This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.
You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
So I am here because I have something to say.
I got announcements, I got news, and I have updates, I guess?
I don't know.
I'll start with the announcements, news, and updates.
Wait, that's everything I said I had?
Hmm, okay.
Well, let me slow down a bit.
I'm going to tell you this is episode 44 of Story Over Everything, and it's going to
be called something like, Can I Be the Master of Middle Grade?
And that might be a pretentious, ostentatious, overdramatic title slash question slash prompt
for the episode, but I promise I'm going to deliver on that.
At least for the episode.
In real life, we'll see how things go.
So here we go.
My first announcement, or a little bit of news, is that I'm back.
Story Over Everything, the long hiatus is over.
It's done.
I think I'm going to keep pretty consistent on here.
I preference everything going back to MJMunoz.com.
So everything's going up in the blog.
And what do I mean by everything?
I mean that every day I'm doing my best to make sure I take 10 minutes to draw, 10 minutes
to write, I take about five more minutes to read or play that back and record some sort
of commentary over that, and I'm taking maybe five to 10 more minutes over that.
So really it's like an hour a day with stack.
If you take both and multiply everything out, it's about an hour a day of writing and drawing
and getting it packaged and processed and posted online.
So where am I doing it?
I'm doing it on my website mainly, but I'm also doing it on TikTok, which allows up to
10 minute long videos.
So I try to keep them under that link and they're going to YouTube as well.
But I've also decided that I'm going to start publishing them on the RSS feed as well.
So again, the preference is the blog.
The secondary place I want you going is subscribing to the podcast.
And the third place I want you going is to YouTube and TikTok, I guess.
That's third and fourth.
They're tied for three and four because I don't really feel strongly about either one
of them.
Yeah, I don't feel very strongly about either one of them.
So excuse me.
That's that's kind of the way I think structured for myself.
And I to finish things off, I mean to say that with all that content I'm producing,
by the way, I have I don't know, maybe 100 videos that I have saved and processed like
this that are not lost.
I know where they are, but I'm not going to take the time to publish them right now because
I don't have an as the as the refrain goes on this show, I don't have a lot of time and
I don't have a lot of money.
And I pray that'll change soon.
And I'll be able to say I do have a lot of time.
I do have a lot of money in this time using it and being a blessing to other people.
So anyway, I'm still still doing my best to bless now.
But that's that's a story for another time.
But what my point is, is that you can now tune in and subscribe to the RSS feed for
the audio only version of the podcast and you can get my commentary from my writing
and from my drawn.
Now, the commentary for the writing, I'm actually reading back what I wrote and then I'm making
some sort of commentary on it.
Excuse me.
Getting over a little cold in the midst of it.
I'm at the tail end of a cold.
So bear with me, please.
And for the drawing, yeah, you're not going to be able to see it, but you're going to
be able to hear my commentary on it.
And I will provide links in the show notes of the audio podcast that take you back to
MGMooners.com.
Yes, you know exactly where I'm going with this.
Anyway, everything leads you back there so that you can go check out all that good stuff,
see the images, maybe even pop over and see the video if you want to, or maybe if you're
not that excited by the, you know, less than three minute process for me to draw.
And actually when you, I can speed it up times eight.
And when I do that, excuse me, my throat's hurting.
You know, they say that they say, whoever they are, that Benjamin Franklin said that
beer is proof that God exists and who loves us.
And I'm going to agree with that and say coffee is the same thing.
Coffee hot drinks.
It's amazing how good a hot drink can feel in your throat when you're parched, when you're
thirsty, when you got a little bit of cough or a sore throat.
It's stellar.
It's amazing.
It's miraculous.
We live with miracles every day.
Anyway, getting back on track.
My point is that, you know what?
I actually lost the thread here.
I'm so excited and I'm so in a frenzy that I'm having a little bit of a hard time.
So please excuse me.
I think my overall point is that now instead of just having YouTube and Tik Tok videos
going up, encapsulating my 10 minute writing and my 10 minute drawing videos, which you
can't see the drawing video.
Oh, here we go.
You can't see the drawing video in obviously the audio format, but the audio format links
you to the website so that you can see the finished picture.
Oh yeah, that's what I was going to say.
