skepticlysm

Tag: books

  • Belonging Kinds

    Belonging Kinds

    • First, “The Belonging Kind” is a Gibson short story in Burning Chrome.
    • And it’s a trip.
    • It’s probably a metaphor for what I’m about to discuss, but he’s smarter than I am and can be more circumspect.
    • Do you feel the need to belong to a group?
    • Like, do you need a group to define yourself?
    • I knew someone once who had this crazy drive to belong to something.
    • The things he wanted to belong to were … control groups.
    • Law enforcement stuff.
    • I didn’t understand it.
    • Still don’t, really.
    • I haven’t even been able to make myself stay in the Metallica fan club.
    • This is one of those things where I want to say, “I don’t,” but that isn’t true.
    • “Metalhead.”
    • Family and friend groups.
    • Is there a difference between interests we use to define ourselves and groups we think we need to belong to?
    • Why do we need external things to define ourselves?
    • Because that’s the language we have?
    • Clearly, this is the Rash talking.
    • A kind of madness.
    • I am going mad.
    • (Queue up the opening of Anthrax’s “Madhouse.”)
    • NP: Twenty-one Pilots, “The Line.”
    • Yesterday, I got my Casa Bonita Founders Club card.
    • Which makes me laugh.
    • I got on the mailing list when we were last in Colorado.
    • The Casa had a months’ long waiting list just for the soft-open.
    • Foolishly we thought we might go.
    • Apparently, it’s a destination now?
    • I probably only went a handful of times in Tulsa.
    • We were El Chico people.
    • That was my first Mexican restaurant experience.
    • What’s cool about Mexican restaurants … the variety of takes.
    • Like the differences between enchiladas, etc.
    • El Chico established “Tex-Mex” in my mind.
    • Stuff drowned in sauces. Con Carne, people!
    • Dear lord, I’m having trouble avoiding passive voice today.
    • Every damn sentence wants to use “was” for its verb.
    • I can’t lecture people about writing technique when I can’t do it myself.
    • Dammit all.
    • Were.
    • Was.
    • Is.
    • Bah.
    • Crap.
    • Writing in bullet lists promotes lazy writing habits.
    • Apparently.
    • See?
    • A damn adverb.
    • Motherfucking adverbs.
    • There I go, swearing again.
    • You know.
    • You can’t have known me and expect clean language.
    • Except in the book I’m writing because, well, it’s a YA book.
    • I know how it happened.
    • Still weird.
    • I need to get it finished so I can write other things.
    • Though the sequel is already a third plotted.
    • (IS; again.)
    • I am not currently fit for public consumption.
    • I need to go stand in a field and scream, except the heat would inflame the Rash.
    • This cannot stand.
    • Turning into a fine whine today.
    • I can’t wait to see F1.
    • Dude makes good movies.
    • Also, did you see the Denis V. got the directing gig for the next 007 flick?
    • Mixed feelings about that.
    • Dude is one of top two best living sci-fi directors.
    • But … he’s directed great non-sci-fi movies, too.
    • I think they’re about to shoot “Dune: Messiah.”
    • (About time for a Dune rewatch. Been a month or two.)
    • He’s one of my top-five favorite directors.
    • I’ll watch whatever he makes.
