Tag: Kickstarter

This Year Can’t End Soon Enough

John Winkelman

New reading material from the week of December 5, 2021

This past Wednesday I received my COVID booster shot at a local pharmacy and, like with the first and second shots in April, I felt an immediate sense of relief which was welcome but not altogether pleasant. It was something like a hangover, a post-stress reaction to getting a thing which is desired but not wanted, if you follow me. Since it was necessary, I was glad to get it, but I would much rather that it was not necessary. But this is the world in which we now live.

I just found out that an old friend has entered hospice, which, coming after another friend passed a couple of weeks ago, and two others in late winter and early summer of this year (none from COVID), really took the energy out of me. And all this in addition to Mom dying back at the beginning of September. Yeah, 2021 can go straight to hell, which at this point is kind of redundant.

On a more positive note, this was a most excellent week for the library at Winkelman Abbey, with many books and magazines arriving in this, the first full week of December.

First up is The Tempered Steel of Antiquity Grey by Shawn Speakman, newly arrived from a successful Kickstarter. This is another of the Kickstarters which was significantly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated fallout and supply chain disruption. I suspect this will not be the last Kickstarter reward which will suffer from the events of the past couple of years, and at this point it is probably fair to say that this will be the normal state of affairs for the foreseeable future. As Hofstadter’s Law states, “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

Next up is the latest issue of The Paris Review. I recently cancelled my subscription, or rather the automatic renewal of my subscription, as I have not read any of the previous six issues. However, the thought of no longer receiving The Paris Review causes me a sense of unease, so that cancellation may soon, well, be cancelled.

Next up are two(!) books from my subscription to the catalog of And Other Stories — Paulo Scott’s Phenotypes, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn, and Mona Arshi’s Somebody Loves You.

Next is issue 44 of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, a small magazine of great words published by Small Beer Press.

Next is Terminal Uprising by Jim Hines. This is my second copy of this book. Hines signed the first one at ConFusion 2020, and I gave it to some friends who live on the east side of the state. This copy, however, is MINE, and I hope to get it signed at ConFusion 2022, which is scheduled for the third weekend in January.

And finally, the boxed set of the Interdependency series (The Collapsing Empire, The Consuming Fire, and The Last Emperox) by John Scalzi, of which much to my surprise I did not own copies. This is also a purchase specifically meant for receiving one or more signatures, as Mr. Scalzi is a regular attendee at ConFusion.

Jim Harrison Collected Poems

As Zyra and I were leaving to pick up dinner last night I noticed a box tucked in a sheltered corner of our porch. When I opened it I found my copy of the single-volume edition of Harrison’s Complete Poems, which I was not expecting to arrive for several more weeks. This book is gorgeous; nearly 950 pages long, and it contains, as it says on the cover, all of Harrison’s poetry. This edition includes a beautiful introduction penned by Terry Tempest Williams, and cover art, as with so many of Harrison’s other books, by the late Russell Chatham.

Wednesday night after Tai Chi class, I watched the book launch event for Jim Harrison’s Complete Poems, hosted by his publisher Copper Canyon Press. It included stories about Harrison, as well as his friends reading some of his poems. I have been a fan of Jim Harrison since the early 1990s when, at the suggestion of one of my professors, I picked up Wolf. One book led to another, and I have never looked back nor regretted a single minute spent reading his words.

The event was recorded and is available for viewing here on YouTube.

In reading news, I am (still) working my way through the stories in Dostoevsky’s The Eternal Husband and Other Stories, as well as David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years. I am enjoying both immensely, but times being what they are I don’t have a lot of energy or focus, and these books each deserve both. So I am reading slowly and in small chunks.

In writing news I am noodling around with a short story and a few poems, trying to work up the energy to dive back into my partially-completed NaNoWriMo manuscript. I would have made better progress, but 2021 keeps finding way to kick my legs out from under me, metaphorically speaking. So maybe I will hit my writing goals for the year. All I can say about that is, this year was a hell of a lot better than last year, writerly-speaking, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was good.

Kickstarter, Covid, and Supply Chain Disruption

John Winkelman

New Books for the Week of October 3, 2021

This past week was one of little to nothing accomplished. A combination of terrible insomnia and stress, along with some kind of mild illness (not COVID, according to the test I took on Wednesday), left me as brain-dead as I have been in any week this past year.

Three new books arrived at the house this past week.

On the left is Empty Wardrobes by Maria Judite de Carvalho, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Julie Costa and published by Two Lines Press.

