skepticlysm

Tag: book-review

  • And On And On And On

    And On And On And On

    • What happens if you get caught picking your nose when you’re on Zoom?
    • I know you pick your nose.
    • Don’t lie.
    • Hey, what’s up.
    • Friday.
    • Hard to develop the audience if you’re not consistently producing.
    • I won’t make promises.
    • Too easy to go unfulfilled and the cost sucks.
    • I have been making lists in my notebook.
    • For real.
    • They’re mostly for me.
    • It occurs to me I’m talking to myself.
    • A list is a conversation with the other versions of me.
    • Or the inside me?
    • Anyway.
    • This morning, I clicked on a Spotify playlist of new music from, or related to, artists I’ve followed.
    • New Lamb of God.
    • New Megadeth.
    • New Royal & the Serpent.
    • New Au/Ra.
    • Anyway, played it.
    • About five or six songs down, there was one called, “IT’S WORTH IT,” by Left on Red, whom I’ve never heard of.
    • Soon as the vocals started, the singer said my name and then gave me like this whole positive affirmation message for like a minute and a half.
    • And honestly, it was topically relevant given the existential week I’ve had.
    • I found it fucking horrifying.
    • Obviously AI based.
    • Has to be, right?
    • What in the fuck is Spotify listening to?
    • My text messages?
    • F the AI revolution.
    • F the Administration taking away my rights.
    • F you I won’t do what you tell me.
    • I’m not making that up.
    • I’m actually curious.
    • If YOU listen to that song, will it plug in your name?
    • Your mission, should you choose to accept it.
    • You know how you can get your text messages in the browser window on your computer?
    • I do that all the time.
    • If you text me between 9 and 5, I’m answering with a proper keyboard.
    • Yesterday, I answered texts all morning, and then I went to look up something on my phone …
    • No phone.
    • I searched the whole office.
    • My desk.
    • The floor.
    • My bag.
    • No phone.
    • Did someone steal it out of my office while I was elsewhere?
    • Did I drop it on the sidewalk?
    • Panic, you know?
    • That first moment.
    • Motherfucking anxiety.
    • Left it in the car.
    • Two blocks and two stories away.
    • Damn phone.
    • I don’t even remember what I needed it for.
    • Panic erased the task.
    • But hey, didn’t lose my phone.
    • Woooooo.
    • I have a note that says, “Cheeto hands,” which I wrote down right before I went to the bathroom.
    • Make sure you wash your hands before and after in that situation.
    • Just sayin.
    • What else …
    • Song lyric of the week: “There’s nothing more American than starting a war.”
    • A bunch of these are from last week, which means I no longer feel that urgency I did when I wrote them down.
    • Saw this thing on Insta last week.
    • They’ve added a new ‘vert: Otroverts.
    • “They are not fueled by solitude and they are not energized by the spotlight. These individuals feel their best in the company of others, yet they don’t need constant chatter or the intensity of extroverted energy to thrive.”
    • That’s closer.
    • I believe we spend most of our time in one of the shorthand categories, but it’s situational.
    • Sorry for the hopscotchery today.
    • It’s Friday and I’m sitting in a webinar … that I sat through in person at a conference two years ago.
    • Literally.
    • Same two presenters.
    • And it’s shit I do already anyway.
    • It’s things like this that are driving me to the classroom.
    • To teach.
    • Taking my “How to teach at the College” class this month.
    • Why get a grad degree if you’re not planning on teaching?
    • Grad school, btw, is a helluva lot more interesting than undergrad.
    • Okay, what else?
    • If you followed the lists since April, you know what a headtrip I’ve been on.
    • Daily Prednisone has ridden shotgun on the Eye for three years.
    • I’ve been tapering since July.
    • Took the last one yesterday.
    • Now, we wait.
    • There are “potential” side effects when disembarking from Train Pred.
    • I got all of them.
    • Might take a couple of months to get my body back.
    • If ever.
    • Knees weak, arms spaghetti.
    • Or something.
    • I have much empathy for long-term Pred users.
    • How do you talk about a thing without it being a cry for sympathy?
