Anklecast 68: Queen Bea Available On Patreon

 

Okay folks, the moment you've been waiting for has arrived! The new episode of The Anklecast is up on Patreon!

Monty and his friends have always had a lot of fun out in the woods playing near the clubhouse they built, but one day, things change substantially when Bea asks them to catch a butterfly, but they get something else instead...

Afterward, Rish and I talk about framing devices, romanticizing a certain time period, and...how to use a phone while time traveling?

Check it out. You can become a member of my Patreon for only a buck a month, so it's super reasonable. You spend more than that on new skins for your Fortnite characters each week, so it surely wouldn't bankrupt you or anything, but it would be super appreciated by this struggling artist. Come on over and join us!

Reaction Figures

You know those reaction videos that they do on YouTube, where somebody reacts to a YouTube video of a song or something like that? Here and there, I've watched a few, because I was drawn in by something like finding out what today's teens think of Blink 182 or something like that. Usually, they're the most worthless possible content that YouTube has to offer, though, and I don't understand how they proliferate so damn much.

Recently, I was thinking it would be funny to make a video or even have a channel where I react to videos of people reacting to other videos. That would be the whole channel. I thought it might be funny. I could ignore the actual thing that the person is reacting to and specifically talk about the reaction of the person watching the video and nothing else.

Then I wondered if it was even the least bit worth it. Somebody probably did that before me, right? So, I searched for it. I don't know how many people have done it, but it seems like this guy here took the joke to its ultimate end, and there's no point trying to go any further. I present to you, The Ultimate Reaction (you'll likely not make it through to the end...I didn't either, but you don't have to. Like I said, he took it to its ultimate end).

The Good Old Days

This came up in my YouTube feed today, but it's 11 years old. I thought it would be fun to post it to remind everyone of the good old days, the time back when the Star Wars fans bitched about the same things that I bitch about and the prequels were what everyone hated the most. And, of course, y'all miss this song, don't you? You know you do.

I don't even watch Star Wars anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I can still consider myself a fan. I only like the first three films...of an eleven film (and many TV show) franchise. That's like 25% or something. Can someone who only like 25% of something say they're a fan of it? I guess maybe I could go as high as 30%, because The Mandalorian had its moments over the years.

Rish and I often laugh about today's critics of Star Wars, because they complain that the stuff doesn't keep with the lore of the prequel trilogy. They say that this broke Star Wars or that broke Star Wars because it ignored the way things have always been. These people seem to be oblivious to the fact that things weren't always that way, and before Disney broke Star Wars, George Lucas had already broken it with various things that didn't coincide with the earlier films' lore. Star Wars has been creatively bankrupt since Cindel Towani first strode onscreen in 1984. Nothing has changed since then.

I remember back when Disney bought up Star Wars, and Rish and I did an episode of That Gets My Goat about the prospects, I wasn't super excited, but I did say that it couldn't get any worse, so why the hell not? I think people today would try to tell me that I was wrong, and that it did get worse, but I would have to contradict that assessment. None of the Disney productions are any worse than the prequels were. Sadly, they're also not any better.  It's just more of the same.

I hope you're enjoying The Acolyte, all you Star Wars fans. I guess I can't count myself among you. At best, I can call myself an Original Trilogy fan. I don't suspect I'll watch any of The Acolyte myself. I'm not interested at all anymore. At least I can still collect toys from those original movies. They still make plenty of those.

Gotta Post This

A little while ago, I helped Rish Outfield publish his first print book called Female Protagonist. Keith Teklits, a long time listener and fan of our stuff, bought a copy right away, and then posted a picture of himself showing it off on Facebook.

I have to admit that I was pretty jealous of that picture. I saw that thing and wished I could brag about having one of those of my own. One where a fan bought a copy of my book and felt the need to take a picture of himself holding it up to send to me. It reminded me of the fun days back in the Dunesteef era when we made merch, and several fans bought some and took pictures of themselves wearing them for us to see.

