Bryce Moore's Blog, page 54

Giving a Series Time to Succeed

It’s a well known fact that I watch a fair bit of television. I like how consumable it is. How you can have a nice concise story told in under an hour, with a beginning, middle, and an end. (Typically.) Any while there are some shows out there that I’ll try for a bit and then just decide they’re not for me, I’m generally pretty forgiving for a show, at least for the first while.

A great television series is really hard to assemble. You have to get enough funding in the first place to get your series off the ground, and then you have to work with the producers (who often don’t share your exact vision) to create it the way you’d like it, and then you need to hope that enough people out there watch it and stay with it to justify a second season.

Ideally, that all works great right from the beginning. But that’s often not the case.

The first season of The Wheel of Time is a great example of this. I watched it, and I generally enjoyed it. Was it perfect? Definitely not. But it was intriguing enough that I’ll stick with it, especially since I know some of the issues I had with it were anything but self-inflicted. The finale felt especially rushed, but when you realize that the show was pitched as having 10 episodes (with a 2 hour premiere), you realize that the creators wanted to take more time with it as well. But The Powers That Be cut it short. Now that it’s been quite successful for Amazon, I’m hopeful the second season has a little more leeway to do what it’s trying to do.

People like to compare it to the already uber-successful Game of Thrones, but they forget that GoT took time to get to where it peaked. (I’m not going to argue about the last two seasons. I enjoyed them, though I felt they were rushed once again, this time apparently by an unfathomable desire by the creators to just finish the show and be done with it.) The show wasn’t nearly as well funded to begin with, and it ended up cutting corner as a result. It’s not like it started off able to show a fully rendered dragon attacking a wagon train, with all the special effects bells and whistles. It earned that by working up to it.

Evaluating the first season of a show by comparing it to a different show you loved might be somewhat useful, but ultimately it’s an unfair comparison. It’s sort of like saying a recent college graduate being told they really ought to get a better job because they aren’t making as much money as a forty year old.

So what would make me decide to give up on a show, and what would make me stick with one? The characters would be a big factor. If they’re relatable or intriguing, that goes a long way. The writing is huge: are the characters making decisions that are consistent with who they are? How is the dialogue? Are there people I can root for? The general conceit of the show is also a big factor. As long as the basic structure of the show is in place and sound, then I’m willing to forgive some fumbling along the way.

It was easier to do that when shows came out once a week, and bingeing wasn’t a thing. Now, it feels like people sometimes demand perfection right from the get go. Some of the shows that I’ve ended up loving, I didn’t love right off. The Wire is an excellent example. It took half the first season for me to really be intrigued, and then I was really turned off by the first few episodes of the second season. But there was enough there to keep me going, and I ended up loving the whole thing.

Right now, I just finished the second season of the Witcher. I’ve had issues with some of what it’s been doing. The timey-wimey-ness of the first season, and the seeming glee in reveling in obscure references and confusing plots are definite problems. But by the end, I felt like it had really found its footing and was some excellent television.

How about you? What makes you stick with (or abandon) a TV show?

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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 the Milgram Experiment

I’m trying a new experiment as a librarian this semester: attending a class as an embedded librarian. The thought is that by knowing exactly what a class is doing and learning, I can better help those students and the instructor with their research. It’s not something that I see myself doing multiple times for the same class, but so far, I think it might be very helpful to me (and to them) to do one class at a time, each semester. We’ll see how it plays out.

The class I’m taking is Intro to Psychology, and judging from the two sessions I’ve already attended, I think my biggest hang up is going to be that I just want to talk about so many of the things I’m learning, and I don’t have anyone to really get into them with. (As a librarian, I’m trying to keep my actual comments in class to a minimum, which–if you’ve attended a class with me–isn’t the easiest thing for me to do.)

However, I have this thing called a “blog.” And so my gut says you’re going to be hearing more about my thoughts on psychology for the next few months . . .

The focus of the last two classes has been on the Milgram Experiment. I assume many of you are familiar with it: two people are brought into a lab and told one will be a “teacher” and one will be a “learner.” The learner is taken to a different room, where they’re hooked up to a device that administers electric shocks. The teacher is in the first room, at the device that gives out those shocks. Every time the learner gets a question wrong on the material that’s being studied, the teacher gives the a shock. The shocks go up in intensity each time, capping off at 450 volts, which is marked on the machine with an XXX. To begin with, the teacher is given a taste of what the shocks feel like before it begins–about 100 volts.

