![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 11th, 2025 02:25 am)
Yes, it’s actually pretty much this color in the sky, as it’s hanging low enough in it to pick up coloration by atmospheric refraction. It’s a pretty cool thing to see. If you get a chance to go out and look at it, it’s worth the view. If you can’t (or you have cloud cover), well, at least you got to see it here.
— JS
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 10th, 2025 08:34 pm)
In recent years, I, like many others, have pretty much completely fallen off the Marvel bandwagon and stopped watching all the Disney+ shows, the spin-offs, even most of the theatrical releases like Madame Web and Brave New World. Whatever your reasoning is, whether it’s because there’s simply too much stuff to get through, because the original gang we all loved is long gone, or you’re just burnt out on superheroes, tons of other people are in the same boat as you.
For me, I’ve been wondering so much lately what it is for me. Why don’t I like Marvel anymore? When Marvel hit it big and came out with The Avengers in 2012, I was 13, and boy howdy did Marvel take over my teens. I was pretty damn obsessed. I had Tumblr posts and fan art saved on my iPhone 5, would talk about all the movies and superheroes with my friends, see every movie on opening day like my life depended on it, all that typically teen fan type stuff.
So what happened? Is it that I’m getting older, or did Marvel content just genuinely get worse and worse as the years went on? Is it some of column A and some of column B?
It was just about right after having seen Thunderbolts that I was really thinking about this question a lot, when a video came up in my recommended section on YouTube.
The video was called “The Lost Art of Marvel’s Phase One,” and was part of a series called Detail Diatribe from Overly Sarcastic Productions. If you’re on the internet and also a nerd, you probably already know who Overly Sarcastic Productions is. While I had heard of them plenty and even seen a mythology video from them once or twice, I never really got into them.
But how could I resist a two-hour video essay over Phase One of Marvel, the phase that pretty much changed not just my life but society as a whole? So I took a chance on it, and immediately loved it. So much so that I started watching OSP’s other superhero videos, and now I’m here to recommend them to you.
They put out “The Lost Art of Marvel’s Phase One” about three weeks ago, and I would recommend starting with this one, like I did. In it, they talk about what made everyone fall in love with Marvel in the first place. Are we all just wearing rose colored glasses and remember them being better than they were? Especially for people like me who were younger when they came out, is our nostalgia blinding us into unearned fondness of these movies?
While it is almost two hours long, I genuinely don’t feel like any part of this video essay drags or is boring, as they talk about so many different things and keep their points moving along consistently. They go over the characters specifically of course, like Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, even Hulk, but they also go over how well the creators did at weaving together the overarching narrative that comes together in The Avengers.
This video made me realize, you know what, fuck yeah I liked Marvel. Shit was good. Like genuinely good! There’s so much to love about Phase One, and so much to love about our original group of super pals! I’m not ashamed that I liked, and am still fond of, Phase One. I hope this video inspires some of that in you, too.
After loving this video so much, I of course had to watch another one of their Detail Diatribe videos called “Captain America The Winter Soldier is the Best MCU Movie” which came out only two weeks ago. Why? Because I have been saying that exact thing for years. But, they can explain it better than I can, so you should listen to their video over it:
This one is also two hours long, but when you’ve been saying FOR YEARS that The Winter Soldier is the best Marvel movie, those two hours really fly by. This one is such an important analysis of not just Captain America as a character, but also Black Widow, and the relationship between these two throughout the film. It also talks about the importance of Hydra and how this movie is a damn good political thriller/espionage movie that I feel like we did not know Marvel was capable of at the time!
Moving away from Marvel, I just listened to their Detail Diatribe over Superman a couple days ago, and since Superman is my favorite superhero, I want to share it with y’all!
Superman is my favorite and I’m sick and tired of people saying he’s boring! He’s not boring! Y’all don’t understand the art, and most importantly, heart, of Superman, and hopefully this video will make you see how awesome he is. And you guessed it, it’s almost two hours.
I have absolutely been loving these videos (and a couple others, such as their Doctor Strange one) and I hope you do, too.
My parents were being killjoys by saying that they didn’t understand why I’d spend two hours watching something like this, and that you can just say “The Winter Soldier is the best MCU movie” without needing to talk about it for two hours, but I wholeheartedly disagree! So I’ll keep watching my two-hour videos and keep recommending them to you. You’re welcome.
On a real note, though, if the idea of sitting there and watching a two-hour video is daunting or seems like too much, I’ll go ahead and tell you I didn’t actually watch a single second of any of these videos. I only listened to them. I listened to them in the shower, on my drive to the store, while I was folding clothes, etc.
You don’t have to sit perfectly still and have your eyes glued to the screen the entire time to watch these videos, y’know? You can still enjoy the points they’re making and think about the ideas they bring up without feeling like it’s a chore to sit there and watch two hours of PowerPoint slides.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy what OSP has to say about these characters and movies we’ve all loved at some point in our lives. I know I did!
Do you have a favorite superhero? Which Marvel movie is your favorite? What do you think of all the shows they’ve come out with? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 10th, 2025 03:38 pm)
Because they’re pretty, and the US is a mess in ways that will take a lot to essay, and I just got back from travel and apparently caught a bit of con crud in Phoenix and so am kind of low energy at the moment. So: Look! Flowers! I figure the rest of the Internet will catch you up on the rest of it. Here, have a bit of pretty.
— JS
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 6th, 2025 07:03 pm)A couple days ago, my cousin sent me a Facebook post from AeCha Cafe that said they were having their soft opening. A new bubble tea shop was opening in Tipp City and this was the first I was hearing of it?! Though I wasn’t able to go to their actual soft opening on Tuesday, I did make it out there yesterday with my cousin and her three kids.
AeCha Cafe is smackdab in the middle of Tipp City’s historic downtown, and has the prettiest blue tile storefront:
We walked in and took a look at the menu. They offer milk tea, fruit tea, some coffee options, lemonade, matcha, all that good stuff:
I had never heard of Cha Dum Yend before, so I asked about it and was told that it’s like Thai Tea without the milk. My cousin doesn’t drink milk so she actually ended up getting that, and I got an iced strawberry matcha. I know, I know, I should’ve gotten bubble tea since I was at a bubble tea place, but a strawberry matcha just sounded so nice and refreshing in the moment! I promise I’ll try the bubble tea next time.
Initially, I thought that the space was pretty small, but it turned out there was a whole other section of the shop with a decent amount of seating, and it even had this comfy looking couch section:
I noticed a couple of wall decorations that were perfect backgrounds for aesthetic photos, like this neon-sign and wall sticker set up:
After careful consideration of where to take my drink photo, I chose the latter:
I’m glad that this cute little shop moved in, and am excited to visit here more this summer with my cousin and her kids. It’s a great location and I’m looking forward to seeing more from them once they’re all settled in and in the groove of things.
