I mentioned in my post about The Expanse series that doing the book posts that I've been doing lately are dangerous to my pocketbook, and here is the proof of that.
Yesterday morning, just 24 hours after I'd written that post, and the next volume (the final volume? Or is it the penultimate volume?) of the series was in my hands. I immediately spent that money. Stupid consumer.
Well, now the next James S. A. Corey book is in its place on my shelf.
If I keep this up, I'm going to have to throw away a bunch of books to make space for the new ones. That's probably fine, though. There's a fair number of books on my shelves that I don't love, so I could trade them out with the ones that I do.
Back in 2016, I went to a used book store and found that someone had unloaded their entire collection of Piers Anthony Xanth novels there. I loved those books as a teenager, and I jumped at the chance to buy all twenty books. Then, because a few of them in the sequence were missing, I went to other used book stores to acquire what I didn't have. Now, I have the first 24 Xanth novels in the old mass-market paperback format. Along with the first three books of the Apprentice Adept series (plus the seventh, but I'm missing 4-6), and a couple of books from the Mode series.
I normally don't get the little mass-market paperbacks, because they don't go well with hardbacks on my shelf due to their significantly different size. However, I made a special exception in this case, and even made a special shelf for them to sit on.
Last year, I went through and downloaded a ton of the audiobooks for these in the attempt to go back and reread the books I knew and then go forward into the books I never had read. I only made it through book five, Centaur Aisle, however. The books weren't as good as I remembered. It was a whole lot of taking long journeys through Xanth and fighting with the crazy magical inhabitants of the areas, and much less of plot and character.
It's funny, because I remember Ogre, Ogre being one of my favorites from back in the day, and that's the one I stopped at and never read. Maybe I ought to go back and try listening to a few more of the audiobooks. Maybe if I did a just a few a year or one a month or something, they wouldn't get as repetitive and tedious as they became when I was bingeing them.
Anyway, having these books really takes me back to the early days of me as a reader. If it weren't for Piers Anthony, I probably wouldn't be what I am today. His imaginitive worlds lit me on fire as a teenager, and of course I loved to read books with art like this on the cover:
Just look at that griffin! Isn't it awesome? I sat and stared at that picture for so long when I got that book.
I'm back with more talk of my book collection, and I'm starting to think that it might not be a good idea to perpetuate this series of posts. I'll talk more about that later.
Back in 2013 or 2014, I was looking for good books to listen to on my commute, but I didn't know what the best place to go to for legit recommendations might be. Then I had an idea. I should see what the nominations for the Hugo Awards were, and maybe they'd have something I would like. I looked at the finalists for best novel from the last few years and that's where I found Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey.
I listened to the audiobook, read by Jefferson Mays, and absolutely loved it. I quickly went on to read the sequel, Caliban's War, and then that sequel's sequel, Abaddon's Gate. I was very much a fan from there on out. I read each book as they came out from there, and was super excited when they announced a TV show on SyFy based on the property.
I wanted to collect the series, but the series wasn't a big deal when it first came out, so it didn't get wide release and I couldn't get a hold of a hardcover version to put on my shelf. I pretty much only collect hardcover, but if I remember right, it was because of The Expanse that I decided it was okay to collect paperback...as long as they're trade paperback-size books that look good on a shelf next to a hardback book.
So, here is my collection of The Expanse books so far.
Is it impressive, not really. They're the cheap, basic versions of the books, but I love the books so much that I wanted to have something, anything of them on my shelf.
One time, Rish Outfield found Leviathan Wakes in hardcover at a used book store, and he bought it. I was hoping to convince him to hand it over to me, but when he looked on eBay, and saw just how much he could get for it, he sold it and filled a bathtub with gold coins and rolled around in them instead.
It looks like they are reissuing the books in hardback now, but eight books in, I'm too invested to switch over now. So, I won't go there. I do still have two books to acquire, though. The final book of the series, Leviathan Falls, has been out for a while, as well as a collection of supplemental novellas and short stories that Corey wrote for the series called, Memory's Legion, as well (and yes, I know James S.A. Corey doesn't exist but is actually a pseudonym for a team of writers, but it's easier to refer to him this way).
