Month: December 2022

Happy New Year. Buy something from me.

Hi guys.

I’ve been blogging and publishing and making videos for years. Every year I try to have some success at it but it usually just costs me money.

Pretty tired of not being good enough at this to sell anything. Not sure exactly how to change that so I am trying this.

WordPress costs me about 75 bucks per year. If I can sell 100 bucks worth of books off this site (profit, not gross) I will continue it into 2024. It just renewed in December of 2022 so I’ve got a full year to try this out.

I also started a substack, it’s crackerstack.substack.com. It replaces my Patreon for now. Nothing is really set up yet but I’m just letting you know.

I’m at that point. Let’s ride.

Kill The Beast https://a.co/d/0pDDN9k

What I read in 2009

2009 was the first year that I actively tracked what I was reading. I had read that Louis L’Amour once read 115 books in a single year and for whatever reason I wanted to beat him.

Granted, I used audiobooks and he didn’t, but I also read a few epic fantasies, and he read a lot of dime novels. I figure it balanced out.

I didn’t have a tidy system for tracking it all, I just wrote it all down without numbering it or putting months on it. Now it’s all numbered and color-coded and stuff. Over the next few days I’ll post each year’s record since I started tracking it. Anyway, here’s 2009.

I’m going live on my channel in a few minutes to discuss all of this.

(Exactly as it appears in my document):

Inkdeath

Warbreaker

Hunt for Dark Infinity

Burying Our Swords

John Carter of Mars

Artemis Fowl

Tarzan of the Apes

Reagan in His Own Voice

Seventh Son

Reading Like a Writer

Black Belt Patriotism

Rings, Swords and Monsters

Hearts of Steel

The Indigo King

Chasing Lincoln’s Killer

Believe in What You’re Doing

Redefining Joy in the Last Days

Too Much to Carry Alone

Eye of the World

Watchmen

Bright Blue Miracle

Escape from the Carnivale

Opening Atlantis

Hourglass Door

Fablehaven 4

Sea of Monsters

Titan’s Curse

Battle for the Labyrinth

Last Olympian

Demigod Files

Hatter M

Epic

Seeing Redd

Godless

Tuck

Forest of Hands and Teeth

Peter and the Shadow Thieves

Federalist Papers

Dragon America

How to Win Friends & Influence People

I Am Not A Serial Killer

The Supernaturalist

The Graveyard Book

Anansi Boys

Stardust

Wings

Silver Kiss

Maze Runner

Red Prophet

Wish List

City of Bones

Superman: Neverending Battle

Silver Hand

Other Side of the Island

Superman/Batman vs Alien/Predator

Patrick Son of Ireland

Arctic Incident

Old Man’s War

The Heldan

Supergirl

Maximum Dinobots

ROTF Graphic Novel

The Sight

I Am Spock

Complete Guide to Guys

Where’s my Jetpack?

Schlock Mercenary vol. 1

The Alliance

Cry of the Icemark

History of the Millennium

Land Keep

Heroes of the Valley

Catching Fire

Across the Nightingale Floor

Key of Kilenya

Pingo

Elantris (Graphic Audio)

Chivalry

Course of Human Events

Mice and Magic

Uglies

You’re Not Fooling Anyone…

Saving Madeline

Glenn Beck’s Common Sense

Alcatraz/Knights of Crystallia

The Lost Symbol

Endless Knot

Leviathan

Something Wicked

Amulet of Samarkand (#90)

Tuesdays with Morrie

Superfreakonomics

Troy Lord of the Silver Bow

Grass for His Pillow (Otori 2)

Christmas on Mill Street

Pretties

Hashbrown Winters

Hunger Games

Storm Front

Next 100 Years (#100)

Notebook

Little book of BofM Evidences

Reagan’s Funeral

Merchant of Death

21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

Lord of the Flies

A Christmas Carol

Shadow Dragons

Hush Hush

Pirate Latitudes (#110)

Stir of Echoes

The Dark Divine

Mormons and Polygamy

A Sound of Thunder

Eaters of the Dead

Heart of Stone

Old Time Christmas Radio

With my budding love for old time radio productions and vintage music, YouTube keeps throwing things at me to feed the addiction.