    • Anyway, the road to normal aging starts now!
    • And maybe some PT.
    • Wooooooo.
    • Started reading A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny again.
    • That’ll be three Octobers in a row.
    • I don’t remember where I heard about the book, though I’m pretty sure I wrote it into a List for work.
    • But I looked the book up on Reddit … or maybe that’s where I heard of it in the first place, and that’s where I learned there’s a whole community of people who love that book, and read it at a chapter-a-day pace every October.
    • Which is easy because the chapters are named by date.
    • It’s a good time.
    • It’s like a macabre literary version of a dog cartoon.
    • That’s a poor, poor description.
    • Cause I need a nap.
    • So about three weeks ago, I shared the draft of the Novel with a Librarian.
    • And heard nothing.
    • Wednesday, during my existential crisis, one of the haunting thoughts was about how bad the book is, how it’s not worth finishing, how I should let the dream die.
    • For those playing the home game, Wednesday, for a lot of reasons, I was down in a hole.
    • Do you understand how personal it is to share anything you’ve created with other people?
    • Especially when you’ve tied so much of your identity to it.
    • A Librarian.
    • If the Librarian didn’t like it … well, I’d be fucked.
    • They’re the book experts, you know?
    • But I did hear back.
    • And damn, talk about uplifting.
    • Like a gift, really.
    • Which brings me to this train of thought.
    • Words have so much power.
    • To uplift.
    • To decimate.
    • To inflict or incite or inspire.
    • And we fling them around like bladed weapons, indifferent to their effects.
    • I have 17 chapters left to go and a round of rewrites, but …
    • It has to happen.
    • Speaking of books …
    • I preorder stuff on Kindle.
    • Obviously.
    • I have tiered authors.
    • If I love them, I preorder hardbacks.
    • If I really like them, I preorder Kindle (though I’m beginning to contemplate a way out of that environment since I don’t really “own” those books according to that rich asshole).
    • The downside of preordering the ebooks … you’re apt to forget you bought them ahead of time.
    • Probably I should make a calendar of preordered books, or what happened in September will happen again.
    • I bought a book, The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown on a Monday.
    • And then … three more books showed up on my Kindle the next day.
    • Or maybe it was two, and then another one the Tuesday after.
    • Either way, too much money on books all at once.
    • (Sorry, Dear.)
    • The preorders:
    • The Shattering Peace, by John Scalzi.
    • To Clutch a Razor, by Veronica Roth.
    • Thief of Night, by Holly Black.
    • And then … Nm, man. I have a problem is what I’m saying.
    • I prefer to think of it as being a Micro-Patron of artists.
    • I’m supporting those brothers and sisters living the Dream.
    • Yes, I’m procrastinating writing this List instead of the Book.
    • The Book scares me.
    • Goddammit.
    • Before I get out of here, let’s go back to that Playlist.
    • Writers are frequently asked whether they listen to music while they write.
    • Stephen King does, for instance.
    • My daughter does not (and yes, she’s officially started writing her passion project).
    • I do.
    • It just becomes something I need.
    • I cannot abide a silence.
    • Silence makes the ringing louder.
    • It can be detrimental when you’re trying to give new music the attention it might deserve.
    • Like, four or five songs played through and I heard nothing.
    • They were on.
    • I heard them not.
    • Listen.
    • Actively.
    • With focus.
    • It’ll change your life.
    • I’m not sure if this is the record for List length.
    • Gotta be close.
    • Okay, one more thing.
    • Facebook showed me a post from 11 years ago, my feet propped up on the back porch, a pint of DNR in my hand.
    • Accompanying the picture, I talked about how great that Friday, Oct. 3 was with a temperature of 64 degrees.
    • Time flies when you’re having fun, and all the things you want remain undone.
    • Do not go gentle, gang.
    • I’d pay for a proper October temperature about now.
    • Sigh.
  • Now We’re Playing with Portugals

