Bryce Moore's Blog, page 59

Where to Find Me at FanX

I’m in Utah! (Despite the best efforts of the Salt Lake airport to make me give up and just go home. Seriously. We landed around 10:15 last night. By the time I waited for the bus to take me to the main terminal, then walked the huuuge ramp they dropped us off at to get to the main terminal, then walked through all of terminal B, through the big tunnel, through all of Terminal A, and then out to the rental car place, it was around 11pm. And I was walking fast. Sheesh.)

Anyway. That means I’m going to be scarce online, but if you’d like to find me in real life, here’s what I’ve got going on this weekend. I hope to see some of you there!

Thursday September 16, 2021 

3:00 pm-4:00 pm How to Write a Great Character Arc 255 BC

7:00 pm–8:00 pm Defining Your Writer’s Block — and Then Conquering It! 355 B 

Friday September 17, 2021 

12:00 pm-1:00 pm You Don’t Understand Officer, I’m an Author: Questionable Writer Research. 150 G 

1:30 pm-2:30 pm Bryce Moore Signing The Printed Garden – Booth 129 

6:00 pm-7:00 pm The Truth About Publishing 151 A

Saturday September 18, 2021 

10:00 am-11:00 am Writing for YA Today 251 D 

2:00 pm-3:00 pm Bryce Moore Signing The Printed Garden – Booth 129

TV Series Review: The Mysterious Benedict Society

I read The Mysterious Benedict Society a while back. Just the first book (I believe it’s a series now?), but I enjoyed it, even if it quickly faded in my memory to “book about a secret school, with students who go there under cover to save the world.” It’s a cool premise, but I couldn’t remember much more than that. But when I saw Disney had done an adaptation of the first book on Disney+, I remembered enough about the book that I thought the TV version would be worth checking out.

And . . . it was! If you’ve seen the Netflix version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, then you should know about what to expect. (Minus the doom and gloom.) It’s well produced, with a cool design that consistently pops. It stars Tony Hale (Buster from Arrested Development) and four child actors who do a decent job. I watched it with the whole family, and everyone enjoyed the whole season. (Anytime a show can pull that off, entertaining the ages of 8, 13, 17, and 40+, that’s noteworthy right there.)

I especially liked the humor of the show, which took me a bit to figure out. It’s pretty dry, but once I got it what the show was going for, it worked really well.

The general premise is as I remembered it: a group of four students are recruited to go undercover at a school for the gifted that seems to be the front for a sinister operation. They need to find out what’s going on and how to stop it, and they need to do it largely on their own. Adventure ensues.

Is it going to change my life? No, but it consistently delivered a good time. Tony Hale turns in a solid performance, and even when the show’s pace ebbed now and then, it was still fun to just watch the screen and appreciate the design work.

If you’re looking for a show to watch with the whole family, and you have Disney+, then check this one out. Not too scary, but not too simple either. 7.5/10, but not many kids shows can score that highly for me.

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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.

Why Aren’t We More Unified?

For the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, I’ve seen a lot of posts out there bemoaning the fact that our country came together to support each other 20 years ago, but we’re unable to do that today with the pandemic. The tacit assumption for all of that is that we’ve changed as a society, and that who we are now is fundamentally different than who we were then.

I’m not so sure that’s the case.

From what I’ve seen, people generally stay the same. They’re motivated by the same basic needs and fears. They’re looking for acceptance or validation or wealth or prestige. They want to provide for themselves or their family. They want to be safe and free. None of that has changed. On a local level, I still see people being people. Some of them are nicer than others. Some of them are meaner. But it’s not like that’s anything new.

And it’s important to remember a couple of things. First, when 9/11 happened, there was a very real, very tangible threat. Americans were unequivocally attacked, and so it was easy to band together against a common enemy. With the pandemic, that immediate threat didn’t really appear. The science behind what was going on was unclear at first which left things open for people to debate just how much of a threat really existed.

Anytime you’ve got room for debate, that debate will happen, if you involve enough people and give it enough time. And we’ve got plenty of people, and we’ve had plenty of time.

