Monthly Archives: January 2023

Ranking My RPG Stats

Over on Twitter last night, Gail Simone asked: This is a fun little exercise to consider, and while I answered this briefly over on that service (because everything on Twitter still needs to be brief), I thought it would be fun to rank them out over here in more detail. I won’t be offering a […]

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Black & White Concert Photos Are Totally the Best

When I was on the JoCo Cruise last year I took my usual literally thousands of photos and intended to post a curated selection of the ones that weren’t blurry, as I usually do. But I went straight from the 2022 cruise into my Kaiju Preservation Society book tour (seriously; I had one day at […]

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Winter Meander

I downloaded a new synth and fiddled a bit with it today, and this is what came out. As the title implies, it’s a bit of a meander rather than a proper composition, but it was still fun to put together. At some point I’m going to some actual songs, with, like, lyrics and stuff. […]

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A Gentle Reminder

There’s a current kerfuffle in the speculative fiction space and some folks are wondering why certain authors/notables in that space haven’t chimed in (this has not been directed at me, as I’m not in that particular space, but some others I know of). This is a good time to link back to this, which I […]

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Where is My Mind

I’ve had a ridiculously good week this week, enough so that it’s done my brain in just a bit. Some of it you know, some of it you will know soon, and some of it I won’t be able to tell you for a while. Just know I’m happy but mildly discombobulated at the moment. […]

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A Mildly Disappointing Snowpocalypse

We were told for the last couple of days that today we could expect anywhere from four to eight inches of snow, and that we should probably all just stay in our houses and hunker down while the stuff blanketed the earth (and roads, and electrical wires, etc). So we did — I mean, I […]

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The Great Leveler

The house that we bought on the property adjacent to our church is no more; neither is the rubble of that house when it was torn down. What’s left now is dirt, laid over the former basement space of the house by the machinery you see here, and soon to be blanketed in snow thanks […]

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HBO Max Subtitles Need To Get With the Program

I, like many others, have been watching The Last of Us on HBO Max. I have also been watching it with subtitles, and I’m shocked at how garbage they are. You would think that such a huge, expensive, and widely-anticipated show would cater better to its subtitle-using audience, but you’d be severely disappointed. What do I […]

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Hey, Wanna Know Who Won This Year’s Robert A. Heinlein Award?

And as you might expect, I’m pretty damn happy about it. Not only because it’s an award named for Heinlein, who is an undeniable influence on me (you may recall that the Publishers Weekly review of Old Man’s War said “Though a lot of SF writers are more or less efficiently continuing the tradition of […]

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“My Year of Dicks” an Oscar Nominee!!!

It had been on the shortlist (i.e., the step before actual nomination), but as of this morning’s Oscar nomination announcements, it’s officially a nominee. Which means Pamela Ribon, my friend who wrote its screenplay, is also an Oscar nominee! This is genuinely the best news of the day, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not […]

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The Kaiju Preservation Society Out in Paperback Today

And what a lovely trade paperback it is, too. It doesn’t look too much different from the hardcover, with a only a few graphic design changes to push a review quote, and to announce the book’s NYT bestseller status (thanks for that, folks, by the way). If you want to pick up this version, it’s […]

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Chengdu Worldcon Now Accepting Credit Cards

For those folks outside China who wanted to get a membership at this year’s Worldcon in Chengdu, but were stymied because the Worldcon site wasn’t accepting payments from outside China, there’s good news: The site now accepts credit card payments. I tried it myself and the site acknowledged my payment and membership (although, please note, […]

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Happy Lunar New Year!

Hey, everyone! I just wanted to come on here real quick and wish y’all a happy Lunar New Year! Today, I celebrated with my friends by exchanging red envelopes, making paper lanterns out of construction paper, wrapping spring rolls, and I even tried making Tang Yuan for the first time! Specifically I made these black […]

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Absconding With My Wife For the Weekend

Guess who is having a weekend off with his spouse? If you guess “Why, it would appear John Scalzi is,” then you are 100% correct. We’re off to see friends and hang about and enjoy each other’s company. Honestly, sounds ideal. I believe Athena will be posting something in the next couple of days, so […]

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Jam-A-Rama: Part 1

A food influencer I follow on Instagram and Tik Tok has in fact influenced me. I have been thoroughly influenced into buying Bonne Maman’s Advent Calendar. If you have never heard of Bonne Maman, it is a jam/jelly brand that’s pretty common in most grocery stores. It’s like a nicer Smucker’s. When I went to […]

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The Big Idea: James L. Cambias

One advantage writers get when they work in different fields of writing is more tools for their professional toolbox — but as James L. Cambias points out in this Big Idea for The Scarab Mission, not every skill is directly transferable from one medium to the next, and learning which tools this is true about […]

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Family Portrait, WWII Style

In this photo you will see, from left, my great uncle Roy, my grandmother Jean, and my grandfather Mike. This would have been taken during World War II so my grandmother and grandfather would have been in their early 20s, which makes this officially the youngest I’ve ever seen them in a photo. The photo […]

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