    • Except that movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman with the kidnapped girls.
    • Can’t watch a movie about kidnapped daughters.
    • I have not watched a bunch of stuff in my convalescence.
    • Weird.
    • Has been so much more draining than I expected.
    • I usually bounce back quicker.
    • Then again, I’ve never had my skull opened before.
    • Sitting here watching my Mom recover from the hip replacement.
    • She’s doing laps around the house with the walker already, and would no doubt be attempting more than she should if my sister wasn’t keeping steady watch.
    • Constant vigilance!
    • Anyway, recovering faster than the skull thing.
    • Perspectives and expectations, right?
    • Adjust to the reality.
    • Do not cling to your expectations.
    • That seems like the worst thing we can do as humans.
    • Getting stuck in a specific frame of mind limits your potential.
    • You have to be open to change, open to disappointment and redirection.
    • (Word always wants me to change “have to” to “must.” No one says must anymore, Word-bro.)
    • I’m not (open to change) as much as I’d like to be, anyway.
    • Working on it.
    • Like this “chocolate croissant” business.
    • It’s “pain au chocolat,” people.
    • (Always makes me laugh that bread in French is “pain.”)
    • Said this before, but if you want the real thing, you need to go to Saint Amon’s.
    • Next door to Nords.
    • You want a French pastry, go to a bakery operated by a real Frenchman.
    • Also, while we’re at it …
    • Listen, Panera, if you’d do it right, you wouldn’t need the powdered sugar and frosting crap on top.
    • The quest for profit robs us of better-made things.
    • Greed ruins everything.
    • Veering toward ranting.
    • Not gonna do it.
    • This time.
    • Wait.
    • I just ranted about bread.
    • My playlist just went from Royal and the Serpent to Killswitch Engage to Rusted Root.
    • Like a bunch of stuff.
    • Hit random.
    • I am a crazy person.
    • Actually, I think these lists represent a pretty typical trip through someone’s consciousness.
    • Maybe it’s just mine, but …
    • I have trouble holding onto one topic for any substantial chunk of time.
    • My brain operates in Squirrel in default.
    • Concentrating’s hard.
    • Maybe I don’t have ADHD, but it sure feels that way.
    • Remember me talking about the Kid’s boredom yesterday?
    • Yeah …
    • I apologize to her all the time for passed-on traits.
    • “Sorry, kid. Good luck with that.”
    • NP: Lorde, “Buzzcut Season.”
    • (When the hell did I hear that and click “like” on it?)
    • (“I have no recollection of this place.”)
    • (And if you don’t picture Gandalf along with that quote … maybe we can’t be friends.)
    • Speaking of Friends: Focus group time!
    • Thinking about paying $3/month to follow Poorly Drawn Lines on Patreon, because that dude makes me laugh and I want more.
    • You think these lists would sell?
    • Exploring options to get paid to write without a corporate/higher-ed middleman.
    • Part of the plan.
    • Plan the path to freedom.
    • How does any metal band think to write a song called “Flying Whales?”
    • Have a weekend.
    • Embrace the chaos.
    • For good.
    • Chaotic Good.
    • …