If you’re in the area, be sure to check them out and support them in this first week of being open! Their hours are Tuesday-Friday from 8am-8pm and 10am-8pm on Saturday and Sunday.
What’s your favorite milk tea flavor? Do you like popping pearls or tapioca pearls? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 6th, 2025 05:05 pm)
A few things that are up with me recently that I have not yet otherwise posted elsewhere:
1. When the Moon Hits Your Eye is one of Amazon’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2025 (So Far), and it’s nice to know that the book has made its mark at this point in the year. And while I recognize that the “so far” lists are just a way for Amazon and other places to double-dip on the marketing around “best of” lists, in point of fact lots of good stuff released early in a calendar year escapes the notice of end-of-the-year lists (there’s a reason Oscar contenders come out in December), so I can’t help but appreciate the effort. Other authors on the list include Stephen Graham Jones, Nnedi Okorafor and V.E. Schwab, so it’s worth checking out if you have not done so already.
2. I won an award! In Italy! The Italian translation of Starter Villain took the Premio Italia (not to be confused with the F1 series race of the same name) in the category of “International Novel,” with other finalist authors in the category being Charlie Stross, Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds and Mike Resnick. That’s a nice peer group. The full list of winners and finalists is here. Thank you, Italian science fiction fans!
3. Longtime visitors to Whatever know that in the last couple of years I’ve been posting cover versions of songs here. I’ve collected up ten of them into a YouTube playlist called “Cover Story,” and that playlist includes cleaned up and remastered versions of three of the songs previously posted here: “Love My Way,” by the Psychedelic Furs, “That Ain’t Bad” by Ratcat, and “She Goes On,” by Crowded House. The cleaning up is mostly fixing vocals (removing intakes of breath, moving the vocals up in the mix) and changing up instrumentation in a couple of places. Don’t worry, I’m not giving up my day job to embark on a life of cover artistry, but you know what? These don’t entirely suck. I especially think “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Under the Milky Way” are pretty darn decent. And it’s fun for me, which is really the point. Enjoy.
Aaaaaand that’s it for now – I’m busy at Phoenix Fan Fusion the entire weekend long, so if you’re going to be there, come say hello. Otherwise, have a fabulous weekend.
— JS
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 6th, 2025 02:48 pm)
What goes better together than dragons, revolution, and being queer? Not much, and author Vanessa Ricci-Thode is here to show that with her newest novel, The Dragon Next Door. Dive in to her Big Idea to see how queer wizards can be both powerful and fierce and wholesome and cozy.
VANESSA RICCI-THODE:
How did I get from action movie Hobbes & Shaw to a sapphic romantasy? It’s not as big a stretch as you might think (and don’t tell me you watched that without wondering what if they just kissed already!) Like most of my ideas, big or otherwise, it always starts with asking What If?
“What if there weren’t so many fucking dudes in this?” is something I find myself asking all the time. Because look, I like action movies both mindless and thoughtful. But dudes aren’t the only ones who know how to throw a punch and blow shit up. And while yes we do very occasionally get Evelyn Salt and Captain Marvel and Furiosa and Wonder Woman, why not a whole lot more?
But I don’t make movies, I make books. So here we are. I’ve always liked the grumpy/sunshine, opposites attract, odd couple type of tropes going back to the original Odd Couple, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. I watched Hobbes & Shaw and really got noodling on doing something similar, but asking myself “What if this was queerified and genderbent?” I grew up rarely seeing myself in anything, so you can bet your ass I’m putting myself in everything (and everyone else who never got to see themselves in things).
Another What-If central to the story: What if they kissed? But make it ace. I rarely see any of the intersections of my identity in popular media, and I decided to make this an asexual romance at a time when that was something I was discovering about myself. As important as it is for me to see myself in things, I want others to have that as well. Both MC’s are women of colour and I very much am not, so there was a lot of research going into authentic portrayal and staying in my lane. I went through every free resource plus some paid workshops provided by Writing the Other, and then I hired a sensitivity reader.
My initial musings envisioned writing a book that was some kind of fantasy buddy-cop plot with more action and less pining than the end result. I also wrote this toward the end of TFG’s first term and really had revolution and overthrowing dictators on my mind. This book’s research started with The Anti-Fascist Handbook and the history of revolutions, but once I decided it needed a baby dragon (because of course it did), things went in an entirely different direction. For starters, my characters having to care for a dangerous but sort of helpless fire-breathing puppy took things in a much more nurturing direction.
And then I realized they weren’t just going to sit around and let the dictator take over—they’d march out and meet the threat head on. Not the revolution I was looking for, but definitely still cathartic. And, well, as a Canadian living under the threat of annexation, this book really hits differently now than when I wrote it. During outlining and then drafting, the book morphed into something more anti-colonial, stopping the takeover from happening in the first place (I was revising during the Biden years and possibly too optimistic).
Writing this book certainly offered a lot of challenges, not only in basically throwing out half my research and having to re-outline the entire second half while I was still drafting. This book had a monster of an outline, almost 20,000 words long! But I had three POV characters with arcs to track, trying to match emotional and plot beats for all three. This is the most upfront work I’ve done on a novel and probably the most intentional I’ve been about what I wrote.
And now we’ve (unfortunately) come full circle politically, and I massaged a few things in the final editing pass to reflect that, but the core themes have always been about community and bravery and a lot of mutual pining. In queerifying some of these action and fantasy tropes, the focus on community became central, with characters who are (usually) gentle with each other despite being at odds.
While the book has some applicable messages about unity, courage and the power of spite, it’s still a cute, cozy-adjacent adventure with a pair of odd couple wizards mothering a delightful baby dragon.
The Dragon Next Door: Amazon (US)|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Google Play (US)|iBookstore|Indigo|itch.io|Kobo|Powell’s|Universal Link
Author Socials: Website|Bluesky|Instagram|Goodreads
Read an excerpt.
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 5th, 2025 11:51 pm)
Where it is a brisk and nippy 100 degrees Fahrenheit! Sweater weather here, certainly. I am here for Phoenix Fan Fusion, and I will have panels and signings all weekend long; check the schedule for the details (I also need to check the schedule for the details. I am running slightly behind these days). If you are in the Phoenix area, I hope to see you there. If you’re not in the Phoenix area, well, I mean, have a nice weekend anyway, I guess.
