Bryce Moore's Blog, page 116
February 1, 2019
Don’t Jump to Conclusions: Mob Mentality on the Internet
It feels like we get a new story to be upset about every day. Some of them are local, some of them are national, and some are even international. And while I’m certainly not trying to say these stories are all fabrications, I know much of how the internet works these days (monetarily speaking) is focused around eyeballs. If you can get people to click through to your article, you get money. Take a stroll through established news sites and you’ll see this immediately.
Right this instant, CNN is running the following stories on its front page: “5 Ways to Understand Cory Booker’s Presidential Chances.” “She Ate 501 Wings in 30 Minutes.” “Drought Woes? This Tech Can Literally Make It Rain.” Fox News has more of the same: “Here’s Who Really SHOULD Run for President.” “What Patriots Star Did for Bullied Girl QB Will Make You Smile.” I could go on, but we’ve all seen how click-baity things have become. These are sites that at least some people in the country consider reputable, non-“Weekly World News” sources of information. And they’re all designed to get people to click through so they can sell more ads.
And to be truly successful (to prompt other people to share the stories and encourage them to go viral), nothing’s quite as effective as outrage. Write a story and slant it in a way to provoke an immediate response of anger, and you’ll quickly enflame a group of people who have lots of like-minded friends who’ll want to share that story onward. All sorts of eyeballs just waiting to be mined. This happens on both ends of the political spectrum, and it happens daily.
I’m not going to list specific stories here, because to me, it’s not about the stories. Some of the stories are accurate and justified. Some of the stories are biased smear pieces designed to do nothing more than enrage. What I’d like to focus on is how we respond to any story we come across. Speaking as an information professional, I’d like to suggest a couple of things we should do when we’re presented with a story that just makes our blood boil:
Take a step back and look at the story with a critical eye. Are both sides of the story portrayed? Why or why not? Could there be more to the story than you’re aware of? Do you really have all the facts? When I come across an account of a story, I like to discuss the concept at the core of it, rather than the specifics of that individual case. If I don’t know the details of an incident, I don’t feel qualified to speak to those details publicly. I’ve read a single article about the story? That doesn’t make me an expert, though I definitely feel free to talk about the concepts that article may bring up.Try to get more information. Look for the other side of the story presented elsewhere. Search out unbiased sources that aren’t clamoring to be shared on social media. Inform yourself about what’s going on.Avoid falling for any immediate “call to action” sort of things. Often these stories are presented in a very clear cut right/wrong sort of scenario. The right decision is so painfully obvious, it’s shocking that anyone in the world would have made a different decision. In these cases, it can be very tempting to call for consequences as quickly as possible. “That person did WHAT? They should be fired.” This sort of flash-mob, viral justice mentality does no one any favors, and often ends up doing far more harm than good.
I’m always careful to acknowledge when I don’t know the whole story. I’ll discuss the principles behind a story without calling for actual outcomes for the specific story in question. Why? Because my experience leads me to believe clear cut right/wrong cases are few and far between, but it’s quite simple to portray something in that light. An author gets to select what details to include and what to exclude, and through that process, the reader can be fairly easily manipulated.
I’m not saying I never fall for the technique, and there are probably instances where I should have spoken out more strongly than I did, but I believe on the whole, my approach has served me well. We can call for more understanding and civility in the world and around us without making specific “Off with their head!” accusations in stories where we know only what a single writer has told us.
The trick is we *want* to be upset. We *want* to rush in to the victim’s aid, especially when it’s *so clear* who the victim is. That’s a good trait to have, and I wish we’d see it more in the here and now instances where witnesses watch events unfold first hand. That’s the time to speak up. To call people to account. You’ve got far more facts than a person sitting in front of his computer reading about the story a week or two later can ever have, and you have a far better chance of actually doing some good. You don’t have to be a jerk about it, but you can say things like, “I hope I misheard you,” or “I might not have the whole story, but it really seems like . . .”
