seen a
(23:16):
leg I haven't been making as many videos as I
used to.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
And one huge reason.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
For this is that I'm writing again, and it feels
so good. I can't explain to you how good it feels.
It's like I've been waiting for this, and I thought
maybe it was gone for good because it was about
a period of eight years where I wasn't writing and
that felt horrible.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I feel really good that I'm writing again.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
So one more thing here, I do have an article
that I wrote for the Bookworms Horror zign Regina from
Haunted Book Library. She runs this magazine. You probably know that,
and yeah, I wrote a small little article. It's going
(24:09):
to come out in the Space Horror volume, which I
don't know when it's coming out, but I'll let you
guys know when it does.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
So thank you to Regina for accepting my piece.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
For that, I was really excited when she said yes,
and so, like I said, I'll keep you guys updated
on all that. So thank you for listening. I have big,
big plans for twenty twenty five. And as I was
going through this list here, I started to feel that
niggle of worry. It's like, can I actually do this?
(24:42):
Because I often have to ration my energy levels. But
the one thing is like, I find it much easier
to edit podcasts.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
I don't really.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Go and edit all the ums and ahs and silences
you may have noticed on the podcast. I will do
it for the videos sometimes, but editing podcasts is like
it takes me ten minutes, maybe twenty at the most.
I don't go into the detail that they suggest you
do because I a lot of the podcasts I listen
(25:16):
to that are quite popular don't do that either, So
what's the sense anyways?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
So that's it.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That's my plans for twenty twenty five. Thank you so
much for listening. And like I said, next up will
be that interview with Richard Thomas that I did on
the podcast or on the Jason's Weird Reads YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
You'll see that coming very shortly. And thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Keep being weird, my friends, and keep being safe and
I'll catch you guys in the next podcast. Li
You're listening to the Weird Reader podcast, an extension of
Jason's Weird Reads found on YouTube. Welcome, Welcome to episode
forty five of the Weird Reads podcast. I am your host,
(00:32):
Jason White, and this is something I've been kind of
neglecting about doing for a little while because I didn't
know exactly how to formulate into words what it was
I was planning on doing for the year twenty twenty five.
But I knew what I was going to do. It
was just a matter of sitting down and putting it
(00:52):
into a list. And I've finally done that, and so
episode forty five here is my list the things I
plan on do doing for the channel, the Jason's Weird
Reads YouTube channel, and the podcast here, and there's also
an announce sort of announcement. I'm gonna tell you some
(01:12):
of my plans, but I'm not necessarily announcing anything yet,
so you'll get a good idea of what I plan
on doing in twenty twenty five. So I've broken it
down into a list, as I mentioned, and I've got
subheadings here for this list. So twenty twenty five involves reading,
So I have some reading plans that I want to
(01:34):
discuss some podcasts and Jason's Weird Reads videos plans, Patreon plans,
and my own writing plans. So how about we get
into it right after this small break. If you like
(01:56):
what I'm doing here and want to support the channel
without involved any money on your part, you can do
so by sharing the podcast on social media.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
You can also write a review on.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Apple Podcasts or rate the show on Spotify. I can't
stress enough to you how much I would appreciate that alone.
Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or rate the
show on Spotify. As I just said, each and every
way you can help out the channel and podcast grow
would be greatly appreciated.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
All right, So what am I going to be reading
in twenty and twenty five? Well that's an interesting question.
If you've missed my wrap up video, my twenty twenty
four reading year was absolutely fantastic. I knocked some things
out of the park for me anyway.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I read eighty five books in total.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
That's the most I've ever read in a year. Ever,
I don't know I've to be I think I've only
reached like seventy five. I think that was the most
I ever read before then, But what surprised me more
was my page count. I have never read this many
pages in a year. I read twenty eight thousand pages.
(03:15):
That's a lot for me, and quite honestly, I did
this fairly effortlessly. The only problems I had was struggling
through some of the books I didn't feel like reading,
even though I enjoyed them, But I had to do
it for interviews, and we're going to get to that
in a second.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
But I want to.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Read less this year, not because I don't want to
smash that goal that I reached in twenty twenty four.