— JS
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 5th, 2025 02:17 pm)
A heart attack, life and all its craziness, and the loss of a close friend certainly threw a wrench (or multiple wrenches) into author Ryk E. Spoor’s life, but it didn’t stop him from writing this novel. Come along in his Big Idea for his newest novel, Fenrir, and read not only a story about perseverance, but a lovely tribute to a friend.
RYK E. SPOOR:
The Final Collaboration
Most of my readers know that I have worked with Eric Flint on multiple books – the Boundary series, the Castaway Planet books, and our first collaboration, Diamonds Are Forever. Most also know that it was through a long process – starting with me insulting his editing skills on Usenet – that led to Eric getting me published at Baen to begin with. Eric Flint was a mentor, a gadfly, a collaborator, and a friend of inestimable value to me.
When we’d brought the Boundaryverse to a close with Castaway Resolution, we’d already been bouncing around different ideas for another collaboration. There was an odd alternate-universe fantasy concept, a few scattered other ideas, but we both ended up coming back to our successful collaboration in a genre neither of us tackled well alone: hard-edged SF along the lines of Boundary or other people’s work like Weir’s The Martian.
After a few false starts, and a lot of discussion, we came up with the idea of a First Contact novel which changes up the usual approaches to this. There are a number of stories that have the aliens show up in our solar system for some purpose of their own, and at varying levels of technology (Footfall, The Jupiter Theft, etc.); there are others in which the ship in question is either automated or a derelict (Rendezvous With Rama, All Judgment Fled, etc.). We decided to intersect these by having the alien vessel approach, then experience an unknown accident that turned it into an apparent derelict.
We created a rough outline, got a contract to write the book, titled Fenrir – and Eric became extremely busy, and then had a number of health issues, which slowed down our collaboration. I was also busy writing other books, and going through my own difficulties, at the time. COVID also intervened to make everything more complicated – and afterward, I had a heart attack of my own. But we did manage to hammer out some details, and I eventually started work on the story itself, with Eric still working on some of the key background and eventual resolution details. Naturally, whenever you’re making a new book in a new universe, you have a lot of worldbuilding to do – and you want the world to support potential sequels, as “get a long-term series” is the holy grail of a would-be professional writer. David Weber has Honor Harrington, Jim Butcher has Harry Dresden, and Eric had 1632.
Then, one day, I picked up the phone and called Eric with a key question on the direction I was planning to take the book. No one answered, but that wasn’t terribly unusual; I figured I’d call him again tomorrow.
I never would, though, because somewhere around the time I was calling him, Eric Flint had already passed.
His loss was felt throughout a large portion of the SF community, and none more than the multiple authors he had supported and shepherded through the beginnings of their careers – I was only one such. His publishing company, Ring of Fire Press, failed without him – which happened to include a number of my more recent books. The consequences of his passing continued for quite some time, not just for me but for other people and even the companies he had been working with. Eric had been, well, a very busy guy.
With respect to Fenrir, I felt like I’d been shot in the gut; the idea of trying to finish one of our hard-SF collaborations without Eric to provide advice, backstop, and occasional deflation of my usual space opera/melodramatic preferences was paralyzing in its quiet terror. There were huge open questions we’d just been working on when he passed, and I knew from work on Threshold, Portal, and the Castaway Planet books that my off-the-cuff inventions often improved drastically with Eric’s dry, measured, experienced input.
But… I had a contract. I had notes. Despite my occasional impostor syndrome, I had, in fact, written those several hard-SF novels, and they’d been fairly well received. And I had Eric’s memory – his sometimes gravelly voice, his incisive and occasionally sledgehammer-hard advice, his approach to analyzing what I’d done to make it better, and, most of all, the times he’d simply kicked me into DOING things because he wouldn’t let me convince myself I couldn’t do them.
Once I’d recovered, I made myself start anew. And – sometimes with that phantom voice correcting me – I began to see how I could finish Fenrir. It wouldn’t be exactly what I’d have written with Eric; it was a fool’s errand to try to pretend I was also Eric Flint. But it was still born of both our concepts, still built on things he’d done as well as my own ideas. And slowly, it began to come together. I began to hear Stephanie Bronson speaking to me, learned about the conflicted motives of the sinister yet earnest Group that wanted humanity to just wait a little until we were sure the “Fens” were nicely dead before going to their ship; I dug into the size and power of the immense ship we called Fenrir and its owners called Tulima Ohn. I chose key technologies that weren’t utterly ridiculous to be the core of Earth’s interest, above and beyond just the appearance of another species.
And I had a sketch that Eric had made of some very peculiar-looking creatures, his rough vision of the “Fens” – and from that sketch I found myself meeting Imjanai and Mordanthine and starting to understand the civilization that had come so far to discover our own.
I took some old, fan-favorite technology and found a new coat of modern paint that would make it work for the story; found a ridiculous but not scientifically impossible way for Fenrir to cross the gulf between the stars, and figured out just how terrifyingly huge its energy requirements were.
And in the end, I even figured out why Fenrir – Tulima Ohn – had made its journey across light-years to our distant solar system.
In its final form, Fenrir tells the story of the human race overcoming its own worst impulses to show its best side, and of another species facing fear and uncertainty to discover survival and friendship. It may not be exactly what would have been written if Eric Flint were still with us – but it is still, inarguably and absolutely, a new hard-SF novel written by both Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor. I would like to think that Eric would read it and say “You got a little carried away, Ryk… but it’s still a damned good yarn.”
And of course, I hope all of you will too. Thanks to you, readers, thanks to John Scalzi for this space – and above all, thanks to you, Eric.
Fenrir: Amazon|Barnes & Noble
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 4th, 2025 09:48 pm)Last night, my most favoritest wine bar in all of Dayton was hosting a new type of event they’re trying out. I decided very last minute to go and check it out, so I snagged myself a ticket just a few hours before the event. It’s called “Night School,” and is basically a much more casual and fun version of an educational lecture, and you get to drink during it!
If you didn’t catch my post back in January where I talked about the cocktail class I attended at Joui Wine, Joui is a super cute, lovely wine bar right in the heart of downtown Dayton. It has plenty of open space, beautiful colors and art, a stunning bar, and of course, incredible service, drinks, and food that are amazing every time. It’s truly a delight to visit.
My mother and I attended their burlesque brunch event this past Sunday (which was so awesome), and I thought, there’s no way I could go to two Joui events in one week. And then I thought, well why the heck not? And I’m so glad I did!
This Night School event was the first of its kind, and they already have more lined up for future dates. Each Night School is about a different topic, with a different expert brought in to talk about their field of expertise. This one in particular was titled, “When Marijuana Wasn’t Cannabis: A Botanical and Legal History,” and the expert on the scene was Dr. Sarah Brady Siff.
