Bryce Moore's Blog, page 35

Tomas Update: Week 25 in Žilina

Ahojte všetci! Last email before transfers…

This week’s been good! I’m low on time yet again so I’ll try and keep it short but here it is: 

Tuesday we did a bunch of work on our advertisement that they asked us to make. We finally got it done and edited and everything, (our idea was to do something with me being in color and the background not in color so it took quite a while) and submitted so it’s running on Facebook in the Žilina area right now. Besides that we had a good English class with a new person from Odessa, who taught me the Ukrainian equivalent to “it’s a small world” which is Одеса – маленьке село (“Odessa is a little village”)

Wednesday we ended up visiting a smaller city near us called Martin for the day, it was POURING so we were soaked but we had a few decent conversations. I’ve never been more thankful for dry clothing though. Besides that we called a few people in the evening as we spent most of the day in Martin. Also Rigby’s umbrella broke so we had to find an emergency poncho somewhere. That and we stopped by a pawn shop and almost almost got a Canon AE-1 Program for 50€ but left it, I definitely should have got it though because broken ones go for at least that on marketplace or bazoš. So if anyone reading this wants one, I know a guy I guess? Probably a bit far for most of you. 

Thursday we did our mega weekly planning and had a good lesson with our guy Kristian, we are now trying to help him stop smoking so he can be baptized. He’s told us he hasn’t bought any cigarettes since so I think it’s going well? But he also says it’s super super hard which is very fair. Also Thursday we had the elders from the east pull up for travel for zone conference the next day. 

Friday was zone conference! All the Slovak missionaries gathered in Trenčín to have some meetings about how to be better missionaries and just kinda see each other. We also are saying goodbye to 3 missionaries this transfer which is sad but that’s how it is. Anyways big takeaway was practicing how to be natural when talking to people and also being a little more direct about meeting again so people don’t just bail on us. 

Then Saturday we all went back to Trenčín for the commemoration of the dedication of Slovakia for missionary work! Tons of members were there (we had 84 people total) and we had good food, good friends, and Noftle and I played just like old times. A few days prior I cut my finger real bad making a smoothie but it turned out okay and I could play violin at the commemoration. Also me and Millett had a couple really good conversations with people on our way up to the castle woods. And I took a bunch of pictures. 

Okay then Sunday was just a nice, chill Sunday and we worked on our other ad as a church unit (shout-out to Mom for doing the voiceover for that with her super clean Slovak) and finally got that done too. It felt super good to have that done especially because the deadline was coming up.

That brings us to today’s Monday, final pday of the transfer. We headed out with the Banská Bystrica elders, the Ottos, and the Astills to Orava Castle, where they filmed the 1922 Dracula. It was a very cool castle and I took lots of pictures, I’m glad we could make it out because by anything besides car it takes forever. 

Anyways, that’s about it for this week. Hopefully you’re all well, I’ll add the pictures as usual once I sort through them

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

S láskou,

Starší Cundick

How Much Can an Author Influence Their Sales?

I’m hardly an old pro at publishing, but I do have four novels under my belt now, and that’s given me some more time and experience to see what goes on behind the scenes. When I was first published, I tried to do everything I could to increase the visibility of my book. I blogged all about it, I pestered family members and friends, I made promo items. Anything I could think of that would move the needle. What did it all amount to?

Not a whole lot of anything, unfortunately. I had no idea how to gauge success, but it definitely didn’t feel like I was anywhere close to it.

Memory Thief came along, and once again, I tried to do whatever I could to make it successful. Book signings. Blog posts. Meeting with booksellers. The book did better, but it was hard to tell exactly how it was doing, due to the deal my publisher had negotiated with Barnes & Noble. (They sold them around 30,000 copies directly, with no returns allowed. None of those sales counted toward any of my Bookscan figures, and I had no way of knowing how may actually sold.) I watched my reviews like a hawk, and I tried to promote good ones. Did it influence anything? Again, hard to say. The book sold well enough that I got a contract for a sequel, but then the publisher sold itself to a company that didn’t publish books, so . . . there went the sequel and the book being in print.