I loved that. It made me feel a little bit like all of this stuff we were doing was worthwhile, because it resonated with people enough that they wanted to wear our symbol on their chest. That's something pretty special.

Well, it turns out, Keith likes me too. That's right, when Three Vampire Weekend came out, he was the first in line to buy a copy, and he just posted the photo showing it off the other day on Facebook!

So great! It makes me feel like a million bucks. It didn't even cost that much to make me feel that way too. You can get it for much less than a million. Thanks, Keith, for the picture, and I hope you enjoy the book. You'll have to tell me how you like "The Elephant in the Room," because I think you'll be the very first person to read it, and I'm curious what people other than me think of it.

A Halloween Toy?

I saw this on clearance at Walmart.

$7.50 is a pretty good price, but I almost didn't get it. I'm not really a She-Ra fan. I don't collect the villains or anything. I didn't need it. But I couldn't help but think about how I think Shadow Weaver is a fun character. She's a super sexy ghost sorceress chick. I mean, check out the art on the box.

When I thought of that...a sexy sorceress without a face, I thought, wait a minute...I could put this up at Halloween. I should get that after all, so I did.

There you go, my new Halloween toy...it's not specifically a Halloween toy, but now it is...for me anyway.

It comes with a really cool stand so that you can make her floating over the ground. I like the way that looks. She also came with some extra hands and a flame ball to throw.

I may use them someday, but probably not. I'm not one of those guys who cares about the infinite number of extras they pack into a box these days. I guess that maybe if I started taking pictures of toys for Instagram or something, then I might care, but I don't. It takes too much time that I need to put into other things like writing, so I'll just stick with my level of toy collecting. I do keep all those extras in a box...so I could use them someday if I want to.

Lion Diet Carnivore? and Exercise? | What Am I Even Doing Here? | Week 56 Roundup

I have been drifting for the last little while, and particularly this week. I've been eating stuff that I stopped allowing myself to eat months ago...somehow I let it creep back in, and it's not agreeing with me. It's causing inflammation and issues instead. Yet I keep doing it. How much longer am I willing to go on with this? Is it time to clamp down and put a stop to my wandering?

A Mailbox Update

A few weeks ago, I gave my first update of the year for my flowers at the mailbox. Last year, I planted flowers and diligently watered them, and we had something nice in our mailbox planter for the first time since we moved here seven years ago. This year, I was late getting started, so my flowers aren't looking as good or impressive, but they're there. There's something.

I'm making this update, because I finally have something other than just greenery.

My first flowers of the year appeared recently. Huzzah!

The petals look a little wilty. I think they need to be watered more diligently, like I did last year. Especially now that it's gotten really hot. I'm hoping that the plants will get more impressive. My wife grows these flowers in the backyard, and the same seeds make big bushes of flowers for her, but for me they're always just single shoot plants. I don't know what it is about the two spots that makes them so different. I thought that maybe it was too many plants in one little spot last year, but this year I have way fewer plants, and they're still doing the same thing. I guess we'll see if that changes as the summer progresses.

Maybe Try This?

There's a local lawyer who has billboards up all over the place with a great suggestion for many. Are you feeling down? Uninspired? Listless? Has you day not gone the way you'd hoped? Do you need a change? Do you need something to make you feel better? To feel alive? To feel like a million bucks? Maybe you've never thought of this...as Rish always told us, why not?

Asajjj Vennnnntrisssss

Rish once told me that George Lucas claimed to like normal names in his science fiction...wait, no he didn't. I just asked him what the quote was, and he said that it wasn't Lucas at all. It was actually Orson Scott Card. Card claimed that he didn't like it when they make names sound sci-fi by putting in all sorts of extra letters particularly Xs. For some reason I always thought that it was Lucas who said that, and I thought of him as a hypocrite, because this was the same guy who named Chewbacca's home planet of Kashyyyk. I guess I was wrong with my disdain for him. He wasn't hypocritical after all.

