Religious Faith as Superpower, and Other Nonsense

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I had originally written up a long post about religion in fantasy and horror, and the way that having the “right” religion had traditionally been treated at a superpower to use against supernatural evil. But I just deleted it.

First, I was talking about a specific as-yet unrealized project and I didn’t want to name it or kick the people involved.

Second, I was raised in a religious family but I’m an atheist now. As an atheist, I much prefer stories use the concept of a loving god of infinite mercy over the idea of a god who takes sides. Why shouldn’t vampires have the chance to receive salvation? Why shouldn’t demons? God created both. He should love them, too.

Third, all that said, I’ll sit down and watch as many Salem’s Lot movies as they care to make.

Fourth, speaking of that, fuck those Harry Potter TV seasons. We need a deeply faithful Salem’s Lot TV miniseries.

Anyway, the point was supposed to be that lately I much prefer science horror and cosmic horror.

Also, The Boroughs is really well done.

Moving on, I’m more than two-thirds of the way through *this* revision of the final 20P novel and some of these story problems are going to haunt me for the rest of my days. I keep having to stop and rethink/recontextualize whole scenes while trying to preserve the story I’ve already got going.

I sort of feel that Pandemic Me must have hated Current Me to have dropped this vomit draft on me.

In personal medical news, I posted earlier this month about my recurring chest pains. This past week I went in for a echo cardiogram. The result appears to be that my heart has no discoverable defect. I’m sure that’s significant but I won’t have context until I can actually sit down with the cardiologist.

Last thing: for Tabletop Tuesday, we have reached the part of our Brindlewood Bay campaign where I’m allowed to make the villains attack them with “sendings and servitors” and boy, were my wife and son startled by this scene. Both gave me that head-shudder-wide-eyes look of surprised.

Very satisfying.

Take care. Look after each other, and thank you for your support on Patreon.

What does it look like when someone is drowning? 2026

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Up here in the northern hemisphere, summer is about to start, so it’s time to repost my annual warning:

How to recognize when someone is drowning.

It’s not what you think. Before you take your kids or loved ones into the water, read this article.

Please.

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 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.

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. 

An Out of Control Chief Executive (in a Brave New World)

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I don’t see a lot of movies in the theater lately. My health has been shit and in America that means money has been tight. Very tight. (Please buy my books and post reviews of them, and if you back me on Patreon, thank you thank you thank you)

However, there’s a new MCU entry with a black Captain America, and in defiance of the Worst People on YouTube, I was willing to throw an afternoon-matinee worth of my income into that big pool of box office returns. 

My spoiler-free take on the film:

  • Anthony Mackie should be a movie star (meaning, people see movies mainly because he’s in them
  • Brave New World is as good (and as flawed) as any of the ordinary MCU entries when the series was at peak popularity
  • It ditches the ironic snark of the last few films and thank God for that.
  • When is Sam Wilson going to get a love interest? 
  • Feige really needs to change the way he makes these movies.

The story is fairly straightforward: Thunderbolt Ross has gotten himself elected president, and he’s been trying to make amends for past mistakes both for his legacy as CiC and to make amends with his estranged daughter. He’s pushing hard for an international treaty on the exploitation of a newly discovered mineral, adamantium, inside the body of that dead Celestial from a few movies back.

What he won’t do is go public about his mistakes, even when they’re getting people killed by the dozens and eventually pushing the world to the brink of war. 

It’s up to Sam Wilson to figure out what’s going on and put a stop to it, and that’s a job that’s going to require a lot of action scenes.

If that sounds like the story is weirdly focused on the antagonist’s personal journey, it is. Wilson does have a personal journey of his own. Sort of. In the non-action scenes of the movie, he talks about feeling like he isn’t up to the challenge of being Captain America, and he even expresses his regret at not taking the super soldier serum. 

But because this is a Marvel movie, with different parts shot by different people, and in which a rough compilation of scenes were brought to Kevin Feige so he could whip up a storyline to glue them together in reshoots. 

Which is why, no matter how much Wilson talks about his fear that he could never live up to the standards set by Steve Rogers, that never once plays out in the action sequences (which are pretty terrific, honestly). Wilson talks about the possibility that he might come up short, but it never even comes close to happening.

It’s the biggest flaw this movie has. The second biggest is the on-the-nose dialog, but that’s par for the course with political thrillers. 