Upon arriving, I was greeted and checked in, and handed a drink voucher. I had no idea when I bought the ticket for twenty dollars that it came with a drink included, so I was stoked about that. It was basically a free drink in my mind because I thought I was just paying twenty dollars for the talk itself, so it was like a sick bonus to be handed the drink ticket.
Joui put together a special line up of drinks you could redeem with your ticket:
While I was super curious about the Cannabis Spritz and thought it was cool they’d include that given the topic of the evening, I just opted for the Prosecco. It was a lovely Prosecco, very crisp and bubbly.
Joui had moved their stylish furniture around and set up an area for the speaker with a microphone and all that jazz, and then set up a few rows of black folding chairs for the audience, but you could also sit at the bar or in the back at the high-top tables. At each table next to the chairs was a printed out packet and pencils. The packet was basically like a bunch of PowerPoint slides and you could follow along with the speaker as she went over everything.
Y’all, I learned so much about cannabis. Not just about the plant itself (which we learned plenty about the actual plant, too), but also about its history, both in terms of its legality/criminality over the years, and how the press and government talked about it. Check out these headlines included in the packet:
Dr. Siff also talked a ton about how indigenous cultures viewed marijuana, how colonizers and the US government tried to eradicate the plant, how white people demonize minorities by associating marijuana with minority groups like Mexicans; it was all super interesting and also upsetting. But that’s like, all of history.
At the beginning of the lecture we were told we could get up and get a drink at the bar or use the restroom at any time, don’t be shy. Well, people were definitely shy and I of course ended up being the first person to get up and get a refill on my beverage. But at least I inspired a few other people to get up, as well, though. What can I say, I’m a trendsetter.
For my second beverage, I got a cocktail instead of wine. There was a ton of great ones to choose from:
Specifically I got the Low Rise Jeggings, with vodka. The owner said she was out of lavender syrup, so she used blueberry syrup to make it and it turned out amazing:
Isn’t it so pretty! It was fruity and refreshing without being overly sweet, the perfect summertime drink to sip on throughout the rest of the lecture.
At the end of the lecture, there were five glass jars on each table that each had a colored scrap of paper inside. We were given a worksheet with the colors listed on it, and we were supposed to smell the jars and write down if a color was cannabis or not.
There was cannabis, hops, peppermint, ginger, and a very smelly variety of geranium. I had written down that the hops were cannabis, as well, which like I should’ve known it was hops and not cannabis because I worked at a cidery for crying out loud! I know what hops smell like (obviously I don’t)! Anyways that was a fun little interactive activity.
After the lecture, Dr. Siff took questions and hung around for a little bit after to talk with people. I spoke with her and she ended up giving me several extra printed out pages of information for me to read and look at, which was really cool. She was super friendly and did an awesome job explaining everything in a really interesting and engaging way. I feel like I learned so much, honestly.
The event as a whole was great, especially considering it was only twenty bucks. I definitely want to go to their future ones that are in August in September. The August one is over DEI and why it matters so much, and the other is over quantum physics. As you can see, there’s already a huge variety happening in terms of topics which is great.
I implore you to check out Joui Wine even if it isn’t for one of these cool events, and follow them on Instagram if you’re in the Dayton area.
Is this a topic you would’ve been interested in? Would you have tried the Cannabis Spritz or is it not for you? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 4th, 2025 05:29 pm)
Sometimes, great ideas can stem from just a single word. Author Kalla Harris talks about her single-word-inspiration in the Big Idea for her debut YA novel, The Ground That Devours Us. Follow along as she takes you through the many changes this story underwent; you’ll be dying to read it.
KALLA HARRIS:
The Big Idea for my young adult debut, The Ground That Devours Us, came from another Big Idea. Yep, you read that correctly—two ideas were meshed together to create this diabolically plotted dystopian novel set in a post-apocalyptic Charlotte, NC.
My writing group, lovingly called HQ, can take some of the credit. In 2020, we started a creative writing prompt challenge for the month of October, and each day we’d write a short story based on a specific word. The word in question? Blood. I didn’t think much about the story when I sat down to write it, only that I was going to type out a few quick paragraphs and be done with it. Except when I started, the words began to flow. Suddenly, a scene unfurled in my mind: a sarcastic teenage girl fighting a zombie prince to the death. Spoiler: there was a lot of blood. As the words appeared on the page, so did the setting. A dying world full of slayers and zombies with supernatural abilities. What started as a short story turned into a full-fledged chapter, which quickly devolved into late-night outlining sessions in my pajamas.
Over a few months, that single chapter became an entire novel. My main character, Ruby, was a hardened zombie hunter who needed enough kills under her belt to gain access to a human compound on the other side of the decimated city she lived in. There, she and her twin sister would finally be safe from the flesh-eating creatures that go bump in the night, including that (unfortunately cute) zombie prince from the writing prompt.
After revising, I entered The Ground That Devours Us into a writing program called Pitch Wars. I didn’t get in, but two of the incredibly talented mentors I’d applied to offered to work with me on the side, although they did warn me that their feedback would suggest significant changes.
Oh boy, they weren’t kidding. I ripped the story to shreds. Cut characters, subplots, and entire settings. Amid the chaos, the idea of switching out zombies for a new paranormal creature was tossed around, and that’s when it hit me: vampires. I wanted to create a unique take on the ever-familiar “bloodsuckers” pop culture knows and loves, giving them abilities that matched the apocalyptic setting, such as earth-walking, and trading out their fangs for infection-spreading, sharp fingernails.
As the ideas churned, my new Big Idea formed: What if Ruby was a vampire hunter who lived in the human compound? What if said human compound may not be the saving grace she thinks it is? What if the zombie prince from the writing prompt was now a ruthless vampire named X who turns Ruby’s twin sister? What happens when Ruby has to team up with X to keep her sister “alive” long enough to find a cure for vampirism?
These questions quickly turned into realities on the page. They became huge plot points and fundamentally changed how Ruby interacted with her world and the characters that live in it, including her sister and X. This Big Idea ultimately landed me with my editor (and literary agent!) and placed me on the path to traditional publishing. Regardless of which Big Idea you look at, though, if you plan on picking up The Ground That Devours Us, expect lots of blood.
The Ground That Devours Us: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop
Author socials: Website|Instagram
Read an excerpt.
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 4th, 2025 02:16 am)The title really says it all, don’t you think?
May you enjoy the rest of your Tuesday!
