Why is Frodo so mopey all the time? Paying attention and critical response

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It’s pretty common for readers to write reviews that get basic facts wrong.

It’s not surprising. If the reader doesn’t like the book, isn’t engaged with the characters or the plot, they start to skim. Skimming means they miss character motivations or plot details. Missing those details means the reader thinks the story is full of flaws, and lowers their interest further.

As an example, I read a review of Peter V. Brett’s The Warded Man that one of the main characters inexplicably became a great fighter even though he spent all his time studying in a library. The only problem with that assessment? The text explicitly states that he spent hours every day learning to fight. It’s right there in the book, but a skimming reader missed it, so it might as well not be.

Anyway, this is why I stop reading books when I find myself skimming. Continue reading

Randomness for 5/17

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1) 16-Year-Old Invents $5 Cell Phone Bike Charger And Shares The Instructions For Free.

2) Seven legendary artists drawing The Hobbit, imagined.

3) Sweden employs the “gay sailor” defense against Russian subs that encroach on their waters.

4) Chinese audiences stymied by Age of Ultron translated subtitles.

5) Animators use Grand Theft Auto: V animations to create a tribute to BREAKING BAD. Video. Pretty amazing.

6) Special gloves that you can’t take off… because the inside is covered with thorns.

7) What would a four-year-old girl like to see Wonder Woman do? This made me laugh with delight.

My kid buys a hat

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On Tuesday, I tweeted this:

We were at Target solely because there’s a Best Buy on the floor below, and he wanted to get a new headset for his computer without waiting for online delivery. And why not pop in to Target to see if he could replace his old Minecraft baseball cap?

He looked good in that fedora, but he went with a plain black cap instead. Then we got home and discovered the headset was fucked up.

His mom took him back there yesterday to return the headset for a new (more expensive! grr!) model, and while they were there, he decided to rethink that hat.

Picture posted with his permission: Continue reading

An interview with Aidan Moher about his new book, Tide of Shadows and Other Stories

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For a change of pace, today I’m interviewing Aidan Moher, the Hugo Award-winning editor of A Dribble of Ink, about his new book, Tide of Shadows and Other Stories. Let’s get right to it:

HC. Let’s make the first question an easy one: What’s the pitch for your new book?

AM. Tide of Shadows and Other Stories is my first short fiction collection. There are five stories in the collection—from a military SF set on board a galaxy-faring starship, to a whimsical romp through the Kingdom of Copperkettle Valley—and accompanying story notes. The stories are all vastly different from one another, and I think there’s something to please every type of genre reader.

HC. I see you’re self-publishing this book, a choice many of us have made for a wide variety of reasons. What made you decide to publish yourself?

AM. I took the long way around to self-publishing. Like a lot of readers and writers, I used to have a fairly negative opinion of self-publishing—I thought of it as a literary dumping ground, a place where the rejected and down-trodden ended up after trying valiantly to get someone to publish their work. I didn’t see that changing. I was wrong. Continue reading

Three posts about health, part three: I’m allergic to my own sweat

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Not a joke. If you google the phrase “I’m allergic to my own sweat” you come to a bunch of results that point you to what I have: cholinergic urticaria. “Cholinergic” referring to acetacholine, and “urticaria” which just means “hives.” What that means is that I break out in horrible red itchy hives whenever my body gets warm. Continue reading

Just plug yourself into this sinister dark lord: the power of cliches

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Lately, this map of Clichéa has been making the rounds of the internet, and getting a lot of laughs. Nervous laughs, sometimes. Continue reading

Three posts about health, part two: food and skin

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Yesterday, I talked about food and anxiety. Today I’ll talk about food and my face.

Ugh. Seriously, I hate this, but many years ago I started getting red patches on my face. My skin would get rough and slightly puffy, and no amount of washing or moisturizing would make it better. The best I could hope for was to scrub my face so hard it all turned red. My wife had it, too. The best our doctors could manage was “You should wash your face,” which… yeah.

Eventually, things would get so bad that those red patches would start to peel. Yeah, I had face dandruff. Sorry, ladies, I’m taken. Continue reading

Three posts about health, part one: food and anxiety

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This space is where I talk about my weird bullshit, but for whatever reason, I’ve avoided talking about health issues here. Today I’ll talk about the most negligible of them: my fucked-up anxieties and the foods that made them worse. Continue reading

What makes a monster: Avengers 2 and the Black Widow

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A whole lot of folks are unhappy with the portrayal of Black Widow (“The Black Widow”? Hm.) in the second Avengers movie, and there are a whole lot of others insisting they just let it go. So naturally, I have to weigh in.

As a sidenote, it’s interesting to see: ““I’ve said before, when you declare yourself politically, you destroy yourself artistically,” [Joss Whedon] said.

And he’s right, obviously. People might criticize the sexist parts of, say, SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD but they don’t subject Edgar Wright to the same “What a wonderful feminist/He calls himself a feminist? Ha!” rhetoric that Whedon gets. It’s the first thing people want to talk about. And many of those same people are really hot about Black Widow’s infertility and her use of the term “monster”. (spoilers) Continue reading

PayPal can just take $2500 out of your accounts now?

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PayPal’s new rules remind me why I hate doing business with them in any capacity. If they’ve decided that one of their users has violated their Acceptable Use Policy, the contract allows them to deduct money directly from your account or from other accounts you control, and the contract specifies that you agree that $2500 USD is a reasonable minimum charge.

It’s amazing the bullshit this company gets away with.

Back when I was running my Kickstarter campaign, Continue reading