This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #490, on the subject of Looking Back.

Once again, as we did last year in web log post #461:  2022 in Review and in previous years linked successively back from there, we are recapping everything published in the past year–sort of.

I say “sort of” because once again some material is being omitted.  There have been a few hundred posts to the Christian Gamers Guild Bible Study which can be accessed there but aren’t really fully indexed anywhere.  Meanwhile, the dozen articles in the Faith in Play series and the similar dozen in the RPG-ology series were just indexed on the Christian Gamers Guild site in 2023 At the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, and won’t be repeated here.  The RPG-ology and Faith in Play series were both released in book form this year, along with two other books, RPG Theory 101 and Other Essays in Role Playing Games and An Analytical Commentary on The Book of Romans.  These are all available in paperback and Kindle format; follow the links for more information about them.

I also posted several days a week on my Patreon web log, which announces almost everything I publish elsewhere on the same day it’s published, but again omitting the Bible study posts.  There is also a bi-monthly review of my work at Goodreads under the title The Ides of Mark, now at sixty-two installments, which does include some information about those Bible Study materials.

This year saw the last of the web log song posts, at least as an ongoing series.  These included:

• #463:  The Song “John Three”, which captures Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea outside the tomb;
• #464:  The Song “The Secret”, an oft-misunderstood song about how to be saved;
• #466:  The Song “In a Mirror Dimly” about the greatness of God;
• #468:  The Song “Present Your Bodies” a strong collection of scriptural admonitions.
• #471:  The Song “Walkin'”, an upbeat evangelistic piece;
• #473:  The Song “In the Light of His Love”, a benediction;
• #477:  The Song “Step by Step”, a long rock operatic piece as a Roman soldier supervises the crucifixion;
• #479:  The Song “They That Trust”, a weird one;
• #481:  The Song “To the Philadelphians”, a live recording with lyrics from Revelation;
• #483:  The Song “Give Me a Vision”, a commissioned choral work reminiscent of Randall Thompson;
• #485:  The Song “Where Did I Go Wrong?”, a recording of an unfinished work;
• #488:  The Songs of Christmas Quick, wrapping up the series and the year with a collection of instrumental arrangements of traditional Christmas songs and carols.

I continued posting the ninth Multiverser novel Con Verse Lea, featuring Lauren Hastings, Tomiko Takano, and James Beam, from chapter 27 to the end (chapter 85), which are indexed there along with several behind-the-writings posts about it, and after posting a few character papers to the support site I continued with the tenth novel, In Version, featuring Robert Slade, James Beam, Joseph Kondor, and Derek Brown, through chapter 91.  Behind-the-writings posts on these two books included web log posts:

• #463:  Characters Unsettled covering chapters 18 through 34 of Con Verse Lea;
• #465:  Characters Wander covering chapters 35 through 51 of Con Verse Lea;
• #470:  Verser Turnings covering chapters 52 through 68 of Con Verse Lea;
• #472:  Versers Vanish covering chapters 69 through 85 of Con Verse Lea;
• #476:  Versers Deduce covering chapters 1 through 12 of In Version;
• #478:  Character Conflicts covering chapters 13 through 24 of In Version;
• #480:  Versers Think covering chapters 25 through 36 of In Version;
• #482:  Versers Engage covering chapters 37 through 48 of In Version;
• #484:  Characters Maneuver covering chapters 49 through 60 of In Version;
• #487:  A World in Space covering chapters 61 through 72 of In Version;
• #489:  Battle Worlds covering chapters 73 through 84 of In Version.

Collaborator Eric R. Ashley and I have managed to finish the twelfth novel, A Dozen Verses, and the thirteenth, Multiverser:  The Thirteenth Story, and are working on one called Verse a Tile.  Separately, I picked up the horror book I dropped, Corpoises, and wrote a bit more, and will probably finish it shortly.  I’m also continuing setup work on the analytical commentary series.

I think the rest of everything is a bit miscellaneous and disorganized, but here’s what I find.

Mark Joseph “young” web log post #465:  Believing in Ghosts considers whether ghosts exist and what attitude Christians should have about them.  It was an answer to a question from a friend.

Another question from the same friend led to post #469:  Church History, rather narrowly focused on distinguishing Reformation Protestants from later Evangelicals and both from Pentecostals and Charismatics.

Responding to a question from a time travel fan, #474:  Preliminary Temporal Thoughts on Paper Girls looked at the description of a television series and the time travel implications.

In our Christian Gamers Guild Chaplain’s Bible Study the accout of the healings of Jairus’ daughter and the woman who touched the hem of his garment arose, and when I suggested the woman was the girl’s mother I was asked why I thought this.  That seemed too big a question for the Bible study, so it became web log post #475:  The Mother of Jairus’ Daughter.

A few years ago someone had written to ask me what I knew about Bernice Wurst, an artist who was a friend of my mother who gave me two of her paintings.  I had featured one of them in an article in the Game Ideas Unlimited series.  It bothered me that when I looked for information about her on the web, there wasn’t much, so I decided to record the few reminiscences I could recall in post #486:  Bernice Wurst:  Impressions of an Impressionist.

In other news, I made it to AnimeNEXT this year, and expect to be invited coming up in June once again; I edited and subsequently reviewed two books for a friend–the BeautyAndTheBell trilogy–and expect to start on the third soon; and I posted a few recipes and some other images to Instagram.

I think that summarizes the year; the new year has already gotten started, but you can keep up by following my social media sites including Patreon.  I’ve already started something new this year, but maybe I’ll tell you about it next year once I see how it goes.