Steven Harper's Blog, page 9

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My fellow PayPal users:

PayPal is updating their Terms of Service to let themselves sell your shopping habits to merchants starting November 27. They're banking on people not knowing about it. You can opt out, and you should!

To opt out, log into PayPal. Go to:
>Settings (the little cog in the upper right corner)
>Data & Privacy
>Manage shared info
>Personalized shopping

Set the toggle to off.

I shut it off just now.
 

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Super Trademark

The novel I started has people with super powers in it. Last I knew, the terms "super-hero" and "super-villain" were jointly trademarked by DC and Marvel, meaning everyone else had to use terms like "supers" or "meta-humans" or "powered people" while pretending the word "super-hero" didn't exist. But I hadn't heard anything about this issue for many years, so I decided I'd better look into it.

I checked the web and discovered that a company called Superbabies had sued DC and Marvel over the trademark. They pointed out that "super-hero" went back to 1909, that DC and Marvel were NOT the first comics to use the term, and that the term has long been part of ordinary speech.

The deadline for DC and Marvel to respond to the lawsuit passed without a peep from either of them. As a result, Superbabies won the lawsuit by default. (I'm assuming the two companies decided it wasn't worth the fight.) So the trademark has officially been lifted.

When did this happen? Why, TODAY. This very day, September 29, 2024.

How weird is that?
 

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New Project

 I started a new book today. Character thumbnails, setting notes, plot sketched out. Go me!

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The Doomsday Vault Redux

In celebration of Open Road Media offering new versions of some of my books, I'm blogging about the history of these novels and how I came to write them. A trip down memory lane! (You can find the books here: https://openroadmedia.com/search-results/books/steven%20harper  Buy a few copies for the kids!) For months I'd been toying with the idea of writing a steampunk novel. I'd already done a couple-three steampunk short stories, and found I liked the genre very much. But I needed characters. A world. A story. So I set about to make them ... by asking myself questions.[image error] There are generally two ways to start a science fiction or fantasy novel. You can start by building the wider world and deciding how the magic/science affects the world and the people in it, then narrowing the view down to one person and his or her place in this world. Or you can start with a person and slowly widening your view to the surrounding world, building the setting around the character. I always respond best to people rather than their surroundings, so I almost always start from the character and build outward. And so I set out to make some people in a so-far undefined steampunk setting.  Alice came to me as a young Englishwoman who owned a windup cat and one good dress. This is where the questions began. Why did she only have one good dress? What would she use it for? Where did her windup cat come from? I answered my own questions, and Alice took shape in my mind. I also knew I wanted two protagonists who would eventually form a romantic relationship, and I wanted a male who was very different from Alice, so I deliberately ran in the opposite direction to create Gavin. He was younger, barely eighteen, and unlike ladylike Alice, he lived a life of travel and adventure on a small dirigible, and he played the fiddle. But where did Gavin himself come from? How did he get on the airship in the first place? Why does he play the fiddle? I answered those questions, too.  Every protagonist needs an outrageous best friend, so I created Louisa to be Alice's. Louisa was great fun to write ("Puff up your chest, dear—here he comes with the petit fours!"), and as a result she ended up playing a much bigger role in the book than I'd originally intended.  And we need an antagonist. My favorite kind of antagonist is one who is (rightly) convinced that she's doing the right thing, and the protagonists are terrible people who need to be stopped. Out of this, I got Lieutenant Susan Phipps, who is probably my favorite antagonist of all time. Don't tell my other bad guys! Then I needed to build outward and create my world. I wanted zombies in my world because ... zombies! I wanted mad scientists who created impossible inventions out of brass and steel and steam. But how did these things come exist? Why can the inventions defy known physics? What do you do with inventions that could potentially destroy the world? You put them in the Doomsday Vault, of course. The Doomsday VaultThe Impossible CubeThe Dragon MenThe Havoc Machine 

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New Books at Open Road Media!