When I record for 10 minutes my self drawing and I multiply by eight, which is the fastest
that my video recording software is able to utilize at this time, it basically shrinks
the video down to about a minute and 20 seconds, I think.
Then I have other stuff on there.
It's too long for an actual YouTube short, which at this point is one minute long.
Oh boy.
And it's an okay length for a Tik Tok or for like just a short YouTube video, but I'm also
using it as a, I'm also turning it into audio because I think I'm, you know, I'm offering
value in that audio.
So you know, I don't feel like I'm cheating.
I'm just putting my content out in like a smart way, which I think is a good thing.
And it makes it so that basically seven days a week I am having posts go up on mgmwimius.com.
Seven days a week I'm having stuff go up on Tik Tok.
Seven days a week I'm having stuff go up on YouTube and seven days a week I'm having something
go into the audio podcast RSS feed.
So I've now gotten to the point, this is the news I guess, I've now gotten to the point
where I figured out a workflow and God willing I'll be able to keep this going where I have
content coming out every single day.
And I'm very happy about that.
And it's something I've wanted to do for a long time.
Now it is all focused on my writing, which is a good thing, but there's other things
I love to podcast about and other things I'd love to work on.
But honestly, my writing is the most important thing to me.
And it's crucial that I turn my writing into a career and the way I think I will be able
to do that is by treating it like a career, giving it dedicated time every day, putting
effort into it every day, and striving to make myself better every day.
And also, the great thing with how I'm doing things is I'm making content, yes, but I'm
also actually writing my books and I'm sharing that with you.
I'm being open and transparent chronicling my journey as an author, artist, and analyzer
to show you how I tweak my designs when I'm drawing, to show you how I improve in my drawing
craft over time, and also to show you my books as they're coming together so you can see
the mistakes.
If you look closely at the videos, you can watch as I erase things or reject things or
I have whole sections that I say, you know, I'm going to throw this out and I'm going
to write over this.
I'm going to completely delete this or trash it for now and instead I'm going to write
this and then you get to see that.
And I'm going to be talking about that in the process as well and it won't be to the
point where you could stitch together all my stuff and get my books.
I mean you'd get a really inferior version of them because I'm going to go through and
edit them and rewrite them as well but that's something I plan to document as well as I
go through.
So anyway, yeah, I would love to do other stuff but I really think I need to be focusing
on my writing which I'm doing and everything I'm drawing isn't it's not just random stuff.
I'm drawing things that are pertinent to the stuff that I'm writing.
So what I'm drawing right now currently as of February 26 2024 is a series of drawings
to figure out these monster characters for a story I want to write in the future.
So yeah, I'm not writing grow bugs or I'm not drawing grow bugs.
I'm not drawing critter bots which maybe I should be doing for synergy instead of drawing
stuff for another project but I'm okay with that for now.
So yeah, that's what I'm doing and I'm happy to be doing that.
And yeah, so my updates and my news are that I'm moving forward vehemently.
I'm getting daily content out even in the short form which is fine and I'm writing actual
stuff and drawing actual stuff which I plan to use for future storytelling in well in
the future.
And my current project is it's a grow bug tale and that is one of the it's one of many
grow bug tales in the grow bug tale series overall and I won't go much into it right
now although I will tell you yeah I'm starting on chapter 15 of grow bug tales.
I'm documenting and sharing that right now as I bring back the podcast for season two
of story over everything and that's that's just something you're gonna have to be okay
with.
There's there's lost stuff there's gaps there's hidden things.
Maybe if I get a Patreon going and I get people giving me a certain amount of money per month
for that I can say yeah you know I'll charge you know thirty dollars an hour to you know
set aside the effort and you know go comb through my archives and get all this stuff
up and I'll give it to the patrons first and then give to other people later.
I don't know I may or may not do something like that just a thought.
That is to say a thought I had spur of the moment and decided to share because of being
overly transparent and speaking of being overly transparent I accidentally shut off my recording
as I was finishing up what I was saying but it reminded me I need to get back on focus
because it's been about 10 minutes where I'm talking about stuff other than the premise
of the episode that I promised to talk about which is me making myself the master of middle
grade.
What does that mean?
