Walking Away From the Same Old Same Old, or The Man Who Revises

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Time for the March report:

First, book-wise, which I’m sure is the main reason you guys are reading this, I want to report that I worked through the problems with that problematic scene. 

Weirdly, this extended scene doesn’t feel all that different, but it’s shorter now and the people in it act the way people act, which is nice. 

And with that, we segue into a pop cultural topic. 

When my son had just turned ten years old, I decided it was time for him to see Star Wars. I was a little older than him when I saw it in theaters in 1977, but I figured ten was the perfect age to see that movie. 

Anyway, I’ve told this story before, but we were watching the film together and, right in the middle of the climactic dog fight, where the X-wings are flying down the trench trying to explode the Death Star, my own son got up off the couch and walked away. He just wasn’t interested. I watched him sit at his computer and start up Minecraft game while the TV was filling the room with pew pew noises.

Now, there are a lot of platitudes that could be mined from a story like that, and I like to think I’ve typed my share of them into the big empty void of the internet, but I was reminded of the incident once again last Wednesday.

Because here’s the thing: I showed him the Star Wars movie without taking into account that he had already played the Lego Star Wars video game.

Those Lego games take every moment from a film and stretch it until every plot point of the movie needs fifteen minutes of smashing and building things before you can move on to the next. (I exaggerate, maybe, but not by much) The point is, it’s slow as hell, and along with all the other reasons my son would not respond positively to old timey science fiction movies like Star Wars, is the simple fact that he’d already been there and done that, at length.

And the reason all this came up again was because the teaser trailer for the Wizard Boy tv remake dropped. 

Personally, I have no interest in watching the upcoming Wizard Boy tv show. For every pound sterling that goes into that franchise, some portion is diverted into taking rights away from vulnerable populations. I’m not going to put a ha’penny into that. I don’t care if this new show is The Wire for fantasy YA lovers, human rights matter more.

But once people on my Bluesky timeline start talking about how terrible the teaser trailer looks, I absolutely want to see how and why it sucks. 

So I did and it looks slow. Harry deals with bullies in a muggle school. Aunt Petunia giving his hair a hate-trim. Harry and Hagrid sitting on the tube, having a conversation.

It looks like they’re going to show all the usual story beats, but slowed down to fill up a streaming season, and you know they’re not going to take IP this popular and make fewer than ten episodes a season.

So maybe that’s why the teaser–a teaser!–feels so slack. 

I’ve seen people complain about the way it looks, but I like the candlelight aesthetic for Hogwarts. It’s dumb–magic lanterns would make more sense–but it’s pretty.

Still, so much feels recycled from the films. (Confession: I haven’t read the books since Family Reading Time, more than 15 years ago, so the movies are my main reference.) The train scene, the wand shop, even the lettering on the Hogwarts envelope, it’s all stuff we’ve seen before. 

Worse, the tone is reverential when it should be playful and fun. And they’re button-mashing the “You’re secretly the specialest boy ever, Harry!” button when the character’s most endearing trait is his desire to be ordinary. And Hagrid has been reimagined to be smaller than life. 

And let me be honest: I’ve watched worse things. I recently told some friends that last years Red Sonja remake was a scrappy B-movie. I watched the live-action Last Airbender remake. And years ago, when the first D&D movie came out with Jeremy Irons chewing up the scenery, I knew it would be terrible but I put a 20-sider into my pocket as a talisman against high expectations and saw it in a theater.

But I won’t be watching this, not unless Rowling has a sudden realization that she’s become one of the bigots she was trying to lampoon when she wrote the Malfoy family. Or if she predeceases me, I guess. But I don’t wish her harm. I wish her enlightenment. 

However, if there is any force in this universe that will lessen Rowling’s ability to hurt vulnerable people with the power of her overstuffed bank accounts, it won’t be righteousness. It’ll be the perception that her new show is a dull, meandering retread of the same old same old. Which is what it appears to be. 

Back to work for me.

But first, I want to thank everyone who has been chipping in extra to my Patreon since my wife was struck by a car. We are incredibly grateful for your help.

Talk to you guys next month. 

The Work of Making Things

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Before I blather on about nonsense, here’s a brief progress update for Twenty-One Palaces.