 Hey, everyone! Open Road Media has released new versions of my steampunk series The Clockwork Empire and my fantasy trilogy The Books of Blood and Iron. The new covers are some of the best I've ever seen! And the books are pretty good, too. :) If you missed any of them the first time around, or want a spiffy new edition, now's your chance! Check them out: https://openroadmedia.com/contributor/steven-harper  The novels are: THE BOOKS OF BLOOD AND IRONIron AxeBlood StormBone War Death herself is bound and imprisoned, leaving the world in chaos. Danr, a half-troll, half-human outcast, and Aisa, a slave girl kidnapped from her homeland, and Talfi, a boy who can't die, need to save her—and the world.  THE CLOCKWORK EMPIREThe Doomsday VaultThe Impossible CubeThe Dragon MenThe Havoc Machine The clockwork plague turns some people into zombies and others into mad scientists. England and China are caught in an arms race to control them and their fantastic, deadly inventions. Alice, a fallen noblewoman with a very strange aunt, and Gavin, an American airship sailor stranded in England, are caught in a web of intrigue that spans three continents. The only way they can rescue the world is to destroy it. Have a look! 

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Zap! Ow! Bleah.

On Friday, Darwin and I got covid boosters. I got a flu shot, too--I do work in a germ factory. For the other shots, we both got sore arms and felt a little run-down the next day, but that was it. 

This time, when we got the shots, the needle didn't hurt for me, but the fluid going in felt uncomfortable. Darwin said the needle hurt a little bit for him.

The next day, Darwin started getting flu symptoms, pretty heavy ones. Aching, feverish, run-down. He finally went to bed and slept for four hours. He got up briefly, then went back to bed for the rest of the night.

I started feeling off in the early evening, mostly tired and a little achy, but not too bad. Just to the point where I didn't want to go anywhere or do anything. Overnight, I felt worse, but was able to sleep. This morning, I'm still tired. Darwin is much better, but not fully himself.

This is the worst reaction to a covid shot either of us has had, and I'm glad we got them on a Friday afternoon. Way better than covid, though!



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Hey, Dude! It's Shoes!

I've become a fan of HeyDude shoes. 

I originally bought a pair when Darwin and I were planning our cruise around Greece and Italy. My tennis shoes are black and thick and not very summery or cruise ship-y. I wanted some white or pale brown shoes. And at the mall, Darwin (who wanted new shoes for similar reasons) and I came across this new brand we'd never seen before: HeyDude.

The shoes are very light-weight. You can barely tell you're wearing anything. The cloth looks like a rough canvas, and it's tied with funky elastic laces. We tried them on and bought pairs on the spot. We wore ours throughout the cruise and found them to be very comfortable while they look cool and (dare I say) edgy. They went with my usual summer pallet of bright colors and with my new white Mediterranean suit. And they accommodated the orthopedic inserts I have to have in order to walk more than four steps. I loved them!

I finally got around to looking up their web site and discovered they come in a huge variety of colors and designs. Wow! Suddenly I could have shoes that matched stuff! I ordered a gray pair and a white pair and a bright blue pair and a bright red pair to go with my beige pair. I've never mixed and matched shoes before, but now I can. And I do.

I've been wearing them all summer long, and now that school is back in session, I've been wearing them to work. (I try to wear bright colors when I'm teaching so the students can find me more easily in the classroom and because bright colors attract the eye, which helps keep the students' attention on me when I need it.) 

They feel almost like dress shoes, but they really aren't. They're casual but can get away with a dressier outfit by pretending to add a touch of style or whimsy. One thing they definitely aren't is athletic. They don't have the ankle support. I wouldn't jog in them, though they're fine on a bike. I also don't know how warm they'll keep my feet in winter, and I wouldn't wear them in snow or slush. But I still have my heavy black sneakers for that.

The dress shoe feel, though, contributed to me at first not wanting to wear them often. I should save them for special occasions! But I eventually discarded this idea as ridiculous and started wearing them full-time, every day. Of course, this meant they got dirty, especially since I like to walk on the dirt roads behind our house.

And here I discovered another advantage to HeyDudes. They're so very easy to clean. My fave blue pair had gotten pretty grimy, so I popped them into the washer. They came out completely clean but wet, of course. I didn't want the noise of them banging around in the dryer, so I put them in the sun and they were dry in a couple hours. Fantastic! I swear my tennis shoes take three days to dry completely.

