Here’s something I’ve worked on over the last couple of days, as I fiddled about with my new musical equipment. Since it’s the the first composition I completed this month, I̵… | Continue reading
Hello, everyone, and welcome to your regular monthly Japanese snackbox review! Today I’ll be reviewing Sakuraco’s August box. I wanted to mention that in the comments of a recent post o… | Continue reading
Friday the 13th is scary for some, but here at the Scalzi Compound, it just means we have this excellent collection of new books and ARCs to peruse. See anything you’d like to have in your ow… | Continue reading
I was sent a powdered wig today. Because why not? I’m not sure it’s an everyday look for me, but, honestly, it could be worse. “Hey, baby. Wanna found a nation with me?” Oh,… | Continue reading
It’s a pretty good year: Best Science Fiction Novel Machine, Elizabeth Bear (Saga)Ready Player Two, Ernest Cline (Ballantine)Attack Surface, Cory Doctorow (Tor)A Desolation Called Peace, Arka… | Continue reading
Author Josh Rountree believes in bringing the reader the best of both worlds. Or, in this case, many worlds. Dive into his Big Idea as he tells you about all the different genres that have played a… | Continue reading
I watch a lot of cooking videos on YouTube, and I’ve been watching Joshua Weissman for about a year now, but have never made one of his recipes before. Until now! I decided to make sticky bun… | Continue reading
People age — it’s what happens if you get to live for a while — but how aging is portrayed in literature is often one note. As editors Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law want to show i… | Continue reading
It’ll probably come back to me as soon as I post this. But honestly, if I can’t remember, was it really important enough to write about at length? Probably not! Anyway, Spice looks good… | Continue reading
Losing friends can be hard, especially when you and your friends are a group of adventure-seeking heroes. Come along in Elijah Menchaca’s Big Idea as he tells you why he decided not to focus … | Continue reading
This comes up because over the last few weeks there’s been an uptick in news stories about people who chose not to be vaccinated dying of COIVD, and on their deathbeds — or alternately,… | Continue reading
The house being buzzed several times by an airplane. To be clear, I don’t think it was buzzing my house in particular; it was flying a loop and my house just happened to be part of the loop. … | Continue reading
The new Coke Zero Sugar (henceforth referred to as “Coke Zero”) has arrived at the Scalzi Compound, in its “Hey Look We’re Just Like Regular Coke” red can and new flav… | Continue reading
For someone who proclaimed he was on vacation, I had a busy week — edits on the novella (now done), meetings on things I can’t tell you about, and business emails and such on other thin… | Continue reading
Fantasy stories as often as not have their roots in reality, and for Monkey Around, author Jadie Jang wanted to root her book in her own lived reality — one other people might think they knew… | Continue reading
This past week, I swam in the ocean. Unfortunately, so did my phone. My friends and I had the bright idea to buy some of those waterproof cellphone bags from the beach store so we wouldn’t ha… | Continue reading
Good things always have to come to an end. Or do they? Author Matthew Hughes is determined not to let the good name of Jack Vance and his fantastical worlds end. Follow along in his Big Idea as he … | Continue reading
Hello, everyone, and welcome to my one-year-anniversary-of-being-on-Whatever post! The last time I posted, it was about how I’ve been having a hard time posting lately, and I’m sad that… | Continue reading
This just in: Our neighbors’ apples are coming along nicely. They’re not ripe yet — if you bite into one, they’re still a bit astringent — but it won’t be long u… | Continue reading
Author Nicole Willson, who has been a lifelong horror fan, gives us a little backstory on how she came up with the idea for her newest novel… or rather, the backstory on how she realized she … | Continue reading
The occasional speckle that you see? Birds and planes. Oh, and like one frame of my window screen at the end. Enjoy. — JS | Continue reading
So here’s a thing: With the completion of the third Dispatcher novella, which happened last night (minus a quick read-through and a few inevitable minor tweaks of the last couple of chapters … | Continue reading
For those of you who are fans of the Dispatcher series, good news: I literally just five minutes ago finished the third novella. Also, the answer to any question you might have about it at the mome… | Continue reading
