[ A stream crossing the path at Rosell Park. ]
And things continue to be exciting, here in the USA. As of this past Sunday (July 21), Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris as the new candidate. Assuming the Democratic party power players don’t fuck this up – and there is every reason to expect that they will, in fact, fuck this up – I look forward to voting for Harris. I don’t think she is a perfect candidate, but she is the best one at present for beating Trump and slowing the inevitable slide into full-on Nationalist Christian (or “Nat C”, which has an appropriate ring to it) totalitarianism.
Reading
I finished M. John Harrison’s Viriconium after almost a month of steady progress. What a beautiful, dense, poetic, difficult read! As I commented on Bluesky, I would shelve Viriconium between Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. More for writing style in the latter case than for content.
Writing
Though I am on vacation this week and next I find it difficult to put my head in the space necessary to put words to page. That said, I am making some good progress in my world building for Cacophonous (and slight progress for Up the River to the Mountains), and have come up with some interesting ideas for past weekly writing prompts. If only I had the focus to follow through with any of these.
And I also wrote a poem! And made some notes for improvements!
Subject: Dragons, Revenge
Setting: Library
Genre: Romance
Listening
Molly Hatchet, “Dreams I’ll Never See”
Interesting Links
- “Free George R. R. Martin from The Winds of Winter” (Maddy Myers, Polygon) – This article caught my attention (ha!) due to its discussion of ADHD and “ADHD paralysis“, in particular the line “you do want to write — you just cannot get yourself to start.” That is where I am and have been for most of the year. I don’t know if I have the ADHD part, but I definitely have the paralysis part when it comes to long-form writing.