They're not cheap, but they aren't especially expensive, either. Their web site sells them for $65 on up, with most in the $75 range, but of course they give you a coupon when you arrive at the site for 20% off, so the real price is more in the $60 range. They also have other styles, including high-top, thick-sole, and even boots. I might try those to see what they're like.

Anyway, I very much like these shoes. Highly recommended.

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Stormy Start

 Big storm whipped through here. Tornado spotted north of us. 60 mph winds, big rain. We didn't lose power, but big, big chunks of Wherever did lose it, including Nameless High School and the two other high schools in the district (according to DTE's power outage map). Yeek! I wonder if we'll have school tomorrow.

As it happens, several schools in Michigan did a half day or closed entirely because of the heat--95 degrees and higher. Lots of schools have no AC or they have cheap-ass AC that can't handle this level of heat.

A similar thing happened last year, too. Right at the beginning of the school year, we had a power outage that closed school. Meanwhile, we had very few closures for snow and ice. In this changing climate, rain is the new snow.


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Summer's End

 Today is the last day of summer break.

I've already been up to Nameless High School several times, actually. I set up my room, got my first week's worth of plans in order, made copies, sat through the World's Worst Professional Development (tm). No, really. It was THREE HOURS of a trio of lecturers reading from a PowerPoint. When one lecturer was speaking, the other two were on their phones. And there were NO BREAKS.

You read that right. Three hours of dull lecture with no breaks. Know why? The school we were in is undergoing heavy renovations, and earlier that morning, one of the workers did something that basically shut off the water to most of the building. The only bathrooms that had working toilets were a pair of two-stall restrooms. For an auditorium filled with over 500 teachers. 

"We won't be taking a break," one lecturer said, "because that'll cause a really long line at the bathroom, so we're just going to power on through. We promise that we'll stick to the three hour time slot and end on time."

When you catch me alone sometime, ask me how I spent those three hours. It probably won't surprise you.

Anyway, today's the last day, and it's a lovely, warm summer day in Michigan. I'm spending it doing very little. I went on a lovely bike ride this morning through woods and cornfields. I made a nice breakfast. I've surfed the internet, and I've written this blog.

Tomorrow the students arrive and the real work begins.



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Hot Dish?

Lately, the internet is abuzz with hotdish. This is because Tim Walz mentioned it in a rally speech as a Midwestern thing, and now everyone is talking about this quiet little food that's traditionally showed up at potlucks all over the place. It's been a huge mainstay of dinners everywhere.

I've never heard of them.

A hotdish, if you don't know them either, is usually some kind of ground or chopped meat in a white sauce covered with tater tots and baked. Often cheese, bacon, and/or mushrooms are involved as flavoring. They can be really easy (canned cream of mushroom soup with ground beef topped with tots) or really complicated (make a bechamel sauce while the shredded turkey is mingling with the tofu...). They're hot and filling and a cheap way to feed a large group. 

I grew up in the middle of Michigan's lower peninsula in a rural area. Potlucks were a thing at any community gathering. I never saw a hotdish. There were lots of hot dishes, usually casseroles that ranged from fantastic to horrifying. (You learned really quick to avoid Mrs. Gunderson's noodle dish.) Lots of them had a protein in a white sauce. But I never saw anything that involved tater tots, as a hotdish must.

Weirdly, the hotdish engenders strong feelings either for against. They're either delicious, heavenly, and a touchstone of childhood, or they're instruments of world destruction in the hands of Satan. 

But I've still never heard of them until now.

I've never made one, either, but out of idle interest, I looked up a bunch of hotdish recipes, and they strike me as solid but bland, like a lot of Midwestern cooking. (The Midwest's spice palette consists of salt. Pepper is too spicy, paprika too daring, curry too weird.) They're basically pot pie topped with tots instead of a crust or biscuits. Nothing worth getting upset--or excited--about. But people do. Screen after screen of comments on the recipes sound like a political divide. It's weird.

Have you heard of them? Made one? Are they a staple or a mystery?





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