    Alternate title: Bread Fans

  • June 24

    June 24

    • This getting old shit sucks.
    • I understand my generation’s parents are getting to the age where they get replacement parts and augmentations.
    • Possibly courting mortality.
    • Oof.
    • Mom had a hip replacement Monday, so we’ve been busy.
    • Yes, she’s up and moving already.
    • With a walker, but still.
    • It is what I expected.
    • She gave me the fount that is my stubbornness.
    • Obviously.
    • Like me, she’ll probably expect to be better before she actually is.
    • She’s bunking with us for a couple of weeks.
    • In no small part because she has eight or nine Great Pyrenees, and she would have pretty good odds of getting bowled over.
    • (Falling when you’ve just had a hip replacement is not physician-recommended.)
    • Dog Rescuer.
    • So was my sister at one time.
    • Stubbornness and caretaking run in the family.
    • My uncle showed up for the surgery on Monday, and we ended up talking to him at the hospital Starbucks for the couple of hours Mom was in the OR.
    • Good talk.
    • He’s a doctor, so again, the caretaking thing seems to run in the genes on that side of the family.
    • I bailed on pre-med, one of those decisions I regret, so that had been my path at one time, too.
    • (Given what my uncle said yesterday, I should’ve been a radiologist.)
    • I’d planned on being a shrink.
    • Sometimes, I still think about being a therapist.
    • I don’t think I want to incur that much student debt again, especially not when we’re about to co-fund the kid’s college.
    • It would be fun to be back in school.
    • I loved grad school.
    • Would probably enjoy lower-level stuff now.
    • If I had the time to audit classes, I totally would.
    • Teaching would be rad, too.
    • The Path.
    • It’s interesting to look back and remember those choices that had an outsized impact on the course of your life.
    • Literally one thing.
    • Boom.
    • There are lots of little unnoticed moments that shape our lives, too, but it’s the big ones you remember.
    • Butterfly effect, right?
    • That makes me think of that Machines of Loving Grace song, “Butterfly Wings.”
    • Loved that band.
    • Still like those first two albums quite a bit.
    • I listen when I remember.
    • They had a song on The Crow soundtrack, “Golgotha Tenement Blues,” which was a pretty good song, but they never blew up.
    • I may go listen to them today.
    • After we figure out what we’re doing for dinner.
    • One of the worst things in adulting.
    • When you don’t know what you want, but you sure know what you don’t want when you hear it.
    • It’s probably going to be Meddys (it was).
    • (I’ll cook tomorrow; it’s been a couple of days and nights of exhaustion.)
    • (Know when you’re beaten.)
    • (Meddys rocks, btw, and it’s not terribly expensive by comparison.)
    • Shawarma rules.
    • I had no idea.
    • My exposure to it before now was the end-credits scene after “Avengers.”
    • (I want to do a head-to-head comparison between shawarma and gyros.)
    • I’ll be a lot more excited about food when I’m also exercising again.
    • I’ll have that date on Friday.
    • Can’t wait.
    • Going five-for-five days with doc appts this week.
    • Combine that with mom’s stuff …
    • I’m bloody tired of doctors and medical facilities.
    • Not finished yet, but … soon.
    • …
    • Do not trust to flow.
    • It has abandoned these bullets.
    • I blame the exhaustion.
    • Then again, sometimes the stream of consciousness has rapids.
    • My TBR pile keeps growing.
    • I think I’m on the last book (currently) in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series (which I heard someone on the Internet describe as an “intergalactic Hunger Games”).
    • It’s good stuff.
    • Fun.
    • Also upcoming: …
    • Yeah, okay, I looked at my Kindle library and it’s running over with samples and other things I don’t remember getting.
    • …
    • I considered listing them, but there are probably 15.
    • Well, hell with it.
    • “Modern Divination” by Isa Agajanian
    • “Nettle & Bone” by T. Kingfisher
    • “Doorways in the Sand,” Roger Zelazny
    • “The Fourth Consort,” Edward Ashton
    • “An Easy Death,” Charlane Harris
    • “This is Your Brain on Music,” Daniel T. Levitin
    • “Written on the Dark,” Guy Gavriel Kay
    • “Practical Demonkeeping,” Christopher Moore
    • “The Original,” Brandon Sanderson & Mary Robinette Kowal
    • “The Raven Scholar,” Antonia Hodgson
    • “In the Garden of Beasts,” Erik Larson
    • “The Ophiuchi Hotline,” John Varley
    • “The Bone Season,” Samantha Shannon
    • And that’s just the stuff on the Kindle.
    • Not the paper books I have laying around.
    • And that’s not the whole “now reading” list.
    • A couple of those I already bought, so they aren’t samples.
    • A few are on Kindle Unlimited.
    • Authors get paid by the page on that?
    • (I didn’t even look into it when I pubbed that short story.)
    • I’m sure Amazon pays less now, or has jacked up the system.
    • When I published that short story, I feel like Amazon got much more of the 99 cents than I did.
    • The ratio was better if you charged at least $1.99, I think?
    • Again, the creatives doing the work, some other entity profiting from it.
    • Shocking!
    • Shocked!
    • Stunned!
    • …
    • I gotta stop.
    • We have Ironheart to watch.
    • Back tomorrow …
    • …
    • …
    • Yeah, I did not get this posted before I went to bed.
    • Going to post it now and then get on with today’s.

