Sacrifices in stories generally tend to be noble ones. Characters are made to suffer but always for the greater good. Author Alex White shows us that sometimes things are just plain bad, and sacrifices are no fun. So how do the main characters in August Kitko & The Mechas From Sp … | Continue reading
You ever seen a rock and been like, “man I wish I could eat that”? Just have the urge to take a chomp right out of a geode and all its crunchy goodness? I have had this problem my whole life, but even more so after handling so many pretty rock samples in geology class […] | Continue reading
Because I was fiddling around with my musical instruments today, that’s why, and was feeling a bit synth-y and Vince Clarke-ish. I actually played every instrument on this track, save the drums, which were your basic EDM beat out of a drum machine. It doesn’t have a name other th … | Continue reading
In Ryan Van Loan’s third installment of The Fall of the Gods series, the author sheds light on an important fact: being smart doesn’t guarantee being wise. This makes a world of difference for the protagonist of The Memory in the Blood. RYAN VAN LOAN: My Big Idea for The Memory i … | Continue reading
Are the bad guys inherently bad, or did they choose to be bad? Author A. C. Wise takes us into the mind of one of literature’s most famous villains in her new novel, Hooked, in order to shed some light on this question. A. C. WISE: Part of me wants to be a little bit […] | Continue reading
I’ve been meaning to hop on the Stranger Things band-wagon for a while now, but after seeing so many people praise the newest season, I decided it was finally time I join the crowd. I did watch season one back when it originally came out, but it’s been so long I didn’t really rem … | Continue reading
Sure, we’ve all wished to visit the imaginary or virtual worlds of fiction and dreams… but when it’s time to come home, will we always find the exit? This is a question Kimberly Unger is considering in her latest novel, The Extractionist. KIMBERLY UNGER: I suspect most of us can … | Continue reading
Well, that’s certainly a mouthful, isn’t it? Especially if I add “with cream cheese glaze” at the end. But that’s exactly what I made last night, glaze and all! I can’t quite remember how I found this recipe, but I’m pretty sure it was through Instagram, and I decided to give it … | Continue reading
For various reasons, I was already leaning against physically attending the 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu, China, but now, a little over a year out and with other organizations querying me about appearances in the same timeframe, I should more firmly note that I won’t be on the ground … | Continue reading
Futuristic stories often take their cues from the present, and this is certainly the case in Mia V. Moss’s new novel, Mai Tais For the Lost. Set in an alarmingly realistic future Earth, Moss’s story is part mystery, part sci-fi, and all underwater. MIA V. MOSS: What if the world’ … | Continue reading
This feels in many ways like the platonic ideal of a sunset. It certainly was lovely to look at. I’m delighted to get to share it with you now. — JS | Continue reading
For a country with an at-best-precarious social net, the idea of a Universal Basic Income can be beguiling. But how would it work in hard reality? Rachel Swirsky has decided to take a swing at giving an answer to this in her new work, January Fifteenth. And if you think this woul … | Continue reading
Here, this should remedy the situation. And there are two blooms, so clearly I’m catching up in bulk. It’s been a lovely couple of days here. Hope they have been lovely for you as well. — JS | Continue reading
I follow a boba tea shop on Facebook called Oh! Boba and they posted a couple days ago that they’d be serving boba tea at a “Community Extravaganza” event hosted in the parking lot of a local Walmart. I had never heard of this event before, but apparently it’s the second annual o … | Continue reading
Wherever you are in the world at the moment, I hope you can enjoy and appreciate this small moment of bucolic Midwest splendor. That’s what I have for this Saturday, but I think it’s enough. Look, a dog! And a tree! What more do you need? — JS | Continue reading
With a story collection title like Love and Other Monsters in the Dark, you might think that author K.B. Jensen has a skewed view on, well, love. But as she explains in this big idea, it may be not all that skewed, when you dig into what love really means for each of us. K.B. […] | Continue reading
Athena bought them for her mother, which I though was kind of her. They certainly stand out. That’s it, that’s the post. Just thought you could use some sunflowers in your day. — … | Continue reading