    Now We’re Playing with Portugals

    • “Retire 17.5 years early by moving to Portugal!”
    • That ad popped up in Instagram first thing this morning.
    • Ah, yes please?
    • No, I don’t speak Portuguese, but …  I can learn enough to buy groceries, order from a menu, and get bus and train tickets.
    • Plus, five years and you can become an EU citizen!
    • Having lived in Europe … Yes, I would move there and never come back.
    • The terms of my current indenturedship do not allow for such hopes, but …
    • Yes, yes I would.
    • Steph and I trade house listings from Norway and Denmark.
    • You can get a place for less than $200k.
    • Sure, you’re living in the artic north, and close to those desperate Russians, but … it’s affordable and the scenery is a helluva lot better than Oklahoma.
    • The thing I keep stressing to my daughter … do your best to not go into debt, because debt keeps you from freedom.
    • Debt and fear of financial insecurity has kept me from acting on many things I’d like to have done.
    • Anyway, what’s up.
    • Happy Tuesday.
    • Yesterday, saw some random article telling me NOT to post anything personal on Facebook or social media.
    • Duh.
    • Those darn hackers!
    • Again, I have f-all for them to take, but … what’s the point of social media if you can’t be, you know, social on it.
    • You do not connect with people if you’re not sharing.
    • They’re going to have to call social media something else.
    • Or at least all this shit that’s been monetized.
    • We’re going to have to boot up old versions of social and get back to its roots.
    • “They” have made it hard.
    • I saw this Instagram video, a guy (bupc_boopsy) I’ve seen before who posts GenX stuff.
    • He talked about posting on social like I do, how we do it, and more importantly, why.
    • “Social media is the equivalent of that yard with all the bikes parked on it.”
    • “We were the background noise of society.”
    • “There are so many GenXers on social media because it’s the first time in our lives anyone has asked us what we think.”
    • “We’re not here to be recognized, to be influencers, we’re just here to be seen, to shout into the void and to finally hear somebody yell back, ‘Dude. Same.’”
    • The reel resonated.
    • (I’ll put the link in the comments.)
    • Dude is doing what I’m trying to do, only I don’t like to be on camera.
    • The type-written word or nothing.
    • But I can build community, by god.
    • Which is odd coming from an introvert.
    • I’m kind of an extroverted introvert.
    • Depends on who’s around.
    • At some point, I’ll flip the audience switch from Friends Only to … everyone.
    • Maybe.
    • I’m not sure I want to add the non-filtered dumbfucks to the comment section.
    • (Same on the Discord.)
    • So yeah.
    • Not the Monday rant.
    • I think you should expect ranting on Mondays.
    • Sorta my schtick.
    • That’s my crazy.
    • After I finished yesterday’s list, got all that out of my system, I started a new Word doc with notes.
    • I’m writing from that.
    • Next up, books.
    • After watching the show, I threw a couple of those Dept. Q books on my Kindle.
    • 2025: the year of book sampling.
    • Because I’m having trouble sticking.
    • Again, it’s me, probably, not the books.
    • I’ve started three books in three days.
    • “Navola,” Paolo Bacigalupi
    • “Nettle & Bone,” T. Kingfisher (mentioned yesterday)
    • “Modern Divination,” Isa Agajanian
    • Other than the first one, those other two were on the TBR list.
    • “Navola” started pretty good.
    • Might stick with it.
    • My reading reflects my mood: restless.
    • The “Project Hail Mary” trailer looked good.
    • Book accurate.
    • And it was a fun book.
    • Much closer to “The Martian” than “Artemis” was.
    • Dude has a simple writing style, but it’s jam-packed with well researched knowledge.
    • Simple is good, and I enjoy his stuff.
    • Off the cuff, I feel like I read more sci-fi than fantasy.
    • I’m not sure it’s true.
    • Probably closer to even.
    • Goes in cycles.
    • Like last year, I read all that Gibson and Doctorow stuff.
    • Which reminds me …
    • Now is a super good time to read “Little Brother” if you haven’t.
    • That trilogy is good stuff, and current events relevant.
    • But yeah, sci-fi is good.
    • I wish I wrote it.
    • During the pandemic, I started a short about AIs (not A1s) going for joy rides in implanted humans.
    • Need to finish that.
    • It’s more of a novella than a short, but definitely not a book.
    • Gotta get the book out of the way so I can work on some other stuff.
    • Stay on target.
    • Tons of good sci-fi to read.
    • Gibson.
    • Doctorow.
    • Scalzi (“Old Man’s War”).
    • Simmons (“Hyperion”).
    • The annual reread of “Dune.”
    • The semi-annual reread of “Ender’s Game.”
    • Those “Murderbot” novels are a good time, though overpriced.
    • (There’s a good story about those books saving the life of the author …)
    • And on and on.
    • Youtube fed me an electronic artist, Caught In Joy, yesterday after I watched that trailer.
    • Digging it so far.
    • Retro-atmospheric electronica.
    • I started to go look him up because of the AI thing, but seems to be legit because I was not fed it by spotify …
    • Ugh.
    • We’re living in a Gibsonian dystopia.
    • Yay?
    • Okay, I’m out.
    • Gotta head to the hospital … to get the PICC removed!
    • Wooooooooo

