Been a while since the last post, hasn’t it? I’ve been having kind of a hard time lately and it’s made it difficult to write posts… this isn’t supposed to be personal so I’ll avoid getting into it too much. The views have really tanked as a result of the lack of new content, which makes me worry that I’ve thrown away all my progress, but what’s done is done.

But I’m not giving up, so don’t take it the wrong way.

I’m gonna try to get back to posting at least twice a month after New Year’s. That’s really the best I can offer at the moment, but I hope it’s enough to re-energize the place some. For now, happy holidays, and do come back to see what I’ve got next year.

Once again this month, I’ve tossed my hat into the ring to join forces with many of my fellow indie authors to promote our works together. This weekend only, you can grab Eidolon, the second book in my Lance Canela series, for just 99 cents! But there’s over one hundred other books available to choose from, including sci-fi, fantasy, and even horror genres. Click the image below and choose your preferred ebook vendor to get started:

And while The Arcology isn’t part of the promo this month, I’ve marked it down to $0.99 as well, so if you missed last month, here’s your chance. I probably won’t be doing another deal for a while, so get them both while you can.

To my American readers, Happy 4th of July! Summer’s in full swing, so if you’re the outdoors type I hope you enjoy it. Me, I’ll be hiding from the sun in an attempt to get Eidolon out by the fall… and maybe because I have a tendency to turn crispy rather quick this time of year.

On that note, Smashwords is helping out your summer reading list with a great sale throughout the month of July, and I’ve opted to put The Arcology on sale as part of it. Until the 31st, you can get a 50% off discount on the ebook version of The Arcology, in any format! Just use coupon code SSW50. What better way to appreciate a sunny beach than by reading about a rainy dystopia? That is what people like to do on beaches, right?

There are a lot of other great books on sale too, so do browse the sale page and see what else strikes your fancy. If you do pick up The Arcology, thanks! You can help me out even more by leaving reviews, be they on Amazon, Goodreads, or right there on Smashwords. Reviews mean a lot!

On June 4, 2014, RetroPhaseShift went live for the first time. It’s been 2 years since then, and boy, has the site been through a lot of changes, from posting schedules and topics of focus to huge influxes of visitors and changes of hosts. I thought I’d share some of what I consider to be the site’s most important moments today, and some interesting statistics I’ve collected.

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Hello readers. I’m so sorry about the lack of posts recently. Without going into too much detail, I’ve been pretty sick for the last few weeks and finally got over it just now. I tried to put together some posts during this time, and I have a few that were half written, but nothing I was confident about posting without more effort than I could dedicate to it at the time.

No worries, as I’m doing just fine now and it’s not a chronic condition or anything. To be honest, I’m pretty bummed that I’ve had my first month pass by with no posts… not a good start for any new readers who made their way here from The Arcology. I hope the sizable backlog has been enough to entertain you!

The site’s second anniversary is quickly approaching, and I hope I can make up for the lackluster May with some really special content in June, starting with a SHIELD season 3 retrospective this coming week. As always, thanks for visiting, and I hope you’ll keep coming by for some time to come.

It feels weird to not have a picture on the right, so have this shot of faux-redshirt Max.

What? A news update? Yeah I don’t usually do these but it’s a fairly big change headed forward, so it seemed appropriate.

You might have noticed I haven’t done reviews for the last two SHIELD episodes. This is because I’ve decided to put reviews on indefinite hiatus for the time being. Why? Well, for one, it’s hard to compete with big sites that put up reviews immediately after the episode airs, especially since I usually want to watch the episode at least twice so I can really dig into it before posting. Trying to rush them out really just ruins my ability to enjoy the show and that’s no fun. Secondly, they just don’t get that many views; obviously that’s related to the big sites, but also just because a lot of people don’t look for that sort of thing. So far, the most popular reviews have been for episodes where something wasn’t explained to the viewer properly, or some piece of information that seemed innocuous at the time ended up being really important later. People who don’t remember that thing google it and end up here. Recall our old buddy Kai from Defiance, for example. I had contemplated not doing reviews for SHIELD season 3 at all, but ended up starting them anyway and now wish I hadn’t. There’s also the fact that I generally find SHIELD to be of such high quality that I’m mostly gushing about it and don’t have much to criticize. It makes for a rather dull review, if you ask me, and I’d prefer not to waste my time writing glowing reviews each and every week. I can always do that on Reddit in a more interesting and conversational manner. I will still be doing occasional reviews on CutPrintFilm, and season-long retrospectives are still in order.

The other news, partially related to the above, is that I’ve been writing a book of my own for a while now and I’m nearing the final stages before release. This has been in the works on and off for about 3 years now, so I hope my readers here will be willing to give a sci-fi world of my own creation a chance. I don’t want to get into this too much right now, but I will say it’s cyberpunk, or at least a descendant of cyberpunk, hardboiled (with a bit of fandom-related tropes thrown in). There’s a big new world I want to show you, but that’ll come in time.

For now, I’m going to stick with doing the Friday Four each week, a primer in the middle of the month, and a What Could Have Been at the end of the month, if possible. Primers take a long time because I try to watch the entire series before I write one up, and WCHB tends to require a lot of research that doesn’t always pan out in time, so I can’t do them more often than that. With Max Headroom, I was able to dig up a lot of info from a lot of different sources; with Earth 2, there was only one source to work with. Or take Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which I didn’t have enough info on when I first attempted it last November, but slowly gathering more over the following months eventually enabled me to publish it. So sometimes those just have to be delayed. If that does happen, I will try to put together a list-type WCHB, like I have in the past, to post the following Friday.

I think that about covers it. Thanks to the loyal readers–I hope you’ll stick with me in the months ahead, both here on the site and as I expand beyond it. As always, you can post in the comments or get in touch with me on Twitter @RetroPhaseShift if you want to discuss it more.

Welcome to RetroPhaseShift! This blog will be centered around science fiction, particularly television series but also films, novels, and perhaps some of my own work down the line. I plan to review Sci-fi TV series as they air, starting with Defiance in a few weeks. I may also muse on the state of the fandom and sci-fi culture in general, but that will be much less frequent. I’m also planning to start with 2-3  updates a week, so stay tuned.

Here’s to new beginnings!