The study was focused to see how far someone would go when they’re being told by an authority figure to do something. In reality, the “learner” was in on the study. No shocks were really given. But the “teacher” heard the learner yelp in pain, then complain loudly, then demand to be done as the shocks increased. Ultimately the learner went silent for unknown reasons, but the teacher was told to continue.

The expectation was that very few people would actually go much above 150 volts, choosing to defy authority rather than inflict pain. In reality, 2/3 of the teachers went all the way to 450 volts.

It’s an ethical minefield, obviously, but I’m not so focused on the ethics today as I am on the concepts around the study.

It’s easy to say to yourself, after having seen the study and knowing the results, that you would defy authority if you were placed in a similar situation. I would love to design a study that tested exactly that. Instruct people about the study, and then later on test them to see if they really would resist authority. Getting a pool of test subjects would be easy: every single intro to psych student probably hears about this study. Have them find out about it at the beginning of the semester, and then wait to do the study sometime in the middle of the semester, so it’s not too obviously connected. The big question is how you could design the study in a way that wouldn’t be too mentally hurtful to the students. My guess is that far more students would continue to obey authority, even knowing the results of this study. I really want to know, though. It’s so easy to learn about a study like this and think to yourself, “That would never be me.” But people are people, and you wouldn’t really know until you’re placed in a position that actually tests that.We talked about the characteristics of the people who obeyed authority and who refused to obey. Things like income, gender, personality type, and religious affiliation didn’t seem to have any real impact on that one way or the other, and that didn’t really surprise me. In my experience, people are people. We might like to think of them in categories, but as soon as you’re dealing with an individual, all those categories often go out the window. (I’m looking forward to learning about studies where a person’s age, gender, income, etc. accurately predicts how they’re going to behave in a situation.) To me, knowing that those categories didn’t impact one’s obedience to authority simply backs up my opinion that stereotyping someone based on those characteristics is flawed. I would have liked to see a deeper study that looked at other factors: a person’s experience with authority previously, how religious a person is (rather than simply what religion they are), or their previous experience with electric shocks, for example.We also went over the strategies people used to resist authority. How the ones who did managed to do it. I really wonder if knowing those strategies has an impact, however. When you’re actually in a position where you’re being told by an authority to do something you normally wouldn’t do, does it help to know in the back of your head some approaches to defy it? My gut says it wouldn’t, but my gut is often wrong . . .On the lines of the ethics of the experiment, I thought about how willing so many people seem to be these days to enter a reality show that has absolutely horrible ethics. The best case I can think of is Space Cadets, the British show that duped a group of people into thinking they were going to space, only to let them know at the end that it was all a big joke to make them look like idiots. (Though of course they didn’t quite phrase it like that . . .) So the big question I have is if researchers could use a reality show to give accurate results somehow. The problem, of course, is that the best way to do this would be to have researchers be in on the creation of the show from the beginning, and as soon as you’ve done that, you’ve basically thrown ethics out the window. So what we really need is for some unethical Hollywood type to design a show that would give good results, and then do it anyway. I’m sure there’d be no lack of volunteers . . .

Anyway, it’s been an interesting couple of classes, and I’m really excited to see what comes next. If you want to know more about the Milgram Experiment, you can watch The Experimenter on Amazon Prime. (Or you can sign up for intro to psychology.)

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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.

When Two Wrongs Make a Right

It’s been a tough couple of years for everyone, right? Right. And I’ve mentioned multiple times how I’ve been off my game for the past while. This has resulted in some lapses that I normally just don’t make. The last little bit, I realized I had made two fairly large goofs that were going to cost me some significant money.

Through my job, I put aside $2,750 each year to spend on medical bills through a Flex Spending Account. This is good for tax reasons, but it comes with a couple of stipulations. First, you have to voluntarily re-enroll each year. If you forget to sign up, you don’t get to do it. That’s normally not a problem. I get a reminder each November, and I’ve re-enrolled every year like clockwork.