Revisions hit a huge snag, but it was a snag I knew was coming. Also: difficult. I had to take a few long walks to sort out all the reasons why this group of scenes were a bust. Then I went through them, making lists of necessary story elements. Then I had to come up with a new and interesting way to get all those necessaries incorporated into the new scenes.

Anyway, it sucks to be making such slow progress, but I knew going in that this segment of the book was going to need major work, so it feels good to be nearly done with it.

Once I do that, I put the book aside for a day or two so I can do taxes, then it’s back to revisions.

In other news, my family observes Tabletop Tuesday, in which all three of us get together to play a game (and not a computer game, which would be basically impossible for my wife and me). Board and card games, naturally.

Sadly, we don’t have very many, and it eventually became repetitive.

Happily, this gave me an opportunity to introduce a bit of ttrpg fun into our game night. My son tried tabletop role playing when he was 10. After a few sessions, he shrugged and went back to Minecraft. Many years later, he’s a young adult willing to have a bit of fun. As for my wife, she’s never had any interest in this kind of game, but she is all in for family activities, so I have a captive little group here.

Our first effort was A Town Called Malice, which I picked because it’s very structured for an rpg. Playing this let me introduce role-playing elements, but the progression of the story and the overall plot were basically programmed in.

They had real fun with it, so a few weeks later I introduced Brindlewood Bay.

BB is a mystery role-playing game that uses a system derived from the Powered by the Apocalypse rules system. The player characters are elderly women in a mystery book club who like to meddle in the murder investigations that pop up all too often in their little coastal New England town. It’s very Murder, She Wrote, in a good way.

Also, there’s a cosmic horror element, but that will be more important later.

Anyway, the game works like this: There’s a mystery, a set of suspects, a list of clues, and a murdered character. The GM is admonished not to start the session with a preconception about which suspect is the real murderer. That’s determined through play.

The clues are deliberately vague. They might say, for example: muddy boots in the wrong place, a perfumed love letter, a shattered award, a revised will. That’s all the PCs get.

The idea is that the players collect these vague clues and, when they feel ready to accuse a suspect, craft a murder narrative out of them, then roll the dice. Plus one for each clue the players find a way to use in their narrative. A successful roll means you’ve found the killer. A failed roll, oops.

Honestly, I was iffy about this game when I first read it. It sounded less like solving a mystery and more like creating one. Is that really what players want?

The verdict, for my family at least, is abso-fucking-lutely. I really could not have predicted how much they would love Theorizing about the murder and the murder suspects. They do it so much and so enthusiastically that I have to remind them to play the game once in a while. Talk to suspects. Gather clues.

Weirdly, this continues a long-standing trend for me. Games that seem like something I wouldn’t like become absolute favorites, while games I’m enthusiastic to try miss me somehow.

Anyway, I’d call BB a hit.

Speaking of mysteries, Veronica Mars (the TV series) has popped up on Netflix. It’s one of my favorite shows. If you decide to sit down and watch it (and you should) keep in mind that there’s a movie between seasons 3 and 4.

It’s a 20-some year old show, but it has great characters, the story really moves, and it’s highly recommended.

(The links above are DriveThruRPG affiliate links.)

The Ending that Ruins the Beginning

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First, an update on (working title) Twenty-One Palaces/The Burning Wheels: This rough draft is an unholy mess. As much as I enjoy the actual act of sitting with my laptop to write and revise a story, this is a rougher draft than usual. But, chin up and charge ahead. Doesn’t matter how fucked up it is. It’s fixable and it’s getting better with every pass.

Now onto what I wanted to talk about for this post: endings that upset fans so much that lose all interest, as portrayed in shows that have recently appeared on Netflix.

Spoilers for the endings of Veronica Mars and Stranger Things but not Game of Thrones (because I haven’t seen it).

So, the finale for Game of Thrones is infamous. Shortly after it came out, when fans and critics were still marveling about the awfulness of it, I saw a couple of articles about the earlier seasons, and how rewatches had fallen off the cliff. They’d made an ending so full of nonsense (apparently) that people’s hatred for it traveled back in time and ruined the previous seasons.

Veronica Mars, famously, ended season three on a downbeat. She’d just destroyed her father’s chances at winning re-election to the sheriff job. She’d broken up with Logan, the fan-favorite romantic lead.  Then the show was cancelled. No happy ending for our plucky little protagonist, which is very noir but still.

