Hieronymus Hawkes's Blog, page 6

RONE Awards voting this week 25-29 Apr!

If you didn’t notice, I tweaked the cover again. I’m happy with it now. I think it fits the genre better, but you are the judge for that.

If you have a moment I would really appreciate if you would go to the voting site and place a vote for Effacement under the Science fiction section.

Effacement RONE Voting begins April 25th!

2022 RONE Awards, Week Three: April 25 – May 1

Please note: You MUST be logged in to vote.  Need to create an account?  Click here. 

A note for new subscribers: you also have to verify your account before you can log in and vote. If you have problems with that, check the instructions.

Science Fiction/Time Travel – RONE 2022

This poll will open on Monday, April 25, 2022 – 00:00.

Wolf Alice Rocked the Deluxe Room in Indy!

My life accomplice Twila and I went to the Old National last night to see Wolf Alice live and they did not disappoint. It was one of the best shows I’ve been to in a very long time.

One of the things I love about this band is how versatile they are. Musically they are an eclectic bunch, covering the genre gamut from heavy metal to pop to folk and at the highest level. The band has been receiving accolades from the music world since they hit the scene in 2012, including the Best Breakthrough Artist of 2014 at the UK Festival Awards and 2022 Brit Award for Group of the Year. I’ve been a fan from nearly the beginning, so I felt very fortunate to catch them live in such an intimate venue as the Deluxe room. It is a basement room with a very cool vibe that the band even called out during the show.

The sound man, John Haskett, who’s been travelling with the band for more than half its existence, did an amazing job with the quality of the music we heard. We could actually hear the singing very clearly. John is also the friend of a friend and so it was nice to make a connection. He is serious craftsman and an awesome dude!

The lead singer, Ellie Rowsell, was in perfect voice and hit every note beautifully on key, even when she was screaming at certain points. She is brilliantly primordial, a combination of Joan Jett and Kate Bush and completely fearless.

Bassist Theo Ellis was larger than life and brought the energy as I suspect he always does, all the time.

Drummer Joel Amey killed it and sounded incredible as the accompanying vocalist.

Ryan Malcom is the touring keyboardist and backup singer and his impact was felt throughout the show.

Lead guitarist, Joff Oddie, was absent, but Joey B. Keefe did a fantastic job filling in.

They did an acoustic piece with Ellie, Joel, and Ryan singing in harmony, and then a bit with just the guys that was off the hook.

Here is the set list:

SmileYou’re a GermFormidable CoolDelicious ThingsLipstick on the GlassPlanet HunterBrosSafe From Heartbreak (If You Never Fall in Love)How Can I Make It OK?Play the Greatest HitsSilkVisions of a LifeMoaning Lisa SmileNo Hard FeelingsGiant Peach

Encore:

The Last Man on EarthDon’t Delete the Kisses

They were absolutely incredible live and if you ever get the chance to see them DO IT!

Tremonti Sings Sinatra and Kills it!

Mark Tremonti is the lead guitarist for Creed and Alter Bridge and has his own band Tremonti, for which he sings lead. It’ hard rock. I love his voice but had no idea he could do this. It’s fantastic!

He did this for charity and I hope he does more of this! Take a Chance on Charity

He is raising money for Down’s Syndrome, which his daughter has. The album comes out 27 May 2022, he is singing Sinatra and recording it with Frank’s band! How cool! I can’t wait.

I love this so much!

Marketing Fail

Red and Metal Cartoon Spaceship Crashed on White Background 3D Illustration with Copy Space

I get emails all the time trying to get me to spend money on a fruitless ad campaign. I’ve learned a lot in the last year about marketing but this is a great example of how not to do it:

Hi Effacement,

I hope you are doing well, we came across your book “Hieronymus Hawkes“, it seems fantastic. Would you like to promote your book?

If you want the massive views, exposure and targeted traffic then you can definitely choose our services. We have 16k Subscribers. And we get 20K to 30K visitors per month.

What will we do for you?

• We will promote your book on our various social media platforms.

• We will send 3 promotional tweets per day to our Twitter followers.

