Knitting Needles and Handkerchiefs

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The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher by E.M. Anderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A chosen one fantasy you say? Been there, seen that… except I haven’t seen this before.

A chosen one who’s NOT a child. Somebody with life experience and real world concerns. Somebody who can’t necessarily solve every problem with athletic skill. What a wonderful change.

While I’m not in the same age category as Edna, it was refreshing to see how life can and does change a person and how they interact with others. Edna and her companions were real and believable. The mish-mash of desires and emotions and actions based on that made for a believable group of people.

There was still action. There were swords and spells and dragons. There were real consequences to actions and choices made. This was a thoroughly enjoyable book. If you’re looking for some good modern fantasy I would recommend this one, knitting needles and all.



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Drunk

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That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book came up on a ‘cozy fantasy’ list as a recommendation. I don’t remember where that list was, but they were incorrect.

This is not cozy, this is explicit. That’s fine, if that’s what you’re expecting.

This is NOT low stakes, except if you simply ignore everything outside of the relationship between the two main characters. The world building is really interesting. There’s a great set up for a land where the people are deceived and how culture builds around certain aspects of life. Everything from names people are given to how they conduct their day to day lives. It’s got good concepts!

Then it rips them apart, and tosses all that aside for a sex on the beach scene.

Again, this is great if that’s what you’re looking for. Don’t think about the world, focus on the sex. Cool. IF that’s what you’re looking for, this is the book for you. It was not what I was expecting, so it suffered because of that.



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Combo Platter

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In catching up with my news feeds and other posts that I have missed over the past few weeks I found two that have some synergy. The first is a post about how much science fiction is created and published each year.

SFF is Too Big?

There are so many stories published at this point that no fan, no matter how quickly they read,  can keep up with what’s out there. There are hundreds and hundreds of stories that come out regularly. I particularly enjoyed the math portion of the article that showed a certain rarity of story from decades ago. It seemed that it could have been my faulty memories from when I was young that the stories I enjoyed so much were so desperately hard to find. As it turns out, the numbers show it actually was hard to find those stories, as fewer of them were published each year compared to today’s standard.

This is certainly not a post, or commentary about how things were better back in the day. I don’t believe that. Things may have been more clear, or more clearly defined with less overlap,  however, it didn’t mean that things were better by definition. I enjoy the simple fact that I have a huge number of choices when I’m looking for a new thing to read. I say “thing” simply because it might be a novel, it might be an anthology, or a series of blog posts, or an online published story or a graphic novel… you get the idea. There are SO many choices out there. I love it.

The second post is Just Plain Good.

The post praises things simply being ‘good’, and enjoys recommendations that match that qualification. Quality and popularity are not always meshed together, in either direction. There is a modern standard that they discuss where reviews and commentary need to be hyperbolic in order to get attention. I agree with the author of this post that there is a need to be circumspect in our word choice.

I have been posting my book reviews for many years. I always try to show why I felt the way I did about any given work. I have some small understanding of how difficult it is to get any work published, so I always hope that an author reading my review understands that my review is precisely that, mine. My opinion and nothing more. I also attempt to avoid hyperbole. I have a special and specific shelf of books in my house that hold the books that have truly changed me or impacted my thought process so much that I return to them again and again. It’s a single shelf and that’s it. There are so few it’s easy to keep them in one place. I’ve written essays in the past about what sort of works changed me. I don’t want to be extra dramatic or willfully polarizing. I hope the clear and simple choices I make in reviewer terms will help people who read my reviews to understand how that affects their choice.

That all seemed a little convoluted as it fell out of my head. Let me see if I can explain this more clearly. If you read my review of a book, then you go read that book and you agree with me, you could then trust that my next review might better match for you.If you read my review of a book, then you go read that book and you think, “my God that was terrible! How did he praise that? I hated it all”, then you could understand the next time you read one of my reviews that if I loved it you won’t. I often find that an ‘opposite’ reviewer is just as helpful as one I match well with. That is the idea behind being as authentic as possible. If you find a match, then you will look to that person or those reviewers, whoever they may be, as a trusted source for finding the next thing you want to read. The screaming noise makers just don’t fit that category.