To be honest with you, I absolutely want to go
and smash that goal and read maybe ninety or one
hundred books. But honestly, I have some other goals that
are intruding upon that, and that's perfectly fine. I don't
(03:54):
need to go read eighty five books. So I want
to read less books this year because I want to
focus on certain things.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
You'll see below exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Where I'm going with this, But right now I just
want to say, in this moment, I want to say
that twenty twenty five will be a year of looking
deeper into certain stories, a lot of short stories, so yeah,
you'll see that when I get to the podcasting and
the YouTube channel. But before I get into that, I
(04:23):
just want to mention that I want to read more fantasy,
kind of like I used to. There's so much more
fantasy out now than there ever has been. I think
fantasy has just completely blown up, and I think, honestly.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
YouTube is.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Probably really kind of responsible for that and to some degree,
but I have run into some roadblocks. I've tried reading
some books and I just didn't enjoy my experience. I
think I've chosen some wrong books. At the end of
the year of twenty twenty four, I reading The Dragon
(05:01):
Bone Chair by Williams. As his last name, I can't
remember his first name for some reason. I want to
say it's like Chet or something like that. But anyways,
I've read it before, so it was a reread for me.
But halfway through I got really bored and I just
didn't want I didn't want to read it anymore. So
(05:21):
I DNFD it and just yesterday, as at the time
of this recording, I tried reading or listening to the
audiobook of Grace of Kings by Ken Leu, and the
names are so foreign and I just couldn't remember who
was who or which faction was which faction, and so
(05:44):
I ended up dnfing that as well. But I want
to continue with Grace of Kings. I want to try
it maybe a little later on. I've gotten into a
little bit of immersive reading, and if you don't know
what that is, or at least the version I'm talking about,
is when you listen to the audio book and read
it at the same time. I find that this helps
(06:05):
focus by quite a bit. Honestly, I'm able to uh
understand and retain a lot more information about the books
that I read. Sometimes my job really gets in the
way of that. But with the less reading goal, maybe
maybe that will work.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I don't know, so we'll see.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I think I've just chosen some some bad books I
should probably uh select for for well.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It's not really a first.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I have read some fantasy throughout the year of last year,
like The Wandering In, and there's one or two others
I think, but I should I should select something that's
maybe just a little more simple. I listen to a
lot of audio books while I'm at work now, but
sometimes your mind wanders, mostly because you're you're focusing on
what it is you're doing, and that that can be frustrating.
(06:57):
And then suddenly I'm lost and I have no idea
what's going on, so I have to backtrack, and I
hate doing.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
That, so we'll see where that goes.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
It's kind of a weird experience, though, because every time
I sit down to read, I crave reading fantasy. I
guess what I'm craving is the relation I had with
reading fantasy ten fifteen years ago. I used to love it,
and you know, back then you just read whatever's most popular,
(07:29):
a Song of Ice and Fire. But George R. Martin
was typical, you know, Lord of the Rings. I remember
reading that and really loving it. The Wheel of Time books.
Of course, there was others too, and I don't know.
We'll see where it goes. So I might try experimenting
with that. And I think that's all for the reading plans.
(07:52):
I set my goal, as I usually do, at fifty books.
I thought about setting it at forty books, and I
still might go.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Read said it.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And I'm doing another weird experiment for this year because
last year I kept running into problems with good Reads
not being able to display my books that I've read
so far in my reading goal, and that became frustrating
because I always wanted to backtrack and look at what
I was reading, especially for the videos my recent read
(08:23):
videos on YouTube that would explain or go into mini
book reviews of what I read that month. And it's
really frustrating when you can't use that feature. So I'm
experimenting with four different methods of recording my reading this year.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I am using good Reads still.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Honestly I like good Reads, except for you know, they
do have their flaws, especially when the site isn't working.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
That's the most frustrating.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
But I want to continue using good Reads. But I'm
also using the Fable app. The Fable app to record
my reading year story graph I'm using.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I'm going to use that one again. And also.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
I've ordered a reading journal and it should be here
today actually, so I'm excited to dig into that. It
seems a little ludicrous, a bit maybe tracking your reading
four different ways, but I have a goal in mind here.