How dare I say that and how can I accomplish that?
Well here's the thing I want to write so many things and I want to be involved in so much
storytelling in different forms.
I'd love to make comics or manga, anime, movies, whatever.
To me because the story is prime, story is over everything, I want to focus on just writing
good stories and I do understand that depending on what your medium is you need to change
the way that you tell your stories because stories are told in different ways depending
on how they are consumed by the audience and that's fine.
However, you still need to have a compelling story for you to be successful in telling
your story to people whether it's over a campfire, over a VR headset, through a video game or
audio drama or anything else.
That's important.
That's definitely important and that's something that's important and that's something I understand
and something I acknowledge and yet it's not something I have to fully address at this
time.
So getting back to it.
It turns out that the longer I'm writing the more it seems like I'm turning myself into
or it looks like I'm moving towards being a middle grade book writer for that age bracket
even though as an adult I and other people have read middle grade books and enjoyed them.
There's been middle grade Star Wars books from the High Republic Initiative that they
did a few years back.
I only read one middle grade and a couple of the adult novels.
I think a middle grade of YA and an adult novel or whatever.
I had my thoughts on those.
I talked about them if you want to look through my archives of fully operational you can find
that stuff.
Again if you go to MJBunnyers.com you can look it up and find me talking about those
Star Wars books.
Probably if you type in Star Wars in books you'll find something.
Anyway so yeah I think like for adults I want to be a pulp writer.
What does that mean?
That means I want to write certain types of stories and I want them to be at like a 60,000
word limit.
Because of who I am my pulp novels they won't be lurid.
They won't be necessarily well anyway they won't be lurid or like exploitational I guess
you could say.
They will be exciting and dramatic and have interesting characters in crazy scenarios
and you know dramatic high stakes and pulse pounding pulp action.
Like that's definitely going to be a part of it.
But who I am I'm not going to write well I'm not going to write certain types of things
and that's fine.
I figure the pulp formula the pulp model can be delivered to lots of different audiences
and the fact that there aren't scantily clad women on my book covers and the fact that
there aren't you know hard boiled grimm detectives who change women like they're changing their
cigarettes or go through women like they're going through cigarettes that's fine.
And I don't know for a fact that a lot of the hard boiled detectives are like James
Bond where there's a new woman every story.
Yeah in fact I don't know that so I'm just kind of making a presumption there.
But that's not the kind of thing you're going to get in my pulpy novels.
They'll definitely be super heroic and they'll have other elements to them and I do want
romance and other things but it's not going to be it's going to be suited for my audience
which I really want to write all ages type stuff but just tailor it towards what if you
like superheroes you're going to like this.
My wife for example doesn't like superhero stuff but yeah she doesn't like superhero
stuff and I don't anticipate she'd be interested in reading any of my books that I'm going
to make any of my pulp novels but I've talked to her about some of the subplots and some
of the different ideas I want.
I have one character who I want to have.
I have this whole like a life story planned out for her and a whole romance and family
life for her and my wife says yeah that sounds pretty cool like I still don't think I want
to read it but like you know I get where you're going with that and that sounds cool like
if you dialed up the romance and the relationship stuff and dialed down the superhero super
heroics I'd be interested and I told her well that's fine but you know you can go read that
book right there and you know leave my books alone.
So you know we have an understanding.
We have an understanding.
But before I get to writing my pulps I want to develop my performance as a writer and
my style as a writer and just my career as a writer because I think that would be wise
and because I'm not interested in writing lurid sensational wildly inappropriate stuff
I figure and since I'm into superheroics and fantasy I figure I might be able to write
for a child audience and I in my efforts to write the grow bug tales or kid in the grow
bug picture books I realized I'm writing I'm having a hard time constraining myself to
what the modern market is for children's books and that's part of the reason I want to self
publish my children's books get them fully illustrated and all that good stuff which
is going to take time and money.
I'm more concerned about the money that it'll take them the time because I figure well I
just need to pay for it and it'll take the artist the time and those books are all written.
But as I was thinking things through and realizing how many stories I have that are suitable
for a child audience or a kid audience I thought well maybe I should just shift my expectations
of myself and go ahead and write middle grade books and I don't say that to insult middle
grade.