I have to agree with Card on the naming thing. I dislike names that are made to sound sci-fi. These days, however, every kid gets named some goofy sci-fi type name. Kids are actually named Jaxon instead of Jackson now. Luke Skywalker is a cool name. Similar to other famous sci-fi names like Flash Gordon and John Carter. Even a name like Lando Calrissian is cool, despite being a little odd. It feels sci-fi without having to be spelled Lyndo Kylryzzian.

Today, when I was at Ross, I saw a ship from the Star Wars Micro Galaxy Squadron line that I did not have. I've been collecting these for a while, and would like to someday soon make a little 1/72 scale space station that I park these ships on. The reason I didn't have this ship yet, was because it was definitely not one that I would pay full price for. This ship belonged to the stupidly sci-fi named character of Asajj Ventriss.

Asajj Ventriss was a character introduced in the 2D animated Clone Wars show that was created in between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. In fact, it is supposed to lead right up to the moment that Revenge of the Sith begins in the skies above Coruscant. She wasn't a particularly good character, and I don't know if anybody remembers her fondly.

The ship doesn't look very Star Wars-y either. it seems to belong to a completely different universe than the one the Jedi inhabit. I think there's a good reason that this ship was in Ross. I wasn't the only one who didn't want it at full price.

I do like having ships of all kinds, though, for my space station. That's why I bought so many of those little ships from the Lightyear movie. So, I went ahead and got me one of these too.

This ship comes with a stand, which is something new...of course, that's just because the ship is so poorly designed that there's no way for it to land. It's wings have to be up and down rather than side to side. Seems to me like the best way to make it land would be to make it's cockpit able to twist, but I don't know if it does that kind of thing in the source material.

The figure is kind of dumb two. She has two ignited lightsabers in her hands. She's a one inch tall figure, so there's no way to put the lightsabers down. She always has to have them in her hands, even while she's in there flying her spaceship along. I may have to take the fingernail clippers to those lightsabers and remove them so she can be something other than just a Jedi in battle.

All of the Micro Galaxy Squadron ships tend to have some kind of play gimmick, and for this one, it's that the wings extend. It can go from looking like the picture above to this picture below.

The guns are adjustable too, so they can be pointing forward even though you've changed their position on the wings. I don't know why, but I really want to twist that ship so the wings are sideways instead of up and down. I wonder if a dremmel and a little super glue could make it happen. Maybe some silver paint, and it could look like a completely different ship. I don't know. I guess I'll have to think about it.

Audio Progress 6/21

This was a very good day for me. Not only did I supersede my yearlong goal for writing, but I also reached the end of my audiobook goal. That's right, baby! We made it to the end of the last story. Today, I finished up the last of the editing on the last four chapters. I added another half hour or so to my audiobook, and now it's done.

Okay, that's not 100% true. It's not totally done. I'm done with all of the stories, but I still have to do the opening and closing credits, which will take about two minutes. I have to choose the five minute sample. 

Then there's the biggest thing. Over the last few days, I've gone through and written author's notes for all of the stories, so now I need to record and edit them. Because they're a new addition, I also have to add the tracks that they will be in to the list. I'll also have to renumber all of the tracks that I've already uploaded and reupload them. That's going to be a pain in the butt, I think. Hopefully, somebody actually buys the book someday, and it will all turn out to be worth it, but probably not. None of any of this will be worth it.

Writing Progress 6/21

Okay, y'all, I did it! I decided to just put the pedal to the metal this morning and get there. After yesterday, I only had 1,640 words to reach my goal. My daily goal is 1,333, which meant that I could stretch it out into two days if I wanted to. In fact, I got to 1,385 and looked at what I had left, and considered it, but then said, "No way."

I went on to write a bunch more words. I finished off the day with 1,991, and I am now 351 words over my goal for the year! I did it!

100.12% folks! The great part is that I still have 128 days in the year. I started this on the day after my birthday, and we're not particularly close to my next birthday. Yet I'm already done. That's pretty great.