-AMS
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 3rd, 2025 06:13 pm)In New York magazine this week, an article about how US citizens who have been detained by ICE can have an exceptionally difficult time proving that they they are, in fact, US citizens, or will have the ability to prove it before they are sent off to El Salvador or Rwanda or anywhere else in the world this embarrassment of an administration wants to unconstitutionally send people. And, while acknowledging the fact that it’s deeply unlikely I, a middle-aged white dude who lives in rural Ohio, will find myself attracting the attention of ICE in the first place, the article does raise a larger and sadly growingly more pertinent question: How many US citizens could, in fact, prove that they are US citizens at the drop of the hat? Leave aside for the moment the absolutely correct argument that it should not be incumbent on any of us to do so, and focus on this particular question. Can you, directly and/or indirectly, show that you have citizenship here in the US?
The gold standard physical proof of this would be an official birth certificate from within the United States (or naturalization certificate), followed by a valid US passport, followed by a REAL ID driver’s license. To obtain a US passport the first time, you need that official birth certificate or a US naturalization or citizenship certificate. For the REAL ID license here in Ohio, where I live, you need proof of US citizenship (passport or birth certificate) and a social security number, proof of Ohio residency, and, if your name has changed due to marriage or other reasons, legal proof of the name change, from a marriage license or a court-ordered name change.
So: Can you quickly lay hands on an official copy of your birth certificate? Do you now have — or indeed have you ever had — a valid US passport? Do you have a REAL ID-compliant drivers license/state ID card? Do you know your Social Security number (or have access to the physical card itself)? If you’ve ever changed your name, do you have ready access to your marriage license and/or court documents approving that name change?
These are not trivial questions, since in 2024, the Brennan Center noted that over 21 million US citizens of voting age don’t have ready access to documents proving their citizenship, and that the percentage of minority US citizens without these documents is higher than the percentage of white citizens. When the rubber hits the road, nearly ten percent of US citizens can’t easily prove they are citizens. These include some of the people most vulnerable to “accidental” deportation from this country — and I put “accidental” in quotes here because it’s been made very clear that this particular administration doesn’t see deporting US citizens, particularly ones of color, as an actual problem.
Ask yourself whether you have ready access to these sorts of documents, starting with the most critical of these: a legal copy of your birth certificate. If the answer is “no,” then for your own safety (not to mention your ability to vote, which is also pretty important), it might be an excellent time to go about getting those documents and storing them somewhere safe. For the moment, the CDC has a page that can help you find official records in the various US states and territories, and there are also third party companies who can help you locate and obtain various records here in the US. Will any of this cost you money? Of course it will, this is America! But then you will have them, and that’s a good thing.
Personally, if you’re a US citizen, I strongly recommend getting a US passport, including the US passport card (I’ll explain why below). Get them for identification purposes, even if you don’t have immediate plans to travel outside of the US.
Let’s turn these questions back to me, since I am exhorting all y’all to have these documents at the ready. Do I have any/all of these documents ready to go?
In fact, yes. I have a certified copy of my birth certificate in a fireproof lock box. I have a current passport — indeed I renewed it last year, just before the change of administration, in order to avoid any delays due to intentional or inflicted incompetence on the part of the State Department — and I have had a REAL ID for several years, since I saw no benefit in not getting that as soon as possible.
I don’t typically keep my US passport with me when I travel domestically (it stays in the lockbox with the birth certificate), but I do have a US passport card in my wallet at all times, which aside from being useful for land crossings to Mexico and Canada, also “is proof of U.S. citizenship and identity” according to our own State Department (and is also the equivalent of a REAL ID for US domestic air travel purposes). Importantly, the REAL ID Ohio driver’s license which also lives in my wallet is not proof of US citizenship, “just” of legal US residency. So I keep both the passport card and my REAL ID drivers license on me when I leave the house.
Will any of this keep an ICE stooge from looking at one’s various forms of ID and deciding they are fake? Nope! That said, having both a REAL ID and a passport card makes it that much harder for such absolute bullshit to stick after the fact (also, memorize your Social Security number). Do I resent that I live in a time and place where having two forms of ID on me at all times, including one that explicitly tags me as a US citizen, is just about required? Sure do, although this is tempered by the fact that I was doing this anyway, long before it was a defensive posture against my own federal government.
Again, I am white middle-aged dude, and live in rural Ohio, so the chances of ICE getting up in my face about anything is pretty damn low. But if they did, and decided the forms of ID I had on me were fake and tossed me into ICE detention, what else do I have going for me? Well, as noted, I have those other forms of ID in the lockbox. I also have provably US citizen parents, both of whom are still living, complete with birth certificates of their own. Their parents were also provably US citizens. I suspect three full generations of provable US citizenship would be difficult for even this administration to brush aside.
(And before that? Well, everyone came over before (European) immigration quotas and controls were a thing. I have relatives here on the North American continent going back to the 1640s, which is to say, long before the racist-ass current president’s progenitors hied their sorry hides over from the mother country. Which to be clear ought not to fucking matter, as regards US citizenship. But here we are in 2025.)
The other thing I have going for me is that I am, well, me: both well-enough off financially that I could mount a reasonable legal defense, and well-known enough that if ICE actually tried to disappear me, bluntly, it would be noticed by more than my immediate family. Heck, my birthplace is in my Wikipedia article (and even if some troll changes that now, the article history will show it). This doesn’t mean my life wouldn’t be miserable before I got sprung, mind you. Just that it would be difficult for this administration to credibly argue they didn’t know what they were doing before they attempted to ship this particular US citizen into some extranational hole.
Again, at this point, I do not see ICE or anyone else trying to expel me from our national borders. I am, statistically and otherwise, as safe as anyone in the US can be from the unconstitutional fuckery being perpetrated at the moment by our federal government. Also, in the current “show me your papers, no these papers are fake” environment, “safe as anyone in the US can be” is not actually safe at all, especially with an administration that is clearly contemptuous of the US Constitution and the protections it affords not only our nation’s citizens, but everyone who is on our soil. If anyone here lacks constitutional protections, we all lack them; our “rights” exist at the whim of bad people.
For all that, if you’re a US citizen, you should have ready access to your documentation. If you don’t have your birth certificate on hand, get a certified copy of it. If you don’t have a passport, get one, including the passport card. And yes, spring for the REAL ID. We don’t exist in the just world where these don’t matter for your personal security. In the world in which we exist, they are useful to have.
— JS
scalziwhatever_feed Jun. 2nd, 2025 06:02 pm)I recently realized that a lot of my posts lately have been starting with “I was scrolling on Instagram when I got an ad for this,” and then I’d buy the thing and tell you all about it. So I figured I’d just start calling it its own thing at this point since apparently a lot of what I’m doing is being influenced by ads and writing about whatever I just bought.
For today’s “I saw a hundred ads for this thing and finally bought it,” we have the Thigh Society shorts. I have been patiently waiting until summer to tell y’all about these shorts, and it’s finally June so I feel justified in saying that this is in fact, the must have item for summer.
