Vol. 1, Issue 1 – A monthly recap of everything we’ve read, watched, played, and listened to

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Greetings readers! The Latelies have been included in my email newsletter, Postcards, over on Substack for about a year now. Buuuuut those virtual postcards are more like letters with how long they’ve gotten (mostly because I’m wordy and I love sharing the pictures on my camera roll). So I put the length of the newsletter on the backburner to let it simmer.

It’s my self-declared newsletter week (the last week of the month, newly instated way back during the first week of January) and today (at the time of starting this) while stretching and walking my dog friend Mina, it occurred to me that I could pull “The Latelies” from my newsletter and share it here on Mrs. Writer. It’s a work-in-progress idea, but it gets me two things:

• posting more consistently on the blog (monthly!), in addition to the seasonal reads posts
• and helps make the newsletter a teeny bit shorter

(You can take the words out of the newsletter, but you can’t take the…newsletter outta the writer? I might’ve lost the metaphor haha)

So, we’re gonna give a try and see how it goes! Welcome to the first edition of The Latelies!

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• Almost the Chosen One by Paul Regnier // I found Paul on Instagram a couple of years ago when he was releasing his fantasy novel Bard Tidings. Paul started writing this serial story last November and it’s been a delight to read. It’s a take on a classic Fantasy adventure, complete with heroes and a quest—but with a twist! Read it to find out where the heroes hail from! As this goes out, he’s released through Episode 13.
• Flippity Gilbert’s Cottage of Quirks by Emily Barnett // Emily is a writer friend I met through Instagram through a mish-smash of Havok Publishing, #flashfictionmagic, and being on the ARC team for her debut novel Thread of Dreams. She’s delightful, as is this story. At the time of this post going live, there are six chapters available to read.
• Original Works by Katharine Hughes by Katherine Mansfield // Ohmygosh you guys, this story. It’s amazing. I imagine it’s a very real, honest look at the main character’s journey through rehab for addiction. The author Katherine and I met, I believe through a long ago writing community called Illuminate. We’ve followed each other ever since on Instagram and her Stories kept popping up so I watched them and commented and we eventually became friends. And then in November of 2022 we wrote together via Google Meet or Teams, and now fast forward to 2025 and we’re friends who call and catch up and write together! She’s amazing, as is this story. As this goes live, there are seven or eight chapters available to read for free.
• 1890 Philadelphia by Katy J. Schroeder // My friend and fellow hedgie¹ wrote this and I got to beta read it the first half of this month and it’s amazing! I loved it! She’s querying it to agents right now so I can’t share too much about it, but it’s been the coolest thing to cheer her on. It’s YA Historical Fantasy.
• The Black Echo (Bosh Novel #1) by Michael Connelly // Oh Bosch. I’ve loved Thriller/Detective/Ex-CIA Agent Saves the World novels for a looooong time now—thanks Dad! =D this is only my third Bosch novel, staring LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, and I picked up the first one because I finished the television series last fall.
• Lion of the Sky by Ritu Hemnani // Found this at the library last week when I went to print papers. It’s a middle grade novel in-verse and it’s about two friends who are Hindu and Muslim and during the Partition of India in 1947. A beautiful story told from an 12-year old’s perspective.
• Shark Heart by Emily Habek // Finally! I’ve had this on hold on and off since last year. The timing was never right, so I finally took it off, putting it back on at the end of last year, or sometime this month. I had to push it back a couple times, but I’ve finally started it! Sat down to read Saturday night and ended up finishing it. Will definitely buy a paperback copy at some point.
• The Bonehunters (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #6) by Steven Erkison // Ant has been trekking through this series steadfastly for awhile now. The copy he owns was thrifted–I think most of them were, but this copy is the most unique because it doesn’t match the size of the rest of the series. I don’t know how he feels about this one.
• Jude’s letter in the New Testament on Sunday mornings and 1st Kings on Wednesday nights.
• Ant and I are reading through the Bible chronologically per the Christian Standard Bible (CSB)² Day-by-Day Chronological Bible, so we’re in early Genesis right now. Abram and Lot have just separated and things are about to happen! (The Old Testament is a wild place!)

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• The Holdovers // I ended up with the first pick of the new year! I read an article about this movie and I went to Letterboxed to add it to my watch-list and it was already there. I watched the trailer and was intrigued. I really enjoyed it!