In the middle is Jason Sanford’s new novel The Plague Birds, published by Apex Book Company.

On the right is Ekphrastic Beasts, a combination art book and RPG monster manual published by Janaka Stucky by way of his Kickstarter campaign. This book is the basis for the title of this post.

The past two years have been tough on everyone. The COVID pandemic has disrupted the interconnected systems of the world to a level usually not seen outside of world wars. Everyone is having a tough time. Everyone is stressed.

On April 28 of 2020 Janaka Stucky launched the Kickstarter campaign for his RPG monster manual Ekphrastic Beasts. The pandemic was well underway at that time, and quarantines had been going on for well over a month. There was no indication at that time of how long the lockdowns would last, or what the effect would be on the global workforce and supply chains. Simply put, the modern world had never experienced a disruption like this, ongoing, pervasive and unpredictable.

The original estimated delivery date was well over a year ago. Obviously, since the book just arrived here for my weekly update, that deadline has long passed.

In the comments for this Kickstarter are many, many messages of support, many more messages expressing concern and/or some level of dissatisfaction with the caveat of understanding that times are tough, and a few messages which basically say, “fuck your problems, ship the books.”

There are any number of reasons for a Kickstarter campaign to miss its deadline – shipping issues, production issues, workforce issues. Personal issues. This kind of thing happens. It is unfortunate that it happens, but it happens.

Over the last two years a great many deadlines have been missed for a great many reasons, almost all of them related either to COVID (and peoples’ responses to COVID) or the occasional cargo ship stuck sideways in the Suez Canal. This is just as frustrating for the people responsible for fulfillment as the people expecting to be fulfilled.

So coming in when a long-delayed Kickstarter is finally complete, and complaining about the wait, and about the perceived deficiencies in the product, without acknowledging the unique circumstances of the past two years is, frankly, a dick move, and people who feel such a gross sense of entitlement, no matter the amount of money they put down, deserve to be disappointed. It isn’t all about you. Pull your head out and take a look around at the world, and then choose to feel a little empathy rather than kick the one person who held it all together in order to complete the project, come hell or high water.

Here endeth the lesson.

The Failure Mode of Vacation is Ennui

John Winkelman

Reading Material acquired in the week of July 4, 2021

I mean, I had a vacation, technically, back in the last full week of May, but I was still recovering from 2020 at the time, so it was more like attempting to reel myself back to myself after a year of dissociating. And the five weeks of work which followed were fairly stress-free, as far as work goes.

But the first week of my two-week vacation was kind of…I can’t really call it a waste of time, but I spent most of it binge-watching TV and playing video games, and staring at all the things in my life which require my attention, and for every single one of those tasks, I considered the work carefully, then said fuck it and went back to playing Diablo II.

I’m doing my best to not kick myself for wasting a week in which I could have been reading and writing. I did manage to spend some time out of doors, which did me a world of good, but the whole point of having time off was to be productive, and that I most surely was not.

However, even in the midst of this psychological malaise, there are some bright spots; to wit: four new bundles of words arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey in the past week.

First up is the latest issue of Pulphouse Magazine, to which I will one day submit a story, if I ever complete a short story.

The next three are the latest publications from Zombies Need Brains, from their recently-completed Kickstarter campaign – Derelict, When Worlds Collide, and The Modern Deity’s Guide to Surviving Humanity. This is the third of ZNB’s Kickstarters I have backed, and the first to which I have not submitted a story. 2020 was kind of a lousy year in that way.

In reading news, I finished Dalva and moved on to Harrison’s follow-up novel The Road Home. I hadn’t intended to spend my vacation re-reading old favorites, but that is where my mind is right now, and my life seems to be improved thereby.

I also finished Francisco Verso’s Nexhuman (Apex Book Company), which was quite good, and one of the very few “salvagepunk” novels I have read. In fact, the only other ones I can think of at the moment are the Bas-Lag trilogy by China Mieville.

In writing news, not much has changed, though I am putting together a list of upcoming calls for submission to themed anthologies. Maybe one of these will break me out of my funk.

I’m In With the In(oculated) Crowd

John Winkelman

Books for the week of May 9, 2021

As of two days ago, I am two weeks past my second COVID shot, which means, according to the CDC, that I am fully inoculated, or at least as inoculated as one can get against things which continually evolve in response to our interactions with the world. We are well into the Anthropocene, and the scene is getting dangerous, what with the continual and inevitable responses to our actions upon the parts of the planet that are not us.

This was a good week for acquisitions here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey, thanks in large part to the arrival of rewards from a couple of recent Kickstarter campaigns.