The road to recovery is often long and hard one, but for the protagonist of Erin Flanagan’s newest novel, Blackout, recovery has a mysterious added challenge — one that threatens more than just the recovery itself. ERIN FLANAGAN: When I started the novel Blackout, I asked myself … | Continue reading
Now that I’ve been back from LA for a week, I’ve had time to rest and relax and catch up on important stuff, like last month’s snack box. I finally got around to cracking open the June Universal Yums box, and found Thailand inside! Other than Thai iced tea, I can honestly say I h … | Continue reading
The application in question is called Filter Forge, which features thousands of filters, mostly created by the community which uses the program. Many of these filters are… well, not great, but some of them are pretty cool, especially when you layer them on top of each other. Thus … | Continue reading
Funny you should ask, I was just over there to take a look. We are (hopefully) in the end game of renovation; all the major foundational things have been addressed, including a few not-exactly-welcome surprise issues — because there are always surprise issues with 80-year-old str … | Continue reading
For the second day in a row, I feel perfectly fine; still a little tired, but at this point I suspect that has more to do with being on my ass for the last couple of weeks as it does with having been sick. My brain is also waking up a bit more, which is […] | Continue reading
Rome wasn’t built in a day — and its fall took even longer. But what if… that fall never happened at all? Lucas J.W. Johnson is on it with The Clockwork Empire. LUCAS J. W. JOHNSON: There’s something compelling about the fall of the Roman Republic and its transformation to Empire … | Continue reading
In one’s life, one is lucky to get one or two genuinely perfect moments. This song soundtracked one of mine, which I described here on Whatever a couple of years ago: It’s 1999. Krissy and I had our first house. Our daughter was newly born. I had gotten my first book contract, or … | Continue reading
Fantasy is a world of your making, and for New York Times bestselling author Victoria Aveyard, she wanted her world to be inclusive. Read all about how she wanted Blade Breaker to take place in the world that teenage her dreamed of. VICTORIA AVEYARD: I like to say that all writer … | Continue reading
This one’s appearance on my personal playlist is not complicated: It’s just so delightfully and almost innocently randy that it just makes me laugh and be happy. Whomst amongst us has not been where Charli XCX is in this song: So blissfully wrapped up in thinking about the object … | Continue reading
Cosplay. You know it, you love it. And so does author Andrew Liptak. Follow along in the Big Idea for his book, Cosplay: A History, to see how cosplay isn’t just about costumes, it’s about community. ANDREW LIPTAK: When you’re doing something that seems patently ridiculous, it he … | Continue reading
Julie Miller feels like secret knowledge, and someone who have to know someone else first to meet. She’s a contemporary of musicians like Sam Phillips, Shawn Colvin and Victoria Williams, all of whom had far higher public profiles in their day. She’s written songs for or covered … | Continue reading
Few storytellers alive can spin a tale like Elizabeth Bear, and in this Big Idea for The Origin of Storms, the concluding novel of a trilogy, Bear digs just a little into the elements that make this particular story the one to tell right now. ELIZABETH BEAR: What if you inherited … | Continue reading
Dessa is the one musician in this series who I met prior to hearing her music. She and I were guests at John and Hal Green’s NerdCon: Stories convention in 2015, where among other things she and I participated in a team debate event in which we expounded the value of putting on f … | Continue reading
I’ve written about this subject extensively here on Whatever over the years, but it’s worth saying again here in 2022, and also, not everyone who follows me on Twitter comes over here. I posted this tonight over there, and am reposting here for archival purposes and because not e … | Continue reading
And what a glorious last day it was! My friends said they wanted to give me what they consider “the TOUR” of LA, or at least enough of it to fill about six hours. I had no idea where we were going, but I had a strong suspicion that the first stop would be coffee. […] | Continue reading