I want to see what works best, or at least
maybe cut it down next year to just two so
(09:27):
I continue to use good Reads. I can't just stop
using good Reads.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
It's like ingrained in me I have to use good Reads,
but I want to back up and I want to
solid backup, and we'll see which one sticks the best.
All right, So that's it for my reading plans. Up
next is podcast and Jason's Weird Reads videos. So the
podcast obviously is the Weird Reads podcast that you are
(09:56):
listening to right now, and I have another. I don't
know if everyone's going to like this, but I want
to podcast more and do less videos. There's a couple
reasons for this one. My channel has stopped growing for
almost two years now. I've been stuck around the same number.
My growing stats that YouTube shows me sometimes goes into
(10:22):
the minus. So what that stat shows is like your
growth per month, so it's like, in the last month,
you've gained one hundred subscribers. I used to be at
a level where I was getting one hundred subscribers a
month and that has stopped. It's usually hovering around twelve
to fifteen these days, and it, like I.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Said, sometimes it goes into the minus.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Before I left working at the factory, which was a
year and a half ago, there was a period where
it reached minus twenty and I was kind of panicking
at the time, not that I really pay too much
attention to the numbers.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I used to do a.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Lot, but over the years I've decided to let that go.
But when it reaches numbers like that, I start to
get concerned again. Now I know that a lot of
this is my fault. I haven't been putting out the videos.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Like I used to.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
I used to do a lot of top ten lists
that really draw people, but I kind of stop doing that.
I just I just kind of lost interest in doing it,
though I do continuously plan on getting back to it
at some point.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
One thing I think if you look at.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I have a playlist on my YouTube channel, and I
have I think I have like over seventy videos of
top ten lists. I kind of exhausted myself doing that.
But like I said, I will get back to it
at some point. I just don't know when, and I
can't guarantee that that will be in twenty twenty five.
But I want to shift my focus more into podcasts.
(11:58):
As you see here, this isn't a video. If you
go to YouTube, you'll see a lot of book tubers
doing their twenty twenty five plans for the channels and their.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Reading and whatnot. And I'm doing it here on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
I have absolutely no plans on making this into a video,
but I'm not going to stop making videos. I don't
think I can stop. There's other reasons too why I
want to cut back on the videos. The editing time
is so much more longer in my opinion when making
a video because of all the pictures that you put
into the videos and how long you want them to
(12:33):
last up there. I don't want to get rid of
the videos or the pictures within pictures on the screen
that you see so you get like book covers and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I don't want to stop.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Doing that, but I do want to cut back on
my time, and for some reasons that you'll see coming up.
I also want to interview less or maybe more to
the point, more constructively. And what I mean by that
is instead of I would get an email from an
(13:05):
author during twenty twenty four, and they were sometimes very
exciting authors, people who've worked with like George R. R, George R.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Martin, George Romero.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Peter O'Keefe worked with George Romero and I was doing
some research on him and I was like, oh my god,
I got to get this guy on the show. But
there was others that just seemed like to pop at me.
I was like, I got to get them on the show,
and I'm going to read their book and then get
them on the show.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I did that with the.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Majority of my interview people last year, and that kind
of dragged into that really interrupted my mood reading. There
are these all these books I want to read, but
I can't because I'm stuck reading this book even though
it's great. But I really want to go to that
book over there, And this is something I've done pretty
(13:56):
much my whole life, and so I just want to
get back to that. So I will be doing interviews,
and there's some that are planned already. I've got a
couple more interviews on the horizon.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
One should be easy.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Because I've already read the book, but I do have
to read one and a half more because I'm not
gonna I'm not going to announce them just yet because
you never know. But I have some plans regarding interviewing authors,
but to get back to the being more constructive about it.