Then series creator Rob Thomas decided to turn to a new website called “Kickstarter” to see if he could raise a million dollars for a movie that would wrap up the story. He raised five million. Me, I pledged at the level that would get me a dvd of the finished film.

Which meant we got a second ending, paid for by the fans and which many people, quite reasonably, called fan service. At the end of the movie, Veronica and Logan–both much more grown up and sensible–were back together. She was once again working with her father. Everything had been reset to the best version of the show, which felt very much like a happy ending.

But those five million bucks caught the attention of streamers, and Hulu offered Thomas the chance to bring Veronica Mars back in a new, streaming-friendly format.

And Thomas decided that in order to move the show forward, he had to break from the past. He changed the town, the school, and the main romance in Veronica’s life. He killed off Logan right as they were (finally) about to go on their honeymoon.

Thomas himself said that he hoped fans would understand why he felt he needed to make that change.

The fans, many of them dedicated shippers for those two characters, really really did not understand.

What was supposed to be a new direction for the show turned out to be a detour that led right over a cliff. Fans rebelled, word of mouth was awful, and the revitalized Veronica Mars was cancelled.

Now, I know there are people who still rewatch the show. The Veronica Mars reddit still has a little life in it and it’s become more active since Netflix USA picked up the first three seasons. But most of them simply pretend that season four doesn’t exist. Rob Thomas’s inability to transition Logan, the show’s main love interest, from a source of conflict to a source of support ruined his chances for further seasons.

Which is why I’m also thinking about Stranger Things. The show ended recently and the main character, Eleven, either committed suicide in the finale or she faked her suicide. Either way, the boy she loved had to stand, helpless, and watch it happen.

Personally, I had literally spent years telling people that I thought Eleven had as much chance of an unhappy ending as Harry Potter, and boy howdy was I wrong. And while I have always said that I am not much interested in ships and shipping, it turns out that I am quite invested in the raw anguish of characters I’ve grown to care about over 9+ years.

Anyway, for me the final episode of Stranger Things was heart-breaking. I tip my hat to the Duffer Brothers for making me feel genuine grief for the pretend characters they created.

A number of people have said they can never watch the show again. They don’t want to watch little baby Eleven in that first season, hiding from her abusers, learning about the world from the kids who befriended her, and struggling to find her place, not when they know that it will end with her big death scene.

It’s too painful for them. Too futile. Too tragic.

So, another tip of the hat to the Duffers. They could easily have gone the safe route–a big “medal ceremony” followed by a kiss between happy lovers. That audience-pleasing ending was right there for them.

Instead, they gave us tragedy with a little glimmer of hope.

So, I’ve been thinking about these shows in particular as I work on the final Twenty Palaces book. Obviously, Ray and Annalise aren’t lovers and (spoiler) aren’t going to become lovers. I hope that’s already clear to everyone who’s been reading these books. But how are they going to come out of this series? Who lives? Who doesn’t?

And there’s a part of me that’s thinking about the readers who tell me they reread these books. What would absolutely ruin the series? Should either Ray or Annalise die in a heroic sacrifice? Or maybe both? Or neither?

To be honest, I’ve already written out the first draft of the ending, and I’m not sure if I’m going to stick with the choices I made. What I am sure of, though, is that I’ve put too many words into these books to pick an ending because I’m second guessing other peoples’ opinions.

I mean, I hope people will like it, but it’s a little late to start pandering now.

That time of year again: The ghostliest version of A Christmas Carol

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The best version of A Christmas Carol (meaning, the one with the best ghosts) is still available for you to check out on Tubi. Cheer-max your holiday (“Merry-bundle”? “Joy-stack”?) with this most unsettling version of the endlessly retold classic story. Bonus, it’s under half an hour, and that half hour is packed.

Directed by Richard Williams. Produced by Chuck Jones. Scrooge played by Alastair Sim.

LINK  (No fees or subscriptions required)

Seriously, if you haven’t seen it, it’s a holiday treat.

I’ve been looking for other offbeat Christmas movies and I’ve stumbled on two.

First is a fairly well-known Finnish horror comedy called Rare Exports. I was sure I’d seen it years ago, but I didn’t remember it.

The number one thing I want to say is that it’s gorgeous. You really can’t underrate the power of a beautiful landscape on film. It’s also not as violent as I remember, even though it can be quite bloody. The weird violence from the supernatural threats happen almost entirely off screen. It’s like the grimmest kiddie horror movie of all time. Loved it.