First is the Spring 2021 issue of Peninsula Poets, the journal of the Poetry Society of Michigan, to which I had accidentally let my subscription lapse. Things are back in good order now, and just in time to serve as writing inspiration going into the summer.

Next is another Kickstarter reward, Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird and Cooties Shot Required, both edited by Scott Gable and C. Dombrowski of Broken Eye Books, who publish very well-made anthologies full of good-to-great writing on a variety of topics.

On bottom left is the latest issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, which is consistently just a damn good read.

On the bottom right is Fantastic Lairs: Boss Battles and Climactic Encounters, from a recent Kickstarter. I have put money toward several games on Kickstarter in recent years. Though I haven’t played in a long time, the ideas in the rule books, the world building, tactics, and strategies therein make for good study and good writing prompts.

In reading news, I am just over a hundred pages into Arkady Martine‘s A Memory Called Empire. I haven’t completed enough of the book to form a solid opinion, but I am really enjoying it so far. For nonfiction I am slowly working through Darran Anderson’s Imaginary Cities. Though well over a hundred pages in, I am tempted to go back and start again, this time with a notebook nearby. I have not read anything like this book. It is a survey, a history, a meditation, a treatise, and it reads like poetry. At less that 20% through this book, I think it will be one of my favorite reads of the year. Highly recommended.

In writing news, not much has changed from last week. I still feel kind of brain-dead from the effects of the second vaccination shot as well as *gestures at the world*, though the effects of the shot have mostly worn off. The world, not so much. But warmer days means mornings on the porch will soon be viable, and when that happens I hope to hit the ground running with several hundred thousand words of prose by the end of the year.

Or maybe a couple of poems.

Or somewhere in the middle.

One Hundred and Eighteen Seconds

John Winkelman

Today here in Grand Rapids we will get just under two minutes more daylight than we had when I published the previous post on December 20. And those 118 seconds make all the difference.

We are on the far side of the winter solstice and also of the Christmas holidays, with three days and change left in 2020.

One book and one magazine arrived in this past week. They are likely the last of the 2020 reading material.

On the left is the 100th (!) issue of the superb Rain Taxi Review of Books, which highlights lesser-known authors and smaller, independent presses. The quarterly magazine, along with their excellent website, are hazardous to my bank account in the same way that living a hundred yards from the best pizza and deli in the city is, well, hazardous to my bank account.

On the right is Mythological Figures and Maleficent Monsters, from a successful Kickstarter run by EN Publishing. This is a sort of spiritual successor to the old Deities and Demigods rule book for Dungeons and Dragons. Though I have not yet read through the book, I can say that the artwork is beautiful.

In reading news, not much happened last week, due to long work days and prep for holidays. Ditto for writing news.

This is the last of my weekly updates for 2020. I will post a few end-of-the-year roundups over the next week. Thank you all for reading, and good luck to all of us in the run-up to 2021.

Hot and Cold Running Books

John Winkelman

As this weird, terrible, chaotic year winds down, so does my energy, and I find myself drifting without thought or emotion from one moment to the next. The days of December are blurring together undifferentiated, as did the days of November, October, and the rest. I have not left the house for more than an hour in several weeks, and there are times where I don’t leave the house at all for two or more days in a row.

That just ain’t no way to live.

Fortunately I have my girlfriend, our cat, and a great big heap of unread books to keep me from going completely feral here at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A small but most excellent stack of reading material arrived at the house this past week.

On the left is Camille Longley‘s Firefrost, from her recently completed Kickstarter campaign.

In the middle is a signed (!) copy Jeff VanderMeer‘s Ambergris, which includes the three books of the Ambergris series – City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch. This beautiful compilation arrived from Midtown Reader in Tallahassee, Florida. I read part of Finch many years ago, but at the time couldn’t really get into it. In the intervening years I read (and deeply enjoyed!) all of VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy as well as Bourne, and so I think I am ready to re-enter the world of Ambergris.

On the right is the new issue of the Boston Review Forum journal. This issue is devoted to articles about climate change, climate justice, and the like.

In reading news, I am working my way through the superb sixth volume of the Long List Anthology of short fictions which were nominated for, but did not win, the Hugo awards. These books are brilliant, and I wish someone had thought to create such anthologies many years before.

In writing news…there is no writing news. Ideas, yes, but no writing. So it goes.

That’s all for now. Three weeks left in this energy-sucking vampire tick of a year. I can make it three more weeks.