(14:29):
So I want to read books by authors and if
one really strikes me, then I want to say, oh,
I'm going to try to get this guy on the
on the podcast. So this will free up some some
mood reading time for me. I'll be able to say, Okay,
I really enjoyed this book. Now let me go see
if the author will come on the on the episode
and chat about it with me, instead of me having
(14:51):
to read the book and then and then talk to
them about it and having all that planned before I
even start reading the book. If if you were to
start interviewing authors, unless you're able to stick to a
TBR not worry about the books that you really want
to get to. If you're not a mood reader, then
(15:13):
then that would probably work for you. But if you
are a mood reader, I would maybe suggest approaching talking
to authors in this manner because you know, sometimes you
don't even enjoy the book that much, and so it's
better I think for me anyway, if I enjoyed the book,
so I definitely want to go into more constructive to
(15:36):
my needs and desires for interviewing authors. So that's what
you're going to see in twenty twenty five. There will
be less interviews but more focused interviews. So if that
makes sense, If everything here making sense, so yeah, definitely
(16:00):
don't don't look at seeing the Weird Reads interviews going away,
there's others. There's also something else I want to incorporate
into the Weird Reads podcast. I want more bookish content.
I want to find someone who's willing to go through
and examine Shirley Jackson's short stories with me, for example,
(16:21):
sort of like what Sin and I did for the
Dark Tower series. I want to keep that bookish type
of content going because that's just that's fun.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
I love.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
I used to love just talking about books to a
blank screen or a blank microphone, but now I want
to talk about books with people because that makes it
so much more fun. I want maybe to be a
little bit more loose, because I was reading, like from
the WEEKI for the Dark Tower series. I was getting
the plots from the wiki, but I was just thinking
of maybe having loose conversations where maybe we're diving deep
(16:53):
into whatever short story it is we're examining, but we
don't have.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
To necessarily follow the plot.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
I don't know, We'll figure that out as we get there. Also,
I have plans for a brand new spank and bring
brand new podcast coming in twenty twenty five based on
Stephen King's short stories, So look for that sometime in
(17:20):
twenty twenty five, and I already have some really awesome
guests lined up for this because I don't think I'm
going to be doing any.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Solo episodes on that podcast.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I'm gonna always have a guest with me to discuss
a Stephen King short story. So that's all I'm gonna
that's all I'm gonna delve into right now. You'll have
to wait and see deeper into twenty twenty five. So
coming up on the podcast, I have three interviews planned
(17:56):
and they're gonna come out when they come out. I
can't guarantee a plan, but next up you will see
the interview I did with Richard Thomas before Christmas. There
that's going to be next and you can look for
that probably next week, and then there will be three
(18:17):
more interviews, and then you might well you might see
these podcasts come out a little less for just a
little bit because of everything I'm trying to incorporate into
my creative my creative life. It's like it, honestly, it's
(18:37):
like working two jobs. But I don't mind.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
This is like a.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Huge hobby for me and I really enjoy doing it.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
So maybe you won't.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
See a break in episodes, but I'm just warning you
there might be a break. Winter is here and and
let me if you've my channel at all, you know
how I feel about winter. Winter does not agree with
me at all. My brain literally turns to mush and
(19:08):
I really have to start rationing my energy, if that
makes any sense, because my energy levels sink really bad
in the winter. So we'll see how that goes right now.
There's there's a lot of plans and but we're in
the middle of winter, so so stay tuned. Things will
(19:33):
come out and we'll see where it goes from there,
all right. Next up is Patreon. My Patreon was never
truly successful. I'm hoping that maybe the new Stephen King
podcast will bring some new people. And there was one
thing that I was trying to do on the podcast
(19:53):
or on the Patreon that I just couldn't do. I
don't know why. I think it was because it involved
a lot of video editing and I just didn't want
to do it, but I kind of had to because
I can't stand watching a video myself. I can't stand
watching a video where people are talking about books and
I can't see the book cover. So I was like,
(20:14):
I can't just make my patreons do that, so I
would always add the cover and that you know that
takes time. You have to hunt down the covers first
of all, and then save them to a file and
then upload them all tier editing software and then place
them into the video and then put them in for
the length of time you want them to be there.
