Monthly Archives: June 2022

The Big Idea: Victoria Aveyard

Fantasy is a world of your making, and for New York Times bestselling author Victoria Aveyard, she wanted her world to be inclusive. Read all about how she wanted Blade Breaker to take place in the world that teenage her dreamed of. VICTORIA AVEYARD: I like to say that all writers share three things. Hard work, […]

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A Personal History of Music, Day 29: “Boys,” by Charli XCX

This one’s appearance on my personal playlist is not complicated: It’s just so delightfully and almost innocently randy that it just makes me laugh and be happy. Whomst amongst us has not been where Charli XCX is in this song: So blissfully wrapped up in thinking about the objects of their affection that everything else […]

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The Big Idea: Andrew Liptak

Cosplay. You know it, you love it. And so does author Andrew Liptak. Follow along in the Big Idea for his book, Cosplay: A History, to see how cosplay isn’t just about costumes, it’s about community. ANDREW LIPTAK: When you’re doing something that seems patently ridiculous, it helps to have friends who’re there with you.  I’ve […]

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A Personal History of Music, Day 28: “Ride the Wind to Me,” by Julie Miller

Julie Miller feels like secret knowledge, and someone who have to know someone else first to meet. She’s a contemporary of musicians like Sam Phillips, Shawn Colvin and Victoria Williams, all of whom had far higher public profiles in their day. She’s written songs for or covered by some hugely prominent country musicians, including Lee […]

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The Big Idea: Elizabeth Bear

Few storytellers alive can spin a tale like Elizabeth Bear, and in this Big Idea for The Origin of Storms, the concluding novel of a trilogy, Bear digs just a little into the elements that make this particular story the one to tell right now. ELIZABETH BEAR: What if you inherited a broken world from […]

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A Personal History of Music, Day 27: “Fire Drills,” by Dessa

Dessa is the one musician in this series who I met prior to hearing her music. She and I were guests at John and Hank Green’s NerdCon: Stories convention in 2015, where among other things she and I participated in a team debate event in which we expounded the value of putting on foot attire […]

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Authors Talking About Politics: An Archived Twitter Thread

I’ve written about this subject extensively here on Whatever over the years, but it’s worth saying again here in 2022, and also, not everyone who follows me on Twitter comes over here. I posted this tonight over there, and am reposting here for archival purposes and because not everyone here goes over to Twitter. 1. […]

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Final Day of Santa Monica

And what a glorious last day it was! My friends said they wanted to give me what they consider “the TOUR” of LA, or at least enough of it to fill about six hours. I had no idea where we were going, but I had a strong suspicion that the first stop would be coffee. […]

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Status Update: 6/26/22

Still on the plateau of meh. It’s the good side of awful and the bad side of okay, if you grasp what I’m saying. Today, I’m mostly just feeling tired, which corresponds with me being extremely bored with resting up. But there’s nothing for it. I understand the secret to keep COVID from messing with […]

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A Personal History of Music, Day 26: “Cut Your Teeth,” by Kyla La Grange

Because I am a hopeless, story-seeking nerd, I have created a whole backstory to the video to the Kyla La Grange song “Cut Your Teeth,” which is taken from the album of the same name. Very briefly, La Grange and her background singers are in hell, for whatever reason they have found themselves in hell, […]

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Day 6 of Santa Monica

I’m finally reaching the tail end of my trip, and though I have loved it here, I’m definitely ready to go back home. One thing I don’t have back home, though, is boba tea. So that was the first thing I went out and got today. There are quite a few places in the area, […]

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A Personal History of Music, Day 25: “Bachelorette,” by Bjork

One thing I have long admired about Bjork is how unapologetically weird she is, musically speaking (I don’t know how she is in her personal life, and it’s not my business anyway). The less ambitious version of her could have made a decent career out of being merely quirky, but nothing about Bjork could ever […]

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Day 5 of Santa Monica

One of these days, I’ll finally go to the beach, but today was not that day. The UV index was at 10, and I didn’t feel like looking like a lobster, so I held off. I did, however, go to lunch at a Mexican restaurant called El Cholo with a different family friend from Hollywood. […]

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Today’s Court Case

I have COVID and my brain is not in a place to write anything substantive about it right now. So I will say what I already noted on Twitter: This court will continue to take rights from Americans as soon as it can. If you’re an American and you don’t think that this will affect […]

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Status Update, 6/24/22

I feel… meh. Mostly fuzzy and distracted and a little ache-y. I have congestion and a runny nose. I don’t feel horrible, but I certainly don’t feel good. I do retain my sense of smell and taste so far, so that’s a good thing. I think it’s accurate to say the thing I feel most […]

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Day 4 of Santa Monica

I had big plans for my fourth day in town, but upon waking up I decided I didn’t feel like leaving the bed. So I didn’t! And I went back to sleep. I ended up sleeping about thirteen hours. I had to keep convincing myself that I wasn’t wasting my day, because rest is important, […]

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A Personal History of Music, Day 23: “On the Radio,” by Regina Spektor

For this series I’m picking one song per artist to represent them and why they’ve mattered to me. Usually, this isn’t too difficult — sometimes it’s that one particular song that’s resonated for me, and other times there’s usually one song above several other equally worthy songs that I thing be represents what I like […]

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Well, Poo

To begin: I’m fine. I’m double-vaxxed and double-boosted, and my symptoms so far have been those of a mild flu; and in point of fact I felt worse yesterday than I do today. Yesterday I wanted to sleep all day, and mostly did; I was in bed at 6:30pm and didn’t get back out of […]

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