    https://www.instagram.com/p/DLYE3V4umZO

  • Book Pushing

    Book Pushing

    Someone on the Discord server asked for fantasy book recs, so I dug through my Kindle and made a list of stuff I enjoyed. The Lies of Locke Lamora is my favorite fantasy novel of the last 20 years, probably. And yeah, I left off a bunch of the gimmies. No Martin, no Sanderson. Lynch is better than both of them. Anyway, stuff I liked. There’re holes, obviously, but it’s a start, right?

    Traditional:

    ·      The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch

    ·      The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

    ·      Codex Alera (series), Jim Butcher

    ·      The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan

    ·      Red Sister, Mark Lawrence

    ·      Black Company (series), Glen Cook

    ·      Cold Iron, Miles Cameron

    ·      The Emperor’s Blades, Brian Staveley

    ·      Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo

    ·      Heroes Die, Matthew Stover

    ·      The Belgariad (if you haven’t), David Eddings (don’t read up on Eddings, btw. dude was a sicko.)

    Urban:

    ·      Dresden Files (series; start at book 4 to get you hooked), Jim Butcher

    ·      Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo

    ·      An Unkindness of Magicians, Kat Howard

    ·      Rivers of London (series), Ben Aaronovitch

    ·      Alex Verus series, Benedict Jacka

    ·      Book of Night, Holly Black

    ·      The Rook, Daniel O’Malley

    ·      Last Call, Tim Powers (Tim’s brilliant, btw)

    ·      Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman (dammit, Neil)

    Scholastic (like they go to a magic school):

    ·      A Deadly Education (series), Naomi Novik 

    ·      The Magicians, Lev Grossman

    I dunno what to call these:

    ·      The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern (loved this book, btw)

    ·      The Near Witch, V.E. Schwab

    ·      The Craft Sequence, Max Gladstone

    ·      A Night in Lonesome October, Roger Zelazny (read in October, chapter a day)

    ·      Colors of Magic (series), V.E. Schwab

    LitRPG:

    ·      Dungeon Crawler Carl (series), Matt Dinnamin

    ·      Cradle (series), Will Wight

    “Cozy” fantasy:

    ·      Legends and Lattes, Travis Baldree

    Liked, but didn’t love:

