Bryce Moore's Blog, page 51

Movie Review: Turning Red

Another movie I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. This one, I’d heard conflicting things. Some people said they loved it, and some people said it was way too heavy handed and just another case of movie studios trying to be too preachy. (Of course, most of the sources for the latter came from the same folks who said Frozen was bad because it was way too preachy about pushing the “gay agenda.” So I wasn’t really taking the warnings too seriously.)

I had a chance to watch the movie over the weekend with the family, and I really enjoyed it.

If you’re not aware, it’s about a 13 year-old girl named Mei, who discovers when she hits puberty that the women in her family magically start turning into giant red pandas when they get too emotional, starting at that age. This is sprung on her with no warning, and she is naturally more than a little concerned. It’s all about how she learns to deal with this trait, and the family troubles the secret dragged to light.

First off, yes: puberty plays a significant role in the movie. And yes, that means the mom actually mentions pads as something she’s got for her daughter. Gasp! And yes, you can easily read into the movie about how it also relates to a child setting out on their own for the first time, and becoming who they want to be, and not who their parents want them to be. Perhaps if my children were all younger than 12, this would be alarming to me. It’s easy when they’re that young to assume (like Mei’s mom) that they’re always going to be the same as they’ve been so far growing up.

But then your kids start actually growing up and becoming who they want to be, and not necessarily who you want them to be, and you realize this movie is spot on in many ways. I won’t say it’s spot on for everyone, because what story is, but it definitely resonated with me.

(On a side note, one of the critiques of the film was that since it was about the Chinese/Canadian scene in Toronto, it was catering to too small a slice of the world, and not many people would relate to it. That’s utter hogwash. I am neither Chinese, nor Canadian, nor a woman, a mother, a 13 year-old, or a red panda. (That I’m aware. Maybe there’s a latent trait in my family for men who hit 45. I still have a few more years to go.) I still really connected to the movie and the characters, the same way I connected to UP, despite not being an aged widower, a cub scout, or a golden retriever.))

Talking it over with my kids, MC liked it a lot because it had a big red panda in it that did funny things. Tomas and Daniela both related to the story of Mei growing up and being more of an individual. So it had pretty wide ranging appeal, and it managed to do all of that in a way that was engaging.

Your mileage may vary, and I’m sure there are some who will feel like the puberty angle is either too much or inappropriate in a children’s movie, but I gave it a 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 PERFECT PLACE TO DIE 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: West Side Story

I had some time over the weekend to catch up on some of the movies I’ve been wanting to see. I’d heard great things about Spielberg’s take on West Side Story, but I was still just a tad suspicious.

Going into it, I really doubted the need for the movie. The 1961 original won 10 Oscars, including Picture, Director, and Supporting Actor and Actress. Why in the world remake something that was done so well? It’s just asking for trouble. But it was Stephen Spielberg, and I had a hard time thinking he’d do something just for some sort of money grab. And it’s been over 50 years since the original came out. Maybe he’d set it in a different time period? Or do something to the movie to make it his own?

Nope. He stuck with the original setting. The original numbers. The original story. Almost all of the original characters. The one real difference? Realism. He made the characters seem much more fleshed out, and so the events of the film had much more of an impact.

I’d always felt the original was a musical first and a movie second. Meaning, I had to give the film a bit more leeway when it came to willing suspension of disbelief. The gangs didn’t really seem that intimidating. The song numbers were just that: song numbers. Asides that paused the action, where we got more information about the characters: their dreams, their fears, etc. But the singing and dancing contrasted with the violence of the movie, in a way that felt artistic to me. I didn’t dislike it; it was just part of a movie musical being a movie musical, and it never occurred to me that it was something that needed to be “fixed.”

Except Spielberg managed to do just that. Right from the beginning, the whole film felt much more real. The gangs were most definitely threatening. Yes, there’s still the singing and dancing that don’t necessarily line up with gang violence, but the movie puts the characters and the acting first, and the music second. This isn’t to say the music is bad by any stretch. It’s fantastic. But where the original felt like a musical first and a film second, the remake feels like it flipped that.