I don't say that as a dig against middle grade books.
I think they're important.
I think they're good.
I think I mean like as a genre I believe middle grade is more of a marketing thing as most
genres are just so people know where to put things.
But I say that because the kinds of books that I like and the kinds of books that I
prefer are not well I'm not even going to try to read that read Diary of a Wimpy Kid
or Captain Underpants which I think is a those are novels right like middle grade not they're
not comics like Dogman.
Dave Filkey did Captain Underpants and Dogman is that correct?
I think that's right.
Anyway but like that's not my style like I don't want goofy zany written at kids kind
of books.
I believe it I believe that The Hobbit is categorized as a middle grade book or definitely
could be categorized as a middle grade book.
I went through a process to search out what middle grade books are and I found a good
collection of them.
I also think while it is zany and kooky like James and the Giant Peach and is it Willy
Wonka or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
I can't remember one of those two.
I believe the book is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
I believe those Roald Dahl books Matilda as well are all considered middle grade books
even though they kind of predate the categorization of middle grade which is fine.
But more to my point the existence of things like that one proves that or supports the
idea that you know middle grade is a kind of an artificial categorization that was created
at some point and it also supports my notion that I want to write books that are good for
everybody but that are targeted at children.
And what does that mean?
That means the content will fall within a certain within certain parameters as far as
what is allowed to happen in the books.
How those things will be framed and I think the books will be written in a more simple
style.
Now I would I'm just thinking right now I don't I would assume that at this point in
my career as a writer because I've written so little that I wouldn't be able to necessarily
with ease and reliably and consistently write something that is a middle grade book and
then switch over to writing a pulp novel you know a superhero pulp novel meant for teenagers
adults or whoever but that is also accessible to a kid.
I don't necessarily think I'd be able to do that right now I would like to hone my
writing so that I'm able to do those things but like I said as of now I don't think I
have that skill.
The expectations of middle grade books are a shorter length even than the 60k that I'm
looking for for my pulp novels.
Okay so I had an interruption there on multiple levels and now I just want to sharpen my point
and say that I think in order to level up myself as a writer I want to set myself more
realistic goal or the more realistic goal of writing several middle grade books and
having that be my project for the next couple years and by that I mean exclusively writing
middle grade books and after I'm done with those then I can move on.
I'm not saying I will entirely abandon those series if they're lucrative and I still feel
like writing them then I will continue to pour more work into them and maybe just you
know continue them on whatever schedule I determine works for me while I'm switching
over to doing my pulp superhero novels but then again I may be able to do both especially
the more success I gain as an author the more time I'll be able to put into writing and
the more and more I would treat writing as a job instead of you know 10 minutes a day
goal of writing I would give myself a you know half hour then an hour then two hours
three hours four hours and really push myself to during that time be productive and write
book after book after book and that's my preference I like ongoing series I like you know longish
narratives but I also like for there to be a fine point where I get to see the beginning
middle end of a story I get to see an arc for a character or for I guess events in the
character's life and then get to see the adventure continue as the character progresses you know
somewhat slowly and I think having the more narrow focus of a middle grade and getting
more finished books under my belt that'll all help me in my goal becoming a better writer
because I imagine that everything I finish will have a positive cumulative effect as
long as I'm reflecting and thinking about things as I go along I can do that so is
me writing books going to make me the master of middle grade no not necessarily I think
it's important to know your audience and to know your market so I've decided that I will
over the over the course of 2024 read and review a series of middle grade books when
I talk about Chronicles of Narnia Diary of a Wimpy Kid no of course not not Wimpy Kid
I'm that's that does not seem like it would appeal to me and frankly I don't want to
give it a chance and I think that's okay so what I've decided to do is I've done some
research I've looked into things and I've made a list I've made two lists one is classic
middle grade books so to speak and the other is modern middle grade books and classic I'm
going as late as the 80s 1980s 1990s I believe and middle grade or modern I'm going as early
as the you know 1990s 2000s I believe that's how I ever broken down and what I've done
is I'm going to basically read these books in chronological order and I will rotate I
will start because I have a an aversion to the modern stuff just because I like classic
things so much more because I have an aversion to the modern stuff I figure I'm going to