    ·      The Will of the Many, James Islington

  • Fantasy-icism

    Fantasy-icism

    • Actually have a theme for today.
    • Before we get to that, however …
    • “Steph, I need some music on, but I don’t have my earbuds.”
    • Her: “I guess you better get your earbuds then. … Alexa, play Taylor Swift.”
    • Me: glares.
    • Her: laughs.
    • Alexa starts playing Taylor Swift.
    • Me: “Alexa, fucking stop.”
    • Her: more laughter.
    • End scene.
    • GenX hot take: Reels suck.
    • I don’t care what platform they’re on.
    • The ones on Facebook are the worst.
    • Like five seconds of nothing.
    • No narrative value at all.
    • Video of random shit with no purpose.
    • If that is what the younger generations are imbibing, we’re screwed.
    • I’m ready to buy a cabin in the mountains, move, and pound out rants on an IBM Selectric is what I’m saying.
    • JFC.
    • Another reason I hate social media.
    • I have a bag fetish, right?
    • Like backpacks and messenger bags.
    • It’s one of those things I would blow stupid money on.
    • Constant vigilance!
    • There’s this one from Code of Bell I’ve wanted for some time.
    • The thing is $239.
    • I do not have it, obviously.
    • It popped up in the Facebook feed the other day, and I clicked on it just to, you know, gander at it.
    • Virtual window shopping.
    • Suddenly, my feed filled with bags.
    • Waste of life.
    • That’s what social media is.
    • What it’s become.
    • By design.
    • Keep you distracted.
    • Keep us divided.
    • Part you from your money.
    • Rinse. Repeat.
    • Greed pisses me off.
    • F the rich. F the greedy.
    • Okay, there’s the pre-ramble.
    • I said I had a theme.
    • Nerdery.
    • The other day at the grocery store, I had on my Magic and Violence t-shirt.
    • (I can drive, but I’m not getting out a ton, mind you. One errand, come home, pass out.)
    • The girl behind the register said, “That’s the third D&D shirt I’ve seen today.”
    • “Really? Three?”
    • I come from the time of Satanic Panic.
    • We were actually in the den hanging out once when my dad burst in and told me I had to get rid of all my “satanic” D&D books.
    • No, sir. I prefer not to.
    • Did not.
    • Have always been a bit of a hybrid nerd, which I’ve talked about before.
    • The gang was into all the things. Cars. Sports. Video games. Skateboarding. D&D. Comics (some of us). Movies. Music. \m/
    • Wouldn’t be fair to call us “nerds” or “geeks,” necessarily.
    • But … I beat the genre drum often enough around here.
    • Could just be me.
    • I buried it during college because … girls.
    • Being honest.
    • The older I get, the less apologetic about it I am.
    • Fly your freak flag, kids.
    • You can be a nerd about anything.
    • Sports guys … you’re sports nerds.
    • What kind of person knows all those damn stats?
    • Bow up all you want.
    • Nerd.
    • Anyway.
    • Yesterday, I mentioned the rewatching thing.
    • The Fellowship of the Ring gets multiple rewatches a year.
    • We’ve been soaking it in the last week or so in pieces.
    • Not The Two Towers or The Return of the King.
    • Only Fellowship.
    • It made me think of how I got into fantasy in the first place.
    • Yeah, partly because my cousin Jeff gave me my first D&D rules set.
    • For sure that lit the fuse.
    • From there … books.
    • Read a couple Conan books by Robert E. Howard.
    • Then there was Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Weis and Hickman.
    • That book at that time consumed me.
    • I pushed it on all my friends.
    • I still have that copy, the one we traded around.
    • It’s shredded, but alive.
    • (Don’t go try to read it now. That third-person omniscient stuff reads like poop.)
    • That book opens in autumn, obviously, which is a motif in epic Hero’s Journey fantasy stories.
    • I feel like they all start in autumn.
    • The Eye of the World does.
    • I think The Sword of Shanara did as well.
    • And they all have that “normal kid (who’s probably the chosen one) gets recruited by a wizard to go fulfill his destiny” thing.
    • Could happen to you, you know?
    • Swords and Deviltry by Leiber did not, and those were the stories that really grabbed me.
    • The Gray Mouser stands as one of my favorite characters of all time, even now.
    • I don’t think you get Locke and Jean without him and Fafhrd.
    • Like I said, nerding out.
    • I haven’t gotten out of this godforsaken state enough, so I do it with books.
    • I love that autumnal ambiance all the great ones open with.
    • All this is subject to my nostalgia and spotty memory, mind you.
    • No research was involved in the creation of this list.
    • Last night while watching Fellowship, I found myself thinking, “I’m going to paint the Balrog to hang on the wall in my office.”
    • I could do it you know.
    • Probably another form of novel procrastination.
    • I’m out.

    Oh, go check out this from The Oatmeal. It’s about creativity. Read it (again) this morning. So good.