There have been a number of stories I’ve seen circulating online the last few weeks. These are the thoughts they’ve kicked up with me. Thanks for listening.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 31, 2019
For Decluttering to Really Work, We Need to Cut It Off at the Source
I’m taking about 50,000 Magic: The Gathering cards off to sell at a local store today, bringing to a close a two year project I took on when I bought around 100,000 of the things for $100. (All told, I think I’ll have made around $1,000 off the purchase, so I didn’t do too bad for myself, financially speaking. But was it worth all the time and headache? I’m not sure.)
Now that I’ve got them out of the house, I can turn my attention to decluttering other things. I really like the Marie Kondo “Spark Joy” mentality, though I recently came up with a different approach on my own. I take a look at the stuff I have and ask myself “If I lost this in a flood or a fire or some other accident, how upset would I be?”
In some cases, I’d be pretty upset. If I lost some of my favorite shirts or my media collection or favorite books, I’d be really bummed. But there’s plenty of things (*plenty*) that I’d just sort of shrug and not worry about for another second.
Why in the world do I still have those things, then?
Some of it is due to the cost of having to make decisions about things. I don’t just want to get a big dumpster and toss in everything I don’t want. I want to get rid of things responsibly. Some things we’ve been working on selling: furniture we’re not using anymore, high quality things that would be worth something to someone else. We’ve made some significant progress with that. But there’s a lot of stuff that’s hard to sell, or that really isn’t worth much to begin with. There are also things that aren’t important to me, but which might be important to someone else in the house. It’s hard to just go through and get rid of things left and right. Each item turns into a committee of decisions.
But really, one of the biggest things to help cut the clutter would be to just not buy the stuff in the first place. That’s an area where I have issues (obviously: if I have clutter, it’s coming from *somewhere*.). Many times I’ll buy something because I want it, or because buying it makes me happy. (Let’s not get into a psychoanalysis of where that consumerism comes from for now.)
So what steps can I take to make sure I stop buying things today that I’m going to just want to get rid of tomorrow? As I’ve thought about that problem, I’ve come up with a few approaches:
Look at the things I’m needing to declutter. Stop buying more of those things. This means board games that I’m not 100% sold on, kitchen gadgets of questionable worth, clothes that aren’t needed, and pretty much anything I’ve bought on an impulse. (So I’m going to need to work on impulse control, as well. Great.)Add a mandatory waiting period before I buy something. Ask myself if it’s something that’s going to replace something I already have and use (in which case, I need to discard the thing that it’s replacing once it arrives.)Don’t buy things for birthdays and holidays just so I can give something. This might be one of the biggest offenders. Kids have birthdays. I want to show my kids I love them, so I want to get them something. They’re American kids, so they want to *get* something. But a lot of the times, “something” just ends up being nothing more than that: a thing they get and then don’t use. Sure, giving money seems like a cop-out, but one thing I’ve never felt like I’ve had too much of is money. I could also give stocks or experiences.Don’t bring home presents for the kids when I go on business trips. I’ve started bringing home a box of Dunkin’ Donuts instead. That usually goes over just as well, and it automatically declutters itself within a day or so.Conversely, I shouldn’t ask for things for my birthday or holidays just so people have something to give me. This is actually one area where being a Magic: the Gathering collector has really helped. The things I really want tend to be no bigger than a playing card. I get them, and I’m happy, even if the people who give them to me don’t understand why.
It’s easy to look at my kids’ stuff and tell them they need to declutter as well, but I personally don’t feel like I have the right to do that until I’ve decluttered my own stuff. How can I tell them their room needs to be spotless when my own room is littered with Stuff?
In the end, I’m sure if I can just cut the source of the clutter out, then I’ll be able to get on top of things over time using normal decluttering approaches. I still have plenty of low hanging fruit. The biggest offender I hold onto is stuff that I keep “just in case.” Chargers and cable connectors that I “might need one day.” Almost everything I buy ends up coming with its own cables and chargers. And what’s the worst case scenario? I have to buy one thing one time?
