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Super Fund Sites and Dinosaurs

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Now, for a proper September post.

First of all, one of the interesting things about being a writer is that sometimes you spend a little too much time on Google maps looking for a sign posted outside a super fund site just to see what’s written on them.

In hindsight, I should have guessed that no one would want the word “SUPER FUND” on a sign in their neighborhood. Such and Such Cleanup Project seems to be much more common.

Also, I’ve learned there are a number of websites, like “parkopedia”, that provide databases, city by city, for parking spots. Sadly, they didn’t have the information that I was looking for, but for every little need, it seems like there’s an ongoing competition to create something to meet it.

Anyway, a need to write with the internet blocked makes it easy to be wrong about very basic stuff. In my mind’s eye, I still see small towns by the highway the way they looked in movies and television of my youth: two-lane roads, family-owned businesses, ramshackle buildings. In the current day, there are a lot of stroads (IYKYK) and big box stores with expansive parking lots.

I’ve always said that I am reliant on revisions, and it’s not just stylistically.

The book is currently over 140K words long. That’s probably a little too long for a POD edition. But we’ll see.

Last post, I talked about being a DINO MASTER (exclamation points!) in the Jurassic Park ttrpg that I ran for my family, and how it didn’t really work for the game’s genre if I was reluctant to kill off a PC.

I mean, I love my family. Also, they’re not experienced gamers. We haven’t been playing for very long and we haven’t, at this point, experienced the actual death of an actual PC. We spent months playing Brindlewood Bay, for example, which has numerous mechanics that let you kill off a character and then immediately undo it.

But a game full of vicious dinosaurs? (and also technologically advanced sleestaks riding around on armored T-rexes?) That definitely calls for character death. So I psyched myself up for it.

(Un)Fortunately, in the session immediately after that post, they didn’t roll a single failure in a peril move. It was all successes and partial successes.

The session after? My son, who had chosen the playbook “The Kid” and was playing the dino-loving 12yo child of Dino Island “founder” Ethan Rusk, failed a peril move and took an injury.

In this game, you don’t get three strikes. A second injury meant you make the casualty move, which is that you do something heroic and permanently die, or you fall down and are helpless until another PC carries you to medical help.

Let me tell you, when I announced that injury, the whole tone of the session changed. Voices were hushed. Glances? They were wary. My wife looked at me like she couldn’t believe that I might actually be a man who would kill my own child(‘s player character).

But it didn’t come to that. They worked well together and had a few solid rolls, so both characters made it off the island. (Rusk didn’t, naturally).

Well, this is a little long. More to come in October. I’m hoping to catch up on a few old horror movies I have somehow missed, once Spooktober arrives, starting with Don’t Look Now. We’ll see how it plays.

Being Specifically Yourself

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This needs to be a quick note because the month is about to end, I’m sick again, and I want to get back to the ending of this book. (I am rewriting it pretty extensively from my first attempt. It’s not the climax that I’m changing, it’s the epilogue. It’ll be a bit long, certainly longer than the one I wrote for Child of Fire, which irritated–in a good way, imo–so many people.)

There has been much talk about so-called AI and fiction lately. I say “so-called” because there are a lot of different kinds of software being labeled “AI”, and much of it (the maybe-possibly useful stuff) seems to be about analysis of scientific data. Not all of it is good, but people who know more than I do have managed to get worthwhile results (like fancy math proofs) from it. And that’s fine.

But when we talk about fiction, we’re almost always talking about large language models, and those are pretty clearly not good.

I don’t know if I’ve said this here before, but I have never used an LLM in my writing and I have no intention of doing so in the future. Never not ever.

First of all, the “AI” branding is fake. The text it spits out might seem to be sapient, but it’s not. The software has no intelligence. It can’t vet itself because it has no conscious awareness. It’s a plagiarism algorithm that is only good at guessing which word should follow next, based on the thousands of authors whose work has been stolen to create it.

Second, the last thing in the world that I want is a story, paragraph, or sentence that proceeds in the most statistically likely way. I’m not aiming for average. I’m trying to do something interesting and unique. Flooding Amazon with generic, machine-processed stories is only good for bilking people out of their hard-earned money. I work hard so that people feel glad that they bought my book.

Third, I sometimes see people bragging about how good they are with “prompts”, and I recognize them as the same guys who used to say they had a great idea for a book. Then they’d suggest I write it up so we could split the money fifty/fifty.

Ideas are cheap, and while I’m glad this particular kind of guy isn’t bothering authors any more, I’m sorry to see them dumping their pseudo-stories into the same marketplaces that actual human writers need.

Okay. Back to it.

 

Adding the Color Commentary: Accretion and Revision

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Our planet Earth was formed by an accretion of whatever matter happened to be nearby, all falling together over a period of giga-years. It collided, made a mess, and eventually settled out into something that could support life.

Giga-years.

I bet you can guess why I’m talking about this: my books come together in a similar way. I write a scene, and revise it over and over. And sure, each round involves smoothing out the text, but I’m also adding little things the story needs–tiny character moments, details that establish the “rules” of the setting, important scene setting, and often times it’s just little ways to slow down the pacing to make sure the action will have more impact.

This is a problem for me sometimes. People can easily recognize when a book is too slow, but when a book (or even just a scene within the book) is too fast, people rarely describe it that way. It’s much more likely for them to say “I didn’t care.”

This reminds me of a fight scene from a best-seller. The narrative off the fight was just a string of karate moves in detail. Reading it, I got that confused-puppy-headquirk. I didn’t recognize the names of some of the strikes and blocks and couldn’t picture them. The guy Our Hero was fighting was just a mook that I didn’t know or care about. I didn’t understand what the stakes were beyond a bloody nose.

Now, that sort of thing can work in a Bruce Lee movie where the physicality of a fight scene can be beautiful and thrilling to watch, but on the page it came to nothing. What works in text is not the play-by-play, it’s the color commentary.

My first drafts usually feel a bit stripped down, as I race through the narrative. It’s only in revisions that I look at things a second time and add in the important stuff: how it feels, what is means, why it’s frightening or embarrassing or just depressing, how it smells or tastes.

And that turns out to be a process of dropping text–sometimes long segments of text–into dialog or between paragraphs. It would take less time if I could do that in the first time around, but I can’t. I can only spend the time to do fix after fix after fix, because these first drafts really are not worth reading.

At least it doesn’t take giga-years.

Anyway, I’m making good progress.

Moving on, this is June, which means my actual birthday recently passed but the day I celebrate it is still in the future. Plus, Father’s Day. As a gift, I got a month’s worth of AppleTV so we can watch more Slow Horses, Severance, and other shows, too. FYI: The Gorge was a delight and I’m really looking forward to Widow’s Bay.

I wish I could pass on a book rec, but everything I’ve been reading has been a little off, for one reason or another. Maybe in July.

Thanks for reading. Talk to you next month, if I’m still alive.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.