  • A Fourth of Pulp

    A Fourth of Pulp

    • Should’ve known better.
    • That’s what I’m saying.
    • Should’ve known better.
    • (There I go, repeating myself like bad movie dialogue.)
    • … than to have brought up Fourth Wing.
    • Yes, I called it a “fantasy beach read.”
    • That was not a knock.
    • I’m not a literature reader.
    • I pretty much only tread in genre territory.
    • I don’t want to read modern real-life drama.
    • I don’t want to be bombarded by non-stop five-syllable words, or pages of purple prose.
    • I want to escape.
    • I want to experience things I can’t here.
    • I want to go to the stars and explore big ideas.
    • Or see someone blow shit up with fireballs (of the D&D variety).
    • FFS, my book, the one I’m writing, is a “portal fantasy,” which means they’d classify it in there with Chronicles of Narnia.
    • So.
    • Fourth Wing.
    • Dragons. Blades. Fighting. Steamy sex scenes.
    • What’s not to like, right?
    • In the first book, the characterizations came off to me as a bunch of 16-year-olds who’re all supposed to be 21.
    • I still read it.
    • The story moves well.
    • You get drawn in.
    • And the two books after are better.
    • See?
    • Not knocking it.
    • Why do you read?
    • To get pulled into a good story.
    • Sure, you can separate books in terms of “quality,” I suppose, but at the end of the day, what’s the point?
    • Whether you like a book or not is personal.
    • Subjective.
    • Hell, take The Martian.
    • Helluva story.
    • Simple prose.
    • Loved it either way.
    • Even the metrics are subjective, right?
    • My favorite book series is urban fantasy pulp, for Pete’s sake.
    • (The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher for those playing the home game.)
    • Steph and I went to Hot Springs many years ago on vacation.
    • She bought a couple of books for the trip.
    • One of them was Dead Beat, which is the sixth or seventh book in the Dresden Files.
    • She chose that for herself, btw.
    • I picked it up when she laid it down at some point.
    • Hooked.
    • Two immediate reactions:
    • 1) This is awesome;
    • 2) Why the fuck didn’t I write this? Damn you, Jim Butcher!
    • I’ve since had the guy autograph a copy of that book in person.
    • What I’m saying here is …
    • Who gives a shit if someone does not like something you do?
    • Does someone else’s opinion of a thing take away from your own?
    • Love what you love.
    • That you do is none of their business anyway.
    • The Fourth Wing series is a fun read.
    • Was for me, anyway.
    • Sheesh.
    • And, again, she’s a multi-millionaire best-selling author.
    • I don’t know shit.
    • Where the hell was I?
    • Today is the kid’s last day of her Junior year.
    • Oof.
    • No.
    • I am not prepared.
    • Time is unfair.
    • Love her so much.
    • Being a parent is equal parts boundless joy and boundless terror.
    • I would not have missed it for anything.
    • Speaking of time …
    • Steph mentioned this, but tomorrow is the one-month mark from surgery day.
    • I do not understand how that is possible.
    • I have lost time.
    • Like seriously.
    • Black holes.
    • And I’m still passing out in the afternoons, like someone’s in the braincave flipping the switch to standby.
    • Yeah, I’m getting better, but the fatigue has been the thing.
    • Was not expecting that.
    • Sure, there’s some clicking in the head.
    • I think it’s the jaw.
    • That or there’s something sliding around in there.
    • Tectonic.
    • Heh.
    • Have you guys seen those remixes of the Golden Book covers of our youth?
    • Worth a find on social.
    • Irreverent in the best way.
    • You know, if you have my kind of sense of humor.
    • Last night, I walked into the dining room to do … something.
    • Was nearing bedtime.
    • Lights were out.
    • I looked up because there was a strange light in the corner.
    • I stopped.
    • Looked closer as my eyes adjusted.
    • Steph stood in the corner, back to the room, illuminated by the soft glow of her iPhone.
    • I started.
    • “What the hell. What’re you doing?”
    • She said something about an air freshener.
    • We have one of those Pura things. You can adjust it with your phone.
    • I dunno. I just work here.
    • I said, “Looked all Blair Witch over there. Freaked me out for a minute.”
    • Scary, but smells nice.
    • Four of five stars.
    • High five.
    • Read (and like) whatever the hell you want today.

