Leland Lydecker's Blog, page 12
August 12, 2018
Writing From A State of Exhaustion
As a night owl and someone who typically requires nine hours of sleep, I’m well acquainted with exhaustion. It’s been a constant companion for most of my life. In addition, exhaustion and depression go hand in hand for me. Exhaustion sucks the light out of life. The world becomes a grey, flat place where I […]
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August 5, 2018
Interference, Chapter 1: Kay
What follows is the first chapter of a new work in progress called Interference. It has yet to be seen whether this will wind up being a short story or something longer, but right now my money is on something longer. Content warning for brief references to torture and grievous bodily injury. Kay’s treads […]
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July 29, 2018
Unpleasant Revelations
This has been a week full of unfortunate events and unpleasant discoveries. The company I work for is having a rough time and there have been rumblings of internal upheaval, yet somehow the gears of corruption and good-ol’-boy favors keep turning. On the home front, I discovered a basketball-sized wasp nest hidden in the […]
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July 24, 2018
The Library Question
On Saturday July 21st, 2018, Forbes triggered a flood of outrage from the literary, academic, and library-using communities by publishing an opinion piece advocating for the replacement of libraries with for-profit retail outlets. Specifically, Amazon retail outlets. While Forbes has since pulled the article, it can still be found here. The owner of this controversial […]
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July 16, 2018
Antagonistic Forces
Let’s talk believable antagonists and realistic sources of conflict. I’m not going to get into the four types of conflict, or six, or however many it is now. I am going to talk about creating a believable antagonistic force, rather than one of those cardboard caricature, source-of-all-evil bad guys. The concept of a having one […]
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July 9, 2018
Book Spam!
No, not that kind. I’m talking about the kind of book spam authors receive after they’ve gotten well enough known that spammers think the author might actually have some money, but might still be naive enough to fall for an obvious scam. Newsflash, scammers: I’ve never been that naive. This post is inspired by an […]
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July 1, 2018
Mythical Monsters & Ancient Biases
I’ve always liked Medusa. Like a lot of the more interesting components of Greek and Roman mythology, she’s a remnant of an earlier civilization that the Hellenic peoples (those who would later become what we think of as the Greeks) overran. Demonized by the invaders as a fearfully ugly monster who could turn men to […]
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June 24, 2018
Review: Paul L Arvidson’s Dark
Paul L Arvidson’s Dark is an unexpected hybrid, part science fiction and part heroic fantasy. The residents of the place known as the Dark inhabit a labyrinth of pipes and drains surrounding a central aqueduct known as the River, and readers will quickly realize that it is a created world rather than an organic one. […]
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June 17, 2018
A Sign of Our Times
Yesterday evening I went out to get a few things done, and it was… interesting. I’m not a people person. Thus I do as much of my errand-running as I can either very late or very early, in order to avoid the worst of the crowds. My avoidance of peak traffic times has become more […]
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June 14, 2018
Flash Fiction: The Stolen Moon
The flash fiction that follows was inspired by the artwork “Birth of the Eye,” by Justinas Vitkus. If you’d like to see more, check out his profile on DeviantArt. The Stolen Moon When the largest of the planet’s three moons finally slid free of the horizon, everyone on the research team looked up in awe. “I […]
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