Until 2021, when I somehow completely spaced it and didn’t re-enroll. (I blame my kitchen.) This meant I wouldn’t have the chance to get the tax benefits, but I wasn’t too terribly upset about it, because I didn’t think those benefits would be too much. (Actually, we can calculate what they would have been. It basically knocks that money off the top of what you earned, so the IRS treats it as if you didn’t earn it, which means it’s not taxed. At my tax bracket, it would have been taxed 22%, which means that by forgetting to do it, I lost $605. It’s not insignificant, and I definitely wasn’t happy about it, but I tried not to beat myself up over it too much.

However.

As I tried to remember through the mists of 2020 and 2021, I couldn’t for the life of me remember submitting a claim for my 2020 flex spending account money. Each year, we just put in a claim in April to get reimbursed for everything we spent the year before, which is always enough to get all our money back. But FSAs are a “use it or lose it” tool. If you don’t get reimbursed for something, then you don’t get the money back from that year. A small amount can typically rollover, but other than that, you’re out of luck.

If I hadn’t submitted a claim, then I would be out $2,750 for that who year, bringing the grand total of my blunders around FSAs to $3,355. That, my friends, is a number that I just can’t let slide. That’s a really boneheaded amount of money to just pour down the drain. And yet yesterday, it looked like that’s just what I had done. I got a letter from my FSA account company that confirmed I hadn’t put in a reimbursement for 2020.

I was, needless to say, not very happy for myself. I read the letter, and then decided to just not think about it until today, because I was too depressed about the loss to face it right away.

Today, however, I cowboyed up and looked into the matter some more. Was there any way I could get some of that money back? It never hurts to ask, right?

Well, after some googling and a few phone calls, I discovered the truth. Because of the pandemic, Congress had altered the rollover rules around FSAs to make it so that your 2020 amount rolled over into 2021, and it could also rollover into 2022. What does this mean for me? It means that while I can’t be reimbursed for any of my 2020 expenses, I can be reimbursed for 2022 expenses, even though I didn’t sign up for the FSA plan for this year. Actually, if I’d signed up like I should have, then I would have had to spend $5,500 this year to get all my money back.

So in the end, by forgetting to sign up for my FSA in 2022, I countered the mistake I made in 2020 of not getting reimbursed.

Mind you, it still means that I’ll lose about $600 in taxes for 2022. The best thing to do would have been to do it right in 2020, 2021, and 2022. But at this point, I’m just grateful to be able to get the money back that I put in. I’ll take my wins where I can get them.

Thanks, Congress! I give you a hard time a lot of the time (deservedly), but you really bailed me out this time, and I appreciate 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.

Book Length is Relative

A new year, a new chance to renew my goals from the year before. As I’d mentioned a while ago, my reading goal really got off track at the end of last year. (Though in hindsight, it just meant I read about 5 fewer books for the year than I’d planned, which doesn’t feel like nearly as big of a deal.) However, with a new semester that’s hopefully less chaotic than last semester, I’m trying to get back in the swing of everything. That includes reading.

Often when I need to read a book quickly, I pick one that’s not very long. My initial plan at the beginning of this year was to read a few short books, just to get ahead of things. So it might seem fairly odd that I instead chose to reread the entire Wheel of Time series. The books are on average over 800 pages each. You’d think that I couldn’t come up with a worse way to “get ahead” on my reading for the year.

But I’d just watched the TV season, and it made me really miss the books. I grew up with them, after all, and I’ve never actually read the series the whole way through at once. The last time I read the first 11 was back in 2009, when I read them all before Brandon’s The Gathering Storm was released. The final book didn’t come out for another three years or so, but it wasn’t like I had time to reread the other 13 before I read that one. So I threw caution to the wind and started reading them anyway.

I’m halfway through the third book already. The pages are flying by, and I’m having a blast.

If I had more time, it would be interesting to look back at the books I’ve read and calculate a page per day average for each of them. (I keep track of when I finish books, and I generally start a new book the same day I finish one. Though there are some books I start and don’t finish, which would throw this off some.) My guess is that for books I’m really enjoying, I read quicker. Not that it’s that stunning of a guess, but I’m also thinking the difference is significantly greater than I’d think at first glance.