Of course, I'm not done. Hitting the goal wasn't the point. That was just a milestone along the way. In this particular case, I'm like a Knight Radiant from Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive. The journey is the destination. What matters is the habits that I made along the way. If I go back to writing nothing all day long, day after day, then I didn't succeed at all.

So, I'm not going to do that. Now, we will just see how mcuh I can get done in the next 128 days. I should be able to write another 128,000 words or so. That will make it much harder to beat my all-time best year in the future.

I also am keen to work on pre-production stuff, outlining, making sure that I have the best possible story to write before I start writing it. That will be my immediate goal. I think I may even skip a few days of writing in that process. I'll have to see what I can do. As long as I'm working every day, that's what matters the most. Work toward the goal every day, and eventually I'll get there.

Wilykit

I'm almost there. Years ago, Super7 announced that they were going to take over Mattel's releases of The Thundercats. I think Mattel had put out only one wave of the figures and then given up. Super7 took over the license and pledged to be much more faithful with it. They re-released all the characters that Mattel had already put out, and then moved further into the line. 

It was exciting at first for me, because I'd missed the Mattel releases. I didn't have Lion-O or Panthro. The other collectors grumbled mightily about it. They just couldn't quit bitching about how Super7 wasn't doing anything new for them. I guess they'd probably been burned so many times by companies in the past never completing the team that they assumed this would just be more of the same.

Later we got Tygra and Cheetara, then after a big pause, they finally got around to Snarf as well. I was only committed to getting the main characters. I'd watched the show, and thought it pretty cool as a kid, but I hadn't caught every episode or anything like that. Most of the figures they were releasing were the things that only huge fans of Thundercats would want. I could skip all of those.

I kind of regretted committing to getting the whole original team though. The price just kept going up, and each figure that I got was less and less impressive. It would be one thing to pay $55 for Lion-O, but for Snarf? But now I'm committed. In for a penny, in for a pound. I had to get to the end.

This week, Wilykit finally arrived. Again, it's a really small figure. They didn't give us a discount for that fact. Isn't it interesting how toy companies do that. If they're doing a big figure, they always charge more, claiming they need to cover their costs for the excessive amounts of plastic, but they never charge less for the little ones.  

Considering how much it cost, I feel like I should have a lot to say about it, but I don't really. Wilykit was never a character that interested me much. Neither her nor Wilykat, who is still to come and will be the final piece of the puzzle. They were mostly just there in my perception. Also rans. But, if you commit to having them all...

It's pretty cool, as far as Wilykits go. comes with a surfboard that can peg into a jet blast to make it look like it's flying. I wonder if Kit Cloudkicker from Talespin was inspired by Wilykit in any way. They both rode on flying surfboards and both had the name Kit. Hmm...

She also comes with a rope to lasso folks with, I guess. I couldn't have told you that her weapon was a rope, but it seems pretty typical. You don't want your kid proxy running around with a gun, I suppose. Though that would make the most sense. It takes a lot of strength and skill to subdue someone using a lasso, but a gun takes the size advantage and makes it moot.

It came with more accessories.

Extra hands, an extra winking head, and a little version of the rope that can hang from her belt...at least it's supposed to. I couldn't for the life of me get it to peg into the hole. These things are neat, but I'm not into them. I guess a lot of people these days are toy photographers, and they want a bunch of different looks that they can use for their pictures on Instagram. I'd prefer a cheaper product with less accessories myself.

Well, here is how my Thundercats collection stands:

I'm almost there. I just need Wilykat, who is supposedly coming pretty soon. You never can tell with these damned pre-orders, but I got an email from BigBadToyStore the other day saying that the preorders were imminent. We'll see if that's true. I wonder if I can fit them all in this spot or if I'll have to move them to a larger cubby hole. I think I could probably get one more little guy like Wilykit in there without having to go to a bigger spot. We'll see. I'll show it off in the final Thundercats blogpost when Wilykat finally arrives. See you then.