  • Short-Term Memory Issues

    Short-Term Memory Issues

    • Favorite cover of a song.
    • Go!
    • I don’t have favorites of anything, really.
    • I like lots of things, and depending on the mood, sometimes something climbs to the “favorite” spot.
    • Ephemeral Favorites.
    • I’m overusing that word.
    • Was listening to Ruelle’s cover of “Where is my mind?”
    • Was playing when I started typing, anyway.
    • Last night, I started thinking about writing.
    • I know, I know.
    • But specifically, scripts and books in terms of paychecks.
    • When a movie gets made, for instance, they’ll pay the actors millions, even cutting them into the profits of the film.
    • RDJ got north of $75 million for Avengers: Endgame, I think I read somewhere.
    • The Director gets his millions.
    • The writers, however, the people who come up with the story, get a pittance in comparison.
    • “For WGA members, the minimum for a first draft screenplay is around $106,000, and rewrites and adaptations start at approximately $54,000.”
    • What the actual F.
    • Without the writing, without the idea, you have nothing.
    • I don’t deny acting talent, but c’mon, those people get paid because they’re pretty.
    • Now’s a good time in history to be pretty.
    • Always better to be pretty.
    • It’s another inherent bias.
    • Back on topic: Not everyone can write worth a damn.
    • How is it they are always underpaid?
    • Started thinking about this because one of the guys in the clan shared an article about the death of SEO and the responsive rise of authentic influencers.
    • Like people writing their own content and developing a following for their ideas.
    • Followed for being thought leaders.
    • Which harkens back to the beginning of the internet.
    • Sounded nice.
    • I’m not sure I believe it.
    • I’m not sure the algorithms would let that happen.
    • Zuck has already said he wants meta products to be less about people, and more about fill your head with content generated by AI.
    • I’m not a trend guy.
    • I react negatively when we try to do things the way everyone else does them at work.
    • I write content based around the idea of developing a relationship.
    • If you don’t …
    • Nm.
    • Revisiting material.
    • That happens when you’re still sitting on the couch with your laptop on your lap.
    • NP: Metallica, “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”
    • When this song plays, I see my bedroom in the house I grew up in.
    • I remember climbing out the window to go skate the half-pipe in the backyard.
    • I remember the music as I fell asleep.
    • Again, repeating, but I used to play that tape in my Panasonic boom box on my headboard at lights out, and I’d usually be in Nevernever Land by four or five songs in.
    • Sometimes, Master of Puppets (album) throws me into memories, full spectrum.
    • Smells. Sounds. Sights.
    • I’ve had that a couple of times lately when I’ve been outside (without the music).
    • Catch a smell and I’m a teenager again.
    • It’s bizarre.
    • Something yesterday threw me back into leaving the house on my skateboard on a summer morning.
    • I remember those years better than my 20s.
    • Or my 30s.
    • Hmmm, I wonder why.
    • I won’t go into the work rant again.
    • I don’t have to
    • You know.
    • I wonder if our memories get worse because of rote repetition.
    • If you’re not creating new pathways, your brain falls apart.
    • “Variety is the spice of life.”
    • Yeah, might be the secret to longevity.