And me being me, I had to take a moment to go make a formula for the Google Sheet I use to track this, just to see if my hunch was correct. And . . . it definitely wasn’t. I mean, generally speaking there’s a trend. For books I loved, I sometimes was reading them at a 300+ page per day clip. But sometimes that wasn’t the case, and sometimes books that I didn’t like, I still read quickly. I imagine there’s just too many variables for me to capture. How busy was I at the time? How dense is each page? Words per day would be much more accurate than pages per day.

Anyway, the big takeaway for me is to remember not to be afraid of book length. Enjoyment has a much bigger impact on how long a book feels for me. If I’m having a great time the whole time, what do I care if it takes me longer?

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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.

In Memoriam: Dave Wolverton

Yesterday I was shocked to find out Dave Wolverton (who published under the name of David Farland) passed away quite suddenly. In many ways, Dave changed the course of a big chunk of my life. I had just finished my mission, and I was back at BYU. One of the courses that caught my eye was ENG 218R: Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. I’d dabbled in writing off and on, and I’d always thought I’d like to write a book someday, but it was the same way many people talk about it. Something they’d like to do, but never really got around to doing.

I remember sitting in class the first day. Dave came in and introduced himself. He was the author of the Runelords series. That really impressed me right away. Here was an actual, real life author teaching this class. And not just an author, but an author with Tor Books. He led off by telling us all that he’d heard too often too many people say it’s almost impossible to make it as an author.

“I’m here to tell you that’s wrong. You can totally make it, if you keep at it.”

He went through the rest of the semester breaking down just how possible that was. He did a great job not just teaching a topic, but showing how it was actually done in the real world. He talked about how to plot, how to create characters, how to get an agent, how to get published. It wasn’t just the craft, it was the business.

That class really connected with me. I started writing that semester, and I haven’t stopped since.

After that class, I continued to connect with Dave. He encouraged us to go to national sci-fi/fantasy conferences. I went to my first one in Madison, Wisconsin back in 2005, when I went to the World Fantasy Convention. That was a pretty epic conference for me. I flew out to Milwaukee with Isaac Stewart, and we rented a car and drove to Madison, where we met up with Brandon Sanderson and Dave, who were doing a book tour as part of the trip, as I recall. The four of us split a room in Madison, and it was Brandon and Dave who really showed me the ropes of how to navigate a conference. I met my future agent at that conference, and I never would have gone without Dave and Brandon’s encouragement.

Dave continued to be a mentor for me in the years since. He served as a great resource for questions about the business, and I continued to talk to him at conferences right up to FanX this past September, where I chatted with him again briefly. He was only 65, so this all feels very sudden.

He was very active in the sci-fi/fantasy community, and I know he was a good mentor to many, many other authors besides me. He was a real force for good in the field, and I’m very sad to hear he’s gone.

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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.

My Current, Full Thoughts on COVID and Omicron and Maine

I’m not really sure why I’m writing this post. It’s more for me than it is for everyone else, I guess. I know that at this point, it seems most people I interact with are just over COVID. They’re tired of dealing with it, worrying about it, planning how to handle it, and just generally tired over all. I completely sympathize, of course, but I also know that me being tired of it doesn’t have any influence over what’s actually happening. I might wish it were over, but it isn’t.

This is particularly important on a local level because Maine is at its peak hospitalization rate right now, and Omicron hasn’t even really hit us yet. I’m not a health official, so my opinion is just that, but I’ve been tracking case rates locally, nationally, and globally, and since Omicron has come out, it’s always been very easy to see when Omicron made it to a new spot. The numbers don’t just go up, they skyrocket. I watched India’s numbers, and as soon as a blip started, I was pretty sure Omicron was there, judging from the pattern. That was December 28th, when they went from having about 6,000 cases per day to 9,000 cases one day. January 12th, just a bit more than 2 weeks later, they had 442,000 new cases, and I’d be very surprised if they’ve come close to peaking. My guess is they have another 2 weeks to go before they reach the top.