Audio Progress 6/20

Okay, I got to work editing the reading of "Last Contact" that I finished yesterday. I edited about thirty minutes worth, and now my time sits at this:

It's a bummer that I don't know what the final time will be, so I can't say what percentage I'm at. I guess, if I wanted to, I could add up the word count and figure it out. Gosh, you're so demanding...hold on...okay Mr. Bossy, I'm 76,8777 words into the total of 81,155. That means I'm almost exactly 95% of the way done. 

It's a lot further away than with the writing, where I'm 99.45%, but making progress on this goal is much faster than on the writing one. There's a reason that one takes almost a year, where this one will only be a couple of months.

I could finish up as early as tomorrow, or I might have to wait all the way until Monday to get there. I'm not sure how much I can get edited of the last 4,000 words, but I shall do my best.

Writing Progress 6/20

1,391 words for today. And this is what my total sits at now:

That's just over a day's worth of writing for me to hit that goal. I might be able to get it tomorrow if I buckle down and go hard, but I'm not sure what to write. I'm at the end of the goal, but I'm also at the end of the author's notes that I've been doing. What do I move on to? I had an idea strike me the other day, and then I remembered it again yesterday morning and thought, "Maybe that's what I should write next...yes, I will." Except, now, I can't for the life of me remember what the idea was. It just refuses to return for another lap. Hopefully it will come back soon.

The Postman

Last week, I talked about finishing up the David Brin book, Sundiver. I liked it, but it was a little bit too far on the hard sci-fi end of the scale for my tastes, so it didn't really do it for me like I'd wanted. A twist of fate in the scheduling of my holds, however, had me trying Brin out again right afterward with his book The Postman. 

I remember that being a movie with Kevin Costner in it back in the 90s, but I didn't ever see it. I did know the general storyline of the book, however, because of the commercials and whatnot for that film. It's a post-apocalyptic world, and a dude brings hope and community to the people by pretending to be a postman and delivering letters around the area.

Now, that may sound a little silly. It did to me. I'm guessing that David Brin once worked as a mailman before his career as a writer took off or something. If I had to imagine what things might ignite hope in people after a nuclear holocaust, having a mailman would likely be down on the list toward the bottom if it made the list at all. Brin made it work, though. The story was good and even believable. Maybe it wasn't the best thing to use as an avatar of hope, but it worked.

I really enjoyed the story, and for the most part, unlike what I had in the previous book from him, Sundiver, I really wanted to keep reading to see what happened next. That's really all I'm looking for in my entertainment...some real entertainment. So, getting this book from Brin right after Sundiver was good. It makes me more likely to go back and finish up the books in the Uplift Saga as well, After all, unlike Sundiver, those ones are the books that are on my shelf. 

The Postman was too, so I'm making some progress. Someday soon I'll be able to say I've read all the books on my shelf, but for now it remains a dream.

Audio Progress 6/19

There isn't any progress on the total time of the audiobook to report today, but I still took a huge step toward the finish line. This morning, I woke up early again, and rather than waste time laying in bed trying to get back to sleep, I just came out and recorded my narration of "Last Contact." I made it from chapter 8 all the way through to the ending, so the only thing left is the editing. Not going to be doing any of that today, but I'll get to it over the next week or so for sure. The finish line is in sight. My legs are tired, but the finish line is in sight!

Writing Progress 6/19

Happy Juneteenth! I wrote another 1,409 words today, and inched ever so much closer to my final goal. Here's where I stand today:

99%! As Chandler would say, "Could I be more close?" Only 3,031 words left. If I stretched just a little, I could do that in two days. I've been getting 1,400 words or so a day recently. I could probably get 1,500. Maybe as early as the 21st, but for sure by the 22nd, we'll all be smoking fat Cuban cigars in celebration of my championship!

Marvelous Marvin

Rish had me on his show the other day to do a sketch with him about his sad inability to haggle with people, even when they make it painfully obvious that they are willing to accept less money for what he wants. I thought the sketch was really fun, and I hope y'all enjoy it too.