I think that’s a risk I can handle.
Anyway. That’s where I am mentally around decluttering today. I’m looking forward to getting more stuff out of my house and freeing up more space inside my house to just live and relax. As long as I keep that vision in mind, it should be easy. Right?
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 30, 2019
A Facebook Alternative
Facebook is getting annoying. I know I’m not the only one to observe this, but perhaps my reasons for the observation are at least somewhat unique.
I know the common complaints: it’s a big time sink. It sucks you in, spewing out “interesting articles” that you don’t necessarily want to read, but find yourself reading anyway. It skews your viewpoint, presenting only things that tend to agree with what you think anyway. It gives you far too much information about people who you really don’t need that much information about, potentially destroying some relationships in the process.
The list goes on, but even stopping there, it’s easy to see why people are giving the service up. Why do I continue to use it? Because it also brings some strong advantages to the table: it lets me connect with friends across the country that I wouldn’t see or interact with otherwise. It exposes me to new ideas, because I’ve curated my friends list in a way to make it as useful to me as possible. I share my blog with people who wouldn’t be able to read it otherwise.
In the end, the pros outweigh the cons, and yet I still find myself wishing things were different. My biggest complaint at the moment is that Facebook is really only in this game for Facebook.
I have long noted how frustrating Facebook is for a distribution method for my blog. Some people (a very few) subscribe directly, but the vast majority of people rely on Facebook delivering my blog to them each day if they’re going to read it. (Which, I admit, perhaps says more about how they value my blog than about the delivery mechanism, but work with me.) So a blog post can sink or soar based solely on whether or not a few people “like” it early after its posting. If the algorithms decide people want to read it, it gets shared. It snowballs. It reaches hundreds more people than it would have otherwise.
If it doesn’t? It sinks into oblivion.
In my ideal world, Facebook would allow me to set up what I want to see on my wall. Who I want to see. How much of their stuff I want to see. And if you do a lot of work with the site, you can achieve some of this. But even then it’s a crap shoot. I have family members who actively want to read what I’m writing, who’ve tried to “like” my posts often, and yet Facebook refuses to show my posts in their feed, likely because we’re separated by distance or ideology or some other quirk of the algorithm. Facebook ought to let people correct this.
But it doesn’t. I don’t pay it money to advertise, and so it shoves other things into people’s feeds instead.
I’m not wishing they’d completely abandon their business model. (Though I wouldn’t mind them stop using it for snooping and nefarious purposes.) I just wish they’d give users a bit more control. A way to easily curate what they DO want to see, not just what they DON’T.
But maybe I’m dreaming.
In the meantime, if you actually want to see what I’m saying each day, don’t use Facebook. Try subscribing directly. It gets emailed to you, and then you can delete what you don’t want to see. (Which maybe is more than I’d wish, but oh well.)
You can also use a Feed aggregator to stay on top of blogs. My personal favorite is Feedly, and I still go there every day to see what’s going on with the blogs I care about. Cut Facebook out of the loop entirely. Just sayin’ . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 29, 2019
The Evolution of a Maine Driveway in Winter
A lot of non-Mainers will ask me from time to time just what winter’s really like up here in Vacationland. The answer is probably what most people would expect: it’s cold (-10F on the way to work this morning), and it’s quite snowy. (I haven’t seen my yard since November. It’s got 1.5 feet of snow and ice in it, and I don’t expect it’ll surface until . . . May? Maybe April? You never know.)
For the most part, I really don’t mind the winter at all. I have a pellet stove, wood stove, and oil heat to keep warm, and I don’t do too many things that take me outside. The cold gets old now and then (especially when your pipes freeze, as mine did this morning), but you get over it.
However, my personal pet peeve in winter has to be the state of my driveway. I always start out with the best of intentions. If you can keep the driveway clear, life is good. Simple snow is easy enough, especially if it warms up right after. But in Maine, you rarely just get simple snow, and it often doesn’t warm up right after.
