Month: February 2024

  • Weekly Round-up, February 24, 2024

    Grand Rapids, Facing East from the corner of Monroe Ave and Louis Street.

    This was another extremely busy week, so not many updates to report, unless ServiceNow debugging is interesting. Managed to read quite a bit in the spare moments in the mornings, and worked out a lot, so as I finish this post I am tired and sore.

    Reading

    Currently reading The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers, a collection of short stories by Moroccan writer Fouad Laroui.

    Writing

    A little creative work this week. A poem and some world-building for the story I wrote most of during NaNoWriMo 2022. So that idea, at least, still has legs.

    This Week’s Writing Prompt

    Subject: Dragons, Mutants
    Setting: Ocean
    Genre: Adventure

    Interesting Links

  • Weekly Round-up, February 17, 2024

    Ice sculpture of a castle at the Elliptic at Rosa Parks Circle, Grand Rapids, Michigan

    The warm weather comes and goes, and it seems that all of winter was packed into a couple of weeks in late January. I have a friend, Mark, who I get together with weekly to practice martial arts. This is much easier outside, because we don’t need to worry about walls, ceilings, and cats. Of course practicing outside in the winter is difficult, except for this winter. Our last outdoor practice session for 2023 was the week before Christmas, and our first of 2024 was the second weekend of February.

    Reading

    Still working my way through short books. Currently reading Not One Day by French writer and Oulipo member Anne Garréta.

    Writing

    Not a lot to report, though I did come up with a couple of ideas for last week’s writing prompt (Genius Loci, Reincarnation, Lost City, War). There is something interesting to be mined from that particular random assemblage of words.

    This Week’s Writing Prompt

    Subject: Colonization, Kaiju
    Setting: Ship
    Genre: Literary Fiction

    Interesting Links

  • Weekly Round-up, February 10, 2024

    Happy New Year! Today is the first day of the Year of the Wood Dragon. As I am an Earth Rooster, this is potentially an auspicious year for me.

    Reading

    I’m still feeling some post-Dostoevsky reading stress, so I have been hitting the big stack of short fiction. A couple of issues of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, some Patreon short stories, and the like. I also have a great many short novels and novellas which have been gathering dust on my shelves for some years now. So I am working my way through them, and enjoying the process. It’s nice to be able to both start and finish reading a work in the same month.

    At the moment the book in front of me is Wakulla Springs by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages. I picked this up at ConFusion in maybe 2016, and am finally reading it.

    Writing

    Not much to speak of. This year has been busy to the point of distraction.

    Writing Prompt

    Subject: Genius Loci, Reincarnation
    Setting: Lost City
    Genre: War

    Interesting Links

  • IWSG, February 2024: Website or Webshite?

    Frost on a car.

    Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone! Welcome back for another visit to my humble blog, where I talk about whatever is front and center in my mind at the moment.

    The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for February 2024 is: What turns you off when visiting an author’s website/blog? Lack of information? A drone of negativity? Little mention of author’s books? Constant mention of books?

    I have been a web developer, and have run this blog in one form or another, since 1999. Therefore on the topic of what makes a good website, I have Opinions.

    In order from most-worst to least-worst, these are the things which will most turn me off about an author’s website:

    1. Not having a website. If you are an author who publishes, then you need a website of your own. Full stop. Social media is good for boosting your signal, but social media platforms are ephemeral and, as we have seen with Twitter (and, increasingly, Facebook), vulnerable to the whims of the petulant billionaire manbabies who run them. Any author who wants readers to be able to find them needs their own website which will be the final source of truth for any information about their person and writing.
    2. Unusable/unreadable website. Bad font and color choices, broken images, broken links, background scripts which consume so many resources that the page never loads, or a browser freezes or crashes. So much style that there is no room for substance. As a corollary, websites which look okay on a computer but which are completely unusable on mobile. Smart phones have been around for decades now, and having a website which can’t be accessed or read on a mobile device is immediately cutting out at least 50% of your viewing audience.
    3. Website full of ads. Nothing wrong with bringing in some passive incomes from Third-party ads or affiliate links or the like. Displaying third-party ads on your website is fine, as long as they don’t consume so much real estate or so many resources that they become unusable. Also if your site doesn’t show more real content than ads by at least two orders of magnitude, then you are actually running a clickbait site with a thin veneer authorial intent.
    4. What is this website even for? If you are an author with a professional author’s website, and on that website the information about you as an author and the works you have written and published is difficult to find, then I as a user will give up after about 30 seconds. Take my blog for instance. I have not published much, but right up at the top is the PUBLISHED WORKS AND LITERARY MATTERS link, front and center. If I ever become a Famous Author, my readers will immediately know where to go to see the complete list of my published works.