(20:35):
So yeah, I decided to x that. So you probably
won't see too many. You might see some reading updates
in podcast format, but I'm also thinking of discussing some
like adaptations of Stephen King stories on the Patreon and
maybe some other noteworthy people like Chirleie Jackson for example.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
My plans aren't exactly written out on that just yet.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
I have a vague idea of what I want to do,
but you're going to see that in the Patreon coming up.
All right, lastly, here I want to talk about my writing.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Writing is.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Something that this is where all of this comes from.
I love writing stories, and for I went through a
long period where I couldn't write because I was at
the factory. And when I was at that factory, if
you've watched my channel at all, you've heard me recount
this several times. So I'll keep it brief. I was
(21:37):
working the Continental shift, which is you switch between nights
and days every two weeks and it's twelve hour shifts.
I was exhausted all the time, so I couldn't I
couldn't write. I couldn't write anything longer in a short story,
and I couldn't even do that on a regular basis.
So I'd write maybe two short stories a year, and
(22:00):
I usually did that because I was invited to do
an anthology, So writing anything long for him went away.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
But it's back now.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
I am nearly done the first draft for a novella
I've been working on for the past two or three months,
and that that's exciting. I think I'm about eighty percent.
I think I'm entering the last twenty percent of this thing,
and it's going to be between twenty five to thirty
thousand words, so that should be about one hundred to
one hundred and twenty pages or something like that, and
(22:34):
so you could quite possibly see new fiction released from
me in twenty twenty five. Keep that, and you know,
a lot of these things that I'm backing up on
with the videos and whatnot is because of the writing.
I don't want to I'd rather write before writing took
(22:55):
first first. I planned on writing and doing everything else second,
not of course, excluding family. Family always comes first. But
when it comes to like my hobbies and my creative life,
writing always came first, and then videos. For the longest time,
doing videos for YouTube came first. And you've seen a
(23:16):
leg I haven't been making as many videos as I
used to.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
And one huge reason.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
For this is that I'm writing again, and it feels
so good. I can't explain to you how good it feels.
It's like I've been waiting for this, and I thought
maybe it was gone for good because it was about
a period of eight years where I wasn't writing and
that felt horrible.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I feel really good that I'm writing again.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
So one more thing here, I do have an article
that I wrote for the Bookworms Horror zign Regina from
Haunted Book Library. She runs this magazine. You probably know that,
and yeah, I wrote a small little article. It's going
(24:09):
to come out in the Space Horror volume, which I
don't know when it's coming out, but I'll let you
guys know when it does.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
So thank you to Regina for accepting my piece.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
For that, I was really excited when she said yes,
and so, like I said, I'll keep you guys updated
on all that. So thank you for listening. I have big,
big plans for twenty twenty five. And as I was
going through this list here, I started to feel that
niggle of worry. It's like, can I actually do this?
(24:42):
Because I often have to ration my energy levels. But
the one thing is like, I find it much easier
to edit podcasts.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
I don't really.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Go and edit all the ums and ahs and silences
you may have noticed on the podcast. I will do
it for the videos sometimes, but editing podcasts is like
it takes me ten minutes, maybe twenty at the most.
I don't go into the detail that they suggest you
do because I a lot of the podcasts I listen
(25:16):
to that are quite popular don't do that either, So
what's the sense anyways?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
So that's it.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That's my plans for twenty twenty five. Thank you so
much for listening. And like I said, next up will
be that interview with Richard Thomas that I did on
the podcast or on the Jason's Weird Reads YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
You'll see that coming very shortly. And thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Keep being weird, my friends, and keep being safe and
I'll catch you guys in the next podcast. Li
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