My driveway is about 100-150 feet long, I’d guess. I have a snowblower that churns through pretty much anything Mother Nature will throw down, but it leaves around a half inch to an inch of snow on the driveway after it passes by. And sometimes Mother Nature decides to send slush and rain, and then freeze solid right after. You can’t really shovel rain. The water goes where it wants to go, and then it freezes wherever it was.
This is just to say that inevitably, my driveway turns into an ice skating rink over the course of the winter. Very smooth, very slippery ice, often covered by a thin layer of snow. (Which then melts in the sun and freezes at night, keeping the Circle of Ice going.) The kids think it’s great fun to slide around on while they wait for the bus, but I dislike walking on it, and getting the mail is a chore to do.
However, when that’s my big complaint (“I have to walk carefully so I don’t slip while getting the mail”), then maybe it’s a sign I don’t have too much to complain about . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 28, 2019
Book Review: Senlin Ascends
Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s rare these days when I’ll start a new series and actually continue with it. As I’ve said in other reviews, I’m just too aware that each book I read is also another book I don’t read. So I need to find a book I really enjoy to make me decide to stick with it for the next in the series.
Much of what I read comes to me through Kindle book sales. I’ll see something interesting, I’ll read reviews on Goodreads, and I’ll buy it for later. Senlin Ascends is a book I’d heard about from a number of sources, and then one day it went on sale on Amazon. The concept was intriguing: a man goes to a steampunk Tower of Babel and works on making his way up the tower. I didn’t know much more than that, but I decided to give it a shot.
I bought the second book as soon as I finished the first, if that gives you any idea what I thought about it.
For the first while in the first book, I didn’t think I was going to like it. The main character was quite weak and did some fairly foolish things. But the setting was more than a little intriguing. This Tower of Babel is truly enormous. Each level is basically its own world, and it’s all very well described to the point that it feels real. And as I kept reading, caught by the setting, the main character began to grow and evolve as well. By the end of the book, it had really grabbed hold of me, and I was truly invested in the outcome.
That’s a tough trick to pull off, but it does a great job of it. In the end, it’s an impressive work. I gave it an 8/10, though again the middle and end were much stronger for me than the beginning, which is always preferable, I find. If you’re looking for a good steampunk read with very light fantasy elements, this is a good one to try.
Give it a shot!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 25, 2019
A Plethora of Cough Remedies
I’ve got a really strange cough. I’m pretty much cough-free throughout the day, and then each evening, the hacking begins. I start to cough, and I can’t stop. What’s even more bizarre is that once I’m able to get to sleep (IF I’m able to), then I wake up again each night at 12:30 or so, with an even worse cough. It just won’t stop.
Speaking from experience, when I’m woken up at 12:30 at night, unable to stop coughing, I’m willing to try just about anything to get that cough to stop. I asked for help on Facebook, and these are the suggestions I received:
Vicks vaporub on your chestVicks vaporub on your feetUse a humidifierCough dropsChocolateCough syrupTumeric and honeyHerbal teasButtered popcornDeslynElderberry syrupWhiskeyPineapple juice
It seems like everyone has their own approach that always works. Too bad none of them have worked for me. Last night when I woke up, I stumbled into the kitchen and proceeded to down a huge handful of chocolate chips, peppermint and sage tea, a spoonful of honey, two cough drops, and I smeared some vaporub on anything that felt like it might help. None of it worked. (The aftertaste left something to be desired, as well . . .)
What did work at last was some antihistamine pill I took on the advice of my doctor. Let’s just say in the middle of the night I’ve discovered that I’ll take just about anything to try and make that cough go away.
I have yet to find any foolproof approaches, though I’d forgotten pineapple juice last night. I’ll have some on tap for tonight, if the occasion presents itself. In the mean time, if you see me looking groggy-eyed, it’s either a lack of sleep or severe indigestion. Pick your poison.