    Other than that, the things which turn me off of a website are all content-related, like gatekeeping fandoms, displaying a world-view which would cause me to insta-block them on social media, or complaining about evolving tastes and reading habits without also putting in the effort to learn to navigate the increasingly diverse and fragmented pool of potential readers. An author’s website is their personal space where they can post whatever they want. If their content turns me off, I’ll go elsewhere.

    And that’s all I got to say about that. How about y’all’z opinions? What makes for a good or bad web browsing experience?

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  • Weekly Round-up, February 3, 2024

    A view of the Grand River, facing north from the pedestrian bridge.

    After several months of January, February is finally here and with it temperatures in the 40s. Normally this would be worrisome, and it is in the larger sense, but for now, after the arctic blast which dumped almost two feet of snow on us and caused some moderate damage to our property, I’ll take it. Then again I remember Februaries at Grand Valley State University, around 1990, when the air warmed and people were outside in shorts and swimsuits, sunbathing on picnic tables amidst piles of snow. So it goes in West Michigan.

    Reading

    Duanwad Pimwana‘s Bright, translated from Thai by Mui Poopoksakul.

    Writing

    Nothing to speak of.

    Writing Prompt

    Subject: Addiction, Economics
    Setting: Border Town
    Genre: Magic Realism

    Interesting Links

  • January 2024 Books and Reading Notes

    After almost two months, I finally finished Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Wow, was that a slog. A good slog, but a slog nonetheless. Now on to fifteen or twenty shorter, easier reads before attempting something arduous.

    Almost all of the books I acquired in January were purchased at, or in anticipation of, ConFusion 2024.

    Acquisitions

    new Books and Reading Material in the Month of January, 2024

    1. David Estes and Dyrk Ashton, Kraken Rider Z (Wraithmarked Creative) [2024.01.03] – I have been a fan of Dyrk Ashton’s work for several years. We are Convention friends, and he is a Righteous Dude.
    2. Jean Davis, Frayed (self-published) [2024.01.19] – purchased from Davis at ConFusion 2024.
    3. Michael J. DeLuca, Night Roll (Stelliform Press) [2024.01.20] – Purchased from Reckoning Press at ConFusion 2024.
    4. Reckoning: Creativity and Coronavirus (Reckoning Press) [2024.01.20] – Purchased from Reckoning Press at ConFusion 2024.
    5. Reckoning #6 [2024.01.20] – Purchased from Reckoning Press at ConFusion 2024.
    6. Reckoning #7 [2024.01.20] – Purchased from Reckoning Press at ConFusion 2024.
    7. Zack Be (editor), Inner Workings: A Calendar of Fools Anthology (Calendar of Fools, LLC) [2024.01.20] – Purchased from Storm Humbert during a group signing at ConFusion 2024.
    8. Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth [2024.01.21] – Purchased at ConFusion 2024.
    9. Lesley Connor and Jason Sizemore (editors), Robotic Ambitions (Apex Book Company) [2024.01.21] – Reward for a Kickstarter campaign run by Apex.

    Reading List

    Books I read in January 2024

    Books

    1. Fyodor Dostoevsky (Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear, translators), Demons [2024.01.26]
    2. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2023.01.29]
    3. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2023.01.30]

    Short Prose

    1. Jim C. Hines, “The Girls From the Hood” (Patreon post) [2024.01.15]
    2. Rosamund Lannin, “The Lake House”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.26]
    3. Jim C. Hines, “Coyote Cave” (Patreon post) [2024.01.28]
    4. Eliza Langhans, “A Giants’ Heart”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
    5. D. A. Xiaolin Spires, “Fresh and Imminent Taste of Cucumbers”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
    6. Anthony Ha, “Late Train”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
    7. Chloe N. Clark, “Jumpers”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
    8. Nicole Kimberling, “Sugar-Salt Time: A Love Story”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
    9. Felix Kent, “Dynastic Arrangements of the Habsburgs, Washakie Branch”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
    10. Eric Darby, “The Parking Witch”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.29]
    11. Gavin J. Grant, “Possum, Not Playing”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.29]
    12. Jordan Taylor, “Strange Engines”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.29]
    13. Audrey R. Hollis, “How to Be Afraid”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.29]
    14. Frances Rowat, “Ink, and Breath, and Spring”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.29]
    15. Fred Nadis, “The Giant Jew”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.29]
    16. Amber Burke, “In Pictures”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.29]
    17. T.S. McAdams, “Duck Circles”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.29]
    18. Margo Lanagan, “More Information to Help You Get to Rookwood”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]
    19. Mary Cool, “The Fruit That Bears the Flowers”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]
    20. Lisa Martin, “Seat Belt On, Falling”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]
    21. Jeff Benz, “The Stone People”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]
    22. Nicole Kimberling, “We Should See Less of Each Other”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]
    23. Michael Byers, “Sibling Rivalry”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]