Was it perfect? Not quite. There were a couple of minor issues I had with the movie, and the only significant one was giving Somewhere to Rita Moreno to sing instead of leaving it with Tony and Maria. This isn’t because I thought Moreno did a bad job with it (quite the contrary), but it left Maria reprising a song that wasn’t nearly as powerful to me when she’s holding Tony as he dies.

But that’s really minor, and there’s so much to love about this movie. Take Spielberg’s approach to Spanish. There’s a ton of un-subtitled Spanish throughout the film. Spielberg explained in an interview that he felt subtitling the language would give English too much of an upper hand, and it was important to him that the Puerto Ricans be properly, equally represented. I think he did a much better job with that than the original. (Though honestly, that wouldn’t have been hard.)

In the end, I gave it a 9.5/10, and heartily recommend it.

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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 PERFECT PLACE TO DIE 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.

Regular Sick

The other day, it occurred to me how long it had been since I’d just been sick. Regular sick, not COVID sick. I’m sure I’ve had a few off days now and then over the past couple of years, but by and large the number of sick days I’ve had to use are much less than they’ve typically been. (All of that mask wearing doesn’t just help for COVID, ya know?)

In any case, I almost kind of missed being sick. Lying in bed. Watching movies. Reading books. Being sick was a lot of fun, wasn’t it?

Of course, this is just a case study that shows how easy it is to forget bad things and focus on the good. I suppose that’s a nice trait to have for the long term, but for the short term, it’s just helped me to remember why being sick is not, in fact, “fun.”

MC came down with a cold last week. Maybe more than a cold: coughing, sneezing, and generally not feeling well. We tested, and it wasn’t COVID, so there’s that at least. For the first while, it seemed like we’d avoided having anyone else get it. Then I got sick Sunday afternoon, and Daniela got sick yesterday.

Thankfully, it looks like both of our cases are less severe, since MC is still home sick. I stayed home today and yesterday. Pre-COVID, I likely would have gone to work today, even feeling sick. Now? I’m much more cognizant of germs, and I try to do my best not to share them.

And besides: it’s fun to be sick, 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 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 PERFECT PLACE TO DIE 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.

On Good vs. Great Reviews

The reviews are beginning to trickle in on Goodreads for my next book (Don’t Go to Sleep, coming in August). And The Perfect Place to Die has the most reviews (by far) of any of my books to date. (730 ratings, compared to Vodník in second place, with 295.) And I’mm going to start out this discussion with the big disclaimer that I know many authors generally just avoid looking at reviews of their books. As someone who actively reviews what he watches and reads, I can’t help myself. I want to see what people think about my books, and I’d love to improve them when I can.

But as I think through the reviews I’ve given and the ones I’ve received, I’ve somehow grown less focused on hoping for only 5 star reviews. Don’t get me wrong: I love to read raves of my writing, and to see that I really created something that people loved. But at the same time, more and more I’m paying attention to the experience people say they had with the book. There are two different reviews of Don’t Go to Sleep already that talk about how they liked that both books were on the same theme: Historical murder with a slight twist of the fantastical. This harkens back to an earlier post, where I talked about how I was going to lean into horror more purposefully as a writer. One of my friends noted in a response to that post that the more specific you can be in the “space” you occupy, the more you can snowball into more success.

The more I’ve thought about that, the more that makes sense. (Which is why my current work in progress is (you guessed it) another historical murder with a slight twist of the fantastical.)

There are authors out there I love. I’ve reviewed many of their books on Goodreads, and many of those reviews aren’t 5 stars. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like the book, and it doesn’t even necessarily mean I didn’t love it. A 5 star review, for me, is a book that was just absolutely fantastic. But I can enjoy a 4 star book almost as much. Depending on the person’s review scale, I could see some people giving a book 3 stars and still recommending it to others.

Because that’s the real thing I want, ultimately. I want people to read my books and want to read more and tell their friends to check them out. A couple of those three star reviews for Don’t Go to Sleep specifically say they enjoyed the book and would read more from me in the same vein. Would I rather all my reviews were five star? Sure, but only for the people who hop on Goodreads, check the overall rating, and then decide whether to read the book or not.

(Admittedly, I will do this when I come across a book I haven’t heard of. I’ll see what my friends on Goodreads have said, and I’ll scan through some of the reviews. The total number does carry some weight, but it’s not the sole deciding factor, obviously.)