You can find the episode on the Rish Outcast feed, which you really ought to subscribe to if you aren't already. Also, you can download the episode by right-clicking HERE. But I'm willing to go lower. How about you just click the play button on the built-in player below?

Audio Progress 6/18

Okay, I recorded on "Last Contact," which is the last story in left in the book to record, for about twenty minutes this morning. That produced about fourteen minutes of finished audio, which comprised chapters 5, 6, and 7. Here's what my total time looks like now:

I'm probably only one day's work away from ticking over the eight hour mark. That'll be rad, because I suspect that it will be the last hour mark that I will tick over. After that, it's only minutes away.

Writing Progress 6/18

Okay, another 1,403 words today. I'm inching ever so close. Here's what the total is now:

I'm over 300,000! In 2020, that was my final goal. I would have already made it if I was sticking with that, but, of course, I've got to get beyond my last high water mark, so there's still 4,440 words to go. I'm 98.54%. That's so frigging close. 

Lion Diet Carnivore and Exercise | Struggling to Get on Board the New Paradigm | Week 55 Roundup

I said I was going to be better at doing the Lion Diet this week. Did I manage? Or was it more of the same crap from last week? How'd I do, and am I headed in the right direction on my journey to One-derland yet?

Audio Progress 6/17

I recorded another spot of audio today, getting into the last story in the book. It was only something like ten minutes worth of audio, but it was also the first four chapters of the sixteen in the story. So, maybe word count-wise it was piddly, but chapter-wise it's one fourth of the way there. I'm going to take it.

I wasn't even planning on editng that today, though. I still had almost the entirety of "The Battle of the Ideas" to edit first. However, it was a super good day for editing. I got all chapters of "Battle of the Ideas" done today as well as the four that I recorded this morning for "Last Contact," and now my total sits at:

That's almost a full hour more added to my total. I think I'll make it to the end of this goal before the month is out. That's pretty exciting. I'm feeling confident.

Now it's just a race. Do I finish the audio first or the writing goal first?

Writing Progress 6/17

I wrote my words early today. Already got my 1,473 words on paper this morning...well, on the computer anyway. On paper is just an expression.

And I'm now done with all of the author's notes for A Battalion of Ideas. Next, I'll get them for all the stories in Three Vampire Weekend.

Here's what I'm at as far as the progress toward the goal goes:

So very, very close. the number is down in the five thousands...that's pretty exciting. I'm now over 98%!

The Order Of The Beast

To pair with yesterday's post about finding Halloween merchandise already on sale in June. Check out our receipt:

That's right, if you're looking for a truly evil order, it's a hot dog and soda combo with another soda, a smoothie, and a twist strawberry sundae. Pure evil!

I texted a picture of this to Rish and this was his response:

Writing Progress 6/16

Another 1,575 words today. I feel like I'm cheating doing author's notes like this for so long, but it's the project I'm working on, I guess. Author's notes are something that Rish and I both love, and we used it as a cornerstone of the podcast back when we first started. It was something that set us apart from the other shows out there before we became the first show to do full-cast productions for every show, so I feel like a bit of a cheat for putting out A Battalion of Ideas and Three Vampire Weekend without author's notes attached. That will be remedied soon. If you bought either of these books before I added the author's notes, and would like to read them, let me know, and I'll send you a PDF that includes them free of charge.

Anyway, here's my word count at this moment:

I can't believe how close I am to the finish line. So f@#$ing close. It's going to be in the rear-view mirror so very soon.

I Probably Need This

We saw this at Costco recently, and I had to admit that I would love to have it.

It would go so perfectly with my other Halloween decorations, but it was marked at $90, so I will not be buying it.

Of course, I need to complain about he issue with holiday creep. It's friggin' June folks. Can't we even make it past the 4th of July before we start trying to sell pumpkin spice lattes?

Audio Progress 6/15

I don't have any graphic to show you today, because I didn't add any time to the book today. I did a lot of audio work, though.

Today, I woke up super early for no good reason, like 5:00 AM. I couldn't get back to sleep, and after about an hour and a half of laying in my bed getting frustrated about my inability to sleep, I decided to stop wasting my time and came out to my study, hooked up the mic, and started recording.