The other is a movie-length (under two hours) miniseries called The Sleeper. It’s a combination of ghost story, murder mystery, and family holiday farm drama, and it’s way better than it has any right to be. Especially the ending.

Not gorgeous, but still good.

One final comment, which is the epitome of a buried lede. My previous post was a shout for help, and help was given. I’m tremendously grateful. Thank you.

Have a happy holidays.

A Very Bad Month

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Okay.

So.

I need to update everyone on where things stand for me, why I have made almost no progress on the new novel in the past month, and how things are looking for the future. 

What I don’t want to do is go into any real depths about my wife or what she’s going through, except to say this:

On Oct 21st, my wife was taken by ambulance to the Harbourview Medical Center Emergency Room.

The only thing I want to say about the incident that put her in that ambulance is that the street infrastructure in the United States is a travesty.

However, i have been running around like a chicken with his head cut off ever since. I spent several days bussing back and forth to the hospital while her injuries were assessed and her surgery prepped. I helped her get home and get set up here. I make sure she gets around okay. There are meals to be made and cleaning to do, and she is working to get to a place where she can do more things on her own, but that time isn’t soon.

I’m lucky to have my son here to help. Very lucky. Still, my own health is not exactly fantastic. I am fucking exhausted and I hurt most of the day. I do my best to keep my spirits up for her sake, but I barely have the energy for reading or watching movies lately.

Weirdly, doom-scrolling seems to be the way I reset when my body and mind feel overdone. That can’t be healthy, but it can’t be denied, either.

Which is my way of saying that I’m not making very much progress on the final book in the Twenty Palaces series. Some, but not a lot

Turns out that it’s hard to focus when I’m sitting on the couch, thinking how close I came to becoming a widower. 

In truth, I’m lucky. Her injuries are bad but they could be worse. Her attitude is ferocious and she is determined to recover. She’s knowledgable about anatomy/muscle function and is taking her rehab seriously. Her PT and doctors have to reign her in when what she’d love to be doing is keep pushing pushing pushing her range of motion, balance, and muscle redevelopment. She’s going to work hard and I’m going to help her.

But that means I skipped this year’s post about great horror movies I watched at Halloweentime. I just haven’t had the heart to watch horror. I’m barely making any headway in the book I’m reading. I don’t sleep well. My legs ache all the time. And the woman I love has all those same things going on and more, so it’s on me to make things better for her, if I can.

To wrap up, my wife has started cheering for me when I take time to work. And I must work, desperately. She’s been the majority breadwinner in our home since the pandemic hit, and while we still have a little bit of the money from that long ago advance for Child of Fire, honestly, this looks like trouble. 

Real trouble. 

Whle we’re not at the point where we’re desperate for a way to cover this month’s rent, that time might be coming. So, if you have ever enjoyed my work, please consider joining my Patreon, or maybe buying a few copies of my books to give away. 

If you can’t do that, placing a request with your library system to carry my work would be greatly appreciated. So is simply posting a review of a book you liked on an online bookstore.

Things are getting back to normal, slowly, and I expect to steal a long block of time to work on that final Ray Lilly book starting Friday, but I do need a bit of help to get through, if you can.

Okay. I need to go back to the kitchen and work on tomorrow’s (much reduced) Turkey Day celebration. And even though we’ll be doing with less this year, I have so much more to be grateful for than I ever have. 

Thanks for reading this far, and thanks for your help, if you can provide it. 

No Kings

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Well, I screwed up in September.

I set a goal for myself to update this space at least once a month but I missed. In my defense, I’m a boring person without a lot of worthwhile things to say, except (hopefully) in my fiction.

Meaning that I spent September working on The Crown of Infamy, the last second-world fantasy I’m likely to write.

After wrapping up the vomit draft of The Wheel of Fire, the last 20P novel, I needed a little time away from the book before I jumped back in. Crown was the perfect little break, because the style and the tone are so different, but now I’m back to working on Ray and Annalise’s last romp.

But not tomorrow. Tomorrow I have something more important to do.

I’m going to a “No Kings” rally with my wife and son.

If you’re in the US and you’re able, please find a local No Kings rally and join in. Don’t sign up on any website—don’t put down your name or number—just note the time and location and then show up if you can.