    • I made an “old” quip to Kaia last night at bedtime along the lines of “I’m old, my brain doesn’t work.”
    • She got onto me, told me my brain worked fine.
    • “Okay, my short-term memory sucks.”
    • I can’t even remember what I told her I couldn’t remember. 
    • Just now, I had to ask her what we were talking about that I couldn’t remember.
    • Ah.
    • Bringing the cat upstairs to her room.
    • Of course.
    • I’ve never been good at repetition of anything.
    • Boredom … it means different things to different people.
    • Some people use it when they have nothing to do.
    • I can have a million things to do and still be bored af.
    • I hate the word, but a lack of “engagement” is the thing that causes boredom for me.
    • Disinterest destroys me.
    • (Directly fueled my Internet addiction.)
    • I see it in the kid, too.
    • Another thing for which I owe her an apology.
    • Disinterest fuels procrastination.
    • And dissatisfaction.
    • “Oh, well then, do something that interests you.”
    • Would love to, except I have to work.
    • It’s already this way.
    • AI’s going to make it worse.
    • If I had to work an assembly line, I’d … think self-harm thoughts.
    • Yeah, let’s nosedive into the weekend with this subject matter.
    • As with everything, we make decisions that change our paths or keep us on them.
    • I had a therapist, when we’d talk about this stuff, he would always bring up my values.
    • Would talk a lot about choice.
    • We make choices according to our values.
    • Mine would be family and taking care of them.
    • I go to work because I need to have a paycheck to provide what I can for my family.
    • I don’t see it’s a Choice in modern society.
    • Man.
    • Okay … ah, I think Daft Punk’s Tron soundtrack is better than most their albums.
    • I don’t even want to post this.
    • I will because I’ve got time in on it.
    • Debbie downer, eh?
    • Pet peeve: fingerprints on my laptop screen.
    • Check out The Glitch Mob, btw.
    • (“Band.” Kinda. Do you call electronic artists bands?)
    • They have a couple of remixes that are spectacular.
    • Like the one of “Seven Nation Army.”
    • (Trust me, queue that one up and listen to it in the car.)
    • I’m rolling with the Liked Songs playlist again.
    • Played some Moby while I was shooting up my antibiotics.
    • “Flower”
    • I have so many syringes I feel like a substance abuser.
    • …
    • You guys still wear watches?
    • I love watches.
    • I’ll probably never stop wearing them.
    • Honestly, I’m not sure if it’s the watch or having something on my wrists.
    • I’d roll killer bracelets, too.
    • I bought one that’s got a bunch of brass skulls on it.
    • On the left, there’s my Citizen field watch Steph got me like 17 years ago …
    • On the right, some blue/gray/navy/black friendship bracelets Kaia made.
    • I’ll never take those off, unless it’s an MRI or surgery and they make me.
    • She put little happy face beads on the second one.
    • Which is ridiculous.
    • But here we are.
    • Just a ray of sunshine.
    • Not a pocketful, mind you.
    • You thought I’d forgotten.
    • Try this one: “Disparate Youth,” Santigold.
    • When you text, typos ruin the joke.
    • Every time.
    • Especially when you’re making fun of someone or something.
    • Running long today because I’m sitting here typing.
    • Lists aren’t narratives.
    • Should’ve stopped after the sunshine shit.
    • Ah well.
    • Thanks for stopping by.