So, basically, Thigh Society sells one product. As they say on their website “we only do slip shorts, and we do them the best.” Very true statement, it turns out. Now, while the only thing they sell is slip shorts, they do have several different versions of the shorts, and they come in multiple colors and sizes. Honestly I have only seen maybe two other clothing brands ever that do XS-6XL. That is some serious range, and much appreciated by someone such as myself.
When it comes to choosing which style of short to get, I knew there was only one choice for me. The one with the pocket. I also wanted ones that weren’t sheer, and The Cargo is one of their shorts that’s actually opaque instead of sheer or semi-sheer. I specifically wanted the pocket one because I don’t like to carry a purse. If you are someone who always has a bag whilst out and about, it may be less of a need for you and you could opt for their cooling ones or even cotton ones. But I gotta have my dang pocket.
If you had asked me before I bought these shorts if I ever thought I’d be obsessed with telling anyone and everyone about a pair of shorts, I’d have said no way. Despite getting tons of ads saying I needed this product, I thought, I definitely don’t need that. Little did I know I did need them all along! They have been so incredibly useful and are something I am genuinely glad I bought.
I am tired of trying all these different “chub-rub” powders and creams to prevent chafing. I will say, out of everything I tried, First Aid Beauty’s Anti-Chafe Stick is my preferred product, but still, I don’t really prefer using products like that when I can just wear a super comfortable, breathable undershort instead.
Chafing is more than just annoying, it’s like a genuinely painful thing that has prevented me from doing activities I want to be doing! Like you’re telling me walking hurts when you’re chafing? Life is so unfair sometimes. These shorts have single-handedly prevented any and all chafing for me every single time I’ve worn them.
I wore them under all my dresses on the Joco cruise this year, and I wore them in California and Texas when it was hot as hell outside. They’re honestly just perfect for traveling and walking around in, and they are so easy to pack and to launder. Plus, on the Joco cruise deck when it was super windy, I didn’t have to worry about Marilyn Monroe-ing anyone.
I’m not saying you need these shorts, but I am saying if you are someone who is prone to chafing, who likes walking around, exploring, traveling, all that good stuff, and live somewhere that summers are hot, you might want to grab a pair or two of these (plus you get free shipping when you buy two).
Even though I have several pairs of The Cargo, I’m thinking about buying some of the non-pocketed ones to wear as sleep or lounge wear because they’re seriously just that comfortable.
What products do you like to use for chafing? Have you heard of this brand before (they’ve been advertising to me for like one entire year on Insta at this point)? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
youarenotsosmart_feed May. 31st, 2025 03:41 pm)In this episode we sit down with Brian Klaas, author of Fluke, and get into the existential lessons and grander meaning for a life well-lived (once one finally accepts the power and influence of randomness, chaos, and chance). In addition, we learn not to fall prey to proportionality bias – the tendency for human brains to assume big, historical, or massively impactful events must have had big causes and/or complex machinations underlying their grand outcomes. It’s one of the cognitive biases that most contributes to conspiratorial thinking and grand conspiracy theories, one that leads to an assumption that there must be something more going on when big, often unlikely, events make the evening news. Yet, as Brian explains, events big and small are often the result of random inputs in complex systems interacting in ways that are difficult to predict.
RSS – Simplecast – Amazon Music – Audible
Official Description of the Book:
In the perspective-altering tradition of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan comes a provocative challenge to how we think our world works—and why small, chance events can divert our lives and change everything, by social scientist and Atlantic writer Brian Klaas.
In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas deep-dives into the phenomenon of randomness, dismantling our neat and tidy storybook version of events to reveal a reality far wilder and more fascinating than we’ve dared to consider. The bewildering truth is that but for a few incidental changes, our lives – and our societies – would be radically different.
If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same? Or could making an accidental phone call or missing an exit off the highway change not just your life, but history itself? And would you remain blind to the radically different possible world you unknowingly left behind?
Offering an entirely new lens, Fluke explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and apparently random events. How did one couple’s vacation cause 100,000 people to die? Does our decision to hit the snooze button in the morning radically alter the trajectory of our lives? And has the evolution of humans been inevitable, or are we simply the product of a series of freak accidents?
Drawing on social science, chaos theory, history, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Klaas provides a brilliantly fresh look at why things happen—all while providing mind-bending lessons on how we can live smarter, be happier, and lead more fulfilling lives.
Dr. Brian Klaas is an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London, an affiliate researcher at the University of Oxford, and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He is also the author five books, including Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters (2024) and Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us (2021). Klaas writes the popular The Garden of Forking Paths Substack and created the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, which has been downloaded roughly three million times.
Klaas is an expert on democracy, authoritarianism, American politics, political violence, elections, and the nature of power. Additionally, his research interests include contingency, chaos theory, evolutionary biology, the philosophy of science and social science, and complex systems. In addition to Fluke and Corruptible, Klaas authored three earlier books: The Despot’s Apprentice: Donald Trump’s Attack on Democracy (Hurst & Co, 2017); The Despot’s Accomplice: How the West is Aiding & Abetting the Decline of Democracy, (Oxford University Press, 2016) and How to Rig an Election (Yale University Press, co-authored with Professor Nic Cheeseman; 2018).
Klaas has advised a variety of governments, US political campaigns, NATO, the European Union, the International Crisis Group, the Carter Center, multi-billion dollar investors, international NGOs, and international politicians.
Klaas has conducted field research, interviewing more than 500 people across the globe, including prime ministers, presidents, ministers, rebels, coup plotters, dissidents, and torture victims in an array of countries, including Madagascar, Thailand, Tunisia, Belarus, Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia, and Latvia.
Prior to becoming an academic, Dr. Klaas worked on US political campaigns—including serving as the Policy Director / Deputy Campaign Manager for Mark Dayton’s successful bid for Governor of Minnesota in 2010.
Apple – RSS – Simplecast – Spotify – Amazon Music – Audible
scalziwhatever_feed May. 30th, 2025 03:58 pm)
And what a fine view of a parking lot I have today! I’m on the balcony of my hotel room because it’s a nice morning, and it’s going to get up to the 90s today, so I should enjoy being outdoors while I can. Even if the view is of a parking lot.
I’m in Claremont because this is where my high school is, and tomorrow the class of 2025 is graduating, and I’ll be giving the commencement speech to them. I will be full of wisdom! Or, well, something, anyway. I figured I would get in early to avoid travel mishaps and see a few friends. So far this plan is working excellently.
(For those of you wondering what I will actually say to the Class of 2025, be patient: I will inevitably post it here, and I understand there may actually be video as well. Also, no public appearances this time out, sorry.)