In Florida, they had that first blip back around December 14th. A bit more than 4 weeks later, it’s looking like things might be peaking there. DC has followed close to the same pattern, as has New York and New Jersey. Just looking at other countries as well, it’s usually about a month from blip to peak, and then it takes a long while for that peak to come down. A month after their peak, South Africa still has more than 5 times as many cases each day as they had before the blip started. Their death rate is still climbing, though it’s still less than half of what they experienced for the Delta wave. (Remember: even though Omicron is “less severe” than what’s come before, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any harmful effects. And we’re still finding out how it behaves in larger populations of unvaccinated people. America: leading the world in epidemiological research yet again.)

We haven’t had that skyrocketing in Maine yet. I’ve seen it start in southern Maine back on January 4th, but elsewhere in the state, it hasn’t done much at all. In fact, it’s been decreasing, as our bout with Delta peaked just about when Omicron was getting underway everywhere else. Here where I live, there’s a chance that Omicron finally showed up at the beginning of the week, but I’m still waiting to see the latest numbers to feel completely confident about that. Overall, I expect case rates in Maine to get much worse, very quickly. If the pattern of other places holds, then we’re talking 7-10 times as many cases as we had before the blip, about a month from now. Hospitalizations double or triple, though there’s a bit more variation on that. (And with Maine’s aging population, I expect ours to be worse than others’.)

True, perhaps having just had a surge of Delta, we’ll be spared some of the worst of Omicron. I have no idea what sort of impact they’ll have together, but I’m still expecting a bad rest of January and most of February. Our hospitals are already close to overwhelmed with our current rates. Imagine doubling or tripling that. Even if the people being hospitalized are not as bad as pre-Omicron, that’s still a very bleak future, and I’m very worried for all of my friends in the health industry.

Which is why it’s frustrating to read articles like this one, that promise “signs of hope” already in Maine. Sure, if you want to say that knowing that rates eventually peak means that we can be hopeful rates will peak here in Maine, I suppose that’s a sign of hope. “It’ll all be over soon” isn’t exactly the most hopeful message, especially when “soon” means “a month from now” and “over” means “still much worse than it is now” and “it” means “tons worse than it is right now.”

It’s also frustrating to see how badly prepared we are for this. We’ve known for weeks and weeks that regular cloth masks do almost nothing against Omicron. How do I know this? Because I ordered KN95 masks and N95 masks back at the end of November, when I’d read enough research to know it was time to up my mask game. But we still have the old mask advice, and it’s lucky to see anyone in a mask at all, let alone in one that will do any good. (It’s also frustrating to know the non-maskers will just use this as another piece of “evidence” that they were right all along to not mask.)

I’ve long said that a big advantage Maine has over the rest of the country is that we can see what mistakes everyone else makes before we have to handle a problem on our own. That’s true for many things other than just COVID. But I see many in Maine who seem to think we’re already in the middle of Omicron, and we just aren’t prepared for what’s coming. I want to be wrong. I will be so happy if I am. But if I am, this will be the one spot of all the spots I’ve been tracking where I’ve been wrong. This information has all been out there, freely available, to anyone who felt like looking. But because people are tired of worrying about it, they just stopped looking.

So what am I doing to prepare? Other than having nicer masks, we’re stocking up on essential supplies again. I’m advising everyone I know to avoid taking any unnecessary risks over the next month and a half. Nothing that would give an increased chance of needing to go to the hospital, since hospital services will be severely impacted. I’m preparing for multiple stores and services to shut down for a week or two, not because of any mandates, but because there literally aren’t enough well workers to be able to run operations. I’m expecting schools to go full remote for the same reason. Not for long: just a couple of weeks, until the peak is over, and we have enough well people to make do again.

I’m expecting to get Omicron. I’m expecting everyone in my family to get it, and most of the people I know. I think that’s more pessimistic than what will actually happen, since my family is all double vaxxed, and Tomas and Denisa and I are boosted. But I’ve learned over the last 2 years to be prepared for the pessimistic side of things to win out. That said, I expect my family to get through it mostly fine. The odds are very much in our favor, with our age, health, and low number of co-morbidities. It’s likely at least some of us will not feel good at all for a week or so, but I’m hopeful we’ll get through all of that. If things are worse than I expect, I’ll at least know I’ve done everything I can to mitigate this as much as possible.

I could go on with what I’m expecting, but I think you can guess the rest, and I don’t really feel like belaboring the point now. I’m trying to focus on a time in the middle of February, give or take, when we’re through the worst, and we can begin to reasonably hope that things will be improving, at least until the next variant comes along. But by then, my hope is that since most people will have had a version of COVID, its effects are much less.

My next book (Don’t Go to Sleep) takes place in the middle of the Spanish Influenza outbreak in New Orleans. I did a lot of research into that earlier pandemic, and I feel like that’s prepared me quite well for what to expect out of this one. It came in waves as well. I imagine those were caused by different variants. The first wasn’t terrible. The second was awful. The third not as bad, and it subsided from there. It’s just what pandemics do.

I’m not here to make everyone depressed, but at this point, the thing that’s helped me the most is to have as clear of a picture of what to expect as possible, and to know what I can do to get me and mine through it all as best we can. For the next month, that means hunkering down as much as is reasonable (knowing that the side effects of complete isolation are just not something I’m interested in doing again). It means wearing N95 and KN95 masks. And it means being ready to be sick for a while.

Here’s hoping 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.

Don’t Go To Sleep: Cover Reveal!

Today’s the day! I’ve been sitting on this new cover for a while now, waiting for the green light to share it. When The Perfect Place to Die‘s cover came out, I loved it. Really striking, and it tapped into the book so well. When I wrote the companion novel, Don’t Go to Sleep, I wondered how they’d be able to capture the same sort of feel for its cover, even though the setting and subject are quite different.

I loved the cover as soon as they shared it with me, and I hope you do too.

As a refresher, here’s the book’s official description:

“It’s 1918, WW1 is in full swing, and a Spanish Influenza outbreak is on the horizon. In the midst of the chaos, families are being terrorized and people are being killed by a lone man with an axe. As Gianna and her friend Jake investigate the heinous crimes, she realizes she’s connected to the killer in a way she could have never imagined.

Gianna is the average seventeen-year-old girl living in 1918 New Orleans. She worries about her family’s store, the great war, and a mysterious illness that’s about to take hold of the city she loves.

It doesn’t help that there also appears to be a mad man on the loose in her neighborhood. The attacks started as burglaries but soon escalate to cold blooded murder. There’s a killer out there, and the police can’t seem to figure out how to stop him.

Gianna enlists the help of her friend Jake to investigate. And as they study the crimes, they see a common link between the victims, and Gianna can’t help but wonder if it’s the same man who attacked her family years before.

As Gianna gets closer to the killer, she discovers a connection between them that she never would have suspected.”

While it isn’t a direct sequel to The Perfect Place to Die, Etta (the main character of that book) plays a significant role in this one. I’ll leave it at that. Don’t Go to Sleep is once again inspired by actual events. A killer known only as The Axeman made his way through New Orleans in 1918, attacking Italian grocery stores at night, chopping his way through the community at the same time the Spanish Influenza was laying waste to the city. (New Orleans was the third hardest hit city in America.)

Ready for the cover?

Like I said: I’m a big fan. It does a great job representing the book. It calls back to the first cover. It’s visually striking. I can’t wait to have you all be able to read it.

If you want to preorder, you can do so here:

Barnes & Noble: https://bit.ly/3K1veSA

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HYcbqC

Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3tk8qaU

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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.

Leaning Into Horror

Over the fall, I had a chance to go talk to some author friends when I was at FanX. Among other topics, I asked what suggestions they had for ways I could improve my writing from a career standpoint. My fourth book is coming out in August. Is there anything I could do that would help me build on successes and start getting more books published?

The biggest takeaway I got came from (surprise surprise) Brandon, who basically said I’ve been hopping around too much from a genre perspective. I’ve written contemporary fantasy, steampunk, historical thriller, dystopian science fiction, and more. And I’ve written middle grade, young adult, and adult, all within the last five years. He pointed out that with a track record like that, it would be difficult to get readers to follow me from one book to the next. It’s not like I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve got fans who will read whatever I write. (Well, other than you. I know you will read whatever I write. I mean everyone else.)

So his advice boiled down to simply picking an age group and genre, and sticking to it for a while. Let a fan of one book be able to follow me to the next, and find more of what they like.

I realize this probably seems obvious to you, but it’s very different from my whole approach to writing up until now. I’ve always hopped around on purpose. I’ve been in “try something different, so you can get better at writing” mode for so long now, I hadn’t even though to consider switching things up. This made sense when I was just starting out as a writer, and still trying to get published. It’s the same reason I never wrote sequels. Why write a second book if you don’t know if the first book will sell? Why write in the same genre if you’ve already done that before?

I think that was a fine approach for . . . ten years or ago. Maybe more. But once I was actually managing to get some things published, it no longer really applied. And so I’ve decided to try to switch things up and be more consistent for once.

In this case, that means leaning into the books that are actually selling right now. Historical serial killer thrillers is a bit narrow for this, I think. At least, it felt too narrow when I was trying to come up with a new project. So instead, I’m going with the general “Horror” genre, instead. It’s important to note that this isn’t something I’m doing to settle. It’s not that I don’t like writing horror books. On the contrary: I’m a fan of the genre, and I read fairly widely in it. The thing is, I don’t really look at horror as all that different from fantasy. The rule sets can overlap a great deal, but much of what I’ve written has already skewed toward the darker side of things. The difference now is that I’m going to purposefully lean into that.

This also means that I’ve essentially put the rest of my projects on pause. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t get much writing done in December and November. It wasn’t that I wasn’t liking my works in progress. It’s just that they didn’t fit with this new approach, no matter how I might try to figure out a way to make them work.

I think I’ve got a new project selected, and I’m in the middle of plotting it now. Most importantly, I’m excited to be writing again. We’ll see how this goes.

In the meantime, I believe I’ll be able to share the cover of DON’T GO TO SLEEP with you tomorrow. Stay tuned . . .

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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.

Metroid Dread Review

I’ve been playing Metroid games since the first one came out when I was 8 years old. There’s a whole lot to love about the genre: exploring a new world, gathering power ups as you go, and figuring out boss battles so that you can take them all down one by one. In many ways, Metroid games are a great fusion of puzzles and side scrollers all in one. The worlds are often massive, and you can spend hours and hours exploring as you look for all the secrets.

True, sometimes this also leads to some frustration, as you might miss something and end up spending hours trying to figure out what it was you missed. If you’re not into that sort of thing, then Metroid games might well not be for you. (Or maybe you’ll just want to go through them with a walkthrough close to hand. I’m not here to shame people for playing a game however they want to play it.)

There have been some riffs on the Metroid theme over the years. The Metroid Prime series on the Gamecube was particularly different, since it went more for a 3D immersive world feel, which was also a ton of fun. For the first game on the Switch, however, Metroid has returned to its 2D roots, though in a way that feels fresh and fun.

Metroid Dread follows the tried and true approach when it comes to the set up. Samus is off exploring a new planet. Something happens to her that takes away all her power ups, and she has to spend the rest of the game finding them again, one by one. (You’d think she’d have learned to keep better track of those things by now . . . ). The whole thing is side scrolling, but the graphics are done in a way that every now and then it has more of a 3D feel. The planet feels very lived in, if that makes sense, and getting power ups continually gives you a real feeling of upgrades.

Overall, I’ve loved the game. (Full disclosure: I haven’t beaten it yet, but I’m getting close. The fact that I’m getting close says a lot about what I think of the game.) I’m around 9 hours played on the official time, and I’m sure it’s much more than that, since I keep dying, and it doesn’t keep track of that. I’m hardly an expert player, so I’m sure someone who’s better at all of this than I am would be getting through this much more quickly. That said, I also feel like . . . what’s the rush? I paid for the game. Getting through it faster would feel kind of like watching a movie in fast forward. Might as well enjoy the ride, right?

If you’ve got a Switch and like Metroid games, this is a no brainer. Buy buy buy. If you don’t have a Switch still, and love Metroid games, then this would be a very good reason to get a Switch. If you don’t love Metroid games . . . then why are you reading this review? If they’re new to you, give them a shot. This is an easy 9/10 in my book.

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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.

Media Consumed in 2021

This wasn’t a perfect year for reaching my goals, I’m afraid. Everything fell off the wheels in the fall, and instead of getting to 52 books for the year, I only made it to 45. That said, it’s still 45 books, and being able to keep that up even during a pandemic is something I’m still proud of. As usual, I’m here today to let you know the best (and worst) of what I watched and read. I’ll anonymize the bad books, so as not to point any fingers (out of professional courtesy). Ready?

Best Movies/TV

I watched 129 movies or complete TV seasons, so . . . clearly I had some time to relax somewhere over last year. My average rating was a 7.71, which probably shows that I’m generally easy to please. Most movies get around that, and it has to be significantly good (or bad) to move one way or the other. Here are the films I gave a 10/10 to:

Groundhog Day (duh)The History of Future Folk (Hondo! Such a great movie.)The Purple Rose of Cairo (Yes, Woody Allen. I wouldn’t have him babysit my kids, but the guy can make a great film. This is a favorite of mine)Ted Lasso Season 1 (Just fantastic. So positive.)In the Heights (Great music, great movie)The Goes Wrong Show Season 1 (The worst thing about this is that I haven’t found a way to watch season 2 yet)Mare of Easttown (Kate Winslet is phenomenal in this.)Unforgiven (Fantastic modern Western)Back to the Future (I really think it’s one of the best movies out there. Peak 80s, and practically perfect in every way)

Here are the 9.5s:

Mississippi Burning (Depressing to see how much of this still feels relevant today)The Matrix (Though as I said, I was surprised to see how much more disturbing the violence was)

And then here are the 9s:

Master and Commander (Great stuff)Bowfinger (So quotable, and some really funny scenes. Keep. It. Together.)Ocean’s Eleven (the remake. Super heist film)The Right Stuff (I’m a sucker for space movies)Broadchurch Season 1 (The other seasons weren’t as good, but still a great show.)Gaslight (The movie that spawned a word)The Fugitive (Surprised to see how well this stood up)You’ve Got Mail (Ditto for this)Ted Lasso Season 2 (Not quite Season 1, but what is?)Squid Game Season 1 (When you write pop fiction, you have to know what everyone’s watching. It’s a good show, but brutal.)Great British Baking Show Season 10 (It started out iffy, but became one of my favorite seasons.)Hunt for Red October (Still great)Sleepless in Seattle (It’s a tragedy Hanks and Ryan didn’t make more movies together)Encanto (I loved this, and I think I might love it even more when I watch it again)

How about the worst ones? Here’s what I’ve got that I rated 5 or lower:

Bridgerton Season 1 (See my comment about Squid Game. In this case, however, it stunk. 4/10)Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (I will never (ever) do another Harry Potter movie marathon. Most are middling, a few are decent, and then there are some stinker 4/10)Caravan of Courage (Ewoks, old school. Bad, but funny bad at least. 4/10)Dune (the first one. No no no. 5/10)The Tunnel Season 3 (Liked the first two. Hated the third)2001: A Space Odyssey (Yup. Still disliked it. 3/10)

That’s quite a number, isn’t it? How did I do with reading? My average rating for books was a 7.7 (at least I’m consistent). Here are the 10’s:

Way of Kings (Still excellent, even the third time through)Boy’s Life (Absolutely phenomenal. Unknown to me, and I loved it)

Just two. Wow. 9.5s?

My Best Friend’s Exorcism (Grady Hendrix was a fantastic discovery for me this year. It’s a vein of horror that reads like candy. Love this stuff.)

Man. Just one. How about 9s?

Animal Farm (Classic)The Inheritance Games (Daniela brought this one to my attention)Jaws (Impressively good)OathbringerDawnshardRhythm of War (All Brandon, all great)Project Hail Mary (Really liked the latest Andy Weir)Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (More Hendrix)Salem’s Lot (My first time reading. Love Stephen King as always. And the ending was even decent!)

And that’s it for the best. When it comes to worst I had some 6s and a few 6.5s. Only two books lower than a 5:

The third book in a series where I loved the first two entries. They were fast moving, really fun RPG fantasies. So disappointed in the third. 3/10The first book in a sci-fi dystopian series. Thousands of great reviews on Goodreads. I really disliked it. Found it predictable and tiring. Had to slog my way to the finish.

Both books are very well liked on Goodreads. I’m glad there are people with such a wide variety of tastes.

Anyway–that’s it for this year. We’ll see how I handle the year to come. What did you see or read this year that you’d like to recommend (or recommend to avoid)?

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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.