With The Perfect Place to Die and Don’t Go to Sleep, I haven’t been as aggressive as I was with the earlier books. I’ve still gone to conferences and presented, and I’ve continued blogging, but for the most part, I’ve just focused on the things I really have control over: writing more books. I kept an eye on my Goodreads reviews, thinking that good reviews would mean more books being sold. They haven’t been as positive for these two books as for my previous ones, and I worried that would really impact sales.

Having done all of this for four books, I’ve come to the conclusion that by and large, there’s not a whole ton an author can do to really make an impact in their sales. (Well, scratch that. An author can definitely do stupid things to mess up their sales. Being a jerk online or in person can have far reaching effects.) Why do I say this? Because my books just had their best non-premier month ever. If you quantify my sales by how many copies my first book sold from first publication to now, then these books have been selling 2.5 times that.

Each week.

And what did I do to garner all of these sales? Not a blessed thing. The books were picked up by Walmart for a summer reading promotion, and so they’re in front of a whole ton of eyeballs every day. Those eyeballs mean sales, plain and simple.

In many ways, it feels to me like trying to influence your sales is similar to trying to get rich by buying more lottery tickets. It takes a ton of time and attention, and that’s all better spent elsewhere. This isn’t to say I’m not going to do what I can to help my books and my career. I still believe in serendipity, after all, but I’m not nearly as hung up on it as I was. All of the efforts I’ve made personally have maybe ended up in . . . 500 sales? And that’s if I’m being very (very) optimistic. A single week of Walmart sales blows that all out of the water.

So when people ask how they can best support me as an author, I say “read my books if you like them, and tell other people about them if you did.” But I’m not out there pestering people for reviews anymore. The books will do what the books will do. Professional sales people will do a much better job of selling them than I ever will.

And that’s fine by me. I like writing books, and that’s where I’ll keep my focus.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It 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.

Braveheart 28 Years Later

The last time I watched Braveheart was probably right before I entered college, give or take. I loved the movie. Yes, it was very violent, but I thought the main theme was really well done, and I watched the movie multiple times. That said, it’s a three hour commitment, and it’s not exactly a movie that leaves you with a spring in your step once you’ve watched it, so it’s not that surprising that I haven’t watched it since. Denisa had never seen it, though, so I thought it warranted a rewatch. The experience was much different than I expected–enough that I felt it warranted a blog post.

It’s still a good movie. The themes I remembered are all still there, and it’s still moving. A few things were very, very changed for me, however.

First, the violence is still bloody, but compared to what’s happening in epic medieval-style war movies today, it’s much tamer. Compare it to the scenes in All Quiet on the Western Front, for example, and you’d think one was PG-13 and the other was a hard R, if that makes sense. The biggest difference was the time the film would give to the actual violent scenes. It would give you a glimpse, and the movies these days just show the whole thing and dwell on it. This is not a criticism of Braveheart. If anything, it’s a criticism of modern movies. You just don’t need that much violence, plain and simple.

For example, in my head, the torture scene at the end of Braveheart was extremely graphic. I remembered them actually showing him getting disemboweled. In reality, they show the weapon they use, and they show it going up to his stomach, and then they cut to his face and show his reaction to what’s happening. There’s no doubt what’s going on, and it’s still brutal, but you never see the innards, so to speak. You don’t need to.

Another change was in me. The last time I watched the movie, I had absolutely no clue the prince was gay. It completely sailed over my head, despite it being heavy-handed to the point of being insulting and stereotypical as I watched it now. This isn’t a change in the movie. It’s a change in me. I was surprised just how sheltered I was back then.

Watching the film, its influence on later movies was clear. I found much of the cinematography and design echoed by the Lord of the Rings movies, for example. Right down to the armor and the fight scenes and how battles played out. You can also see it in Game of Thrones. True, some of that is just because the movies are presenting the same sort of warfare, but there’s different ways of presenting those scenes, and Braveheart felt like it paved the way for later movies, if that makes sense.

The biggest change, however, was in the way the themes no longer felt as heart-warming as they used to. The idea of a rebel willing to do anything to secure freedom for himself and his people. How the quest for freedom overrides pretty much anything else, and how it justifies all manner of atrocities. Frankly, much of that rhetoric has been usurped by the far right these days. So much of what was being said by Wallace in the film felt like it could be said by any of the people who stormed the capitol. Wallace felt that he was wholly in the right, and so he’s justified in doing whatever he needs to do in order to make sure his goals are achieved. I’m not saying he’s not justified within the bounds of the film, but it’s important to realize how easy it is to use that justification as a weapon. The Crusaders were convinced God was on their side as they invaded a country and killed people left and right. The same mindset happens today all the time.

It’s tricky, because there really have been regimes in history where the right thing to do was to fight against them. But that same mindset can be used by anyone to justify fighting back against anything. Just convince your followers that something is wholly evil, and then they’ll go on to do whatever they need to do to try and stop that evil from happening. I don’t have the answer for how to deal with it, but I do know that thinking about it definitely impacted my Braveheart experience. Go figure.

In the end, it’s still a great movie. But I was very much surprised at how much my personal experience of that movie had changed, in large part due to the experiences I’ve had since I last watched it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It 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.

Tomas Update: Week 24 in Žilina

Ahojte všetci! It’s been a really good week out here in žilina as usual, so I’ll fill you all in on what’s up.

Tuesday we got out into the woods to film a video and also taught our English class, which as our responsibility this week as the Ottos were gone to Germany to visit the temple. That went way better than expected so I’m glad we didn’t mess it up too bad. There were some very questionable drawings of a “dog” that confused everyone when playing pictionary but aside from that it went well!

Wednesday was a killer day, the zone leaders were over for exchanges and I headed out with elder Wagner for the day. We had a bunch of really good conversations, one guy we only saw his head because he talked to us over his fence for 15min, and we got invited to play volleyball sometime by another guy. Then to finish off the day we had a lesson with one of our friends (the guy from the bus stop if anyone remembers) and he accepted the invitation to be baptized! I mean I say accepted but he pretty much asked us. He is a wonderful man and is so sensitive to the spirit, and it’s been incredible to see his journey this transfer. Also, it’s opened my eyes more to the prejudice that Roma face here in Slovakia at the very least, he was so surprised to hear we weren’t judging him for the color of his skin. That was kind of sad to hear, everything is so against them here.

Thursday was cool and also not particularly special in any way I can remember, just a decent day. 

Friday we bailed on English to head out to a little dedina (village) called Stará Bystrica to visit a man that the sisters had taught over the phone before us. It was a weird meeting. He put us on challenge mode because the longer we were there the more drunk he got and we just didn’t really get anywhere. That was strange and I don’t think we will be back anytime soon although he promised he’d read the Book of Mormon. Anyways after that we were just feeling weird and the buses were strange so we headed outside back home for a bit and then finished off the day. It was strange. Also he said the cops would arrest him if they saw him sooooo

Saturday was a good day, that morning we went and cleaned out some DISGUSTING barrels of old food at the farm we go to weekly, they smelled SO BAD. But it was kinda fun too. The dogs were there as usual although they were pretty into the whole rotting food thing so that was definitely weird. We also stacked some wood, missed our bus, and finished off the barrels. There were like 40 of them, it was bad. But we were happy to serve our guy Igor out there, he’s cool. And the birds that hang out there are like purple and blue and stuff.

Sunday was good too! We had 2 more people at church, and a nice discussion for our 2nd hour. Got a lot of work done on our ad for Facebook and checked in with everyone we had to.

Monday was also pretty laid back, the sisters have to save money to go to Prague 3 times this pay period… We pretty much just played 2 games of Catan (Wagner won the first, I took the 2nd) and shopped at Kaufland for once. Nothing crazy, although we do only have one more normal pday this transfer.

Okay, that’s about it. Photos as usual

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

Hope you’re all well, tearing it up on the track, and enjoying the pretty spring weather. 

S láskou, 

Starší Cundick 

Movie Review: All Quiet on the Western Front

Back when it came out, I heard a fair bit of positive buzz around the new German adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, playing on Netflix. Then the Oscar nominations came out, and it garnered 9 of them, which isn’t normal for an international film. It went on to win 4: best cinematography, production design, music, and foreign feature. So it’s been on my “to watch” list for a while. After the excellent Churchill-focused WWII Darkest Hour (very good, and highly recommended, if you haven’t seen it), Denisa and I felt like going for another historic movie.

Why not All Quiet?

Two and a half hours later, and I have very mixed feelings about the movie. It’s absolutely brutal. Think of what Saving Private Ryan did for D-Day, and now do the same thing for trench warfare. I’ve seen a number of WWI movies (1918 comes first to mind), but this takes those and makes them feel like they were watered down for kids. There’s machine guns, tanks, bayonets, gas, flame throwers, shovels, mortars, daggers, and more. All of them very gruesome. It was not a pleasant experience by any use of the word, even if it was very well filmed and presented.

My biggest complaint about the movie was just how heavy handed it was. “WAR IS BAD!” It says that over, and over, and over, and just when you think it can’t possibly think of another way to say it, it comes up with one. Its characters stop really being people and become more archetypes than anything else. The evil general. The plucky commander. They make decisions that strain credulity, and of course the worst thing always happens as a consequence of each decision.

So where does that leave the movie? If a piano is extremely well-made and perfectly tuned, but it only has one octave, then it’s not a very good piano, is it? This film felt like that to me. If you’re a WWI buff and interested in seeing what trench warfare was really like, then by all means have at it. But if you’re not in that small section of people? I don’t think I can really endorse the movie.

Overall, how would I rate it? It’s very, very difficult to do so, since it feels like the presentation and the content scores would be so different. A 9/10 for the film-making itself, and a . . . 5/10 for the content? I guess we’ll give it the average and go with 7/10.

Anyone else seen it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It 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.

The Power of Serendipity

Yesterday I headed off to the University of Maine at Augusta for a Faculty Development Institute. Basically it was an all day conference focused on a wide range of topics on teaching and collaborating more effectively. I went for a variety of reasons. There were some presentations that touched on the role of libraries in that process, and I was interested in learning more about ChatGPT in education, but most importantly, I went because I never know ahead of time what meeting will end up being helpful or not. All I know is that if I never go to meetings and conferences like that, I’ll never make the connections that can best serve me in my job.

Some circles talk about this using the term “luck surface area” (coined by Jason Roberts back in 2010). Basically, the more you’re out doing things in public and talking to people and working with them, the greater your odds that you’ll “be lucky.” Often it’s tempting to look at someone else’s success and say they just got there through a stroke of luck. And it’s true, happenstance sometimes plays a big role in success. But you can place yourself in a spot where you’re more likely to have that luck fall your way.

For example, back when Brandon Sanderson was just another aspiring author, there was nothing necessarily about him to make it seem likely that he’d become a behemoth in fantasy. He didn’t have some pre-made connection in the industry. But he actively worked on doing things that would make it more likely that he’d one day have a big break. He wrote many (many) words. He went to conferences. Once he was published, he blogged regularly. And on that blog, he wrote a tribute to Robert Jordan, which Jordan’s widow happened to read while she was trying to figure out who to finish The Wheel of Time. That post caught her eye, and she ultimately selected Brandon for the job.

Was Brandon lucky? Definitely. But if he hadn’t been doing the things he was doing, he never would have been able to catch that lucky break.

Personally, I just call this serendipity. (No need for surface areas) I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone to campus lunches and ended up having a discussion about something really important to my job, but which I had no clue about previously. I got to presentations and events, and I talk to people. Often, those discussions just end up being nice chats about things that don’t necessarily matter in the long run, but even then, I never know when a friendship or relationship I started at one of those events will end up helping me solve a problem later on.

It’s not that I go through life looking to see how other people can benefit me. It’s more that I recognize that there’s so much I can’t do by myself, and so the more people I’ve got on my side, the more likely it is I can accomplish the things I set out to do. This is a principle that’s at work in research, as well. You go to the shelf to get a particular book, and you happen to see an even better book right next to it that you didn’t know existed. (It’s why we shelve books by subject in the first place.) I can’t think of an area of my life that this doesn’t play a part.

So I keep going to things. Keep talking. And even if there are panels or presentations or lunches or whatevers that don’t turn out how I’d hoped, I don’t look at it as wasted time. You put yourself out there, because you never know when that lucky break is going to come along. Wouldn’t it be a shame if you’d decided to stay home that day and it just rolls by?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It 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.

Tomas Update: Week 23 in Žilina

Ahojte všetci, another week another week or whatever it is they say. It’s been good out here in žilina but I’ll just get right into it!

Tuesday was nice out although also kinda rained. But we went a ways out into the city, saw a nice lady and her dog, and renewed our bus passes.

Wednesday we went out to Čadca to teach the Italian family, as usual we ate good and the lesson went well. After that we stopped by a little town on the train back but there weren’t many peoe out. Petted a very nice dog though so not all was lost. 

Thursday was a fun one, we had a meeting with one of our friends before he leaves to Iceland and he was late so we ended up getting talked to by a very very drunk man who was upset a priest had wronged him 10 years ago. Weird guy. He said it was Jesus’ fault that he wasn’t paid or something to that effect. I gave him a Book of Mormon and a few verses about free will and why bad things happen to good people and he seemed pretty satisfied with that. After that we talked to some teenagers who were wondering what we were doing here, they had the fastest Slovak I’ve ever heard. They were chill though. Then we met with our friend and sent him off, got some good ice cream with him and just sat for a while. I’ll miss him.

Friday Prezident Skousen visited so we actually got to see some cool graphs and he helped us teach a lesson to another one of our friends, that went super well and he is progressing wonderfully. Also having Prezident along is like cheating, his Czech is really good and he just teaches so well.

Saturday we headed out to work on the farm again in the morning, we did a lot of sweeping this time in a big ol warehouse. That was pretty fun actually and the birds weren’t yelling at us this time. I think we’ve made this into a regular appointment so that’s good. Also the floor looked way better than last weeks wall did when we left it so that’s probably good. Then for game night I played a round of monopoly deal, like fast card monopoly. I got all my stuff stolen again and used against me to win, which is fun to do but being on the other end is not as funny… 

Sunday was cool, an old missionary from 10 years prior came back and visited so our attendance was doubled because he brought his family. Cool guy, served here in žilina for a long while so he knew some of the spots we still go to. 

The today, Monday, for pday we just played some more games and got food at a restaurant. I am not gonna let myself play monopoly deal anymore because it’s just never gonna go well but at least I got em in Bananagrams. Not a ton to say about the day.

I’ll throw the photos on, got some good ones this week and I really like my new camera. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

Still needs a name, trying to come up with one. Anyways, hope you’re all well and having fun with the wonderful spring weather!

S láskou, 

Starší Cundick 

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy 3

Would you believe it? I went to my first in-theater movie since . . . Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, I think? So more than an entire year. (As an aside, part of me is shocked that I’ve stopped going to theaters. But on the other hand, then I was in the theater, and a kid a few rows back kept talking (loudly) through the whole showing. Had to have been about 6, I’d guess. It was more than a little irritating. Also, the screen was definitely bigger than what I have at home, but I was sitting (much) farther away, so proportionally it felt small. The sound was good, but . . . about what I have at home. In other words, after going to the theater, it really left me wondering why I’d want to go to the theater. The only real reason I can think of is that there’s still a bit of a different feel to it. I do miss going to midnight premieres, with a theater packed full of fans. That’s got a great atmosphere, and it’s not one I can replicate at home. Maybe I need to look for more opportunities to do that . . .)

Anyway. Guardians of the Galaxy 3. I was a big fan of the original. It had a genuinely different feel to it compared to the other Marvel movies, and it was a real breath of fresh air. The second . . . felt much like the first. Still fun, but not as novel any more. Still, I liked it, and I heard great things about the third installment. Did it live up to them?

I’m happy to say that yes, it did. It had great action sequences, a fast pace, excellent range of emotion (with plenty of humor), and a rock solid soundtrack. It works very well as the final movie in the series, and brought things home in a way that felt very satisfying. (Will there never be a fourth Guardians movie? I doubt it. Hollywood can’t resist money. But the great thing about movies is that if they’re bad, you don’t have to watch them, and they don’t affect the original in any way.)

I saw it in 3D. For the first two thirds of the movie, it occurred to me that it had been fine to watch in 3D, but there hadn’t really been anything about it that made me think, “Thank goodness I watched this in 3D.” However, then came a really jaw-dropping action sequence (filmed to the Beastie Boys’ No Sleep Till Brooklyn) that more than made up for all that ambivalence. I would go see the movie again, just to see that sequence once more. It felt like a quintessential Guardians scene, in the same vein as the first Avengers. All the characters doing what they do best, to a great song.

It was fun from start to finish. Worth seeing in theaters? Well, that depends on your setup and the theater, but definitely worth seeing if you’re a Marvel fan. If you’re not a Marvel fan? I’m not sure. If you don’t care for Marvel-style movies, I don’t think this is the one that will change your feelings about them. Thankfully, I love being along for the ride, and I had a great time. 9/10.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It 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.

Television Review: Perry Mason 2

The biggest problem about finding a TV show that moves quickly and really draws you in is that you burn through it so fast you’re left stuck having to find another show to watch. Denisa and I enjoyed the first season of Perry Mason back when it came out, and I heard good things about the second. Not enough that I wanted to watch it week by week, but once the show was fully released, we gave it a shot.

It’s always a good sign when you decide at night that you won’t actually be that tired if you finish the season instead of going to bed. With Perry, we kept finding ourselves watching two episodes a night instead of just one, and last night we ended up watching three.

It was engrossing from start to finish, with a very strong noir vibe. This season tracks the case of a rich man gunned down at night. A couple of Mexican immigrants are pinned for the murder. Naturally, Perry steps in to defend them.

The plot is well done, the characters well drawn, the show well executed. There are a few ties back to the last season, but not in a way that you really need to have watched it to have this season make sense. As a long time Perry Mason fan growing up, I like how they’ve involved all the core characters from the show in a way that feels like it fits in (with my vague memories of what those characters were like). Yes, they still HBOized the show, though with a noir vibe like this show has, that doesn’t feel too off.

If you’re looking for a good mystery, this is a solid series to watch. 8.5/10

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, as well as PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It 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.

Tomas Update: Week 22 in Žilina

Ahojte všetci! It’s been another fun week out here in žilina. This week we did a bunch of service which was really cool, and the weather has been alternating between being way better and just rainy and sad. Anyways, here is what happened this week:

Tuesday we got up and headed out to a farm owned by a man named Igor. He wanted us to paint a wall there (missionaries have a history of going there for service so he knew us already). We got to see too really nice dogs and a cool yellow/blue bird that kept yelling at us. The wall looked vaguely better once we finished but the paint they have hear doesn’t stick super well to bare particle board so that’s not really our fault. We also had a meeting with one of our friends (the guy from the sushi restaurant if anyone remembers) and good ol English class. That was a good day.

Wednesday was pretty average, an empty day as our Wednesdays usually are. We spoke Slovak only the whole day again and actually ended up running into one of our other friends just out on the street. He said he has been reading the Book of Mormon and believes in its truth already which was super great to hear. Besides that though nothing out of the ordinary.

Thursday we did our weekly planning in the morning, which took it out of us as usual, then headed out to Čadca again to visit the family we teach there. We ended up being there for quite a while but they fed us carbonara and we had a good discussion so that was cool. Then we had dinner with the branch president from Bratislava, who was passing through. Unfortunately we were super full from lunch still so we only got soup and got roasted for it but what can you do.

Friday morning was a few meetings and then in the afternoon a lesson with Peter, this time we brought a member and it went really well. Hoping to have more focused lessons like that in the future.

Saturday was also a really good day, that morning we went to our friend Lucia’s house (she’s the one who put us on the radio) and helped her drain and clean her koi pond. That took a while but it was a lot of fun and we caught some of the fish just with our hands as they were easier to catch in the shallow water. The pond also looked way better and she was so grateful. I have great pictures from that. Then we just had a bit of street contacting and our game night, we played monopoly deal and I got all my winning stuff stolen from me and used to win. Oh well, you win some you lose some.

Sunday was super nice weather, church was very nice although not a ton of people came, and then we went and tried to find people north of the city and saw some cool views and pretty houses. That was about it.

Then finally Monday we headed out to trenčín real early and played some basketball and soccer, then went to Babka’s house for a bit if a birthday celebration. She made us really good soup and then stuffed peppers, and we went and looked around her yard and just kinda laid in the sun for a bit. I got a bunch of flower pictures. It was super good to see her and I’m so glad I get to live here and go over often, what a cool opportunity. After that we went by some of the super yellow fields and got some pictures, stopped by the city center and saw it was actually super busy because of the holiday today, (they had a band and everything) and then went home.

Hopefully you’re all good with all the flooding going on, the pictures seem crazy. Nothing much like that here, thankfully. But it’s been a good week and I’m glad it’s spring and everything is blooming.

Photos as usual:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

S láskou 

Starší Cundick