This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #461, on the subject of 2022 In Review.
Each year I try to post an index of everything I published in the previous year. I’ve done it before, obviously, so working backwards you can find previous years (and in the early days of the web log, partial years) at:
- #435: Hindsight is 2021
- #371: The Twenty-Twenty Twenty/Twenty
- #325: The 2019 Recap
- #278: The 2018 Recap
- #219: A 2017 Retrospective
- #150: 2016 Retrospective
- #70: Writing Backwards and Forwards
- #34: Happy Old Year
It has been an unusually productive year–in the sense that it has been productive in unusual ways. In the wake of the release last year of my comprehensive apologetics book Why I Believe from Dimensionfold Publishing, they put to print my summary of time travel theory, The Essential Guide to Time Travel: Temporal Anomalies & Replacement Theory, and republished three earlier books, Do You Trust Me? summarizing salvation by faith as the only way of salvation ever, What Does God Expect? A Gospel-based Approach to Christian Conduct about living a Christian life without following rules, and About the Fruit, a study of the famous passage in Galatians and its place in that book and in the history of the first century church. There is a long list of pending titles moving toward publication next year, beginning with a printed collection of the Faith in Play series–more on that later.
There were twelve entries in that series this year, including several on archetypes, a few on bringing divine acts into the game, some about spirits and the afterlife, and a couple about Christianity and role playing games. The companion series, RPG-ology, also slated to be compiled and released in book form next year, gave us eight recovered Game Ideas Unlimited articles from the old Gaming Outpost series, plus one more originally in the e-zine Daedalus, and a few new suggestions for running games. All of those are indexed at the Christian Gamers Guild, 2022 At the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, along with a few other articles at that site.
There were also many posts on the Chaplain’s Bible Study, which finished the Gospel According to John and began working on Mark, along with several Musings posts.
The Multiverser novels continued in serialized form, finishing the eighth, In Verse Proportion, featuring Joe Kondor, Bob Slade, and Derek Brown, and starting the ninth, Con Verse Lea, with the return of Lauren Hastings, Tomiko Takano, and James Beam. These were accompanied by behind-the-writings peeks as mark Joseph “young” web log posts:
- #437: Characters Relate, covering chapters 22 through 42 of In Verse Proportion;
- #440: Changing Worlds, covering chapters 43 through 63 of In Verse Proportion;
- #443: Versers Acclimate, covering chapters 64 through 84 of In Verse Proportion;
- #448: Inventive Versers, covering chapters 85 through 105 of In Verse Proportion;
- #452: Versers Ready, covering chapters 106 through 126 of In Verse Proportion;
- #456: Versers Prepare, covering chapters 127 through 147 of In Verse Proportion;
- #460: Versers Reorganize, covering chapters 1 through 17 of Con Verse Lea.
In collaboration with author Eric R. Ashley, I’ve got the tenth and eleventh books fully drafted, and we have started on the twelfth. I also posted updated character sheets for Joseph Kondor, Robert Slade, Derek Brown, Lady Shella, Ezekiel Smith, and Amira Vashti, and am working on the next set of these.
The web log also posted eleven songs–not twelve, because due to government red tape tangles I was off line for a full month, but it only cost us a bit. We saw, and heard (there are audio files linked from the pages which contain the lyrics and a story behind the song) including:
- #436: The Song “Trust Him Again”;
- #438: The Song “Even You”;
- #441: The Song “Fork in the Road”;
- #442: The Song “Call to Worship”;
- #445: The Song “How Many Times”;
- #447: The Song “When I Was Lonely”;
- #450: The Song “Rainy Days”;
- #453: The Song “Never Alone”;
- #455: The Song “King of Glory”;
- #457: The Song “Greater Love”;
- #458: The Song “All I Need”;
Other web log posts included:
- #439: Corpoises: Toward a Story, tossing out some early ideas for a horror story someone asked me to write, as yet unfinished.
- #444: Ability Versus Popularity, explaining why awards given for being best as voted by the public tell nothing of the ability of the recipients.
- #446: The Religious Freedom Abortion Argument, addresses the claim that laws limiting abortion impinge on the religious rights of some people.
- #449: Cruel and Unusual, critiques the strategy of boycotting drug companies that provide drugs for lethal injection.
- #451: The Bethel/Hillsong Music Controversy, discusses whether and when to boycott Christian artists for supposed heresy.
- #454: In Re: Comes the Storm, a review of a book of devotional poetry requested by the publisher.
- #459: Publication Anticipation, looks at my recently published books, and the long list of books coming in the days ahead.
There was a new analysis added to the Temporal Anomalies site, Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies unravels The History of Time Travel, a clever mockumentary in which time travel was never invented because its inventor prevented it.
Those upcoming books include compilations of the first five years of articles in the Faith in Play and RPG-ology series, plus a book of collected essays on role playing games, and then I hope to see a series of commentaries on the New Testament, one book at a time. I began with Romans a decade and a half ago, worked my way through the end of Revelation, then doubled back to do John, Mark, and Matthew, and am currently working on Luke. after that, I will be going through Acts, which will complete the New Testament hopefully within my lifetime.
On the web, I have a few Faith in Play and RPG-ology entries queued to post and a couple more waiting for me to set them up. There will be more web log posts, and hopefully I’ll get to some of the time travel movies I’ve noted are available on various web streaming services. Of course, the novels continue, and the Bible Study will be around for a while yet.
I have an Instagram account, and early in the year I decided to post some of my Gazebos in the Wild photos to it, along with some other things there. They are mostly in the categories of nonsense or personal, but you’re welcome to look.
Those who wish to stay current on what is being posted can get that from my social media outlets, but particularly Patreon, where I announce everything that posts on the day it posts, other than the Bible Study; and the Goodreads web log The Ides of Mark which publishes twice a month and includes the Bible Study posts.
There are also still more songs to come, and one should be released later today.