I found this playlist of old time Christmas radio programs. I’ll listen to them over the next two weeks (!!!). Jump in if you like.

GODFREY ISAACS: REVOLUTIONARY REVENANT

Farting around on FamilySearch with that whole “where are you from” percentage breakdown. Fascinating stuff. (I did not know that I am 14% Danish.)

However the real gem is this tidbit about my 6x great grandfather, Godfrey Isaacs, who apparently was an unstoppable killing machine in the fight for FREEDOM, charged by George Washington himself to study the arcane arts and hunt down supernatural Royalist infiltration demons in Appalachia.

His charge? Maintain an ongoing network of clandestine operations against the forces of darkness, forces that would nip this nascent nation’s bud and cast it into the flames of tyranny. Nothing is off the table. Holy water. Liberty grenades. Pepperbox artillery of independence. Whatever. Just get the job done, soldier.

Washington told him to fake his own death if he had to. Grandpa Godfrey would play this card in 1787. He did go underground…but not in the way that the King’s demons would believe. He became a ghost, a shadow, a whisper in the backwoods. The creak under your floorboards? That was just him keeping you safe.

Potions were involved, we know that much. And portals. Always the portals. There were silver pistols and obsidian blades. His legend grew as fast as his body count. Soon the things that went bump in the night were looking under their beds for Grandpa Godfrey, the Winchester Wraith. The Brits distracted him in the War of 1812, but even though they burned D.C., he saved us from an even greater threat elsewhere, and we’ll never know it.

He only ever made one mistake, one tiny slip-up: in 1820, while on assignment in Kentucky, had to use an alias on an official document at the Post Office. Legend has it that while he was signing, his granddaughter walked outside the building, and she was the spitting image of his late wife. Distracted, Godfrey signed with his real name, and never noticed.

An enterprising genealogist found a copy of this document and uploaded it to FamilySearch. This is the only hardcore piece of evidence we have that he’s still out there, polishing his guns, sharpening his knives, and getting ready to bump back in the night…

Christmas Books I’m Gonna Check Out

Aiight so by the time this posts I will probably have read one of these, but I don’t care and neither do yoooooooooooou

The Wizard of Oz guy takes a crack at Santa’s origins. Interesting. Looks like he wrote sequels but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Started this once, but never finished it. I may yet, despite its publisher, because Simon Vance is one of my stealth favorite narrators. We’ll see. This book is a backstory for Marley from A Christmas Carol. Why do people think they can just write a tie-in to a seasonal classic and get away with it?

I did the audio and this one was actually pretty heartwarming.

I remember almost nothing about this book. Remember how I worked in Park City in December? I spent all of January trying to forget that, it was freaking Hell Month.

Should probably re-read it. My review on GR said it was fun.

Christmas books I’ve read…

I bought the nice HC edition and I read a handful of them to my kids every year.

Great little production with a full-cast narration. Would listen again.

I’ve read a few in this series and I skipped ahead to read the Christmas one. It’s fine, if you’re into culinary mysteries then this one will scratch the itch for you. It’s a change of pace from my normal procedural reading because the protagonist is a mid-fifties woman, but she reads like a real person.

There was another book I suddenly can’t think of…they made us promote it back when I worked at Deseret Book, it was basically a Salt Lake City version of A Christmas Story, only the kid wanted to go sledding or something, instead of getting a BB gun. I dunno, it was all right, it wasn’t great, and Deseret Book is run by a bunch of cultural Marxists these days anyway, so eh.

Oh and there was this:

I’ll put a review up at Upstream, but it’s really cool. A zombie story on Christmas Eve, and Nate’s a good writer.

Read any of these, I don’t care. We’re in December, BABY!