I recorded the entirety of "The Battle of the Ideas." I just have to edit it now, and then I can add it to the time and share that increased number with you. After that, there's only "Last Contact" to finish off the book. It's the biggest story in the book, but another stupid day with messed up sleep like today, and I could have it recorded as well. We'll see how the rest of the month goes.

Writing Progress 6/15

Okay, I wrote another 1,476 words today, and my total now stands at:

Woo doggy! 97%! That's getting really, really close. We're down to less than 10,000 words, down to just four figures instead of five. Pretty soon, it'll only be a weeks worth away...wait, according to math, I already am. It's a week or less away. I can taste it.

Design Flaw Or User Error?

Does this happen to everyone else? We use wood glue about once a year, and every time that we do, the bottle looks like this:

Is there a way to use wood glue without it creating a plug that seals the spigot off after the first use?

I always have to take the whole lid off and squeeze the glue out of the bottle that way. It doesn't make a lot of sense to even make a spigot if it's going to dry full of glue after the first use every time. Why not just have a regular screw top lid? That's what you will resort to in the end anyway.

Audio Progress 6/14

Okay, I got another fifteen minutes to add to the book. It was chapters 1, 2, and 3 of "The Battle of the Ideas." I probably should have done more, but I didn't sleep well last night, and I was too tired to bother. I felt impressed with myself for getting in the recording that I did manage today.  Maybe I can get some recording done this weekend. That's not usually a possibility, but who knows?

So, here's where we are now:

There are eighteen chapters in "The Battle of the Ideas," so I'm not very far along. I've got a lot to go, but I'll keep at it. The chapters are all pretty short. I'm actually about 25% of the way through judging by word count, so it's not as hopeless as it feels right now.

Writing Progress 6/14

I got 1,461 words today. Half of those were the final words in my book Still They Ride. That has been a troublesome book. It's been hard to get through. I felt like I was drifting and flailing the whole time I wrote it, but I forged on, because that's what a real writer does, right? Or maybe not. Maybe a real write knows when to give it up. I don't know. I'm just trying to learn to finish what I've started, and keep out of the realm of those who quit on their ideas. I think the book will need a pretty radically retooled second draft, but at least I can do that, since I finished the first draft.

The rest of my words were author's notes...I feel a little guilty including them as writing. I don't include the words I write for blog posts toward my writing goals, but these author's notes feel a lot more like blog posts than like creative writing. I guess I'll be done with the author's notes soon enough, and I'll have to get back to the actual creative stuff, so I don't need to worry. The most important thing is that I keep the habit up. That's what matters most. Don't let it slip, because if I do, it'll take me months or years to get back in the swing of things again.

Here's my progress right now:

96.6%, and just barely over ten thousand words before I crush this goal. It's getting so close.

Sundiver

I just finished David Brin's Sundiver the other day.

I said in my other post that I was doing this so that I could say that I've read all the books on my shelf. I don't like having books on my shelf that I've never read. Funny thing, however, is that I don't even have a copy of this book. This is the first book in the Uplift Saga. On my shelf is one of those old Sci-Fi Book Club omnibus editions of the second and third Uplift Saga books.

So reading Sundiver is basically just homework to get to the point where I can start reading the books on my shelf. I've heard that these Uplift Saga books are good, though, so I was happy to do it. I was excited.

I may not be the right audience for this book, though. While I wouldn't say it was bad, because it definitely wasn't that, it was too far on the hard sci-fi side of the spectrum to really peak my interest. 

It's about human beings who have suddenly found themselves in a strange atmosphere of alien politics after making first contact recently. In that environment, they are making a scientific exploration of the sun, and have discovered that there is some sort of life there, a completely different life than anything anyone has ever known.

Some hard sci-fi nuts would love that kind of thing, but I'm not that kind of a nut. It was fine, and I made it through the book easily, but I never got to that point where I really wanted to get back to the story and find out what happened next. That's the feeling that hooked me into becoming a reader and probably into trying my hand at being a writer as well. 