(Just don’t tell me “poison” is a good cough remedy. At 12:45am, I might forget it was a joke.)
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 24, 2019
When Success Blinds You to Failure
I’m not quite sure how else to describe this phenomenon, but I’ve seen it pop up at multiple times in my life. I’ve had experiences talking to people who are very successful in their industry. My hope had been to ask them for advice for how I could go about being as successful. But what I discovered in those conversations is that something happens to people in the process of becoming successful. They are no longer able to accurately see what it was like before they were successful: when they were just failures.
I don’t mean to write about “failures” like it’s a bad thing. For this post, consider “failure” the state of being “not fabulously successful.” So in that sense, almost all of us are failures. (Wow. This is starting off on a very bleak note. Sorry about that.) I also don’t mean to be critical of the people who are successful. They’re trying to give good, solid advice. It’s just that they no longer have the necessary frame of reference to be able to do that.
A good example that illustrates what I’m getting at comes from Arrested Development:
Lucille has become so separated from the day to day operations of her normal life that she can no longer accurately relate to problems too far removed from her. And yes, in this case, she’s a cold hearted wretch of a person, but the “$10 banana” issue comes up again and again.
Take this article from CNN today, where Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross wonders why in the world furloughed government employees don’t just take out loans to cover their short term debts. There was an earlier anecdote about a White House official who wanted to look at the furlough like a long, paid vacation.
Yes, these people are tone deaf. But I also would like to believe they’re trying to see the world as accurately as they can. It’s just their frame of reference is so widely skewed from the reality of the people they’re trying to offer suggestions to that their suggestions come off as completely unhelpful.
If someone were to come to me today and ask for advice about how best to get started as a librarian, I don’t think I’d be the best person to give advice. I’d definitely do my best, but I’m now 12 years out from that time of my life. I’m a library director, and the things I have to focus on now are very different than what I needed to do when I was first applying for jobs. I think in this case that I’d still be able to give some good advice, but at the same time, I think the people who are trying to give advice in the examples above think they’re doing the same thing . . .
The fact is, success changes you. It changes the way you relate to money. Changes to how you relate to co-workers. Changes the way to how you relate to normal problems that crop up every day. And often all of those normal problems are the things that need to be tackled right off when you haven’t reached that “successful” level yet. Which is why advice from successful people can be really off.
Do I want to know what Bill Gates thinks about how to get ahead in life? Should I go to George Clooney to talk about how to get a break in the movie business? If you’re looking for practical advice, I’d suggest finding someone just a few rungs above you on the ladder. Someone who can give you concrete advice on how to navigate the next few steps.
Worry about getting to the top when it’s just a rung or two away.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 23, 2019
Voice Makes All the Difference
I just finished reading two very different books, back to back. The first one (which shall remain nameless), received multiple starred reviews and ended up on a number of “best books” for the year it was published. Middle grade/YA fantasy. The author has won multiple big name awards. The book has great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.
I had to fight to get through it, honestly. In the end, I gave it a 3/10. It wasn’t the plot. I liked the plot and found it intriguing. I also liked the magic system and the characters just fine. Better than fine, in many cases. But I had to force myself to keep reading, and that’s never the recipe for success.
After I slogged through it, I wondered to myself what made the book such a chore for me to read. In the end, I decided it was the voice. I kept getting kicked out of the story because the voice was too stilted for me. The focus in many places was on style and word choice over actually telling a story.
That feels odd to write, coming from a person who’s studied literature and once wanted to be an English professor. But it’s true, and I realized it when I read the next book: The Lost Boys, by Orson Scott Card.
It’s the tale of a Latter-day Saint couple who are dealing with many very ordinary problems: difficulties at home, at work, in a new area, and with their family. It’s got fantastical elements, but they’re very much in the background. It takes place in the 80s, and much of what was written about Latter-day Saint culture in the book was disappointing to me, not because it was wrong, but because it was right. It was a very unflattering view of the religion, in the same way the mirror and the lighting in a Macy’s changing room doesn’t do much for my self esteem.