  • Use It

    Use It

    • Back in creative writing, Vollertsen demanded we cleanse our writing of cliches, and rote turns of phrase.
    • Like I said, I probably learned more about writing from him than I did any of my instructors in college.
    • Weaver told me I needed to use bigger words.
    • “Shibboleth”
    • Irrelephant.
    • The one I’m about to throw down, well, we need to discuss it.
    • “Use it or lose it.”
    • …
    • Before I get started on that, it occurs to me these lists contain a bit of oversharing.
    • Some hacker’s out there reading the blog and adding that to my data file.
    • I mean, I don’t have any money anyway, so … good luck, buddy.
    • I also don’t base my passwords on personal info.
    • But yeah, oversharing.
    • Part of the “healing” portion of this show, which I’ve mentioned, is that I can only walk while I have the PICC line in.
    • My days are spent on the couch, more or less.
    • Lots of writing. Lots of reading.
    • But not a lot of activity.
    • I can feel the muscle leaving my body, my resting heart rate climbing.
    • I dislike it.
    • I know the antibiotics are killing the thing in my head.
    • The area around the PICC is inflamed as hell.
    • They used a different dressing yesterday that’s supposed to be a little nicer to the skin.
    • Seems to be working.
    • Anyway, I have a bad back.
    • Have had since eighth grade.
    • Threw it out playing soccer.
    • And up until the pandemic, it went out two or three times a year.
    • Like, pick up a sock, back’s out.
    • I tore the meniscus in my right knee at one of Kaia’s soccer practices.
    • Did PT for it.
    • The PT doc (and I can give you a referral if you need it) told me I tore up my knee because my hips, core, and ankles were jacked.
    • Knee had to deal with more than it should’ve.
    • PT fixed all of it.
    • Like, if PT were a religion, I’d be a zealot.
    • He did tell me I had to do my take-home exercises for the rest of my life.
    • I’ve been good about it until this surgery nonsense when they told me I couldn’t do anything but walk.
    • Never again.
    • I am never letting this level of unfit happen again.
    • Thinking about starting Tai Chi when I get cleared.
    • In addition to running, biking, and weight lifting.
    • I have advisors and training partners standing by.
    • I’ll start a blog.
    • Another blog.
    • A different blog.
    • Maybe one that makes money?
    • On the server, we continued that music/podcast/audiobook conversation from yesterday.
    • Crazy how different we all are.
    • Someone commented they can’t listen to music they like/know when they’re working because they end up singing the song.
    • I was like, “Yeah, I used to fall asleep to ‘Master of Puppets.’”
    • Someone else dropped what podcasts they listen to.
    • Which made me think about using podcasts and books as personality profile components.
    • What podcasts would I even listen to?
    • Can my a.d.h.d. brain focus?
    • I did listen to a Brene Brown book once on a trip to Texas.
    • It was spectacular.
    • I wouldn’t even know where to start to find favorite podcasts.
    • And here I am thinking about starting one.
    • Well, a few.
    • I saw an article from The New Yorker about how reading is changing.
    • AI is going to fuck up everything.
    • Is fucking up everything.
    • There’s already studies about how much of a negative impact AI has on the brains of writers.
    • Idiocracy is here!
    • Anyway.
    • Pocasts.
    • I don’t even know what I’d listen to.
    • Weird that I’d make one before listening to one?
    • I actually had notes for today’s list.
    • I didn’t want a repeat of yesterday.
    • The sad part of that is my journal for the last two or three months is just full of bulleted lists of topics for the bulleted list.
    • I haven’t properly journaled but once or twice.
    • When I was down in a hole and had to get it out.
    • Paper therapy.
    • I believe in journaling as much as therapy, but it’s another habit you have to establish and stick to whether you want to or not.
    • All that self-help stuff about habits determining the course of your life …
    • I feel they’re right.
    • That’s why I’m here, after all.
    • Where was I?
    • Oh, right.
    • Music.
    • Ha.
    • I’d forgotten about all those Lofi mixes I’d listen to on Youtube back during the pandemic (and beyond).
    • I guess I’ll have to track some down on spotify.
    • I’m not paying for another service and I’m sure as hell not suffering through commercials.
    • I often laugh at the fact that I write commercials for a living and can’t stand them.
    • Most people suck at marketing.
    • They do it to do it, and to be clever, but don’t consider the psychology of it.
    • Most of them are just checking boxes.
    • Then again, that’s kinda modern work, isn’t it?
    • Check those boxes, get to pay your bills!
    • One of the parts of our conversation post “The Life of Chuck” was screenwriting.
    • I told the kid she might be happier writing screenplays because you can knock those out much faster than books.
    • Talked about my screenwriting class in college.
    • I actually still have the screenplay I wrote for my final.
    • It’s in a box with a bunch of creative writing assignments from college, a couple of my journals from creative writing in high school, and …
    • You remember when I talked about writing sequels to “Friday the 13th” in sixth grade?
    • There are two of those in the box.
    • I don’t know how or why I still have them, but I do.
    • I’m afraid to read them.
    • Kinda.
    • But also kinda proud?
    • This is what I’m supposed to have been doing all along.
    • I guess that’s good?
    • Do we do what we’re good at, what we’re passionate about, what we’re interested in, or do we just do whatever industry says we should because that’s what it needs?
    • Make money, friends, so you can buy back your … freedom.
    • Sure.
    • Have a Wednesday!