Also, check the weather first. Parts of the country could be facing tornado warnings.

Me, I’m about to head out to the pharmacy to pick up the medication I need to be outside marching around. I’m not sure which rally I’m going to or what time. We have some decisions to make, still. But we’re going, even though none of us are much good for standing a long time or walking very far.

While I’m out today, I’m also planning to hunt down a few American flags to carry. Snarky signs that take digs at our weird and creepy GOP wannabe masters are fine for social media attention, but I’m going to go with love of country for the day.

In between picking up flags and drugs, I’m returning Halloween movies to the library. Maybe later in the month I’ll do a little writeup on this year’s scary shows and movies.

So! If you’re in the US, check the weather for tomorrow. Check your situation. If you can come to a rally, please come to a rally. You don’t need a sign. You don’t need to agree with everything everyone else will be saying. You don’t need to stay for the whole thing (I probably won’t be able to). Just show up. Swell the crowd.

We need people coming together to demonstrate our resistance to what this country is becoming. Be there so you can tell future generations that you spoke up for democracy. Be inspirational for them.

Because apparently, we have to do this every few generations.

News about the final Twenty Palaces novel

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I’ll keep this one short and sweet.

A bookshelf of my work with a can of Arrogant Bastard Ale and a full beer glass in front

Am I an arrogant bastard for daring to celebrate the completion of a first draft? Sure feels like it.

Long time readers know what it means when I post a photo of Arrogant Bastard Ale. Actually, it can mean a few things, but today it means that I have finished a first draft of a new book. 

In this case, it’s the first draft of the final Twenty Palaces novel. 

Here’s a thing I wish I didn’t have to say: this is probably the messiest first draft I’ve ever written, and that’s saying something. It’s going to need a lot of work to make it publishable. A lot of work. It’s definitely not going to be ready for you guys this year. 

Also, I finally came up with a title. For years–ever since I started this series–I thought the last book would be called Twenty-One Palaces, but that doesn’t fit anymore. The story has gone in new directions, and the events that would have warranted that title pretty much took place in The Twisted Path. 

So the new, actual title is going to be The Wheel of Fire, the final Twenty Palaces novel.

The plan going forward is simple. 

  1. The Wheel of Fire needs to simmer on the proverbial back burner until I’m ready to tackle it again.
  2. In the meantime, I’m going to do a revision of The Crown of Infamy, which is probably the last pure fantasy novel i’ll ever write. 
  3. After that, revisions to The Wheel of Fire. 
  4. Then I am FREE to write something totally new. 

Hey, one last thing. If you have enjoyed the Twenty Palaces novels but not tried my other work, please do. Maybe start with One Man, my attempt to combine Big Fantasy with a Crime Thriller. Or maybe The Great Way trilogy. Grab something, give it a read, write a review, buy a dozen copies for your friends. Whatever seems best. 

I’ll save the reports on my ER visit followup and jury duty for a later time. 

I am rushed to the Emergency Room, and other news tidbits

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Most of you know I’m working on the final book in the Twenty Palaces series, and I keep telling people that part of the reason I’m doing that now is because I’m not going to live forever, so I might as well get it done. I don’t want to die with the series unfinished.

Just so you know, it’s over 100K words right now, and I’m writing the climactic action scene. 

Just so you know, redux, it’s going to need a lot of revision, so don’t expect to read it soon. Certainly not this year. 

Anyway, the point to all this rigamarole is that I started having chest pains just before midnight on Friday night. 

I posted about it on Blue Sky, then tried to go to bed. Except the pain didn’t go away.

I thought about my dad, who had pain in his side for quite a long time before he told his wife about it. That gave time for his cancer to spread and that cancer killed him. Then I pictured my wife waking up early and seeing me lying breathless and gray-skinned, and I thought maybe I shouldn’t hide what was going on.

So I got up and called the consulting nurse, and she called 911. 

My poor wife was sound asleep but my son was, as he put it “rage debugging” some code he has written. They helped get me together and we moved outside to wait for the ambulance. 

Spoiler: I didn’t have a heart attack. I also didn’t have a hole in my lung. I also didn’t have pneumonia.

What I did have, when the paramedics started checking me out, was a blood pressure of 210/110.