Second, the technology has changed drastically in the intervening 20 years. In 2001, there was no huge public forum for people to discuss issues and share ideas. As a reminder, here’s what CNN looked like that day. Here’s Fox News. See anything missing? Comments sections. Facebook was three years away. YouTube wouldn’t come until 2005. Even MySpace wasn’t around yet. There just wasn’t a place for people to argue.

That also means there was no way for news to spread quickly. There was also no platform for disinformation to run rampant. You had talk radio, and you had opinionated news sources, but if someone wanted to make up a news story, there was no way for them to do that and put it out in a way that the masses could be fooled into thinking it was real. Today, a lot of the really breaking news often appears on Twitter before it appears anywhere else. And making stuff up on Twitter takes pretty much no expertise at all.

It’s also important to remember that “unified” didn’t really count for everyone. There was mass discrimination against people from the Middle East (or people who looked like they were.) So sure, it might have felt great for many Americans, but it certainly didn’t feel great for many minorities. But again, that’s not the sort of thing that would easily appear on anyone’s radar. Not unless the news was actively reporting it.

And the unity wasn’t something that lasted incredibly long, either. Sure, President Bush’s popularity had a massive spike after the attacks, but within a year and a half, it was back down to about where it had been, and it only got worse from there.

Unified? Less than a year before 9/11, you had the contentious election of 2000, filled with debate over hanging chads and recounts. Opinions were very strong on both sides of that. It would have been much, much more heated if Gore had continued to press the issue and not conceded.

I think the biggest difference between then and now is that it’s easier to find out not everyone agrees with you. There are more platforms for people to speak up, many of them anonymously. And the challenge we’re facing is fundamentally different than the one we faced back in 2001. (And even back then, once we got past the attacks themselves, there came the big debate about who was responsible for it.

This might all seem discouraging, but I choose to look at it differently. I really believe the majority of Americans want the same basic things. The possibility of unity is still there, but in many ways we’re at the whims of our leaders. As long as our leaders refuse to compromise and lead by example, there will be no real chance of unity. Then again, we’re also in a unique situation where the people who believe the pandemic is a real threat also believe masking and vaccination are the way to defeat that threat. And the people who don’t want to mask or vaccinate generally don’t believe the pandemic is a real threat.

(Though again, I’d say a big part of that falls at the feet of key leaders and news organizations, willing to put their political and financial futures ahead of the health and safety of our country. At this point, the majority of people who are getting sick and dying of COVID are the unvaccinated. And the majority of those are Republican, according to polls. I really wonder if one side effect of this pandemic will be an even faster swing away from conservatism, for the simple reason that more conservatives end up dying than liberals. (Though, of course, there are also anti-vaxxers among liberals. They just don’t make up as big a slice of the pie.))

How often has perceived unity really just been a selective portrayal of what’s happening at any one moment? History often portrays complex issues as having had a consensus around their solution, but history typically favors the victor anyway . . .

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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.

Revisiting The Matrix

The trailer for the fourth Matrix movie dropped yesterday, and it’s pretty impressive. (Love the use of White Rabbit, even though it’s the most obvious soundtrack choice for a Matrix movie ever.) Coincidentally, I just rewatched the original for the first time in well over a decade. There was much of it I still loved: the science fiction what-if elements, the twists and turns of the plot, and the climax where Neo faces Agent Smith is still incredible.

One of the most famous parts of the movie, however, now goes over like a brick with me.

When I first watched the movie, the lobby scene seemed fantastic. Excellent fight choreography, great special effects, and cool ninja moves? What wasn’t to like? In so many ways, that scene moved action scenes forward, influencing how we see fights ever since. However, in the 22 years since the movie came out, mass shootings have gotten more and more common place, and if there’s one thing that lobby scene does very very poorly, it’s establishing why all that violence was necessary in the first place.

Neo and Trinity need to break Morpheus free from the clutches of the Agents, and it’s true that in the Matrix, the Agents can take control of literally anyone. However, when the duo show up in the building lobby, they’re greeted not by agents, but by regular rent-a-cops. People who really aren’t that intimidating at all, despite the security measures in the lobby. And Neo and Trinity both just open up fire on all of them, killing them in cold blood.