  • Rabbit Hole

    Rabbit Hole

    • One of the things I’ve had to go back and work on for my novel … character sheets.
    • I can see the characters in my head but reading while I’m revising, a lot of them are 2-D.
    • I noticed a lack of presence and flat dialogue.
    • Which means they’re placeholders and need to be fixed.
    • Annoying af.
    • Another speedbump in the struggle of writing a book.
    • That kind of thing was easier in the one I tried to write before.
    • At least it seemed so at the time.
    • Also a time when that was all I needed to worry about.
    • The job was to write, not to … job.
    • Anyway, character dictates plot as much as plot dictates character.
    • Kaia plotting everything down to the tiniest detail shone a light on why it’s taken me so long to write the goddamn book.
    • I get stuck because I did not do the pre-work.
    • I’m not a Pantser, as it turns out.
    • Exposition: allegedly there are two kinds of novelists – Plotters and Pantsers.
    • Plotters plan.
    • Pantsers pull it out of their asses.
    • Sorry, “write by the seat of their pants.”
    • That’s what Stephen King does, btw.
    • I bet he does not write character synopses.
    • I can’t sit here in these lists and criticize novels and movies for lack of character depth when I’m not doing it in my own work.
    • Don’t get me wrong.
    • Just because characters are flat does not mean the work won’t be entertaining.
    • There are fucktons of IPs where we have basic characters and the thing is about the plot/spectacle.
    • Fun, but disposable.
    • Beach books, right?
    • But your audience develops shallower emotional involvement when the characters are flat.
    • Which means the rollercoaster ride has to be perfect.
    • I’d rather have both, you know?
    • It’s like marketing: if you’re not creating an emotional connection to the property, no one’s going to remember (or return/buy your thing again).
    • (This is why most commercials are dogshit, btw.)
    • (Brand loyalty is an emotional response to a product or business.)
    • (Coke or Pepsi?)
    • (Favorite sports team?)
    • (I could do a whole list, or series of lists, on what makes for successful marketing, and you would not believe the amount of emotional manipulation that makes the good stuff good.)
    • My book is not literature, it’s a pulpy YA adventure.
    • Book one of a trilogy.
    • The heroine is 15 in book one, 17 in book two, and 19 in book three.
    • This is no kiddie story, but it begins when she’s youngish.
    • And she’s a she because way back when this was a short story, not a novel, Kaia said, “Why isn’t he a girl?”
    • Which is also how this became FOR her instead of for me.
    • I just thought the idea was cool.
    • Couple of kids break into a sorceress’s home.
    • Getting back out turns out to be harder.
    • This has been more difficult than writing my Master’s thesis.
    • However.
    • Progress!
    • I’m kinda pissed it’s taken me six weeks to make headway on it.
    • Head had to clear up a bit I guess.
    • We’re rollin’ now.
    • Obstacles being removed.
    • Hold fast.
    • You know, they say you’re less likely to complete a goal if you talk about it.
    • Like, I’m less likely to finish the book because I’ve talked about it to people.
    • F.
    • Too late, right?
    • Writing is a largely solitary effort.
    • You with a keyboard in a room alone.
    • Sometimes, however, you need to talk about it.
    • Need feedback.
    • Need holes shot in your thinking.
    • 17 chapters to go.
    • That’s where we’re at.
    • And then we revise.
    • (This is another of those lists written the day before.)
    • (Most of it.)
    • (Yes, sometimes, I write two in a day.)
    • (Like I’ve said before, this is compulsory.)
    • (And the freedom has been inspirational and motivational.)
    • (I’m not going to finish this one yesterday, however.)
    • Anyway, character sheets.
    • One of the how-to books I read on novel writing had you do all this character pre-work.
    • Role.
    • Values.
    • Ambition.
    • Goal.
    • …
    • But all I can think of are D&D character sheets.
    • It’s a struggle not to give them ability scores and proficiencies.
    • I am giving them alignments.
    • Because, duh.
    • Shorthand for values and general demeanor.
    • At least when you’ve trafficked in alignment labels for 40 years.
    • Go find a D&D alignment quiz out there on the Web.
    • (I’d do it for you, but the link would only be good on the blog, not FB, and … c’mon, you can web on your own.)
    • (Okay, fine.)
    • I’m Chaotic Good.
    • Got a t-shirt and everything.
    • Yippie-ki-yay.
    • My favorite descriptor of that alignment: “The right thing, the wrong way.”
    • Wrong’s a strong word, and I disagree with it in this context.
    • Who’re you to tell me I’m wrong?
    • It’s only wrong because you think you’re right.
    • (Said all I needed to say on the opening topic.)
    • (Maybe I’ll get to the chickenshit Hollywood bit …)
    • Honestly I took one of those tests just now and came up True Neutral, but that does not fit my internal narrative.
    • I feel I should mansplain it a bit.
    • When you’re doing an RPG, the alignment you assign to your character dictates how they act.
    • Say they’re Lawful Good, then they’d be a Dudley Doright kind of person.
    • Chaotic Evil would be a megalomaniac.
    • Chaotic Good would be … John McClain or Henry Jones, Jr.
    • It’s like a game version of Myers-Briggs.
    • Okay, yeah.
    • I may post another of these later that’s a little more … in line with what we’ve been doing.
    • This one’s like a writer’s nerd rabbit hole.
    • I need like a song rec or something.
    • Uh …
    • “Death Do Us Part,” Royal and the Serpent.

  • 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.