That is where the synergy comes in with the article about science fiction publishing becoming too big. Finding a reviewer or a series of reviewers you can trust to give you honest and clear opinions on things, without exaggeration, will help you sift through the hundreds and hundreds of choices and perhaps even guide you to finding works that you would never have otherwise found. I suppose it’s very similar to panning for gold. You spend a great deal of time trying to wash away the grit and find the shiny treasure that you can then show to others. 

Revel in the multitude of choices that you have when looking for your next entertaining read.  Look for, or perhaps even become, a trusted source for your circle of friends. It takes time to learn and see the pattern of things you enjoy,  but once you find it, be authentic about it. It’s okay to say that something is good and that you enjoyed it. Everything you read doesn’t have to be a revelation of the highest order, nor does it have to be something that you despise and would publicly denounce. Sometimes just finding something enjoyable is enough.

This is how I approach my reviews and why a one-star or a five star are so vanishingly rare among my reviews. The highest high or lowest low truly should be rare. Reviews should not fall into the same category as The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Scream and yell on too many occasions and people will presume that is your default setting. Keep panning for that gold and be sure to share your treasured fines with others.

Toolbox Fallacy

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It’s still weird to me to have my words translated onto a page by way of a microphone. This sort of thing is going to take some getting used to. I need to learn to speak louder and more clearly when I do these things. Having said that, I hope to be able to create many more words very quickly over the next few weeks.

Oddly, when I’m speaking into the microphone like this, the flow of consciousness helps me to organize thoughts. Sometimes, however, one thing that it does is make other thoughts and other patterns of memory more evident. I was telling somebody the other day about the toolbox fallacy. Is this a philosophy?  Perhaps it’s a school of thought? Is that the same thing?

Anyway, the thought here is that people who are creators, in whatever form they create,  simply create. The tools are just that, tools. If I want to say that I am a writer, I should write.This should mean that I write without regard to what tools are available to me. If I need to use a marker and a napkin, or a piece of cardboard at work and a pencil, whatever it is, if I have an idea I should be writing.  Editing, compiling, composing all of those things come after. The most important piece is the actual creation. Get words on a page. If the page is blank, there’s nothing to react to.

The caveat here is, I need the time in my schedule to actually sit and make these things  happen. I’m hoping as we move forward through the end of this year that I will be able to make more time for my creative pursuits. I really do want to finish the first full novel that I have been writing for a very long time. I have world building, I have characters, I have story arc, I have villains, I have plot twists, but what I don’t have are words on a page. Hell, I’ve got as much “marketing tool writing” as I do actual, written story. Can’t buy it if it’s not actually there.

 So, I’m going to take this stream of consciousness as a starting point, remembering the toolbox fallacy, and try to create more and get these words out of my head faster so that I have something on a page that I can then go and edit and say yes I have completed this thing.

 I’ve stated this before, but I’m hopeful that perhaps, this time it will stick. Only time will tell.

Check out this video – it’s part of what stuck in my head about making my work real:

Painful Indeed

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Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches by John Hodgman


My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Vacationland is, by any metric you’d care to chose, the whitest book I have ever read. It oozes privilege. It was gifted to me at some point in the relatively recent past. My friend believed because I was from New England originally, and had briefly both lived and vacationed in Maine that I would appreciate the stories told within the pages.

I can say now that I’m unsure what my friend’s true intentions were. Did they really think I would enjoy it or were they trying to send me a cryptic message about my own behaviors? Was there ulterior motive? Perhaps not.

I recognized and related to a couple of stories here, or parts of them. I had successfully repressed the memories of going to the dump, but now they’ve returned. There was a significant portion of this work that simply made me cringe. Perhaps that was the authors plan all along? Having read all the essays in this book it wouldn’t shock me. I could imagine a meeting with an editor where plans were made to really put one over on everyone by publishing this. We will laugh maniacally whenever a royalty check is sent.

I have read this book. That is now a thing I can say and not be lying at all.



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Annihilated

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Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Two stars has the little pop-up ‘it was ok’ and I think that’s fair.


I would place this work squarely into the existential horror category. It’s shades of Lovecraft through and through. IF you’re a fan of that, this book is likely right up your alley. I can’t really call myself a fan of this kind of thing, but I’m not NOT a fan. This is a compelling book, but I just don’t get as worked up about the existential stuff as a lot of fans apparently do. Some things happened, sort of, I think… but I’m not sure. Maybe that’s the point? What did happen? Did it really happen? Wouldn’t a walk on the beach be a good thing to do?