If we have to come to the end of July, at least we have this lovely stack of new books and ARCs to send it off. What here would you like to take with you into the dog days of August? Share in the c… | Continue reading
Earlier in the year, the toilet in our en suite bathroom stopped working as it should and we decided it was time to replace it. Also, and coincidentally, we decided that 2021 was the year we were g… | Continue reading
Sometimes the Big Idea of one’s book is… well. Not something that you would contemplate in real life, but might make an intriguing premise for one’s novel. Brad Parks knows a litt… | Continue reading
This dog needs her own yoga studio. Clearly she has the form for it. Hope you had a good day, folks. As you can see, ours here was pretty relaxing. — JS | Continue reading
Archived here for posterity. 1. Team Scalzi was approached today with a query about a “shopping agreement” for one of my properties. A “shopping agreement” is basically wher… | Continue reading
There’s a special time in everybody’s life, and by “special” we mean “really confusing and also seriously what the heck is going on?” It’s that special tim… | Continue reading
Small housekeeping note: In the last couple of days it’s become clear that “pingbacks” — notifications from other sites that they are linking to posts here — are being… | Continue reading
Sugar, a connoisseur of small arthropods. She knows what she likes. In other news, Athena is on vacation this week, and I am finally at a point where I am likely to finish this novella I’ve b… | Continue reading
Doldrums /ˈdōldrəmz,ˈdäldrəmz/ noun a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or depression. Like a ship in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, I am going through a doldrum. July has been my lea… | Continue reading
Open your chakras and come along in author Nicholas Bowling’s Big Idea, as he tells you of his journey for happiness. Or at least, his journey to writing his new novel, The Follower. NICHOLAS… | Continue reading
Cases of COVID are on the upswing again, in Ohio as well as nationwide, so I thought I would check in with the CDC and see how my county is doing. Darke County, Ohio is not particularly well vaccin… | Continue reading
Humans are garbage. Or perhaps, as author Catherynne M. Valente has it, it’s more accurate to say that the world that people live in is actual garbage. Come along in her Big Idea as she tells… | Continue reading
A few months ago, I started noticing that things I looked at every day that were not previously blurry had become blurry. The clock on the stove from the couch, the subtitles on a video game from t… | Continue reading
In author Dan Rice’s Big Idea, he shows us a world beyond our own, alongside a world that happens to be our own. How is this possible? Follow along as he tells us a bit about his inspiration … | Continue reading
Back in the summer 2018, I wrote for the blog like I do now. For my last post of the summer, I mentioned that I felt bad I never responded to anyone’s comments the entire time. I proceeded to… | Continue reading
There’s a lot of drama going on in tonight’s sunset. It’s a keeper. (Actually, it’s not, it’s already gone. But it certainly was memorable.) — JS | Continue reading
Because sometimes it’s fun to take bright and colorful things and make them… moody. So angsty! — JS | Continue reading
We’re at the mid-point of July, and what better time to show off a hefty collection of new books and ARCs that have some to the Scalzi Compound. What here is calling to you for the second hal… | Continue reading
I didn’t think that this post would be the last of its kind, as I expected there to be episodes 7-9, like with WandaVision, but alas, season one of Loki ends with just six episodes. I’m… | Continue reading
They say you should always know your audience, but in author Nicole Kornher-Stace’s case, she took this saying literally. Follow along in her Big Idea as she tells you about who she wrote Jil… | Continue reading
It was going to be released on March 22, 2022 (in the US and Canada). Now it’s going to be released a week earlier: March 15, 2022. Why the change? For abstruse reasons relating to internatio… | Continue reading
I regret nothing. — JS | Continue reading
By now, you’ve probably come to expect my monthly snack box review posts, and with this post I shall have met said expectation, because this post is my review of the July Sakuraco Box! If you… | Continue reading
In the face of adversity, it’s easy to think everyone is going to turn on each other. Author Ada Hoffman shows us that the opposite might also true, in the Big Idea for her newest novel, The … | Continue reading
News arrives to me today that the Coca-Cola company is yet again tweaking both the formula and look of Coke Zero (more formally known as Coke Zero Sugar, but literally no one outside Coke’s m… | Continue reading