  • GD Ewoks

    GD Ewoks

    • Order!
    • Have some housekeeping this morning.
    • Corrections, more like.
    • First, it was a ’70-and-a-half Camaro, not a ’71.
    • Second, I left out a ’69 Impala, “The Whale.”
    • Ahem.
    • We’re here today because I ended up making a list in my journal with an ink pen this morning while I drank my coffee.
    • Unintended. Unavoidable.
    • I’ve been writing Thank You cards this week.
    • You people have blown my mind.
    • Joyce, thank you for the quilt.
    • I’m going to keep dropping in minor Brain updates.
    • You’ll get tired of it.
    • But here’s the thing.
    • The crazy surgery with the crazy scar?
    • It was a biopsy.
    • Yeah, they removed some of the mass, but there’s still a lot in there.
    • It’s wrapped around my optical nerve, my jugular vein.
    • It’s in my sinus cavity.
    • They can’t just go in and scoop it all out.
    • They have it narrowed down to two things, and it’s a chicken-and-egg situation.
    • There’s a pathogen in there that infects a cell and then coats it in slow growing fibrous tissue.
    • Then there’s the immune system response, which includes massive inflammation, which is where all the pain has come from.
    • They have to tackle both of these things.
    • The crazy antibiotics I’m on (two, btw) attack the pathogen.
    • There’s an immune-suppressant treatment coming for the other, which I assume is infusions.
    • We have done all these Mayo trips to get to the treatment part, to rule out cancer.
    • To have a path.
    • We’re on the path.
    • Imma keep on with life because … Do Not Go Gentle.
    • And I’ll get back to not talking about it.
    • Hardwired.
    • But when it pops up, well, the War is ongoing.
    • Right now, I’m sitting on the couch with Kaia, Return of the Jedi playing on the TV because I’m waiting on Steph to watch Andor and did not want to waste cycles thinking about what to put on.
    • Kaia’s informed me tomorrow is “Donut Day.”
    • Who am I to argue with that?
    • It does mean I have to get my ass up and drive to the donut store at 7 a.m. or we’ll miss out on the good stuff.
    • Her order: donut holes and … whatever.
    • Used to be glazed and chocolate.
    • Now there’s a maple bar thrown in there.
    • Maybe a “pink” one.
    • The other day, she was craving a cinnamon roll … in the afternoon.
    • You can’t just go get a good cinnamon roll any old time.
    • And really, there are just two places in Tulsa to get them:
    • 1) Blue Moon
    • 2) The Savoy
    • We keep trying them other places, but …
    • Blue Moon, man.
    • That’s still my favorite breakfast place in town.
    • Not even close.
    • Been craving it for months at this point.
    • (Awkward segue)
    • Cory, what ink pens are you talking about?
    • Well, guys, I’m talking about the Everyman Grafton Pen.
    • I traipsed around the edge of that whole “everyday carry” man movement.
    • Knives, pens, bags … I dunno, it’s weird, but there are multiple subreddits dedicated to it.
    • I settled on one knife, and this one pen.
    • Because I can refill the pen with a Pilot G-2.
    • The Graftons are heavy, but they feel right in my hand.
    • You people still write by hand, right?
    • Also, you can do the Jason Bourne stuff with the Grafton.
    • The year before the Pandemic, we started journaling as a family.
    • I realized if I wanted to reread anything I needed to change my handwriting.
    • I bailed on cursive in seventh grade and always wrote with this weird hybrid print/cursive thing ever after.
    • It sucked.
    • So I switched to something closer to architect writing you’d see on a blueprint.
    • It’s not that clean, but it’s a helluva lot better than it was.
    • I’m weird, man.
    • What you want?
    • Back in Vollertsen’s creative writing class, he had us get a subscription to Harper’s, and my favorite part of it was the Harper’s Index at the back.
    • Which was … an entire List of facts.
    • The seeds of my current nonsense were planted in the ‘90s.
    • God, the Ewoks suck.
    • George got tricked by business.
    • Catering to the children.
    • Cut all that Ewok shit out of Jedi and you might have something closer to Empire.
    • Even as a kid, I did not need militant teddy bears added to my space wizardry.
    • In those years, it was all about the ships, the blasters, the lightsabers, and the gd Jedi mindtricks.
    • The Force.
    • Standing in my bedroom trying to move one of my two action figures with my mind.
    • …
    • You know you did it.
    • Next week, we’re getting into G.I. Joe and Snake Eyes.
    • I’ve said this before, but that first season of Stranger Things … that was my junior high crew.
    • We could be the Goonies.
    • I have enough stories to fill a book.
    • I don’t write them because my memory is not the same as everyone else’s, and those are not stories I want to defile.
    • My memory is for shit is what I’m saying.
    • Still.
    • Nostalgia’s trying to inhibit my brain function.
    • Or it’s my current coping mechanism.
    • Whichever.
    • This has gone on long enough.
    • It’s one of the last three or four beautiful non-scorching days until Fall.
    • Get out there.
    • Get off the couch.
    • All I’m cleared to do currently is walk, so … I guess I’ll go for a walk in the pockets full of sunshine.
    • With a hat.
    • So I don’t scare the neighborhood kids.

    I got that Ewok pic from a Google Search. Looks like someone’s dog was photoshopped/AI’d into an ewok costume. I do not claim credit for the pic, nor am I making any money from using it. I didn’t want to look that hard for a photo, and that was the path of least resistance. Though I did have to change the file name to jpg. Freaking internet.

  • 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.