Aldready Feeling It

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.

Nostalgia Purchase

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.

Morr Berks!

 

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.

Those Words

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?

I Guess It's My Thing Now

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...

Under the Covers

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.

ADF & BBBE Carnivore | So Close I Can Taste It | Journey to One-derland | Week 47 Roundup

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?