Those cops are then supported by what seems to be an elite level of security. Tons of guns and body armor for Neo to fight against. But in the confines of the movie, we know these are just regular people who are convinced they’re doing the right thing by Agents. They aren’t villains. Those deaths all feel much more disturbing to me now than they did before.

Some of that is no doubt because I’ve changed. But some of it is also likely because when the movie came out in 1999 (months before Columbine), random shootings just didn’t seem like that big of a concern. That lobby scene was designed to be cool, not realistic. But when mass shootings are a regular occurrence, it’s impossible for any informed audience not to see similarities in the real.

Yes, we’ve had plenty of other violent movies. The John Wick series (another Keanu Reeves vehicle) is an obvious comparison. But I can’t think of any that don’t at least try to establish why the “bad guys” deserve what’s coming to them. And if there are innocents who are affected, then they’re side casualties. In the lobby scene, the heroes show up to shoot the bystanders, and there isn’t even a hint of concern of what they’re doing to those people.

It’ll be interesting to see how the fourth movie handles it. I’ve seen the second and third movies just once each, and I’ll probably watch them again, even though I remember not particularly loving them. I still like the original movie a lot. It’s influential both in action and science fiction genres, and I love the attention to detail that was given to each individual scene. The special effects have also stood up remarkably well. Crazy to think that a movie that’s still fairly recent (in my head), turns out to be more than twenty years old.

But even movies that are products of their time can’t help but be evaluated from a modern point of view, and that once scene is far less appealing now than it once was.

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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.

The Trauma of Middle School

In our class this semester, we begin each day with a question. Nothing too deep, but a chance for the students to go around the room and tell us a bit about themselves. “What’s your comfort food?” That sort of thing. Today’s started out as “Who’s someone you admire and why?” I went first, and I said right off the bat, “I admire my thirteen-year-old daughter, because she’s going through middle school right now and doing a tremendous job.”

From there, the entire class started talking about how horrendous middle school is, to the point that the question changed. Instead of “who’s someone you admire?” it turned to “what’s something traumatic that happened to you in middle school?” (For me, it was the time we were taking class band pictures outside, and someone kept throwing grass at my head. I finally got sick of it, picked up the grass, turned, and chucked it back at the guy. That’s when I realized he was a football player and much bigger than me. We got in my first (and only) fight at school. A fight I lost in about three seconds, leaving me a sobbing wreck on the ground. It was not fun.)

But as we went around the room, with everyone telling these stories, it made me reflect once more on how universally un-fun those middle school years are. (I suppose there must be some people out there who loved being in middle school. Right? But they’re in the vast minority.) Everyone is going through so many changes. Trying to figure out who they are and how they fit in, and really desperate to fit in. Or to stand out. Or to show they’re unique.

It was so encouraging to see all these students talk about where they were just five or six years ago, and to see where they are now. (I also realized in the middle of all this that these students of mine are last year’s seniors. The COVID class, who had to deal with their senior year being full of distance learning and quarantines.) And to understand that in the middle of all that struggling to fit in or stand out, most of us end up fitting in along with everyone else: by feeling like we don’t.

At the same time, I also wondered about the fact that none of us were talking about the times we provided the trauma for others. After all, it’s not like all that trauma just comes from “those people.” We inflict it on our peers in the same way it’s inflicted on us. Often unintentionally, usually without thinking, and sometimes with long-lasting effects.

Did I provide trauma for anyone in middle school? As I thought it through, I definitely did. The story that stands out in my mind is the time I wrote an article for my friend’s ‘Zine. It was intended to be a humorous piece, and it was something to the effect of “Top tens ways [Student A] is better than [Student B, who shared the same first name.]” Student B was, to us, much more popular than our friend (Student A), and so it felt at the time like that was a totally reasonable thing to write. And then make multiple copies of. And distribute throughout the school.

I still cringe to think about it, looking back. It was really a horrible thing to do, and I didn’t even blink at doing it. Not because I was a malicious person or out to get Student B, but because I didn’t even think it might affect Student B at all. I was too tied up in myself to be able to think about others, and I’m sure there are multiple other instances of that.

In middle school, I can’t help but think we all leave a trail of carnage behind us without even realizing we’re doing it. And while we’re doing it, other people are providing the carnage for our own lives.

So there’s your cheerful thought for the day. But I don’t want it to be too much of a downer, because as I said: it gets better. We get through those years, and we figure out who we are and what we want, and we stop trying to tear other people down to get ahead ourselves. (Or at least, many of us do. I suppose I shouldn’t speak for 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 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.

Listening to the Experts

I wrote a while ago about the pain I was dealing with brought on by TMD, and how I’d started to go see a physical therapist about it. Mind you, this is now months that I’ve been dealing with this, which I realize is a drop in the bucket compared to how long others have faced it, but I just mention to say that it’s been a perpetual problem for quite some time.

After that initial visit with my physical therapist (shout out to Justin at Allied Physical Therapy!), he gave me some exercises I was supposed to follow. I was expecting the to be around something to do with my jaw. I don’t know: maybe moving it side to side, or yawning a lot? The pain’s in the jaw, so that must be where I need to work on the muscles, right?

Except instead of that, he told me to stretch my neck twice a day from two different angles, paying attention to both sides of my neck. I agreed, because what else was I going to say? (I was tempted to remind him I came for pain in my jaw, not my neck, but I decided not to do that.) The whole point of me going to see a physical therapist was acknowledging that I didn’t know enough about this pain to beat it on my own, and an expert would.

So I started stretching my neck, morning and evening. Maybe after I did that for a while, I’d start to feel the stretch in my jaw somehow as well. Maybe they really were all connected. Except the longer I did it (and the more practiced at the stretch I became), the more I knew I wasn’t feeling a stretch in my jaw at all. Not even a little.

The day after my first visit, my jaw felt pretty good. A feeling that ended the next day, and made me wonder if it was just a fluke. I went back for my second visit, and Justin assured me that was a good sign. He seemed optimistic that this was all going to help. And then he proceeded to massage my neck to death. Yes, he massaged the jaw a little, but 80% of his attention seemed to be focused on the neck. The next day, the biggest difference was that now my neck hurt more than my jaw.

It would have been easy at that point to throw my hands in the air and decide I was done with PT. I had tried asking “the experts,” and “the experts” had done something completely nonsensical. They’d even made things worse! But Justin had also mentioned that it might feel sore for a few days . . .

So I kept stretching my neck.

And you know what? A week and a half later, I’m seeing a real difference. My jaw only hurts occasionally. My teeth feel better. And when the pain comes back at all? I stretch my neck, and it goes away. I’m not ready to declare “Mission Accomplished,” but I do know this whole neck stretching thing is really making a difference.

Which is just to say, if someone knows more than you about a topic, it makes a whole lot of sense (to me at least) to listen to them. Especially when listening to them can improve your life in a potentially significant way. Food for thought . . .

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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.

Teaching by Surprise

If you had asked me at the beginning of the semester how I thought the semester was going to go, I would have told you, “It’s going to be busy.” That’s my typical response, and it’s always accurate. This September’s actually been one I’ve kind of been dreading. Between the impending kitchen renovation, the return of early morning seminary drives, an upcoming novel revision (with a deadline), my continuing church commitments, getting kids to school on time when Denisa’s teaching early, and getting a Makerspace on campus up and running, I definitely had more than enough to keep me busy.

So if you had said, “What if you added teaching a class at UMF to all of that?”, I probably would have laughed you out of the room. Where in the world would I have found time for it?

But as with many things in life, our preconceived notions don’t always match up with the choices we make. And last Tuesday, I was asked to pinch hit as a teacher for a freshman composition class. And I agreed.

Now, before you just say I’m crazy, allow me to explain why I said yes. First, it’s for a friend, and team teaching with another friend. That helps on many different levels. For one thing, it’s a huge motivation for me to pitch in and help out. I have a hard time saying no when I know someone’s in a bind. For another, since I’ll be team teaching, the course was all set up and ready to go. All I had to do was step in and pick up the reins. And I won’t be there alone; I’ll have someone helping me as we go.

Also, it’s a course I’ve (sort of) taught before. Way back in the murky days of “before I moved to Maine,” I taught numerous classes on writing. Freshman comp and advanced comp. Since then, I’ve done a fair bit more writing myself. So when it comes to teaching about writing, I’m not really worried about it. (If the class had been about teaching physics or biology, then I’m sure I wouldn’t have been asked, just as I know I wouldn’t have said yes.)

Where am I going to find the time for all of it? I’ll be coming to work early and staying late, because I all this teaching is in addition to my librarian duties. (I’m plenty busy as a librarian already. I wouldn’t be able to find the time to teach within those 40 hours each week, even if I could.) It’ll actually help that I’ll be taking Tomas to early morning seminary, then. I’ll be going to bed earlier and waking up earlier. So I’ll mainly be taking time away from my “zone out in front of a show at night” time, which I was going to have to do anyway.

And surprisingly, I’m actually looking forward to it. I’ve now taught for two classes, and it’s been a lot of fun. I have plenty to say when it comes to discussing writing and reading, and they’re a good group of students. It’s twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) from 9:50-11:30 and 12:00-1:40. I’m squeezing in work while I eat my lunch in the break between class. (And yes, they’re paying me for the course as well, so it’s not like I’m doing it all just for the love of teaching.)

That said, this semester looks like it will be especially busy. So if there’s something you’re thinking about asking me to do beyond the things I’ve already got on my plate . . . odds are very against me saying yes at this point. I just don’t have any more time to squeeze out of my schedule for more things.

Wish me luck.

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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.

FanX (Salt Lake Comic Con) Bound

Okay, so technically it’s not called Salt Lake Comic Con, because trademark, but telling people outside of Utah that I’m going to FanX just generally gets me stares of confusion, so I inevitably explain what it is by saying Salt Lake Comic Con. (Maybe they could change the name to “The Convention Formerly Known as Salt Lake Comic Con.)

And I suppose I’ve already let the cat out of the bag during my explanation up in the first paragraph, but . . . I’m going to FanX this year! I’ll be attending as an Author Special Guest, which means I’ll be speaking on panels, having some book signings, and generally just enjoying the con. Look! They’ve got my picture up with lasers even, which makes it very official (and makes me feel very self conscious, because I don’t really feel like I’ve reached the point where I’ve earned those lasers, if you know what I mean.)

I’m either a guest author or starting a cult. Maybe both?

Of course, going anywhere in the time of COVID isn’t a hop, skip, and a jump, and I’ve debated no end about whether or not I wanted to go to a convention while the pandemic is still raging all over the place. In the end, I decided to go forward with it for a few basic reasons. First, I’m vaccinated, and from everything I’ve seen, the pandemic is raging for the unvaccinated. For the vaccinated, it’s much less severe. In Maine, 95% of the cases have been in the unvaccinated population since vaccines were available. So while Maine had 665 cases today (which is right about where we were at Peak COVID, if 95% of those are unvaccinated people, then that means we had only 35 or so cases among the vaccinated. (I realize that’s a very rough estimate, and likely lower than it really is, but it’s for illustration purposes only.)

Take that into account, and add me wearing a mask the whole time and staying socially distant, and the risk level dropped to a point where I feel comfortable enough to go. (Personally, I feel that if you can’t do anything even once you’re vaccinated and masked, then . . . things just get too depressing.)

In any case, I’ll be out in Utah the 16-18th of September. If you’re in the area and want to swing by the con to hear me pontificate on writing, horror, YA, and publishing, come on by! 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.

Movie Review: The Fugitive

The Fugitive would be another one of those movies that I watched growing up and assume everyone’s already seen, only to watch it now and realize that it’s almost thirty years old, and there’s a good chance that most people younger than that not only haven’t seen it, they haven’t even heard of it. Which is a shame, because it’s a fantastic movie (as I’m sure anyone who saw it back in the day can attest to).

For those of you who don’t have it on your radar, it’s an adaptation of the television show by the same name. The movie stars Harrison Ford as a man who’s falsely accused of murdering his wife. Not just accused, but found guilty and sentenced to death. He manages to escape from custody and go on the run. Tommy Lee Jones plays the part of the US Marshall tasked with hunting him down and recapturing him.

The film is great mainly for its simplicity and how well it all works together. Ford is a good man. Smart and able to think well on his feet. Jones is a fantastic marshall, able to spot false leads and tenacious. Both of them are good people, though Jones is definitely not a forgiving man. He represents justice, and he intends to see it carried out. But I love that, while they’re both working against each other, neither is a villain. They can both be good at the same time, and you don’t always get that in a movie.

The soundtrack by James Howard helps as well, of course, and Andrew Davis (who also directed Holes and Under Siege) creates a compelling, fast moving plot that twists and turns, developing the mystery of who really killed Ford’s wife while also moving forward the action of the chase. There are some great stunts (particularly the train wreck scene, which is supposedly still set up and a tourist attraction in North Carolina) and you definitely get more than the price of admission for watching it.

If you want to see one of the great popcorn movies of the early nineties (that still stands up to today’s standards very well), then this should definitely be on your list. It was nominated for 7 Oscars (including Best Picture) and won Tommy Lee Jones the award for supporting actor. 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.

Daily Dose of Inspiration

With all the doom and gloom happening seemingly everywhere, I’ve been looking for instances of happiness and positivity whenever I can. One area that’s been encouraging to me recently are the 2020 Paralympic Games happening over in Tokyo right now.

I’d always known about the Paralympic Games, but I never actually watched any of the competitions. For one thing, I wasn’t sure how to see any of them. Watching the Olympic Games is something you’d have to hide under a rock to avoid, when the Olympics are on. They’re all over the news, all over television, and people talk about them all the time. But they last for a couple of weeks, and I think by the end of that, most people are ready to move on from the whole sports thing. Plus, who can remember when the Paralympics start? They’re just not talked about at all.

Lucky for me, YouTube TV makes watching the Paralympics wicked easy to watch. I can just go in and tell it to DVR anything having to do with the Paralympics, and it does it for me automatically. I don’t need to know what channel they’re on or what time the events are playing. (And there’s no need to worry about spoilers, because as I said, no one’s talking about these in my day to day life.) Then when I want to watch something, I bring up the DVR’d events and choose something to check out.

So far I’ve watched wheelchair basketball, a wheelchair 5k, various swimming events (some with participants who were blind, some who were missing limbs), goal ball (a court sport for the blind, where they roll a ball with bells inside it across the court, hoping to score on the other side), and sitting volleyball. I’ve found all of them inspirational, watching people do things so far beyond what I can do, even when facing difficulties unlike anything I’ve had to face.

Take swimming blind. It seems like it shouldn’t be that big of a deal when you first think of it. You don’t need your eyes to swim, after all, right? But how do you know when the wall’s coming? When you’re swimming as fast as you can, do you just remember how many strokes it takes to go 50m? In practice, it turns out the swimmers tuck themselves close to the cordons that rope off the different lanes, to ensure they’re going straight. Then they have assistants who stand on either end of the pool with long wands. When the swimmer gets close, they tap them on the back at a predetermined distance, letting them know the wall’s almost there.

I watched a swimmer from Turkey swimming with no arms. She used a dolphin kick to churn through the water, turning over to her side now and then to take a breath. Swimming like that for 200m? I couldn’t believe it.

When I was on my mission in Germany, I played wheelchair basketball once a week with members of the German national team. I don’t know which missionaries got us involved in that, but it was a great experience. The men were a lot of fun to be around, and they were all much much better athletes than I’ll ever be. Those wheelchairs crashed into each other all the time. People were falling out of them and getting back in on their own. Shooting a basketball when you can’t use your legs (and you’re about 2.5 feet farther away) is really difficult. It all gave me a very different view of disabilities and how people with them view themselves and others. (Not that I’m saying I understand even a fraction of what it’s like, but at least it was a start.)

Anyway. I just wanted to pass the recommendation on while the games are still going. If you have access to any of the coverage, I encourage you to check some of it out. The regular Olympics have a lot of trappings that go with them. People who succeed in them become superstars, though I still love watching the underdogs do things no one thought they’d be able to. The Paralympics feel like watching people who are competing just because they love competing.

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