Month: August 2022

What if ‘Good Omens’ was written by a guy who liked Christianity?

I’m gonna save my in-depth review of this series for an Upstream article. For now I want to link to some stuff here.

Mercury Falls on Amazon

Rob Kroese is one of the much better names doing indie sci-fi and fantasy. It helps that he’s a yeoman novelist with a wide range of interests, and he studies a ton of stuff himself. Much like David Butler, he casts a wide net into different areas of Christian lore, then just has fun telling a good story.

In this case, we meet an angel named Mercury who wants to stop the end of the world, which–funnily enough–may come about due to a loophole interpretation of a divine contract between God and Satan. He’s not the only focal character by a mile.

We also get Christine, a journalist investigating Armageddon sects, and a colorful cadre of side characters to boot.

It’s just plain fun and I want you to like it. I finished book 2 recently so I’m moving through the series. Enjoy.

State of the Dread: August 2022

Very bold of me to drop an update when I’ll be doing it again in nine days but good luck getting me to care. August has been an outhouse tornado and I’m just counting down the days until it ends.

Writing

Cracked 30k in HOWLING WILDERNESS. I’ve embraced the hot mess that is the first draft. I just need to get it down so I can focus on fixing it. Aiming for a Halloween 2023 release.

Reading

Finished a few books this month and in July, mainly I’m working my way through Rob Kroese’s Mercury books. I think Rekieta has a new case coming up soon so I’ll probably follow that, too.

Drawing

Just the new channel art for YT.

Recording

I’ve gotten scripts ready for September, but haven’t recorded them. Gonna work on it this week.

Fitness

The fact that I’m not an overly corpulent blob after a multi-state move is kind of a miracle, but working insane hours to get your whole house packed and then unpacked will do that to you. If I were to take a testosterone test right now it would probably be a fail.

Other

Nothing, get back to work.

Jake Westbrook is BASED!

I’ve shared Jake’s videos before, he compiles vintage old music and puts it on YouTube. Some copyright holders have been hitting his videos with strikes and claims, even though a huge majority of the music is supposed to be in the public domain by now, and all of the individual tracks can be found ELSWHERE ON YOUTUBE. Ugh.

Anyway, he just uploaded this video and included a link to a website where you can still listen to his themed playlists episodes.

Cannot stop the signal.

Channing Tatum is the gayest straight dude alive

And I say that with all affection.

Legitimately, I like the dude. I have yet to see a movie where he wasn’t likeable. Granted I haven’t seen all his movies, so who knows.

The wife and I watched The Lost City last week and it was really funny. Movies about writers tend to really exaggerate the headaches we deal with, but they do it for dramatic and comedic chops, which is kind of the point of the format.

What I didn’t know is that cover models are a huge deal in romance, and they have their own cultish followings. Tatum plays a cover model for Sandra Bullock’s character, Loretta.

There’s some raunchy humor in it here and there, but overall it’s pretty clever for its genre, and a lot of fun. Channing Tatum, who IRL got his start modeling and dancing, basically spends the whole movie playing Channing Tatum, just a little bit dumber. At the same time you can tell he’s playing it straight and taking it seriously, and the effort makes the movie watchable. Plus the dude is jacked, and I respect that.

He was in the running to play Captain America before Marvel handed it to Evans. He was supposed to be Gambit years ago, but Fox is morally opposed to making good X-Men movies since Days of Future Past, so who knows what will happen. But I liked him in this one and you should watch it.

New Channel Art

Forgot to tell you guys I made these. Go subscribe to my channel, please.

Most of the YT channel will still be about books and reading, but I wanted to diversify the content with other things that I do regularly.

The current reading project for the channel is “What So Proudly We Hail.” I have videos scripted, just not recorded. Those who know, know that I have a lot going on for the next week.

In between video scripts, I’m picking at Howling Wilderness. It’s up and down with that one.

I draw when I can’t write, or when I’m not in the mood. My digital stuff is improving, and when I sit down to do publication-worthy stuff, I’m really pleased with the result. Onward and upward.

I need you guys to boost this video

Here’s a video rundown of a bunch of different drawings I’ve done over the last few years. Some good, some less so, and critiques for all.

Somehow this video was set to “unlisted” when it went live, so most of my subscribers didn’t see it. Really annoying. It’s killed my momentum for the week on my channel.

The YouTube algo is a cruel mistress. That’s why UmbrellaGuy is STILL posting videos about Amber Heard. I’m not gonna do that, but I am gonna vary up the content.

Anyway, watch and share, if you’re so inclined.

Howling Wilderness Update

The speed of the writing comes in spurts, so I’m employing a lot of Clint Eastwood Ninja Turtle in this draft. If you’ve forgotten what that is, he’s just a mechanism I use when a scene isn’t working. A meme version of “fix it in post.”

I just write him into the story, and he escorts the characters to the next part.

Get it written, so you can get it fixed.

I crossed 26k words recently. That tells me that it’s overwritten. I wanted the whole thing to be 50k, and it’s looking more like 25k at this point. Sometimes this happens, especially when I’m too busy to write regularly.

This book won’t be out in 2022, but it will be out for 2023. Gonna get it done right. I did already get a publication out for this year (Sheriff Porter) so my streak remains alive. Next year if I have to write something short I have a project in mind. Onward and upward.

Anything Boys Can Do…

…boys can do better.

Okay so I met up with a couple of Internet bros last Saturday (sup guys) for lunch at a Thai place. Predictably we got to talking about books. One of the bros, who will go unnamed here, but who has a character named after him in Howling Wilderness, mentioned that he doesn’t read books by women any more.

People will have predictable responses to this and I frankly don’t care what they are. Literally everyone should read what they want and literally nobody should tell anyone else what they have to read or cannot read. In the meantime, make recommendations to each other.

That said, out of curiosity I perused my last several dozen books and realized almost all of them were written by dudes.

A couple of women snuck in there and I don’t know how, but I’ll do better, you guys. Must have Y chromosome to ride.

Lol, but seriously. I don’t care who wrote a book, I care that it’s good, it just turns out that guys generally do it better.

“But JK Rowling! Stephenie Meyer! They made money!”

Sure, fine, cool, good for them, I literally do not care.

Read

What

You

Like

If you think it’s good, it shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

Unless it’s super pedo or something, in which case, burn it with fire.

Bye.

Like I need another hobby

I’m about to have a huge shop in my backyard, so I can finally start working on cars again like I did 20 years ago.

I’m gonna be tempted to take up new hobbies like Mister Boylei here, but I cannot do it. I have enough dreams that won’t come true, lol.

Anyway, this week he made a dragon. You should also check out the Wild West town he’s been building. All of his stuff is excellent.

Go Horse

Jeez, you fall off the horse one day, and suddenly it’s been three weeks since you posted.

I took WordPress off my phone because they rainbow’d the logo for June. Corporate endorsement in the Pr!de movement is cynical at best and I’m tired of it. Been tired of it for years. Whatever the cause, they don’t actually care about you, they care about your money. The second that brand becomes unprofitable they’ll sweep it under the rug.

That and WordPress kind of sucks. They don’t have integrated antimalware tech, you have to pay a ridiculous amount of extra money for it, and malware is what crashed Upstream a few months ago.

My site is due to renew in September, so I’m going to move over to Substack sometime around then. Just got a lot going on right now.

Anyway, I’ll pre-program a few posts for this week and maybe next week. They’ll be simple and short, and they’ll reward you cats for checking out the site. Talk to you soon.