I suspect that many others would disagree with me and say that's exactly the feeling they got from this book, and I would believe them. I think reading is very much an embodiment of that old saying, "to each his own." My mom was an avaricious reader, but she only read romance novels, boxes and boxes of romance novels. I read one or two of her books when I was a kid, but they didn't really appeal to me very much...except the steamy sex scenes, that part was interesting to a young man going through puberty.

What does that mean? Will I continue on to read the books that are actually on my shelf? There's Startide Rising and The Uplift War still to go. I definitely will. At the very least, I'll read the next book. As I said, I didn't hate it, I just didn't love it either. I have so much time to burn while driving to and from work that it wouldn't hurt me a bit to listen to a book that isn't absolutely inspiring.

Besides, in this election year of 2024, reading fiction is about the only place I can run to escape the ever-present, pervasive shit quick sand of the political arguments that fill every leisure space that used to be a refuge for people. It's in Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, television, movies, music, comic books, broadway plays, puppet shows, and even on CNN. I get enough of that at work, there's gotta be somewhere I can go to be free of it for a minute or two, and reading old books like these is my solution.

Writing Progress 6/13

I got 1,633 words today, but I didn't finish Still They Ride. I should have. I only have a couple paragraphs left, I think, but i didn't feel like it. Instead, I spent my time writing author's notes for the stories that appear in A Battalion of Ideas. Rish says that author's notes count toward word count, so I'll take it.

Here's where I stand after that:

96.12%! So very close. Only 11,000 words away...

Ciri

The last treasure I found on my Ross run the other day was this:

This two-pack was only $9. A while back, I found Geralt and Dandelion figures at Ross, and the only one left that I wanted was Ciri. I would have paid $9 for her alone, but instead, I was getting her ostensibly for $4.50. I was stoked.

These are two very good looking figures from McFarlane Toys. I like the way both of them look. Now the question is what do I do with them. Here's the figures I already have:

One, which Witcher do I want to display? Do I use the new one or the older one? Or, do I keep them both, and put Geralt and Ciri in a different spot. I think it might be pretty difficult to squash Geralt, Dandelion, and Ciri into that space, but maybe I could. Or, I could trade the space out with another spot, switching something that has too much room down to this one and putting the Witcher figures up where the roomy spot is. I don't know. I'll have to think about it.

The figures came with a goofy little stand that, I believe, is supposed to be the dismembered corpse of a monster the Witcher has slain.

It's nice and all, but I don't think I'll use it. If nothing else, it takes up too much space. It also came with these goofy trading card things.

McFarlane toys come with trading cards a lot. I guess Todd must have been a big fan of trading cards as a kid or something, so he gets a kick out of producing them himself. They're really nice, high quality cards. They're thick as can be. But what do I do with them? The ones I got in my Batman and Wonder Woman toys in the past I've just used as bookmarks, except that I do most of my reading via audiobooks now, so even that isn't really useful. I hate to just throw them out, though. I guess I could put them into the copies of the Witcher books that I have and when somebody reads them, they'll have a cool themed bookmark to use.

On the back of the cards, they have this ridiculousness printed on them.

Pretty rad to have my certificate of authenticity. Now these things will be truly valuable. Apparently there was only 9,900 of them made. Even that was too much, because they wound up at Ross. I think that has a lot to do with the show's waning popularity. It started out on a high, but I heard no end of complaints about its direction as it veered further and further from the source material to the point that Henry Cavill, the show's star, didn't want anything to do with it anymore and quit. He was a fan of the books, I guess.

I am also a fan of the books. As with Game of Thrones figures, which I have several of, I collect these figures with the idea of them being action figures for the books more than action figures of a TV series. Maybe I should make a space right next to my Witcher books to put these toys up. That would be fitting. I just hope that one day before I die, somebody makes action figures of something I created. Unlikely, but a guy can dream, can't he?