Writing this series of posts may be bad for my pocketbook, though, because when I decided to write this post, it reminded me that I still didn't have all of the books that are available yet, and that I ought to get another one. So I did. I just ordered Leviathan Falls on Amazon, when I probably should have waited. Oops. I think the same thing happened with my toy posts too. The more you focus on something, the more of a priority it becomes. I need to focus on writing and publishing my own stuff instead. Maybe I can post about that tomorrow.
Robert Heinlein has five famous rules for writers.
They're all valuable, but today, I just want to talk about rule two. I've really been working on rule one this year. Every day I write. That wouldn't be as useful, however, if I didn't keep rule two.
Well, today I achieved another victory in the fulfillment of rule two.
Yessir, that's my baby! No sir, don't mean maybe. I started a story called "Digital Wizards" on the 30th of March. I expected it to be a relatively short story, but it didn't cooperate with me. Yesterday morning, I typed "the end," and checked the word count. The story ended up at 36,235 words. That's even a titch longer than my last overly long novella "The Elephant in the Room" that I wrote in January.
That's pretty exciting. It's always exciting to reach the end of a story. Unfortunately, it's a constant process. It doesn't work like this:
Instead, it's like this:
So, tomorrow, I'll have to go back to Heinlein's rule number one, and write another thousand words. I'm a little nervous about that, as always. Will I be able to? I think I'm going to go back to the book that I began when Marshal did his "Journey Into Journey" contest. He gave me the song, "Still They Ride" for my inspiration. I came up with an idea that was basically The Lone Ranger in space. I started it, got about 5,000 words in, then realized that it was going to be a novel and not just a short story, and I needed something else. So, I quit...or shelved it anyway...and wrote a cheesy Star Wars story about some old imperial biker scouts after the empire has fallen who love the rush of riding speeder bikes so much that they'll risk it all to go out and zip around on them from time to time.
I had an idea about how to make the original Lone Ranger idea work this month, and I guess I'm going to see if I can't put that into practice, and write the original book from beginning to end. If that works, it'll be the second story that Marshal got me started on that I finish in this writing every day process. Thanks, Marshal. The book is going to be called "Still They Ride: A Lazerfist Story" or something like that. Lazerfist is the main character...The Lone Ranger. If it goes well, maybe I'll do more tales about him in the future. Who knows?
In 2019, we were at a Buc-ee's, and I saw a shirt there that I liked enough to buy for myself. It had an image of Sasquatch with the words "Into the Woods We Go" over the top of it. I love camping and hiking, and a sasquatch is kind of an avatar of the woods, so I thought it would make a fine shirt to wear around, so I bought it.
Later that year, after I lost a bunch of weight, I even bought a new, smaller version of the shirt that I could fit at that size. I regained the weight, and the shirt remained in pristine condition with no use until now that I have relost the weight. It has remained one of my favorite shirts through all that time, and owning it in two different sizes meant that I was able to wear it continueally even through my covid-depression induced weight gain and my determined second weight loss.
Well, the other day, and I blogged about this one though I don't usually talk about clothes on here, I found another shirt with Bigfoot on it. This time, it was a shirt with Sasquatch and the words "Believe in Yourself, Even If Nobody Else Does." It reminded me a lot of the days when The Anklecast was all about inspirational quotes and music to get myself to write (of course, none of that worked, and I almost never wrote, but still...). With Bigfoot and an inspirational quote like that, I had to grab it.
So, fast forward about a week, and I go into work yesterday. I'm even wearing that white Bigfoot shirt you see above. My friend, Murray, comes in and tells me that he was at Marshall's and he saw the coolest shirt ever. He had to have it. He looked everywhere for one in his size, but they just didn't have it, and he was bummed. The did have a size large, however, and he thought, "Big Anklevich would love this shirt too."