Anyway–that’s all I have time right now for a post. Hopefully it makes sense. (And should you ever want to review any of my books, you’re always welcome. Wink wink.)

Have a good Thursday!

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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 PERFECT PLACE TO DIE 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.

Kitchen Update: March 2022

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting, wondering if my kitchen might possibly be finished, now that I’ve taken a break from blogging and am back. Surely this project that’s been going on since the Hoover administration is finally complete, right? Right?

Well . . . not quite. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we’ve made real progress. (Today, MC was home sick, so I was home “sick.” But that meant I was here to help out in the kitchen some more. So we got the backsplash set, and it’s now ready to be grouted tomorrow.) Last week, the countertops actually arrived. Getting them in the house was a bit of an ordeal, since the island was one solid piece, 4.5′ by 9′ of granite. It weighed a ton.

We’ve had some backtracking. We redid the cabinets around the fridge, since they hadn’t turned out quite straight, and we swapped a couple of other cabinets around to improve the layout of the kitchen. Some of the painting needs to be redone where a few other repairs went in, and the flooring that we’d already gotten done needed to be taken out and redone.

However, we’ve made a lot of progress as well. Now we’re really just looking at what needs to be done, which is a rapidly dwindling list:

Grout the backsplashFinish the floor under the oven and dishwasher, and then attach the dishwasher to the cabinets.Tweak the door to the bathroom, which ended up being a bit too narrow for the opening, since the barn door hardware leaves it too far out from the frame.Put in the trim around the corners and edges of the ceiling and cabinets.Put on the back piece and corner pieces for the island.Paint the sunroom.Make seat cushions for the seats in the sunroom.Finish the trim to the family room.Finish the trim around the outside of the door to the garage.

While that may seem like a lot, many of those jobs are a half hour or less, and none of them should be longer than a few hours to complete. (Well, other than the painting. Sigh.) But as far as construction goes, we are really close.

Which is great, since as soon as that’s done, we can actually clean the rest of the house.

And start on the main bathroom. Bathrooms are much simpler renovations though, right?

Riiiiiiight.

Have no fear: I will be posting pictures once the kitchen is up to it.

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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 PERFECT PLACE TO DIE 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.

A Skication to Sunday River

While I am far from the biggest fan of skiing in the world, it’s a well-known fact that my family is. Denisa has taught each of our kids to ski from as soon as they could stand upright and it was snowy out. But in all this time of living in Maine, we’ve never done the whole “ski vacation” thing. We’ve gone for day trips to different resorts, and Denisa and I stayed over at Sugarloaf one time, but other than that, we’ve held off the multiday trips, just because they seemed so expensive.

And let’s be clear here. They seem so expensive, because they *are* so expensive. Finding a place to stay is pricey, the lift tickets add up, and then there’s all the equipment you have to get. (Thankfully, we’ve had all that for a long while now.) But we haven’t really done much in the way of travel, and so we decided if we were ever going to give a skication a chance, it would be this winter.

As usual, I committed to the vacation a long time in advance, and by the time the vacation was staring me in the face, I was wondering why in the world I’d committed to it. I’ve been (very) stressed lately, and when I get in that mode, it feels like *anything* more than what I’m doing is just too much. However, as is also usual, once I actually left and was on the vacation, I remembered vacations are a great way to unwind and recharge, and I came home feeling much more optimistic about everything than I had when we left.

We weren’t gone very long. Just a Friday and Saturday night. We went to Sunday River, mainly because it’s the fam’s favorite resort. It’s nice and spread out, so once you get past the main lifts, you don’t see that many people. And they make a ton of snow, so you’re pretty confident conditions are going to be decent whenever you go. This time through, it was in the 40s on Friday, and the skiing was lovely. Saturday started out rainy (boo!) but then switched over to blizzard-like conditions around noon. (Yay?)