• We send our subscribers weekly newspapers on Monday, in which we will include your book.

Know more & submit your book here:- XXXXXXXXX

Thank You

Team XXXXXXXX

I redacted the the names and link.

Did you see what they did?

Tremonti in Concert!

I’ve been waiting quite a while to see Mark Tremonti live. If you don’t know who he is, he is the guitarist and songwriter for Creed and Alter Bridge. He is a tremendous guitarist and maybe the hardest working songwriter in rock. He is constantly writing. He had so much material he constantly puts out new Alter Bridge albums and then five solo albums in a fairly short time span, not to mention managing tours with all three bands.

COVID put this show on hold from last fall, but finally it happened. It was cool seeing him do a new song during the sound check, that we were the first to hear.

The concert was awesome. Loud as hell, and Mark and his other guitarist, Eric Friedman, were in great voice. I love Mark’s voice. It is deep and resonant, like his music.

And yes, our seats were great!

Oh and Chris Daughtry came on after. It was a fantastic show. Good to see live music again. And if anyone is concerned, we are both triple vaccinated. They required a proof of vaccination or a negative test to get in.

New Glasses

So, I just got my new glasses. I love them! What do you think?

I can see quite well through them, which is the entire point, but I think they look cool. Can we still say that? Anyway, I saw the sunglasses on the shelf, they were blue-tinted with a mirror finish and I was instantly drawn to them. They are prescription glasses, so I can read on the beach if the situation presents itself. They don’t look as blue in the office light of this picture, but trust me they are blue and dark tinted. Both pair are Oakleys, which I have a penchant for.

The last time I got prescription sunglasses the store told me that they couldn’t do mirror finish or really make them very dark with a prescription. I’m not sure why they told me that unless they were completely ignorant or dishonest with me. But it was a couple of years ago and maybe tech has improved since then, sure. Well, we found a store not far from our house that not only has an incredible selection of frames and finishes, but they could do real sunglasses, in store. I got both pair back in 8 days to boot. Al I can say is wow!

NeoVision Optical, you are awesome and I will shop nowhere else for my glasses as long as I live in Indiana!

The Case Against Dark Matter

Erik Verlinde proposes a new theory that does away with the need for Dark Matter

I’ve been arguing since the Aughts that Dark Matter is not a real thing. Scientists have been looking for decades and have found nothing to substantiate its existence, other than their theory fits how things work. This seems to be working backwards, to make a theory fit the data, instead of investigating and discovery the theory naturally. Occum’s Razor implies that the simplest idea is probably the right one, and trying to make up matter that we can see or detect in any way disputes the Dark Matter theories in my mind.

Verlinde is not new to radical theories and in this new one he combines quantum entanglement and holographic space-time representation to show how dark matter is simply a false manifestation of quantum interplay with dark energy. Still some more work to be done on testing the hypothesis but it looks very intriguing. You can read more about it here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/erik-verlindes-gravity-minus-dark-matter-20161129

Wow! The Nevers is full of Awesome!

The Nevers first half of season 1 was released in April and I just discovered it over the holidays, looking for something new to watch. It is steampunk urban fantasy. Joss Whedon wrote and directed the show for HBO. They recently finished shooting the last half of the first season, which got interrupted by the pandemic, so I expect the second half will be out by summer, at least I hope so. Steampunk implies science fiction in my mind, but Whedon has added elements of special powers that seem magical, that takes this show to a new level. It is action filled and full of amazing things and characters. Each episode is shrewdly written and the dialogue is wonderful. So far, everything about this show has hit it out of the park. If you like strong female lead characters, it has that abundantly. The main character is a bit of a mystery (I haven’t watched the 6 episode yet, I think we get her back story,) but she kicks ass like Black Widow, and gets glimpses of future events. Her best friend is a gal who can see electrical currents and how they want to join, which makes her into an amazing inventor and takes the whole steampunk vibe in a new and wonderful direction. The story is set in 1800s Victorian London. I can’t wait to see more. It gets my highest recommendation!

The current TBR pile

Any of these speak to you? What are you reading?