He pulls it out and hands it to me. He bought me a shirt just because. He's like that. He's a really cool and very generous guy. I look at the shirt and can't help but laugh.
It's another Sasquatch. Another camping Sasquatch at that. He's out int he woods sitting in a camp chair with a water bottle and his phone, a VW Bus in the background, chillin'. It is a pretty great shirt. And now, it looks like I'm starting to build a collection of Bigfoot shirts. I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened organically. Maybe I need to make a Sasquatch BDA logo shirt. Something like this:
Eh? What do you think? That would look cool on a shirt, right? I think I could have my daughter whip one up in a minute. She has a vinyl T-shirt making machine. She made me a straight BDA logo shirt already. This one could be pretty rad, huh? I mean, since it's turned out to be my thing...
I made an appearance on the Rish Outcast that is now available for all to download, listen to, and enjoy. It's a discussion about the process of making covers for publication. Rish and I have been frantically publishing away recently, which is a process that requires a cover image. Those can be daunting (especially for Rish) and we talk about it and how we've managed to make it work.
Make sure you go to the blog post HERE to see the images that go along with what we're talking about.
You can find the episode on the Rish Outcast feed or you can follow this link over to Rish's blog to see his post. You can download the show by right-clicking HERE. Or, possibly simplest of all, you can just click the play button below and give it a listen now.
I'm a hair's breadth from One-derland. This week I stuck with my plan
and clamped down firmly on it. How did it work for me? Did I lose some
more? Is One-derland within my grasp?
The Witcher is an interesting book series. It began as a bunch of short stories, and eventually blossomed into a five book series (a quintology? No, internet says pentology) that then ended and was followed up by a standalone novel that was set back in the midst of the short stories.
I was talking to Rish about that the other day, saying that Lara & the Witch could be that if he wanted it to. He's written a bunch of short stories in the world and at least one novel as well. Compile that shit together and you might have something just as impressive.
Well, I listened to the audiobooks of the whole Witcher series in late 2022 and early 2023, and I put the books on my list to acquire. I have recently managed to achieve that goal. So, here's that series. First is Blood of Elves.
Followed by The Time of Contempt:
Next is Baptism of Fire:
Then The Tower of Swallows:
And the last book in the Pentology is The Lady of the Lake:
Then, just yesterday, I acquired the last book, the prequel tale Season of Storms:
The art on all of these covers is really magnificent. It reminds me of when I was a child, and I got various Piers Anthony books and would sit and stare at the amazing things depicted on their covers. It was an easy sell to get me to read the stories within with art like that, and these Witcher books are no different.
The interiors are nothing special, just standard book stuff, but they look good together on my bookshelf.
Sadly, a quirk of my shelves leaves them split up on either side of the Lego Scout Walker.
As I add books and sometimes subtract them as well, though, things shift, so they might be reunited someday. Who knows?
Anyway, I recommend reading those books if you are in the least interested. They were a great series. The TV show was okay, but I didn't even watch past the first season. I'm mostly a fan of the books.
On Friday, I talked about my Dune book, and showed off its lovely features. I don't have many books like that. Most of them are used books that I got as cheap as possible. I do have a few, however, so I think I'll hightlight a couple more of them today.
Back in 2022, my nephew was sharing his Audible password with me, and allowing me to listen to all the books he had on his account. He had a job where he drove around all day every day, and so he had a great deal of time to listen to audiobooks if he wanted to. So, his collection was pretty vast. He decided to listen to the Witcher series, I suppose because the Netflix show had made them into household names, and I was happy to hear it. I had attempted to check out the first Witcher book on audio from the library, and the wait was something like six months, so if I actually wanted to listen to these books, this was a much more likely way to make it happen.
Well, I friggin' binged the hell out of those books. I loved them. I listened through them so fast that smoke was rising off my phone by the time I was done. It hadn't taken long for me to decide that I wanted to add them to my shelves...oh, that's how I usually do my book collecting, by the way. I listen to the audio from the library or Audible or wherever I can get my hands on it, and then if I like it enough, I put it on my list to acquire for the shelves.
This Christmas, I put the Witcher books on my list, and my daughter bought me one of them...not the first one, though. It was the most expensive one. She bought me the second one instead. It was a really nice fancy one as well. Here it is:
The Sword of Destiny, the Illustrated Edition. That second part is what made it so expensive. It wasn't just a book, it was a picture book. Not a complete picture book like, say, those Harry Potter editions are, but it had a lot of fancy stuff, like the Dune book I mentioned on Friday. The inner covers were printed with colorful designs.
That main blue color is used throughout the book, on every single page, which surely costs more to print, I assume.
The start of each story got a fancy title page.
And there were several images printed in those colors throughout the pages of the book as well.
I started saving up money to get the rest of the books, and before too long, I got book one, The Last Wish, Illustrated Edition.
This one was the perfect companion. As well it should be, since the second book was made to compliment this first one. It had all the same stuff, only done with a different accent color. Red for this one. The interior cover was the same.
The book was printed with the two colors.
And the illustrations were placed throughout.
They're great books. I'll have to go back and read them again and again over the years to make it all worth it. The stories were good enough, that in a few years, I could see myself doing just that.
I have also recently acquired the rest of the series, though those aren't fancy illustrated editions. I guess maybe I'll talk about them tomorrow.
Yesterday, I started doing posts about my book collection. You should start a collection of these books, which are available in paperback and hardcover on Amazon.
The most recent of which to arrive on the shelves is A Battalion of Ideas: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two. The paperback and hardcover versions of that book just went live this week. I slaved away on them last week until I had it all done, then put them in Amazon's hands. They took a day or so, and then they were live. I'm pretty excited about it. This is the full front/spine/back cover of the book.
I made sure to have it match the first volume in the series as close as possible, but one thing that I added was the volume number up in the top of the spine. I liked it so much, that I redid the cover of Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume One and added that little bit in.
Now, when people buy them, they'll match perfectly on their shelf. I love it...particularly because I'll have copies of them on my own shelf. Hey, I'm a book collector too, right? I can't skip my own books.
Anyway, if you're like me, and you like collecting books, feel free to head over to Amazon and grab a copy of my three short story collections that are now available.
I guess, since I showed the full cover of the other two, I'll throw the full cover of Christmas Creatures on here as well.
This week, I've been slaving away at getting Rish Outfield's new collection ready for paperback and hardcover publishing. So, pretty soon, you'll be able to start collecting books of his as well. I'm doing it for free, although I did request an author signed hardcover copy as my payment for the work of making the book exist. I mean, come on, I'm not going to let my shelves be devoid of Rish Outfield books. So, watch for Female Protagonist: A Short Story Collection to become available soon.
Also, I have my third installment in the short fiction collection coming soon. I've already decided what stories will be in it. I just gotta get some of the audio versions of those previous books finished before I move on. So, I guess, watch for that too.
Okay, as per my post a few days ago, I've decided to talk a little about the books I have on my shelf as well as the toys I have up there, especially considering that there are probably more book nerds who read my blog than toy nerds.
I figured I'd start with Dune since it's pretty topical these days.
I first read Dune back in the nineties, and was totally blown away by how complete the world felt, how imaginative and immersive it was. I wanted to get my own copy, for I had already begun collecting books even then. I had almost no money, however, so I made all my book purchases from used book stores or on the bargain shelves at Barnes & Noble. Dune wasn't making an appearance on either of those shelves in those days. I could buy the full price book or nothing, and my circumstances dictated that my choice would have to be nothing.
Here and there over the years, I've checked to see if there was a good edition that I could pick up, but I never bit. Just a few years ago, not long after the first Timothy Chalumet movie came out, I looked on Amazon, and they had a really fancy edition that was available for $25...well, if it were still the nineties, I would have had to walk away, but these days, I have to pay similar prices for action figures, so adjusted for inflation, it would have been $10 in the nineties.
I grabbed it, and when it came, I was really impressed. The book is beautiful. The cover is striking, and check out the color on the edges of the pages:
Neat, huh? Not only that, but there's a load of great art included in interesting ways. There's full color pictures on the inside covers of the front and back.
And even on the inside of the dust jacket. It's printed on both sides.
The book itself has stuff indented into the cover, which is pretty rad.
I must not fear.
And there's a whole bunch of appendices at the end of the book to read.
I just finished listening to the book on audio today. It's only the second time I've read the book. I really ought to do it more often. At least once every ten years, eh? Anyway, those appendices weren't a part of the audio, so I think I'm going to read them now, and see just what they have in there for me.
It looks like you can still get your hands on this edition of Dune over on Amazon for just slightly less than what I paid, so if you've always wanted a beautiful copy of Dune and you can spare $25, head over and grab it while you still can. Maybe I ought to get one of those Amazon partner accounts or whatever they are, where they give you money if people follow your link over and buy something. Although, most of my books came from used book stores, so I probably won't talk Amazon on many more of these posts in the future. Oh well.
Oh, and for the record, the book Dune had nothing to do with the name of the podcast. Just a coincidence.
I had to get an oil change at Walmart for my wife's car the other day. Since I was stuck in the store for a while, I wandered around and looked at just about everything. One of the things that caught my eye was this shirt. I couldn't think of a shirt that was more apt for Big Anklevich.
It really reminded me of my old intro to the Anklecast where I used a bunch of motivational phrases in an attempt to inspire myself and possibly others. In case you can't see it (because the picture is pretty hard to read) it says, "Believe in yourself even if nobody else does." That's pretty good. On top of that, it's a picture of Bigfoot, which makes it humorous.
My wife didn't get it. She asked me who the guy in the picture was. I was confused.
"Is it some kind of character that's well known?" she asked.
"It's Bigfoot," I said.
"Oh, I didn't realize that. I thought it was just some gorilla or something. That makes it a little more funny."
It is halfway through the month of April now. I thought I'd let my reports slack off a little so that I could spend more time writing on stories rather than writing about writing on stories. Maybe I shouldn't have waited though, because, for the first time since I started all of this, I fell short of my goal...twice.
On April second I suffered from a brain fart. I was certain that I'd hit my goal that day, but on the third, when I went to enter my word count in, I realized that I hadn't ever entered the word count for the day before. When I checked, I saw that I hadn't even made it to 1,000 words on the second. I don't know why. I thought I'd finished my writing on my lunchbreak the day before, but apparently I had not, and I'd forgotten to finish it up. Whoops!
Then it got worse, because a week later, we went west to the Texas Hill Country to watch the solar eclipse. I'd meant to write my words in the morning before we left, but instead I spent all my time packing and getting things ready, and the thought never crossed my mind. I groaned when I realized what I'd done while driving north. Now I was going to have to write my words on my phone. I could do that, and have done that many times.
While on our cruise, I took my wireless keyboard with me, and it was as easy as writing at home. I hadn't brought my wireless keyboard with me this time, though. I was going to have to type on the phone's onscreen keyboard as if I were texting someone. That's a hard way to write 1,333 words, but it was doable. I'd written more than 1,000 words in less than an hour that way already during this process, so I knew it could be done.
Then, that night, when all was dark, we were in our sleeping bags and drifting off for the night, my eyes popped open in panic. I hadn't written still. I'd completely forgotten, and now I was in bed. Should I get out and go tap away at my phone screen for an hour or so to put in my time? I decided against it, and just went to sleep. Everybody messes up sometimes. I've been virtually perfect so far, I could cut myself a break once in a while.
So, I'm about 2,000 words short on my total this month. I should be closer to 21,000 words, but I'm only at 19,000. I'm a little behind on my progress toward the goal. At half the month, I've only got 48.33% of my words written. I bet I'll still get there, though. I'll keep closing that gap, and by month's end, I'll have outpaced the meter and managed 100%.
19329 / 39990 (48.33%)
So, that was the month. How is the year coming along. Well, here is the charts for the entire time I've been at this. We're now into three images to make it all fit.
I'm officially over the 200,000 word mark. That's pretty sweet. I still haven't quite made it to the halfway mark for the year, I think that is April 27th, but I'm past the 2/3rds mark toward the goal. As you can see from this meter below:
207903 / 304475 (68.28%)
So, the train rolls on, as far as that goes.
But those aren't my only goals for the month. As I said at the start of the month, I don't want to raise my word count yet, because there are other things that I want to be working on along with writing. I've been adding in non-writing goals like publishing stories on Amazon and the like for the last few months, and I did it again for April.
My first goal was to do story craft research by watching some of these Tyler Mowery videos as working them into the outline for my story idea called, "Skeleton Crew."
I did a little of that, but precious little. I need to step it up, too, because I'm sliding into home plate with "Digital Wizards." That story is going to be done soon, and I'll have to start something else. Will I be ready when that time comes? Not if I don't get with it.
I've been letting myself get distracted with other things...they're also writing-related things, but they weren't the goals I made at the start of the month. For example, I put together and published a second collection of my short stories this past week. This past few days, I've been struggling to remember how to go about formatting the book for its paperback edition. I'm almost done, and then I'll have that available for purchase as well.
On top of that, I've been helping Rish Outfield get covers made for his stories so that he can publish them. I've also been going through and redoing all of his really shitty old covers so that they match with the new style and don't suck so bad that people will click away rather than buy. There are still about twenty more of those covers to finish, but for now I'm focusing on the paperback manuscript. When Rish catches up, getting all the stories I've given him covers for republished, then I'll see about making some more.
I also plan on helping Rish get paperback and hardcover versions of some of the things he's published. He's putting out a few story collections right now as well, and I'm in the zone as far as manuscript formatting goes, so I could pop them out really quickly, I'm sure.
So, I'm getting a little distracted, but I'm doing things that are really worthwhile, at least.
My other goal for April was to get the audio for Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies published. I haven't been slacking on that one. I recorded and edited one of the two stories that was missing, as well as formatting and uploading all of the files that I already have. Now, I just have to get the title story, "Kingdom of Flies" recorded and edited, and I'll be totally done with that. I think I'll probably make it, though I'll be competing with my Anklecast episode for editing time.
Things are still humming along really well, and you can look forward to a lot of stuff coming at you from old Big Anklevich. Once I finish with this collection, I'll get the last collection out. Then I'll get going on the novels that I have already written. Then...well, by the time I'm done with that, it'll probably be 2025 and I'll have several more novels to publish. I guess it'll be a constant race from here on out trying to publish what I write. Should be interesting. Maybe if some people actually start buying stuff, I might even be able to get somebody to help me and win that race, but I'm not expecting it.
We ended up last week and began this week with our trip to see the solar
eclipse as it passed through Texas. During that particular road trip, I
indulged a little too much. It left me in a pretty bad place to start
the week. Could I fix it? Was it possible to turn things around before
the week came to an end and I'd gained weight again? Watch and see
whether I pulled it off or not.
Yesterday, a package came for me in the mail. I saw the light on our Alexa, and asked it what my notifications were.
"A shipment has arrived, including Blood of Elves."
I couldn't help but laugh. That made it sound like a much more ghoulish shipment than it actually was. It might be a lot neater if it really was something like that. I might be a much more interesting person in that case. Instead, it was referring to this:
Yup, I listened to the audiobooks of those books back in 2023, and I've been meaning to amass the books on my shelves. Now I've managed to get most of them. Just one more left, Season of Storms...the post-finale prequel book.
Maybe I ought to do that on my blog as well. I talk about all the new toys I get in my collection, but I suspect there are more book nerds that see my blog than toy nerds. Maybe I ought to start talking about the books on my shelves too. There's way more of them than there is toys, I think. What do you think? Should I try it? We can discuss the books if you'd like...
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