• Elf // Ant’s pick for movie night. Comedy is 5 stars. Story is 3 stars. We don’t love Will Ferrell movies, but decided to give it a second change. Loved the comedy, but the dad’s redemption didn’t seem fully fleshed out. We coulddn’t find it on streaming for free, so we serendipitously found it at  a friend’s house.
• Westward the Women // This was my pick for movie night. I grew up watching this movie. My grandma Betty (my mama’s mom) had a huge collection of movies. Many of them starred Elvis, but this movie was one of the few we watched that didn’t have him in. It’s a classic Western movie, staring Robert Taylor, and he’s hired to bring 140/150 women out to his friend Roy’s ranch in California where only men are so far. I’ve been wanting to watch it again for years and received it in my stocking from Mama for Christmas. It was like coming home. I remembered so many of the women and moments, but it was a delight to see it fresh after so long.
• Firefly // Still working my way through this show. I think I’m halfway through and enjoying my rewatch. I haven’t been in a big TV watching mode lately, but it’ll return soon.
• Sword Art Online // I watched what was apparently Season 1 with Ant and started Season 2 and then it kinda slowed down. I’m just not sure why I’m stalling, so Ant’s forging ahead.
• Fruit’s Basket, remake // Ant loved the original Fruits Basket that came out in 2001 so much so that we own it on DVD. The remake/new version has been on his list for a looooong time. He rolled a die and it was finally chosen! I’ve been watching episodes of it with him randomly and I’m loving it, so I added it to my to-watch list as well.
• Football: The Bills at Kansas City divisional playoff game // Oh man was I rooting for the Bills! But alas, KC put on a lot of pressure during that last quarter. I’m so proud the Bills for how far they made it this season.

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• I really want to include songs that I’ve discovered thanks to my Release Radar, so I figured it would be easier to make a “new discoveries” playlist:

• Drew and Ellie Holcomb released their new album this month, Memory Bank and it’s so good!

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Playing

Ant and I have become board game fans in the last six-ish! All games will be linked back to Board Game Geek’s website, which is where I get all my information on games (besides Ant and our friend Rob, of course).

• Skull & Roses // A bluffing game! I’m not good at these types of games, but we played this at game night mid-month and I decided to try and be more…bluffy haha. Description from Board Game Geek’s website:
  • “Each player plays a face-down card, then each player in turn adds one more card – until someone feels safe enough to state that he can turn a number of cards face up and get only roses. Other players can then overbid him, saying they can turn even more cards face up. The highest bidder must then turn that number of cards face up, starting with his own. If he shows only roses, he wins; if he reveals a skull, he loses, placing one of his cards out of play. Two successful challenges wins the game.”
• Splendor // I love this game! I regularly only play it with Ant, but we also played it at game night mid-month. There were four of us and just like with any game with more than two players, it always takes me a couple rounds to figure out my strategy. It’s a chip-collecting and card development game. Players represent merchants trying to buy gems, using gem chips to collect gem cards, which can then stay in their hands permanently.
• Hues and Cues // What feels like the most subjective game ever haha The tagline on Board Game Geek’s website says, “How well can you describe a color hue without using a primary color’s name?” The board is this huge color spectrum board. Players pull a card with four different color options, pick one, and then give everyone else a one-word clue like “banana” or “pumpkin” or “seafoam”, etc. The other players then place their marker on the board, one at a time. There’s a second round of guessing, the “cue giver” can decide to give another clue and the players place their second marker down one at a time in opposite order. Whoever gets the closest gets points and the cue giver can received points as well.
• Sleeping Gods: Distant Skies // Round 2, fight! I still want to call this Distant Gods; Sleeping Giants haha We started this again with Rob and Lauri. We’re all playing as different characters this time around and we’re starting to discover new places and new scenarios. Excited to see where we’ll go next!
• Scrabble // Thankfully Ant enjoys our “tradition” of playing this game! We hadn’t played in awhile, so on the last Friday of the month (when we opted to record a Dark Souls episode and push movie night out to Saturday), we played this afterward. Some of our best words: AHA, CHAOS, DEN + EGO, HEX + OX, INVERT, TEMEPERED, WHAM. Ant won: 248 to 205. Our personal best scores are:
  • Ant: 298
  • Tracy: 280
• Dark Souls 1 // Ant’s playing and I’m watching and reacting. Honestly, last month, I put this under the “watching” category, so it’s subjective *facepalm* We uploaded Parts 15-20 this month: Episodes uploaded this month:

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And there we have it! A month’s worth of stories and games in various forms. Your turn! What did you read, play, listen to, or watch in January? Is there something else you enjoy that you do more regularly than one my latelies? Did you knit, bake, sew, or hike something this month? Feel free to share to the extent that your comfortable 🙂 I’d love to hear from you!

Happy February, my friends!

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1. Writers in the Quill & Cup community are called “hedgies” because it’s a cute nickname for “hedgehogs”. If you want to know more email me at Tracy Erler [dot] Writer [at] gmail [dot] com 🙂 ↩︎
2. I’m reading in this CSB version; Ant’s reading it in his ESV Bible. They’re similar in their word choices. The CSB is supposed to be even a little more simplified, I believe. I was curious about it years ago, so I bought of it so I could see for myself 🙂 ↩︎