I read and finished this one, but I wasn’t excited about it. I was often just waiting for something to happen. I’m still kind of waiting for something to happen.

This book also (apparently) had a film made of it. I looked at the old trailer and I believe I watched the film. I’m uncertain as not much of it is a clear memory. I didn’t connect the thing I watched to this book at all and had to have it pointed out to me.

I think those two things, no clear memory and waiting for action, amount to a solid summary of my thoughts here.



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Check out the trailer for the Netflix movie too:
https://youtu.be/0m3cPEbwwhg?si=5nFbXdNhcNzOYM37

New / Old Tool

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I’m going to test out an old/new tool again. I had tried using voice to text previously and one of the things that slowed me down was always the amount of time that it took to edit these things.  There’s no way to actually say, “hey that’s the end of a sentence”. The Voice to Text tool will actually spell out the word. Punctuation is the bane of voice to text. Pauses are not recognized.

Interestingly enough I think someone complained about that and if you pause long enough you can actually say. and get that actual result (see how that worked right there?)

I’m going to try this again. I can speak faster than I can type. The real question is how much editing do I need to do when all is said and done. I think it will be an interesting experiment. It will force me to look at the words that I create in a much more conversational format as well as giving them something of a flow that they might not have otherwise.

Maybe I get these stories, these words, these things to come crashing together faster and hope the editing process is easy. Maybe I get results that amount to a stream of consciousness that don’t really work out as good stories. Hopefully one of the things that I can do is make this stream of consciousness thing work for me and use my ability to tell a good story to actually create a good story on a page. Typing in this way, which isn’t really typing, I suppose I should at least be able to pull together words faster and more completely than I could do in a traditional typing manner. If I’m lucky I will be able to produce more, and do it more quickly.

I think this is going to be at least, in part, something that I’m going to have to learn and I’m going to have to spend time working with. Based on an articleI read recently, it was suggested that what I really need to do is learn to live with an absolutely terrible first draft. I tend to want my story to come out as close to finished as it can right from the start. I don’t like the editing process. Not that I think anyone likes the editing process, the editing process sucks.

This is the test and we’ll see if my production speed goes up. One of the things I really need to get better at is my speed. There are so many things going on that I really need to make the best use of my time and use tools that maybe I wouldn’t have thought were positive or useful or even for me. We’ll see how it goes.

Time to edit this post because I can already see a giant mess.

Do you have any tools that are your favorites? What tools help your productivity?

Six of something

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The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I struggled with this book right from the start. It begins with the “I hate you. I love you.” relationship mix. That has to be my least favorite – ever.

I pushed past that because I was hoping to get into the mystery of this order the six get selected to try out for. I was hoping for something about the magic system or the books they use to overcome something thought to be lost to time.

I hoped.

I got a fat pile of angst and a magicians style big brother house. Maybe that’s too harsh. I did not like it, and the longer that simmered, the more reactive I got to it. I’ve tried to temper my reaction by giving this review some time, but it hasn’t helped. It didn’t work for me and I won’t be picking anything else up from this author.



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Submission Away!

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It’s not easy to write in multiple places at the same time. I know there are folks out there who do it all the time, but I am not that good, nor am I that prolific.

A friend chanced to point me at a publisher searching for rejected stories. The requirement was that the story needed to have been rejected at least three previous times before it qualified to be sent. I have a number of stories that fit this category, but one in particular has always been disappointing to see rejected. Expectations of Speed is a good story. It’s really short at just fifteen hundred words or so, but it packs a lot into that short space.

So, off it went. I’ve made a small step back into the world of sending my work out there (and hoping it doesn’t get rejected again). They site said to query them if I hadn’t heard anything in 4 months. Hopefully it won’t take until November to see results!

I will be sure to post it here when I get an answer.

Caught up

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I’m still banging away on the YouTube channel. It was never my intention to do this, but now I’m kind of invested in the whole process. I’ve finally caught up with the backlog of videos. I’m up to the most current game play video.

I’m also starting into an area of the story where more and more is being revealed – more of the story that has never seen the light of day. I’m excited for it.

This last episode felt a little slow to me, but I’m sure it is the calm before the storm. Head on over to the channel and check it out: