Bryce Moore's Blog, page 41

Writing Progress

I’ll be honest, the last three and a half months have been very rough for me, from a writing perspective. All through COVID, I was able to keep on soldiering forward. 1,000 words a day. It helped that I had a very definite deadline I was working toward for some of it, and that I was well into writing and revising Don’t Go to Sleep. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to churn through my words, whatever else might be happening in my life.

But that project ended, and I faced the dreaded What Do I Write Next phase of an author’s life. It took me some time, but it helped that I knew the general genre of what I was going to work on. (More historical thrillers!) I picked one and got to plotting. I was still working toward something definite, and all was right with the world.

But then the wheels started to fall off the bus.

Between the stress around home renovations and gearing up for Tomas leaving, and then the disruption of my family heading off to Europe, I cruised into my vacation running on fumes. When I got back, I was out of practice and had a bunch of work to do to catch up on everything else. Then the bathroom renovation picked up and Tomas was actually leaving and yada yada yada . . .

Writing has been tough.

I know it’s easy to just say “go easy on yourself,” and I’ve tried to, but I’ve been writing so long, it feels like an integral part of who I am. Struggling with it hits me in a way not much else does. That said, it isn’t that I haven’t been writing at all. I took the time to go through everything I’d written for my current project, revising it and bringing it all to a certain level of consistency. That was roughly 45,000 words, so it’s far from nothing, but it still felt like a real cop out, because many days I’d just sit down and work on it for 20 minutes or so and call it a day.

The good news is that it finally feels like I’m getting close to the other side of all this Stuff I’ve Been Going Through. The house is getting clean and decluttered bit by bit. The bathroom is finished. Tomas is off. And so the last few days, I’ve been able to sit down and actually get 1,000 words of new material done, even on days when I’ve felt exhausted. I still had enough in the tank to write.

I expect it to be a bit rocky still from time to time, because I don’t think this is something you just magically are done with, but as I look at my trajectory, I’m very encouraged. I want to get back to the point where I feel like my life is under control again. I like to have everything at a certain level of order, including my To Do list. When I wait to long to wrangle it into shape, things go poorly . . .

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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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from 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 6 at the MTC

Hey everyone! This is it-my last email from the MTC!! We’ve been working hard recently in class to finish up everything so that we’re ready. It’s been good here, and I’m definitely going to miss the friends I’ve made while here – most of them are Finnish speaking so we will not see them again until after the mission. But it’s been great here and I’ve learned and grown a ton. 

As far as my Slovak goes, I have learned SO much here. I thought I was decent before, but I barely knew any grammar or even how to read properly. Now I know most of the grammar and I can read and pronounce so much better, and I really feel like I can actually speak. I didn’t know before how much I didn’t know. According to my teachers, my Slovak is about as good as whoever will be training me in the field, which is kind of crazy to hear but I’m excited to be talking to real natives every day! 

I have 25 ties now as well. The other day I made a big master sheet to keep track of days so I can make a graph of my tie usage and track how many times I’ve worn each one, along with their attributes so I can see which are my favorite. Once I get some data in there I’ll update everyone because this should be at least vaguely interesting…

Finally, I got my Slovak passport! I’m now officially an EU citizen and don’t need a visa to go to Slovakia, which means I for sure leave next Monday (the 21st)! 10:37 am we leave for SLC, then fly to Amsterdam and finally Prauge. I can’t wait to go! It’ll definitely be a long day of traveling but it’ll be my first time out in the real world in like forever. 

Anyways, that’s about all that’s happened of note this week. I’ll throw in some pictures, and then I’m not sure if you’ll hear from me next week because my day switches to Monday instead, so it might be a bit. 

Love you all,

Starší Cundick

Photos:

My passport!

The happiest the food has ever been here

Flag pictures!

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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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from 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.

Places You Don’t Want to Hear Water

I was excited for Friday last week, as I had the day off work, and I was looking forward to getting closer to having the house all ready to go for Thanksgiving. I got up and got some chores out of the way, and I was just getting ready to get down to some cleaning when I heard it.

Trickling.

Not just trickling, really. More of a “constant flow of water falling.” That’s a beautiful noise out in nature. Calm. Peaceful. But in your house, where you don’t have any water features installed? It’s not exactly a noise that brings a spring to your step. MC had been having a bath in our new tub, so I thought perhaps there was just something strange about the way it drained. A new noise I wasn’t familiar with.

I followed the sound all the way to the basement, where I discovered a steady flow of water coming out from my crawlspace into the main part of my basement. Thankfully I have a sump pump there, so the water wasn’t accumulating too much, but it definitely wasn’t designed to be coming from the crawlspace. I took out my phone (for its flashlight) and clambered down into the depths of the area below my kitchen and bathroom.

It didn’t take long to discover the problem. The drain pipe from the kitchen sink to the main drain had come unattached. And the drain from the tub to the main drain wasn’t venting the right way, which made it so all the water from the tub was flowing up through the pipes (instead of down through them) and out that detached pipe and into my crawlspace. It must have been doing that for a while. I have no idea how long.

This is why doing your own plumbing can come with some . . . risks.

On the plus side, I knew how to fix this, more or less. It involved a trip to the hardware store for some more PVC glue, as well as some PVC supports to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again. (I had failed to properly support that pipe, and I think it came detached at some point when I was monkeying around with everything down there.)

Of course, once I had that glued together properly, I discovered that the drain area of the tub was also leaking. I had helpfully put a bunch of spray foam around there, so I had to scrape all of that out, which ended up being the problem: the spray foam was pushing up against the tub and loosening the seal that was supposed to be there.

In any case, the leaks are fixed, and this evening I’m going to tackle the venting issue to make sure the drains all do what they’re supposed to do. And all it’s taken is 4 hours or so of my life. Kind of like The Machine in the Princess Bride, except dirtier.

Here’s hoping the venting goes more smoothly . . .

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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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from 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.

Hudsucker Revisited

Over the weekend, I had a chance to rewatch the Hudsucker Proxy, years after last time I saw it. It had always stayed in my head as a favorite Coen Bros movie, and I found out some friends hadn’t seen it, which gave me a perfect excuse to rewatch. I was so happy to see my memories of the film really held up, and I enjoyed it just as much now as I did back then.

Like many Coen Bros comedies, it’s got this perfect blend of absurdism, humor, and character development that really scratches an itch for me that few other movies can. With many of their films, it feels to me like they take a well established movie genre and give it their own spin. O Brother Where Art Thou is their take on a movie musical, for example. Hudsucker is their spin on classic screwball comedies. It takes elements of His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the movie, Tim Robbins stars as an aspiring business executive who somehow finds himself whisked from the depths of the mail room to top level of Hudsucker Industry when he’s abruptly appointed to be the new president. (Upon the last president’s death, the board decided to try to drive the stock price into the ground so that they could use some financial shenanigans to make a killing of a profit. Robbins was literally the worst person they could they think of to run the company.) Naturally, Robbins turns out to be a bit more than they expected. Hilarity ensues.

Robbins plays his part perfectly, as does Jennifer Jason Leigh, who portrays a hardnosed reporter focused on finding the real truth behind Robbins. (Paul Newman and Bruce Campbell also have roles, and Sam Raimi co-wrote the script with the Coens.) There’s really not much to dislike about the movie. Perhaps it drags just a bit in the middle, but the beginning and ending are strong enough to make that irrelevant, and I’m not sure if it dragged only because it was my fourth or fifth time rewatching it.

If you’ve never seen the movie (or it’s been a while since you have), then I definitely recommend giving it a shot. It’s PG and safe for just about anyone, though there are some suicide themes that might be off-putting for some. 9/10. Great stuff.

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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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from 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 5 at the MTC

Ahoj everyone!! It’s been such a fast week since my last email, probably because not a lot has happened, but I’ll try my best to make this interesting. I’ll start with the language and such – I feel like it’s coming along so well! At first when I got here I was worried seven weeks would be too short and I’d feel all stressed about going, but now I am just ready to leave. Just like 13 more days and I’ll be in Slovakia if all goes according to plan. Our practice lessons are continuing to go well and every day I feel like I speak a little better – I’ve come so far from where I was when I got here. This week I’ve been doing “šťastný moment dňa,” which all the Slovak missionaries have been doing – every day, I post a “happy moment of the day” in Slovak. It’s so fun to see what they’re doing out there – yesterday I watched my uncle cut open a water bottle with a sword.

It snowed last week as I was writing my email! We got like two inches in some places, which promptly disappeared two days later. Maybe it will snow again – that combined with having all my google photos is making me miss skiing a lot. It’s impressive how much the temperature varies here, and how temperamental the weather is. If it’s cold, it should stay that way – but it never does.

We still clean bathrooms every Tuesday, but last week we got to clean a different set of them which included vacuuming the indoor track (which is weird – it’s 160m, square, and has four super sharp corners making it very inconvenient to run on) with a ghostbuster vacuum. You know we’re having fun out here when the highlight of my week is using a cool vacuum for an hour.

I lied – the highlight was probably when we got to hear another devotional from an apostle last night – Elder Bednar. He talked a bit about what apostles actually do – he’s spent 4 of the last 18 years (as in 4*365 days) just traveling on planes and everything. They do a lot of work that kinda goes unseen. He also talked about the importance of sequences in the scriptures, a sort of forest for the trees sorta deal, and also how so many people believe the gospel applies to everyone but them – so true. It was great to hear from another apostle and was such an incredible experience.

Okay, that’s about it for this week. I’ll throw on some pictures but again, not much happened this week.

Love you all,

Starší Cundick

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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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from 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: The Devil’s Hour

I’ve got so many TV seasons I want to watch, I’ve resorted to keeping a separate list, and that list is only getting longer. So it makes perfect sense that when I finished a show, I completely ignored the list and looked for something else to watch, instead. I don’t know why I do this. It’s just that sometimes what I really want is something I’ve never heard of before. Sometimes that pans out, and sometimes I watch an episode or two and remember why I generally curate what I watch ahead of time.

The Devil’s Hour is a show I started on a whim. I saw it advertised on Amazon, and it starred Peter Capaldi, who I liked in Doctor Who. The premise was intriguing: a woman wakes up every night at 3:33am, suffering from terrible nightmares that may or may not be predicting the future. More perplexing, she feels like she’s constantly having deja vu, which feels to her like she’s remembering things that happen in the future. It had a 7.8 on IMDB, and it was only 6 episodes long. Denisa and I gave it a shot.

I’m really glad that we did. It was a fast watch and very intriguing, full of tense scenes that really delivered some good suspense. The plot was twisty and turny in a way that felt bewildering at times, but which still managed to make sense and come together by the end. It reminded me of Dark in that way, and I was skeptical it was going to be able to pull it off, but it did for the most part. (Though I’m really hoping there’s a second season, because the ending really left me wanting to know more. That said, it could end there, and it would feel like an ending, though one you’d be left with lots of questions about.)

It’s TV-MA almost entirely for language, though there’s also some fairly disturbing images and subject matter, ranging from suicide to abuse, so it’s not exactly a show that’ll leave you with a spring in your step. That said, it uses its 6 episodes well, and Peter Capaldi does a great job in it. The pacing is great, and I kept wanting to come back to see what more was in store.

Bottom line: if you’re looking for a good thrill, this is a great place to go. 9/10.

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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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from 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.

2022 Election Thoughts

I really don’t know what to say these days around elections. It seems like a very significant event each year, of course. (And it always seems like the current election is billed as the Most Important Election Ever, and if things don’t go exactly the way you’re hoping they’re going to go, then the next thing you know we’ve gone full Mad Max and you better just hope you’ve got access to water.) But it also seems like something where more and more, people’s minds are made up and there’s not going to be any changing them.

I’m as guilty of this as the next guy. I have completely lost any and all faith in the Republican party. The party I once really believed in somehow changed into the party of Donald Trump. My feelings on Trump are well-established, and I don’t need to go over them yet again, but suffice it to say that any party Trump’s trying to throw is one I want to spoil if at all possible. It might, perhaps, be different if their embrace of Trump were less jubilant than it has been, but it’s been anything but that. It’s more than a little disgusting.

So I feel like I’m left with no other real option than to vote for the other guy. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not exactly holding my nose to do it, since “the other guy” has a lot of things going for him. Things like “not wanting to ban books,” or “not still trying to increase gun rights.” But again, as soon as I say I’m for those things, then anyone who’s against them assumes I’m on the Other Side and am, therefore, not worth paying attention to.

What do I think we’ll be looking at tomorrow? I think we’ll see that Republicans have taken back both the House and the Senate. I think they’ll spend the next two years doing things I generally disagree with, and some things that I really disagree with. Somehow they’ve latched onto this “Biden is as bad for us as Trump is for you” mindset, which seems to extend into “If you impeached Trump, we’re going to impeach Biden,” which says to me that they view all of this far too much like a game and not like anything serious.

I expect that from that change in Congress, even less will get done in the country to actually change anything for the better. I expect it’ll make people even more divided, as we lead up to the presidential election two years from now, which we’ll be forced to hear about non-stop from tomorrow until the election.

So, my general expectations are pretty low and negative right now. That said, I also expected BYU to get blown out by Boise State, and I was very wrong about that, so who knows.

If the past is any predictor of the future, then regardless who wins, good and bad things will still happen in the country, and the opinion about what “good” and “bad” means will continue to drift farther apart.

So . . . yeah. Happy election day, everyone?

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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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from 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.

Dealing with Being Overwhelmed

We’re coming up on Thanksgiving, and I was looking over my house this weekend and just feeling overwhelmed. In my head, the renovation would be done long before we hit the holidays, and yet we’re still putting the final touches on it here and there. It has felt like I’ve had an unending list of things that need to get done, and no matter what I do, I never make any progress toward being done. That’s definitely not fun, but the worse consequence of that has been that I’ve felt like I can’t ever really take a break. Every time I’m doing something other than working on that list, I’ve felt guilty that I’m not being productive.

I know this isn’t true. I’m well aware of just how important it is for me to take breaks and wind down, but for some reason, I haven’t been able to really believe that this time around. Saturday was especially discouraging, as it was the end of a very long week, and more and more things kept coming. I was really at a loss for what to do.

Then I remembered another time in my life when I was feeling this way: back when I was getting my Masters in English at BYU. At the time, I had so much writing to get done and reading to do, between my thesis and my class assignments and my teaching, that it felt like I’d never be done. At the time, I solved the problem by adding up all the writing and reading I needed to do (by pages), and then divide that by the number of days I had left until those things were due. I don’t remember what the exact breakout was, but it was something like “write 3 pages and read 40 pages,” or something like that. Every day. Which maybe sounds daunting, but it was a relief more than anything. If I wrote and read that much, I was on track. If I was on track, I could take a break and know I wasn’t getting further behind.

It’s the main way I stayed on top of everything back then. And if it worked back then, it will work now.

So what I asked myself was, “What do I really want right now?” And the answer was, “I want to spend my Thanksgiving vacation relaxing and enjoying myself. I’d like the house to be cleaned and ready for winter, so I don’t have to worry about any of it any more.” Once I had that in mind (an actual ultimate goal of all this To Do list), then it was simply a matter of sitting down and figuring exactly what that would look like, and what steps I’d have to take. What needed to happen with the bathroom? What rooms need cleaning? What other chores?

I listed all that, and then wrote down every day between now and Thanksgiving, and I began divvying out tasks on each day. Putting the wood away for an hour or two. Painting the bathroom trim. Cleaning the office. Shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. I kept putting things down until everything was spread out, and I was comfortable with thinking I’d be able to do those things on those days. (I’d also written down general scheduling things I’d already committed to, to make it as doable as possible.)

Sunday, I looped the rest of the family in. They were all on board, thankfully, and so now, it’s just a matter of putting it into practice. I estimated more time than I thought I’d really need for each job, and I built in some buffers just in case I fell behind. My guess is that we’ll get ahead of the plan. Once I had everything scheduled out, suddenly things seemed much more doable, so if nothing else, at least I’m feeling better for the moment. It also got me back into doing things instead of just sitting around feeling overwhelmed. (Sitting around feeling overwhelmed, curiously enough, doesn’t do much for actually getting things done.)

Anyway. That’s where I am right now. Here’s hoping the schedule works . . .

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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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from 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 4 at the MTC

Here’s the latest from Tomas:

Hey everyone! I hope you’ve all been doing well. Things are still all good here, although this week a lot of our friends left since they were learning languages that were less than 7 weeks here. So we no longer have any Norwegian, Swedish, or Spanish speakers on our floor – it’s so quiet. I’m glad I could meet them and wish them all the best out there, but it’s just not the same anymore. I just have 3 ish weeks left here though! I can’t wait to actually be out there in Slovakia. We teach practice lessons with a missionary who has come home from Slovakia, where she pretends to not know anything, and each one is better than the last. This most recent one we gave her a Kniha Mormonova…and then had to ask for it back because we needed it and she definitely already has one. Then again, that lesson I accidentally referred to God as “Bob,” since I confused the words God and Boh (Slovak for God). She thought that was really funny, but managed to keep her composure until we explained what had happened in Slovak. 

We play a lot of sand volleyball. Pretty much every day, since we have an hour a day to exercise (or two on Wednesdays!). No one else has been able to take on the devastating combo of the Czech/Slovak and Finnish elders to the point where other districts of missionaries have heard of us and are afraid to play us. It’s raining today, though, so I think we don’t have much time left outside before it’s too cold or covered in snow. Last week we played in the light rain and it was SO cold, but also very worth it. 

There are a couple of running pranks here, but I think the best one is what happens to new zone leaders (that’s the word for people in charge of essentially the residence floor, kinda like a college RA). Since January of this year, there has been a collection of empty cans passed down from zone leader to zone leader, but the way in which it’s passed down is by dumping them all on the floor of the new zone leaders’ room. When we got here, the current zone leaders had around 250 cans. In like three or four weeks, the floor collectively doubled that to almost 500 – many hands make light work. But we also had to figure out how to get into the room, since they knew it was coming and had secret knocks and everything. We just had our biggest guy bust into the room in a brief window and then all ran in – sometimes simple is best. Then we helped them restack all the cans on top of a closet again, prepared to add another 250 before we leave.

Halloween also happened like a few days ago! I say “happened” because really not much was different. One of the elders in our district got a witch

 warlock hat in the mail, and I wore two ties and two tags because my costume was two elders. Then we did a little bit of trick or treating, but no one really has a lot of candy here or anything. It was fun though.

Okay, I think that’s about it for this week. Crazy to think that I’ve already been here for like a month, and soon I’ll actually be in Slovakia. Still having a great time here, although I miss you all, and I can’t wait to share what I do next week as well.

Love you all,

Tomas

Pictures:

500 cans on the floor

Me, in full costume

“Food”

The last picture of the whole floor

A monkey I drew

Our little trick or treaters

The fabled triple layer drink

Us watching the BYU game out the window 

Master Chief visits the MTC cafeteria

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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 posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from 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.

Movie Review: The Map of Tiny Perfect Things

I just got back from a trip, and you know what that means: movie reviews! These days, I take some time before I leave to download movies that look like they’d be interesting. I typically grab around 5-10, so that I have a choice up in the air. This time through, I came across The Map of Tiny Perfect Things on Amazon Prime. Basically, it’s a teenage version of Groundhog Day, except instead of being alone in the day that keeps repeating, Phil and Rita are both trapped in it together.

With a premise like that, how could I say no?

I’m very pleased to say that the movie delivered on the premise. There are a growing number of time loop movies out there, and one would think the territory they can explore is fairly limited. So far, that’s proven to be wrong. This movie takes the well-established trope and injects enough new stuff into it to make it feel fresh and original. Yes, it’s still a romanticomedy, but if that’s what you’re looking for, what’s the matter? It would be like complaining a Snickers tastes too Snickery, when what you really wanted to eat was a Snickers. Does not compute.

When you get down to it, a time loop movie needs a few essential elements. First off, it needs to establish how the main character(s) are dealing with the loop, and second, it needs some sort of a way out of the loop. (I suppose you could have a movie where they’re just stuck in the loop forever, but that sounds more like an art film, and who wants that when you could eat a Snickers?) This movie does a great job of showing how two different characters would approach a time loop differently.

As with most time loop movies, however, explaining too much of the film would likely get in the way of actually enjoying it. So I’ll leave it at that for now. I gave it a 9/10, and I heartily recommend it.

Need a bit more of a hook? Here’s the trailer:

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