We got an Airbnb right on the slopes, so we could ski into it and ski out of it. (Well, once you walked through the parking lot, though I do think we could have taken our skis around to the back and just skied out from there, had we chosen to do that. We kept them on the roof rack instead, for easier storage. It wasn’t cheap, as I said: the list price was $250/night, but once you counted taxes and fees, it came in a little over $400/night. We saved money on the lift tickets by buying them well in advance. (Someone came up next to me while I was picking up our passes. They bought a half day ticket for that day for $97. Yikes.) We also went during a weekend when Sunday River was doing twilight skiing, which extended the open time until 6:30pm.

The main goal was to go have fun, and to see if we could do this again sometime. I think we were successful on both counts, though we learned a thing or two. First, I think next time we do it, we’d just go on a Friday afternoon and check in, then ski on Saturday. Cutting the ski passes in half would save money, and everyone was pretty exhausted by the end of it all. Yes, it’s a skication, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to ski every second. Second, I would avoid getting restaurant food next time. We did that for our first meal (carry out), and it was quite pricey. For Saturday evening, we picked up some homemade, ready-to-cook lasagna from the Good Food Store. It was delicious, and it fed the whole family for $32. (Strangely, I couldn’t find pizza that delivered. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough?)

Other than that, though, I think we did pretty well for ourselves. We brought games, ate plenty of junk food, and enjoyed the time together. I think it’s likely that we’ll do it again next year, especially knowing we could easily manage it on a regular weekend. (Leave as soon as the kids get home from school, come back Sunday.) The only thing I’d really love is to figure out a better place to stay that still had easy access to the slopes. It was so nice to be able to have some people head in and rest while others kept skiing, without having to worry about juggling rides. I guess we could take two cars? I’ll have to think about that . . . )

Anyone else out there have any tips?

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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 PERFECT PLACE TO DIE 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.

March Madness 2022 Edition!

How could I stay away during March Madness? Actually, I’m hoping I’ll be able to post more regularly for the next while, as I’m through many of the time intensive things that were filling up my plate. But for today, I’m just going to ease into it with a simple invitation to come join my blog bracket challenge. Last year, the lucky winner got the chance to name one of the main characters in my book (Don’t Go to Sleep, coming out in August!) So when you meet Enzo, you can thank Rachel Cundick for choosing a name so much better than Jake. (Not that Jake’s a bad name, mind you.)

This year, the book I’m working on is much more historically based, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to name a character for you. I will, however, put your name in the acknowledgements, along with a note that you’re better than I am. How’s that for commitment?

To enter (by Thursday at noon!), . Group name and password are below.

Group: Bryce’s Ramblings
Password: vodnik

I hope to see some of you there!

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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 PERFECT PLACE TO DIE 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.

Some Time Away

I hate to do this, because I really do enjoy the blog, but I’ve got a few things going on in my personal life at the moment that are stretching me quite thin. For the sake of my mental health, I’m going to step away from the blog for the next bit. I hope to be back to blogging soon, but hopefully you can get by without me for the next bit. (I’ve already skipped Monday and Tuesday this week, so maybe you’re already a bit used to it . . .)

Walking with Ferris

Ferris just turned 20 months old yesterday, and it’s been a while since I’ve checked in to let you all know how The Puppers is doing, so I figured today’s snow day(!) was a perfect time to do that. He might be approaching the end of his puppy days in terms of actual time gone by, but he’s still very much in the puppy mindset. That’s probably best illustrated by his penchant for going on walks.

If you even utter the “W” word around Ferris, he gets extremely excited. Jumping around, tail wagging, running-into-walls excited. In fact, if you put shoes on, or walk past the area where you might think about putting shoes on, his tail already starts to wag. Of course, actually controlling The Puppers when he’s on a walk is a trick and a half.

The first step is to tell him firmly to sit, before you put on his leash. This usually requires a few repetitions, as well as a scowl or two to make sure he knows you’re serious. You then need to remind him that he’s not a sled dog, even if it did snow last night, and even if we’ve been watching a lot of the Olympics lately. Mind you, he won’t listen, but repetition is the mother of all learning, and hope springs eternal.

As soon as you step outside, his first order of business is the Relieving of the Bowels, which he wants to do in Denisa’s flowerbed, right next to the front steps. If you drag him properly, experience has proven that he can, in fact, hold it until you reach the lawn.