Still on the plateau of meh. It’s the good side of awful and the bad side of okay, if you grasp what I’m saying. Today, I’m mostly just feeling tired, which corresponds with me being extremely bored with resting up. But there’s nothing for it. I understand the secret to keep COVI … | Continue reading
Because I am a hopeless, story-seeking nerd, I have created a whole backstory to the video to the Kyla La Grange song “Cut Your Teeth,” which is taken from the album of the same name. Very briefly, La Grange and her background singers are in hell, for whatever reason they have fo … | Continue reading
I’m finally reaching the tail end of my trip, and though I have loved it here, I’m definitely ready to go back home. One thing I don’t have back home, though, is boba tea. So that was the first thing I went out and got today. There are quite a few places in the area, […] | Continue reading
One thing I have long admired about Bjork is how unapologetically weird she is, musically speaking (I don’t know how she is in her personal life, and it’s not my business anyway). The less ambitious version of her could have made a decent career out of being merely quirky, but no … | Continue reading
One of these days, I’ll finally go to the beach, but today was not that day. The UV index was at 10, and I didn’t feel like looking like a lobster, so I held off. I did, however, go to lunch at a Mexican restaurant called El Cholo with a different family friend from Hollywood. [… … | Continue reading
Sometimes you connect with a musician for only one song or one album, but that connection, when it’s made, is a strong one. I feel that way about Jane Siberry; most of her oeuvre is not for me for various reasons, but then there’s When I Was a Boy, an album-length mediation on li … | Continue reading
I have COVID and my brain is not in a place to write anything substantive about it right now. So I will say what I already noted on Twitter: This court will continue to take rights from Americans as soon as it can. If you’re an American and you don’t think that this will affect [ … | Continue reading
I feel… meh. Mostly fuzzy and distracted and a little ache-y. I have congestion and a runny nose. I don’t feel horrible, but I certainly don’t feel good. I do retain my sense of smell and taste so far, so that’s a good thing. I think it’s accurate to say the thing I feel most […] | Continue reading
I had big plans for my fourth day in town, but upon waking up I decided I didn’t feel like leaving the bed. So I didn’t! And I went back to sleep. I ended up sleeping about thirteen hours. I had to keep convincing myself that I wasn’t wasting my day, because rest is important, [… … | Continue reading
For this series I’m picking one song per artist to represent them and why they’ve mattered to me. Usually, this isn’t too difficult — sometimes it’s that one particular song that’s resonated for me, and other times there’s usually one song above several other equally worthy songs … | Continue reading
To begin: I’m fine. I’m double-vaxxed and double-boosted, and my symptoms so far have been those of a mild flu; and in point of fact I felt worse yesterday than I do today. Yesterday I wanted to sleep all day, and mostly did; I was in bed at 6:30pm and didn’t get back out of […] | Continue reading
I find it funny that my father and I are doing “Day X of ___” at the same time. At least his numbers match the actual day of the month. Anyways, Day 3 of lovely Santa Monica! I started this day out right by going to Huckleberry Cafe for breakfast. I’m one of those people […] | Continue reading
There’s a natural progression to the careers of most (successful) bands: The scrappy “new kid” phase, where the band is starting out and struggling, and maybe has a couple of songs passed around by their “first in,” fans; the “rising star” phase, where they get picked up by a maj … | Continue reading
The first thing I did for my second day in Santa Monica was get a pedicure. I figured if I was going to be wearing sandals everywhere, I should make my toenails purple! So I just popped by the closest nail salon I could find, and while the pedicure itself was totally fine and wha … | Continue reading
I suspect most people, if you asked them, could tell you who they thought was the coolest person in whatever genre of music they liked the most, or maybe who was the coolest person in all of music. “The Coolest Person” was not necessarily one’s favorite musician, although there w … | Continue reading
Last week, a family friend asked if I was busy at the end of the month. I said no and was then asked if I could possibly cat sit… 2,000 miles away. I quickly accepted the chance to hang out in LA for a week, and yesterday I boarded a 7am direct flight to LAX. […] | Continue reading