And yet I blazed through the book, even though I didn’t care for the characters all the time, and even though often the plot seemed far more focused on nosing around through the religion than into what was actually happening in the story. I gave it a 7/10. Not stunning, but a good, solid read. (And an interesting look into how some people approach my religion, both the good and the bad side of it. There were parts I wanted to applaud, and other times I wanted to cringe. And interestingly, they weren’t always caused the different people.)
In a vacuum, if you described both books to me, I would have guessed I’d like the MG fantasy much more. But the reality was much, much different, which led to this blog post.
For me, my ideal book is one where I forget I’m reading. Where the pages turn themselves and I’m lost in the middle of a story. Every time something bumps up to jostle me out of that zone, it’s a missed opportunity. This doesn’t mean that I’ll only read books that make me lose myself, but what I get back for that price had better be worth it.
This isn’t to say that books that focus more on language or the way things are said are bad, or that what I like is better than what other people like. But it doesn’t explain a fair bit why people can have such widely disparate opinions about books. We’re all looking for something different.
Scott Card’s voice is (for me) extremely readable. He could probably write about the dictionary and I’d still be turning the pages, just because I like the way he communicates that information into my brain. In the end, I think of it this way: which would I prefer? The world’s most boring man telling me the world’s most interesting story, or the world’s best storyteller telling me the world’s most boring story?
You’d think they’d amount to the same thing, but I think you’d be wrong . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 22, 2019
New Book Release!
Hello, lovely peoples. Some of you might recall a certain blog post I made almost four years ago, in which I wondered aloud what it would have been like if Latter-Day Saints had developed an attachment to Kung Fu instead of Boy Scouts. Still others of you will recall I came across a request for short stories centered around a “Mormon Steampunk” theme. And when I saw that, I immediately thought of that alternate history I’d mused about years ago.
Even though I don’t typically write short stories, I decided to give it a shot, and AN INCIDENT AT OAK CREEK was born. It’s technically a novelette, since it’s 11,000 words or so. (I told you I don’t write short stories . . .) It was accepted to the anthology, which turned into a 3 part series. The first book in the series came out a few months ago, and today the second book has been released: the one that includes INCIDENT.
So if you’re hankering for a big portion of Mormon steam punk action, and you’d like to read what I’m fairly confident is the only Mormon kung fu western action alternate history steampunk novelette in existence, you can now have that experience for the low low price of $2.99.
And if you buy it from this link, I get even better royalties. Just sayin’ . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 18, 2019
Sick is Relative
I’ve been sick for the past few days (sigh, moan, complain), and it’s given me time to lie in bed and think. And one of the thoughts that’s kept repeating in my head is the concept that feelings are all relative. That how I feel when I’m sick might be entirely different than how someone else feels.
In other words, maybe at my most sickest, when I feel absolutely horrible. that’s what someone else feels as “mild discomfort.” I just don’t know, right?The same is true for pain. We all have different tolerances for pain, but maybe that’s also because we all perceive it differently.
From there, you can move on to just about any feeling you’d like to talk about. Love. Fear. Anxiety. Hate. They’re intangible things, and so there’s no real way to know if the thing we’re feeling matches up evenly to what other people are feeling.
I remember when I was in high school, I was in a Dixie Band. We’d go around and play at a lot of senior citizen centers. It was a fun group, and I really enjoyed it. But there were a lot of us, and some of those rooms weren’t large. You get saxes, clarinets, tubas, trumpets, trombones, and more into a small room, and it’s going to be loud. The elderly people didn’t mind: they just turned their hearing aids down. For them, even sound was relative.
So there you have it. My deep thought for the day. How sick am I feeling? Yesterday was “rotten.” Today I’d say “pretty bad.” But what does that mean to you? I have no idea.
Here’s hoping I feel “better” tomorrow . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve been posting my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as chapters from UTOPIA. Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