  • Poorly Drawn Bullet Points

    Poorly Drawn Bullet Points

    • Watched a bunch of Andor season two yesterday.
    • Such a damn pretty show.
    • Which got me thinking about the shitshow that is The Wheel of Time.
    • I know, I know.
    • I’ve been rereading some of it.
    • So the discrepancies between the two are … vast.
    • More than that, however, you can tell Amazon threw money at WoT, but … it’s all terrible.
    • The writing is bad.
    • The characters have been made two-dimensional.
    • It looks like it was shot by amateurs.
    • I finished season three of The White Lotus, and that is the most beautiful show I have ever seen.
    • Andor is also beautiful.
    • They both look like they were made by film professionals, not streaming-TV crews.
    • Like, did no one tell the WoT crew how to frame a bloody shot?
    • Hell, they don’t even seem to know the Rule of Thirds.
    • And the lighting is crap.
    • It’s all crap, is what I’m saying.
    • Hi!
    • (Waves hand)
    • Do we actually talk Andor?
    • Not yet.
    • I’m only three episodes in, so … we’ll wait.
    • Books, right?
    • So much slower this year than last, and I’m doing a shit job of writing down what I read.
    • I’ve read four or five of those Dungeon Crawler Carl books by Matt Dinniman.
    • Four?
    • Maybe I’m on book five.
    • Either way, they’re fun.
    • LitRPG is bizarre to me.
    • That the genre even exists.
    • I’ve read two series so far.
    • Cradle by Will Wight and Carl.
    • Carl has blown up.
    • It’s like dramatization of a D&D campaign, only the setting is different every book.
    • And there’s a talking cat.
    • They’re fun.
    • Disposable.
    • I’m taking a break with The Wheel of Time.
    • Books three and four, then I’m out on that for awhile.
    • That series is … daunting.
    • Fourteen books of 700-900 something pages each.
    • I reread the whole series back in ’21.
    • Started in April, finished in June, reading nothing else in between.
    • Was a good time.
    • I read them as they came out, which was challenging.
    • That was my first “waiting desperately for the next one” experience.
    • For books anyway.
    • In real life, that was probably the gap between The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi.
    • Mom got me out of school early on the last day of sixth grade to go see Jedi.
    • I think it was sixth grade.
    • … I don’t want to look it up and do the math.
    • Braining is hard at the moment.
    • I think all the surgery drugs wore off finally and now my body is fighting to repair the skull hole and killing whatever the “thing” is at the same time.
    • Resting HR is up about six, seven points.
    • Sleep is for shit.
    • Healing fatigue sucks.
    • But … healing.
    • YOLO!
    • We talk about music in here a lot.
    • Delivery of said music, however …
    • I have a pair of Pixel Bud Pros.
    • I cannot live without them at this point.
    • First, I can’t wear any of my over-the-ear headphones right now because they smash my brains.
    • Necessary.
    • But also, these things have fantastic noise cancelling and work amazingly on Zoom and whatnot.
    • They can connect to two devices at once.
    • They actually have bass.
    • I wish I got paid to shill for this stuff.
    • Coming soon.
    • This recovery life … I gotta admit, I need to figure out how to get paid to live this way.
    • Get up. Have coffee. Write. Have lunch. Write some more.
    • Yes, I write for a living.
    • But there’s a gulf between that and what I’d rather be writing.
    • These lists are a bridge for sure.
    • They have saved my mental/professional life.
    • Which gives us another segue.
    • Maybe.
    • Have you read the research on the four-day workweek?
    • No loss of “productivity,” fewer taken sick days, an increase in contentment and happiness in the workforce.
    • Not here in America, mind you.
    • …
    • I can’t end this thing on a rant, so I’m going to stop there.
    • Stop buying into the bullshit.
    • Okay.
    • Where was I?
    • (Consults the notebook …)
    • (Yes, I actually made a list for the List today.)
    • (The hell is the matter with me.)
    • Playlists?
    • The new mixtape or burned CDs.
    • Problem I’m running into is how to share songs.
    • The Teenager converted us to a Spotify family after a successful psych campaign.
    • We were all Amazon Music.
    • So I sling Spotify links around like candy.
    • But not everyone can listen to them.
    • What a pain in the ass our subscription-based world can be, you know?
    • Glad some asshole who doesn’t create the music’s getting richer!
    • (This is what differentiates the Black List from the Work List.)
    • (Like, here, I can say I’d like to punch a certain State Superintendent sycophant in the face. Multiple times.)
    • (Yes, fighting is bad.)
    • “If you could fight anyone, who would it be?”
    • I could do a top-five on that.
    • But it’d be a Kali fight because I never got to where I liked punching people back in my sparring days.
    • Hitting them with sticks and knives? Sure.
    • Would need to talk to my therapist about that.
    • OMG I loved doing Kali, btw.
    • Became the ninja I always wanted to be.
    • I have stories about that, too.
    • Now this one’s gone long, and I only hit like half the stuff I wrote down.
    • Snap. Back to reality.
    • I gotta go water the veggies in the pocket full of sunshine.
    • And then probably pass out from skull fatigue.
    • High five.
  • info dump

    info dump

    Here’s the kinds of conversations I get into with Kaia, just don’t ask me how they get started.  