In the end, I got a ride in an ambulance. I got two nitroglycerin pills to put under my tongue (which dropped my bp by a ton). I got so many sensors stuck to my body that I was still pulling them off mid-day Saturday. I got carried down the tall concrete stairs in front of my building in a special chair with treads on the back that was designed for a 310lb guy like me. 

I mean, at first I asked those guys if I should start down on my own because I’m pretty fat, but they showed me the chair and strapped me in, instead. And the chair is great… when they lean the patient back. Once at the start, they accidentally tipped me forward and–did I mention that there are a lot of concrete steps between me and the street? Yeah, that moment of panic wasn’t a great feeling for a guy whose blood pressure was running wild. But (here’s another spoiler) I lived.

In the end, they kept me in the ER for about four or five hours. I was sick and wrung out enough that I managed a little sleep–and so did my wife–but my son was great about staying awake and keeping watch.

At one point, while I was strapped down on the ER bed and feeling pretty sure I wouldn’t die before sunrise, I told him that I didn’t want my unfinished work to be completed or published. I said he should just look into the notes I wrote on the final 20P book, because I put a summary of the ending to the whole series there, and he should just post that online. 

Which is not as good as a finished book, but better than an unfinished one.

So, I spent Saturday sleeping and feeling feverish. I woke up Sunday (today) feeling tired but mostly fine. Now I’m telling you guys about it, and about how glad I am that I made a little note about the ending of Twenty Palaces, just in case. 

Some side notes: When I was a kid, I saw so many TV shows where heart patients put a little nitro pill under their tongues. So many! In fact, when the emt gave me one and was telling me how to take it, I almost cheered and said I know all about this from TV! 

Weird how I never see that on TV any more. When I mentioned it, the emt said, “It still works!” And it really did. 

Pro tip, from my son: If you ever find yourself deep into rage debugging, just have a family member rushed to the hospital. I’m told that makes all that rage evaporate, and you can return to your project with a clear head the next day. 

Apparently, what I had was a virus of some kind. Supposedly. There are still many mysteries in the world that we can only guess at.

Also, the ambulance had a digital clock above the back door, but the time was wrong, and the emt told me they didn’t know how to set it for the correct time. 

Well, it was lucky they had me strapped in, because I fucking love setting other people’s digital clocks to the correct time. I would have been opening cabinets and pulling panels back and wandering all over that little space, trying to set that right for them.

Finally, I’m lucky to have the family that I have. They looked after me more than I am comfortable with but to exactly the level I needed. I feel extraordinarily lucky for a guy who had to be rushed to the hospital. 

Take care. 

Writing the last 20P along with birthday wisdom

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June Blog Post

For once I’m going to start with news about the book I’m working on, then move on to other topics that maybe no one cares about. 

I typically write the Twenty Palaces books with short chapters, but for my own convenience, I’ll separate them into sections, and each section will have a semi-cryptic little title such as “Seizing Treasures” or “An Uneven Apocalypse”. Basically, it creates manageable sections for searches, revisions, whatever. 

Well, last week I created a section called “The Ending.”

Felt weird, guys. 

Writing the Twenty Palaces novels has always been difficult, but this last one is legitimately kicking my ass. I’ve already thrown out a few opening sections, and now I’m trying to wrap up the story in a satisfying way. It’s not simply more challenging than previous books in the series, it’s more intimidating. 

I’m at the point that I think I might have to set this draft aside once it’s finished and let it marinate for a few months before I start work on it again. Maybe, at the end of that time, I’ll have thought up a decent title, too. 

During that delay, I’ll do one more revision on the last pure fantasy novel I’ll ever write, then I can return to this current book, then I can write something new to hand to my agent. I have a novel idea waiting in the shadows, impatiently tapping its foot waiting for me to get to it. 

Moving on: tomorrow, the day after I send this out, will be July 1st. I’ve said many times in this space that July 1st is not my birthday, but it is the day I celebrate my birthday. And this past birthday was my sixtieth.

I think, having reached sixty years of age, I’m finally able to admit that I’ve failed at achieving the lifelong dream I had for my writing. 

I’m grateful for the successes I have had, and also for the readers who are still interested in my work. 

Honestly, I feel very lucky.

But my books doesn’t excite enough people to build the large group of readers I’d hoped for when I was younger, and no matter how hard I try, I’m not as prolific as I’d like to be. 