Once that’s taken care of, you need to “gently coax” him across the street, since he’s shown a tendency to ignore things like “cars” and “fast moving trucks.” With that out of the way, the walk can really commence. Time has shown that if you constantly remind him “no pulling” and tell him “good dog” approximately every .2 seconds, then he won’t try to wrench your arm out of its socket more than ten times a minute. This is improvement!

Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a walk if you didn’t actually let him walk now and then, so every 100 yards or so, make sure to give him some extra leash so he can run around. This will last about 25 seconds, until he manages to spin around so fast he wraps his legs up as tight as Luke Skywalker flying around an AT-AT. At this point, Ferris will tumble to the ground and look at you, helpless, clearly surprised that this thing he’s done 1,000 times before in the exact same way somehow happened again. If you’re lucky, it hasn’t snowed in a while, and you can make it over to him to untie his legs without getting too much snow down your boots. If you’re not lucky . . .

At this point, you tell him “short leash,” which means his free ranging days are over until you go another 100 yards and decide to give him another shot.

Throughout the walk, there will be small diversions he’ll want to sniff and, ideally, eat. Things like dog poop, dead mice, cans, diapers, cigarette butts, and rocks. Despite your best efforts, he will successfully get about a third of these into his mouth. At this point, you have to decide if it’s worth it to force him to spit them out, or if that ship has already sailed. Usually this depends on just how gross the thing was to begin with.

You repeat this process for a mile or a mile and a half, until the walk is finished, and Ferris returns, reluctantly, to his regular indoor activities of sniffling around searching for dropped food, and licking random things around the house. In about fifteen minutes, he’ll start to ring the bell we’ve put by the door. He’s been told he’s only to do this when he needs to go outside to pee.

One day, maybe he’ll actually do that. Until then, he remains the Puppers.

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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 PERFECT PLACE TO DIE 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.

Where’s the Outrage?

I’m more than a little puzzled by the significant lack of any sort of real response on social media today. I woke up to the headlines of Russia rolling into Ukraine, and I’ve been reading the updates as the day has unfolded: attacks on sites across Ukraine, military coming in on three sides of the country, planes and helicopters being shot down, missile strikes being videoed.

A couple of my friends have posted something about these events on Facebook, but by and large my feed is filled with the same memes and chatter that they’re filled with every day. On the one hand, I’m not really expecting the world to stop these days whenever any one thing happens, but there’s a big difference between “unanimous outrage” and “a couple of mentions.” I remember when an event like the attacks in Paris caused everyone and their brother to change their profile picture to the French flag. Now a European country literally is invaded by another, and we’re talking about cat memes?

This isn’t to shame all the people who are posting anything other than outrage, but rather just to question what changed? My guess (and it’s only a guess) boils down to a few things:

General social media outrage fatigue. Since the election of 2020 and the events of COVID since then, people are just tired of saying anything at all of substance on Facebook. It’s easier to just ignore anything that might be remotely controversial.There’s been a slow build up to the invasion. We’ve been hearing for weeks that Russia was likely going to do this, and now (surprise surprise) they actually did. So the shock is missing that comes with an attack out of the blue.Americans just aren’t as familiar with/sympathetic to Ukraine. It was behind the Iron Curtain back in the day, and they don’t feel the same connection to it that they feel with more well known countries like Paris. (Speaking as the husband of a Slovak, which shares a border with Ukraine, I am anything but unconcerned about today’s invasion.)People are somehow worried about causing a ruckus on Facebook. Yes, you’d think “invading a nation” would be something we can all agree is a bad thing. However, since just a day or two ago, some called Putin’s moves “genius” and “wonderful,” apparently that isn’t a unified sentiment, after all.

When I was growing up, I was fairly convinced we were going to have World War III in the not too distant future. I was worried about being drafted when it happened, and I was worried about nuclear strikes on America. So maybe this resonates with me more than it does with people who didn’t grow up in that environment? I really hope somehow this situation doesn’t deteriorate further, but I’m also not sure simple sanctions are going to do the trick. That’s what happened back with Crimea, and here we are with a worse situation on our hands.

I don’t know. I’m not an expert in geopolitics. All I know is I’m concerned, and I’m worried the seeming lack of concern being voiced by others will only make things worse. Hopefully I’m 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 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 PERFECT PLACE TO DIE 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.