    Out of the blue yesterday, or perhaps the day before, she said, “I really don’t like first-person.” 

    I said, “Some of my favorite books are written in first-person, but I’ve always thought about it as a cheat.” I think one of my writing profs in college called it that and it stuck. Or screwed up my brain. I do not like writing fiction in first-person. Always third-person limited.  

    And then we went on from there for a good 10 minutes. 

    Here’s the thing. Everyone has opinions, right? But opinions don’t make you … right. In terms of writing, I default to calling my opinions preferences. Because I am not a published author. What the hell does my opinion amount to?  

    If you ever want to have a fun time as a reader, get into some of the forums and subreddits about writing and publishing. Lots of unsolicited advice.  

    Some of the fun stuff that always makes me chuckle … how long do you give a book before you bail on it? As a reader, if you know, you know. I’m apt to bail on a book even before I finish Chapter 1, and I can’t always tell you why. The kid has this mental mandate to finish any book she starts. She’s young. She’ll get over it. 

    Sometimes, the story does not hook me. Sometimes, it’s the prose. Sometimes, it’s how they handle internal monologue, which ultimately is why we’re gathered here today. 

    There’s a trend it seems in modern fiction for authors to include huge paragraphs of internal monologue in third-person. Paragaphs that span pages of tell, but not show. I have no patience for it. 

    For instance, Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six. I made it through the first book, but by the second, I could not handle it anymore. I want things to actually happen in the stories I read. I do not want to spend the majority of a chapter sitting there watching a character think. Shit should be going down, man. Set the scenario, give your character something to react to, and then show us how they react. Simple stuff, really.  

    Show, don’t tell, is one of those subjects in writing that’s talked about all the time, and it sure feels like many modern published authors are not getting the message, or not being taught about it properly, or something. I hate it. I skim/skip pages, which even a decade ago I would’ve thought was one of the worst offenses a reader could commit.  

    An argument can be made for exposition, I guess. They’re using these huge internal monologues to convey information about their worlds and their characters history.  

    I’m in the William Gibson school on that. Throw your readers into the fire and let them figure it out as they go, like a constantly unwrapping present. Don’t explain it, let the world and narrative show it to them. It creates that feeling of anticipation and discovery far better than a goddamn info dump. Show them your world.  

    I’m reading like … six books … at the moment. Mostly because I’m having reading a.d.d., maybe?  

    • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,  Hunter S. Thompson (haven’t read it since ‘94?) 
    • Servant of the Shard, R.A. Salvatore 
    • Burn to Shine, Jonathan Maberry (just finished that one) 
    • #NSFW, Tosca Fasso 
    • The Third Rule of Time Travel, Phillip Fracassi 
    • The Gate of the Feral Gods, Matt Dinniman 

    The difference in styles is crazy. One of those is a work manifesto, so not fiction at all, but I find myself studying and comparing … writing styles? Makes me wonder what doing an MFA in creative writing would’ve done to me. At the very least, it would’ve taught me how to finish writing a goddamn book. Probably. 

    (No, I cannot write these kinds of things without swearing. Also wtf am I going to do with this when I’m finished with it?) 

    Anyway, this morning, I made the decision to leave my phone in the bedroom on the charger. I’ve spent too much time on my Spring Break looking at the damn thing. I trundled out to the couch, sat down, talked to Steph a bit, and then noticed Kaia’s copy of The Deathly Hallows sitting next to me. She’s got the whole thing marked up, colored post-it note tabs sticking out all over the place. 

    Picked it up, opened it to a random spot, and started reading. The spot turned out to be where Harry, Ron, and Hermione (almost left out my Oxford comma right there, which is another conversation the kid and I have had recently) are going in to question Olivander about the Elder Wand.  

    I have not reread the Potter series in at least a decade, and my memory of Rowling’s prose was slippy. Adverbs and the like. What I just read this morning? Not bad at all. I’d even go so far as to call it pretty good. Sure, it’s book seven. But in this particular scene, she’s info-dumping wandlore, but it’s not a whole page of anything. It comes out through conversation in the midst of scene demanded by the story. It’s … well done.  

    I mean, Rowling? Really? 

    I may sit here and read this freaking book today. Harry Potter and the Properly Written Prose.  

    Happy Spring Break, y’all!