Is this the place to talk about President Hulk? Or President Red Hulk, I guess? The Hulk has always been a sort of werewolf for the atomic age, where instead of a fear of the beasts of the wild, it represented a fear of the destructive power of radioactive weapons unleashed by baby-men throwing tantrums. 

If I thought Feige could see the future, I would suspect this was a comment on our current political situation. It isn’t. It can’t be. Ross is a bad person, yeah, but he isn’t “You should drink bleach/ Isn’t my daughter fuckable/ Let’s take over that sovereign nation” level bad. Ross wants a treaty to allow international cooperation. A Trumpian figure would be trying to turn Celestial Island into the 51st state. 

Anyway, good movie. Fun action scenes. Great performances. It would have been a fantastic movie if they’d taken the time to make it a cohesive story.

—-

In other news, after a long reading drought, I’m finally reading something that I’m enjoying. There’s about 50 pages left, but as long as it doesn’t shit the bed during the ending, I’ll happily recommend it here. Details to come, maybe.

—-

Work on the final Twenty Palaces book continues in my every spare moment. I’m not as far along as I’d like to be, but I feel like I’m genuinely getting it right. I even have the ending–mostly–worked out. 

As always, revisions will be extensive and intense but progress is happening. I only wish it could happen faster. 

—-

I had more to say but I think I’m going to stop there so I can get back to the things that really matter. 

Annual Repost: Beautiful and Terrifying. The Best Ever Version is Here Again.

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Here is the best adaptation of A Christmas Carol ever made.

Why is it so good, you wonder? It’s the spookiest. Look at that freeze frame up there. So many adaptations skip this moment, even when they’re making a two-hour movie rather than a 25-minute short like this.

Of course, you shouldn’t really watch it on YouTube. Better to use Tubi.

Don’t skip it.

 

Learning to Love Horror Movies and some Patreon Annoyance.

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Two notes:

First of all, starting November, no one will be able to sign up for my Patreon through the Patreon app on Apple. The reasons are semi-complex and not all that interesting, but mainly don’t like that Apple insists on extracting 30% from every monthly donation (edited to add: my understanding is that this only affects new signups)

Folks who want to support my Patreon will have to sign up via desktop, laptop, Android device, or whatever alternative they can find. I’m sure this will cost me money, but it’s annoying to have another huge corporation sticking their fingers into my pockets and yours, and money is already so tight that the sacrifice of this small trickle of pennies won’t really matter.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure this situation with Apple is temporary.

Second, over on reddit, someone was talking about the appeal of horror movies, asking if viewers really truly honestly enjoyed watching them. 

It’s a silly question, obviously. Movies are entertainment and art. The people who watch them clearly expect to be either entertained or otherwise affected by them. But this person could not fathom the appeal in the same way that my wife doesn’t understand why I (or anyone) would choose to eat spicy hot food.

But in between the time I started typing this comment and the time I finished it, the post had been taken down. No idea why. 

Still, it’s advice. If you’ve always been horror curious but hate various aspects of the genre, like gore (I mostly hate that too, although I sometimes tolerate it now), or doom and gloom endings (mostly not in the mood for that shit), or jump scares (annoying but not a deal-breaker for me anymore), maybe this trick will make the effect of horror less severe and more enjoyable.

Here’s the comment:

—

Watching a horror movie is a safe way to experience the upside of being in danger–the chemicals that flood your body when you perceive a threat–without actually being in danger.

For a long time, I had a problem with scary movies, too. They stressed me out. Anxiety off the charts. Then I started focusing on older movies famous for being scary to the audiences of their time.

It turned out that the style of filmmaking, fashions for costuming and acting, and other “old movie” markers gave me the mental distance to feel a muted version of the scares without having to carry them with me after the film/show was over.

Now I’m able to watch modern horror, although there are still genre tropes I don’t like. Took a while to desensitize, but it wasn’t exactly punishment to watch great old movies.

I think it’s a lot like eating hot peppers. You’re not being burned–there’s an enzyme in the peppers that perfectly fits pain receptors–but your body doesn’t know that and floods you with endorphins. There’s no lasting harm but very real pleasure responses.

—

And if you’re one of those folks who have zero interest in scary movies, that’s great. Please unread the paragraphs above.

Happy Halloween.