push myself out of my comfort zone and whatever the earliest modern middle grade book is on
my list I will read and review that first and then I will excuse me and then I will
read and review a classic and about once a week I'll be releasing a special skimming
leaves episode slash something else story or everything episode where I will be doing
a casual book chat on each one of those and talking about whether or not I think the books
are worthy whether or not they're quality and yeah I'll be ranking the books basically
and saying where I think they belong and I think that'll be good I think that'll give
me some authority having sampled so much children's fiction so much middle grade fiction for you
know to make the term broad from the past to the present so I don't know that I have
anything from 2024 in there but I definitely have stuff from the 2020s and you know all
in between there so I think I'll get a really interesting cross section of books and I I've
spread out the genres basically I mean so it'll be you know there will be fantasy there
will be more modern stuff things I'm not really interested in reading other than the fact
that I want to do this kind of challenge for myself and establish myself and I don't anticipate
that I will hate those books I just think that you know while they may not be my preference
they're very well maybe merit in them I may enjoy them a lot who knows I'm not going to
say that I will not like wonder it seems weird to me and I've seen that book different places
pop up and I thought huh I don't know what this is about and I feel like the author doesn't
or the published the author or the publisher excuse me doesn't really want me to know what
this is about wants me to guess and I don't like that because I just want to know what
the book is so I can determine whether or not I'm interested in it and then read it
but I feel like you're trying to trick me and I like that but then I'll go ahead and
talk about it so I think I haven't decided the format 100% I kind of think I'll say like
this is my first impression of this book based on the title based on the author what I know
about the author and then I'll say here it is I'm going to read this book and these are
the things I liked didn't like this is you know well it'll be a casual book chat you
know how those go if you've been around and if not that's basically how it goes I just
talk about the book in kind of an unstructured loose way and I'll be doing this series while
I'm doing everything else and it'll all be released on the podcast meet on story over
everything and actually I had kind of started a middle grade series actually two so I was
reading Skoll Charleston's Terra Valley series and there's one more book scheduled to come
out so I'll be listening I'll be yeah I'll be reading slash listening to that and sharing
my thoughts on it probably interviewing squall as I've done with the other two books and
then I actually have the four more Harry Potter books to release a episode about a casual
book chat about and I am I one of them I worked on today I'm going to publish it after this
or I'm going to process it after this and then the others I have basically ready to
go I need to do some modifications them and they get those released so I'm very much prepared
to do that and I'll get those released hopefully in rapid succession before March the start
tonight in doing my research I found out there's something called middle grade March and I
don't know all the details of it it seems a little funny to me a little gimmicky but
that's okay gimmicks gimmicks are good sometimes and I may include some of my own gimmicks
and talking about middle grade books but basically the first week of March I should be releasing
the first of my middle grade things so I'm kind of hitching my myself to that middle
grade March thing effort whatever and that could be kind of interesting I'll see what
happens with that especially with well I'll be curious to see how people perceive my take
on middle grade and then who knows maybe since I want to be in the middle grade world I might
just keep tabs on in like 2025 we're all still here keep working on middle grade stuff as
well reviewing it you know writing it and reviewing it and I don't know we'll see they'll
be interesting to see I might keep that as like a monthly feature or something like that
where I talk about a middle grade book a month and yeah I think that would be interesting
so that's my plan and that's my update that's my plan that's my announcement that's everything
that I have going for this episode and I just ask that you stick around and you look forward
to everything I have coming down the pike and I think it'll be good stuff entertaining
and fun for us all and I'm really excited about some of these books and I'm really interested
to see how I will receive everything I read because there's a lot there it'll fill up
2024 if I do one a week and it'll be really interesting to see what middle grade feels
like to me after going through all these books and yeah I'm really curious to see how people
react to my reactions to a lot of these books new and old new and old anyway I believe that's
it for now so I'm gonna thank you for listening and I'm gonna go ahead and get out of here
this is MJ signing out I hope you enjoyed that go to MJMunoz.com to leave any questions
comments or other feedback you might have there you can find all of my analysis art
and fiction I cover books tokusatsu comic books anime and more look around you're sure
to find something else that you'll enjoy as well this has been a story over everything
production