I really like being in Claremont; it’s the town that I generally list, as convenience’s sake, as my “hometown,” because my high school is here. In reality my “hometown” is a general smear across the Eastern San Gabriel Valley, since I also spent significant time in Azusa, Covina, Glendora, San Dimas and La Verne growing up. But that’s hard to explain to people. Claremont it is. There are much worse places to be from.
Anyway, at the moment and I suspect for the rest of the weekend I’m feeling a pleasant nostalgia buzz. I’m gonna go ahead and ride this for a while.
— JS
scalziwhatever_feed May. 29th, 2025 09:25 pm)Recently, while scrolling on Tik Tok, I saw a video from Tab Buddies where they were promoting their product, aptly named the Tab Buddy. It’s a small gadget that helps you open soda cans, and they even have a bigger version that can open larger cans like canned vegetables or soup cans, even cat food cans. Here’s a video giving a rundown of their product and the different versions they sell:
@tabbuddies Replying to @aliteralcommunist Thank you for the love and for giving us a jumping off point to delve into one of our most frequently asked questions- which Tab Buddy is best for me? Let’s discuss
#tabbuddies #tabbuddyxl #accessibility #kitchengadgets #kitchenhacks #arthritis #assistivetech #disability #nailhacks
When I first saw this, I was intrigued. I’d never seen something like this before, but the product immediately made sense to me because I’m someone who has had acrylic nails before. When you have really long nails, it can be hard to do a lot of regular tasks, like opening a soda. Even if you just have a regular manicure, a lot of activities risk chipping your polish or nails. I distinctly remember that opening soda cans was not the only issue I faced with long nails, but it was certainly a frequent one.
In the comments of the video I saw talking about their product, there were tons of comments from people saying they didn’t understand why someone would pay money for something you can just do normally, and that they were a waste of money and plastic, and represent over-consumerism. Tab Buddies actually does address a lot of these comments, and one thing they said that really stuck with me was “if you don’t see a need for it, it probably isn’t for you.”
While I had immediately thought of how useful it would be for someone with long nails, I hadn’t even considered how much it could help someone with arthritis, carpal tunnel, fine motor issues, and tons of other things that make something as “simple” as opening a can of soda difficult. Heck, I’ve even been on the other side of the nail thing by having too short of nails, where everything I interact with hurts because I tore my nails off too short again (part of why I got acrylics in the first place was so I wouldn’t rip my nails off).
There’s a whole myriad of reasons, disability or not, why someone might find a Tab Buddy useful. Plus, I have had so many times where a can is simply really hard to open. Mostly tinned fish cans. Those suckers do not want to open! I wish I had had one of these back when I did a tinned fish review.
Anyways, what I’m getting at here is that just because you think it’s unnecessary or useless, doesn’t mean it actually is. And I have a personal example of this I’d like to share.
I think it was just about three years ago when I was perusing the pasta aisle in Kroger. Then I saw it. A bag of fully cooked pasta that you put in the microwave for 60 seconds. And then I thought to myself, “man, how lazy can someone get.”
I regret this thought a lot. But, as soon as I thought it, I immediately began thinking of ways in which this product would be useful. Fully cooked pasta in a bag that you can just heat up could be so useful in instances of houselessness, a power outage, an inability to access clean, running water, a lack of pots and pans, so many reasons! Not to mention if you’re struggling with depression, OCD, ADHD, or anything else that can make cooking a meal for yourself challenging. Or maybe you’re just a busy mom, or a college student, it could literally be helpful to anyone and everyone.
I remember standing in the aisle and quite literally immediately began addressing why I had the ignorant, negative reaction I did to bagged, fully cooked pasta. I think a lot of people could stand to do the same in Tab Buddies’ comments.
Accessibility is important, and products that provide accessibility are necessary, even if you don’t initially see why.
Personally, I’m glad I stumbled across Tab Buddies. I’m about to order like five of these suckers. I love their fun designs, especially the calico cat paw, this rainbow, their citrus collection, and this adorable snowman. Of course, if the designs aren’t your style, their classic, minimalist style comes in plenty of different colors and sizes. I personally really want an XL one for the dang tinned fish cans I mentioned. All of their designs come with a keyring strap or a keychain hole so you can take yours with you anywhere!
Did any of the designs catch your eye? Have you heard of these before and I’m just late to the scene? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
scalziwhatever_feed May. 29th, 2025 03:32 pm)
While being the “chosen one” and attending a magic school may sound spectacular and all, what happens to the parents of said chosen child? New York Times Bestselling author Caitlin Rozakis explores this idea with a modern twist in her newest novel, The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association. Come along in her Big Idea as she shows you that maybe magic school isn’t so different from regular school after all.
CAITLIN ROZAKIS:
There’s a school for magic. It’s secret, hidden from mundane reality. If you’re one of the few lucky chosen, you’ll be whisked away to find that the world is far more wondrous—and dangerous—than you ever imagined. Jaw-dropping classics, ancient traditions, dark prophecies, paranormal teachers, bizarre sports, high stakes tests, you’ll face it all—hopefully with a ragtag band of misfits you learn to call friends.
It’s an incredibly common trope these days, and like many of us, I practically raised myself on it. I yearned to be told I was special. Who wants to learn algebra when you could learn to cast fireballs and befriend monsters? But then I grew up.
And had a kid of my own.
Suddenly, I was looking at all those magic school adventures in a whole new light. (It’s almost as traumatic as when I re-read Calvin & Hobbes and realized I identified with the mom.) Because think about it for a second—someone is proposing sending your child away to a place you’ve never heard of, with the promise that when they come home, they’ll be able to set the curtains on fire with their minds?
And don’t get me started on the school supply list. Yeah, I can probably grow some verbena in a pot on the deck over the summer, but you want me to send in a toad for a familiar? Where am I supposed to get a toad? PetCo doesn’t sell toads online, but they have axolotls, does that count? Can I catch one in a creek? Is that even legal, or are there laws about catching wild amphibians? Maybe this a “magic toads only” thing and I have to find a magic toad breeder. What if magic toad breeders are like puppy mills and that’s horribly unethical—oh crap, the next thing on the list is an athame, who thought it was a good idea to give children ritual daggers?
The thing is, modern parenting is absurd. Adding werewolves only makes it a little more ridiculous. After all, the school is already nut free; if half the kids have soy and shellfish allergies, is it really that much harder to accommodate the folks with sensitivities to silver, cold iron, and sunlight? (I say this as a parent of a kid who had dairy, egg, peanut and tree nut allergies that had to be steered around and am forever grateful to the parents who were willing to send in vegan alternatives to the class cupcakes.)