Which means I’m just me, a guy who revises and revises, then thinks again and revises again, until I finally release something I’m not entirely happy with. I’ll keep writing, of course, for however many more years my body gives me, but I’m giving up on hope. Hope is poison.

In other news, I recently picked up a book by a new-to-me author that was highly recommended, who gave a smart and charming interview on a podcast I enjoy, and the book has a genre mix that I find genuinely exciting. 

Then I opened it up to the first page and read a scene featuring Our Hero having a breakfast meeting with a fat person who is eating fatly. 

I understand that spectacle is an ordinary part of storytelling, but a fat person eating bacon is not spectacle, and I’m not looking for a book that expects me to feel revulsion, contempt, and pity for a person who is like me. It’s cheap, thoughtless contempt. 

I’m still reading it, though. It’s got good stuff in it. 

And finally, I’m watching Ironheart and it’s genuinely weird. It has great characters and a solid cast. The story is engaging, the lead is appropriately troubled, and everything feels fresh.

But not the superhero tech. All the superheroing stuff that used to be the real highlight of these shows now just feels samey. It’s the idea of spectacle again, I guess. The story is great but the superpower thrills are just not there. 

Which is not to say that I’ve become immune to or exhausted by the inherent fun of superpowers. A few weeks back, I watched Kraven (because I hate myself, apparently) and the one and only thing it had going for it was the fluid superhuman strength and agility of the main character. That one element was beautiful to watch, like an incredible dancer or martial artist. 

So the appeal remains, but Ironheart doesn’t know how to exploit it.

And that’s it. I’m going to go back to work on the book. I hope everyone is doing well.

Progress on Twenty-One Palaces, Hands-Off, and Other Stuff

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It’s Saturday morning as I write this and I’m watching English soccer on broadcast TV–pretty much the only appointment TV I bother with any more–and thinking about the writing I did on Twenty-One Palaces yesterday.

I’m pretty sure that I described the final predator I’ll ever have to create for the Twenty Palaces novels. 

At this point in the series, it had become a bit of a fraught process. What could I do that I hadn’t done before? I’d done various animal-shapes. I’d done metal. I’d done crystal. I’d done pseudo-angels. I’d done wet sludge. I’d done lightning. I’d done rocks. The drapes were basically amorphous blobs. The cousins were brain worms (more relevant now than when I first wrote them 15+ years ago). 

And so on. The self-inflicted pressure to make each new creature as different as possible from what came before is not just professional pride or creative vanity. Repeating elements in creature design implies relationships between those creatures. Maybe people will assume one is the larval form of the other. Maybe that they evolved from a common ancestor. 

I didn’t want that. I wanted them unique and inexplicable. 

But it’s done. I wish I could say that this final design is the absolute best of them, but I don’t think I’ll live long enough to top the sapphire dog. 

That doesn’t imply I’m almost done writing this draft, though. I’m only now turning toward the climax, and it’s been a real struggle to figure out. Usually, by this point, I know how the story ends and can sprint through it. Not the case right now, unfortunately. The Twenty Palaces books have always been difficult for me, the guy who struggles with literally everything he writes, but this one has been the hardest.

Still: progress. 

I’m also thinking that I should change the title of the book. The story is not going in the same direction as it was when I picked that title so many years ago. We’ll see.

In other news, I went to the big Hands Off protest held here in Seattle (and around the country). The event was scheduled for three hours but I lasted almost two. Sadly, the pain in my legs–especially in the ankle I broke at 17 and never got treatment for–didn’t ease until eight days later. As much as I would like to be one of those people who march and chant, that’s not going to work out. 

It’s been a while since my last post so I haven’t had a chance to recommend new things. My wife and I both enjoyed the heck out of The Residence, which is a rare entry in the recent surge of whodunnits that actually cares about the mystery and the characters both. 

We also finally got around to a few Korean shows that have been ripening in the Netflix queue. Man to Man was a mix of romcom and action spy (on a Korean TV budget). I enjoyed it quite a lot, but I was surprised my wife did, too. She’s usually not a fan of romcoms. 

We also watched My Name, which is an engrossing gangster drama with a lot of action scenes. My wife was happy to see the woman from Gyeongseong Creature again, but thought the fights were a little too bloody. We loved it otherwise, though. 

I’ll stop here so I can get a little more writing done. In the future, I’ll try to keep these updates coming monthly. 

Take care. Speak out. Thank you for supporting my Patreon.