So as I started tackling the school system and parenthood and all the ridiculous demands the world put on my own family, I also started reevaluating some of my favorite tropes. I wondered what happened to the kids who failed their magician dueling class and so didn’t have a diploma for their resume. Whether someone needed to sign permission slips for field trips that could leave half the eighth grade maimed. Why there could be monsters living in the basement who eat the occasional child, and yet somehow no furious parents were showing up in the headmaster’s office. Because if there’s one constant across education today, it’s furious parents.
In The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, Vivian is a perfectly mundane mom with no idea that magic is real until her kindergartner is bitten by a werewolf. Suddenly, she finds herself trying to navigate the politics of a hidden magical school she never knew existed. There are high stakes tests, planar incursion drills, bullying, and a dark prophecy. Actually, it’s not that much different from mundane schools (except that last bit).
But just like in mundane parenthood, the biggest hotbed of drama is…the other parents. When her peers can summon ghosts and cast fireballs and supply a unicorn for a birthday party, Vivian finds herself distinctly outmatched. Which will be more stressful—a foretold curse that sounds more like her daughter every day or the PTA WhatsApp chat?
The one thing that holds true across schools both real and magic, for both kids and adults, is that the key to keeping your sanity is finding that band of misfits you can be friends with. I know I would not have made it this far if I had not managed to make allies—with dedicated teachers, thoughtful administrators, and other parents whose kids are also facing the same challenges. The majority of us just want what’s best for our kids. But figuring out how to get there? Sometimes that’s going to take a little scrying.
The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|BAM|Bookshop|Powell’s
scalziwhatever_feed May. 28th, 2025 04:42 pm)
Author Guy Gavriel Kay believes that sometimes, summarizing a book can be a disservice to it. So how do you talk about your novel in a way that encapsulates everything you want it to, without giving away too much, and while keeping the reader hooked? Follow along in the Big Idea for his newest novel, Written on the Dark, to see how it’s done.
GUY GAVRIEL KAY:
So, GGK, what’s the new book about, eh?
Ah, anonymous interviewer, are you so tired of life, that you ask this of me? Understand in your bones and marrow that I am truly Canadian. I can summon Canada geese to deal with you. You really don’t want that to happen, trust me.
Say what? I don’t understand —
Of course you don’t. All right, let’s try this. Some of us (well, me?) take the considered view that War and Peace or The Lord of the Rings or Song of Solomon can be made to sound trivial, silly, shallow if boiled down to a paragraph’s worth of sound bite. Some of us (me!) also know that’s the Way of the World today for books, pitching a novel as a vibe, or as ‘The Godfather meets Ted Lasso!’, to make it easily grasped.
[Pause for someone to say ‘I’d read/watch the shit out of that!’]
[OK, fine, you can say it too, John. You know you want to.]
Truth is, I’ve always felt that nothing I’ve ever written has one single Big Idea. (Tigana is probably closest.) I’m focused on complicating things, multiple ideas, on nuance, on letting readers decide what they find in or take away from a book. (That’s gonna happen anyhow, might as well embrace it!) But as every release date nears (May 27th in US/Canada, 29th in UK, for Written on the Dark) I know I need to prep some sort of answer as the tour and online interviews begin.
Or also, you know, write a short essay, as here. (Thanks, John.) Because just about every interviewer (see top of this essay) is going to ask, given that a) it’s a fair question and b) it is an easy question to ask.
Problem is, like Canada geese, I will protect my young (the book!). That means pushing back against oversimplifying and trying not to distort the story myself with a flippant summary, or even a serious (but too fast!) one.
But here’s something I can say that’s more than a vibe and honestly reflects some things I think as to writing about history and how the past plays in terms of today — which is what I like to do, and what I did in this book.
A wise man who was not Mark Twain wrote that history may not repeat, but it rhymes. (His name was Theodore Reik and he was a psychoanalyst — make of that what you will — but it always seems to be credited to Twain.) I share that thought. I write with that idea in mind. It is one of many reasons why most of my books take place in a not-quite past, with many different settings, under two moons. What one reviewer called ‘history with a quarter-turn to the fantastic.’ If I do it right, this use of the fantastic — because we are not quite here, because there are elements of the supernatural — causes reader and author to share with each other that we are, indeed, rhyming with the past, not trying to pin the present down with it precisely.
Written on the Dark is inspired by France (and Burgundy, and England, and Italy) during the Hundred Years’ War of the 14th and well into the 15th century. It takes its cue, its opening scenes, from the assassination of a very important figure in the city of Orane, which is fairly close to being Paris. (Parts of the book are something of a love letter to Paris, actually.) Its main protagonist is modeled on the celebrated tavern poet, possible murderer and certain thief, François Villon, who is likely best known for asking in a verse, ‘Where are the snows of yesteryear?’ My version of the poet, Thierry Villar, gets entangled in the investigation of the assassination at the start of the book. Why? Well, gosh, there’s a novel that answers that. I, er, wrote it!
But here’s where the idea of, well a Big Idea meets the notion of the past rhyming with the present. I became interested in thinking about people who are just too powerful to be made to face the law. Where the risk to those who might try to pursue justice can cause them to decide that their duty to family, city, even to a turbulent, endangered country, should perhaps lead them away from that investigation. These fears, and moral quandaries, and political realities, are part of the book.
A bit of a rhyme with today, you think? With America, and several other countries right now? Well, yes. But here’s the thing: I began writing the book two years ago, after my usual period of research. Its themes started emerging for me back then, not in the current circumstances of the world. And that, I suppose, might be a big idea for me…that events in our time have antecedents in so many periods and places. That themes of power and justice (and of tavern poets and power, and of women and finding a space for themselves and their desires in the world) are always with us, in one form or another.
You can write about yesterday’s snows — or the snows of an almost-yesterday — and say things that might resonate for readers as they look up from the page at their own time. I want people reading in my books about people they come to care for, set in a world essentially 600 years ago — and also thinking about … well, about right now. Not for lessons! I’m offering a story not giving a lecture. But as John indicates on this blog, with the very concept of these guest posts: novels do have room for substantial ideas too. Page turners can have us thinking: as we read, and after we’re finished.
I suppose this feeling lies behind every book I’ve ever written. That the snows of yesteryear have never gone away. Where are they, François Villon asked in a poem. They are right here with us, I’ll answer, in stories we can tell, and read.
A friend wrote me this spring after reading an advance copy of this newest novel that ‘maybe every book you’ve done has been written on the dark, trying to find the light.’
I’ll live with that.
Written on the Dark: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|BAM|Bookshop|Powell’s
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}