What I Read In November 2020 – Short Prose

John Winkelman

 

Looks like I will be ending the year as I started it, immersed in short fiction. This month was the first time since March that I put any particular effort into reading short fiction despite my plan at the beginning of 2020 to try to read at least 200 short stories. That sounds like a lot, but considering the average short story takes about half an hour to read at a reasonable pace, that number could easily be doubled without taking a lot of time out of any given day.

There are nineteen short stories in this list, from two anthologies – The Book of Dreams, published by Subterranean Press, and Apocalyptic, published by Zombies Need Brains. I am fairly certain I picked up the Subterranean Press book as part of one of their occasional Grab Bags. Apocalyptic was part of a Kickstarter, the third or fourth annual such which ZNB puts on in order to support the publishing each year of a trio of themed anthologies. I submitted a story to one of their previous calls for submission but, as you may have gathered from the lack of cheering and shouting it to the heavens, that story was not accepted.

[NOTE: That story was later accepted by a different publisher, and will be released on January 1, at which time I will cheer and shout it to the heavens.]

I won’t make any predictions about what I may read in December, which starts (egads!) tomorrow. I am writing several short stories against rapidly approaching submission deadlines, and the holidays are always chaotic, although ironically much less so this year, when everything else is so much more so. I may read a lot or not at all.

The List

2020.11.09: Silverberg, Robert – “The Prisoner”,  The Book of Dreams
2020.11.10: Shepard, Lucius – “Dream Burgers at the Mouth of Hell”, The Book of Dreams
2020.11.10: Lake, Jay – “Testaments”, The Book of Dreams
2020.11.10: Baker, Kage – “Rex Nemorensis”, The Book of Dreams
2020.11.10: Ford, Jeffrey – “86 Deathdick Road”, The Book of Dreams
2020.11.10: McGuire, Seanan – “Coafields’ Catalog of Available Apocalypse Events”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.10: Picchi, Aimee – “Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.10:  Huff, Tanya – “To Dust We Shall Return”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.11: Holzner, Nancy – “End of Eternity”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.11: Blackmoore, Stephen – “Little Armageddons”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.11: Johnson, Zakariah – “Almost Like Snow”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.11: Malan, Violette – “Shadows Behind”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.12: Keramidas, Eleftherios – “A Tale of Two Apocalypses”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.13: Enge, James – “Zodiac Chorus”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.13: Ning, Leah – “Last Letters”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.14: Vaughn, Thomas – “Gut Truck”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.14: King, Marjorie – “Sass and Sacrifice”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.15: Palmatier, Joshua – “The Ballad of Rory McDaniels”, Apocalyptic
2020.11.15: Jessop, Blake – “Trust Fall”, Apocalyptic

The Warm Days of October

John Winkelman

We are in the middle of a gorgeous mid-October heat wave, with temperatures in the upper 70s during the day, and abundant sunshine and a light breeze which makes the autumn trees shimmer like kaleidoscopes seen through a good dose of psilocybin.

Only one book arrived at the house this week – Recognize Fascism, an anthology of resistance-themed short pieces edited by Crystal M. Huff and published by the always-excellent World Weaver Press, from a recently-completed Kickstarter campaign. This is a follow-up to the 2018 anthology Resist Fascism, also edited by Huff. If you think you have noticed a theme in the books which I have collected over the past couple of years, well, you are not mistaken.

In reading news I have managed to keep up the book-a-day pace for the Sealey Challenge, and having this volume and density of poetry in my life is doing wonderful things for my state of mind.

In writing news, I have done almost none over the past week though I think I have figured a way through the snarl which kept me from completing the current scene in the book. I will hit it Monday morning and see if my idea will play out on paper.

In other exciting news, I was just notified that a short story I had submitted back in January of this year has just been accepted for publication! The issue in question will go live on January 1, 2021, and at that point I will announce the venue and post the link and all other sorts of fanfare and information.

In all the chaos, misery and uncertainty abundant in the world right now, this was a very welcome piece of news.

It Is Done

John Winkelman

At long last, after ten weeks of second and third shift work, fifty hours a week, the project from hell is done. I got out of bed around noon today after shutting down my workstation at 11:00 last night. I don’t remember the last time I was this tired, or burned out, or otherwise completely done with the world. Early February 2013 maybe, or mid-May 2009. Something like that. The difference here is that, other than the crazy work hours, it was not a negative or traumatic experience; simply a lot of work across a lot of hours at a time of day when I am usually asleep.

In the last ten weeks I have lost around 10 pounds, most of that muscle mass as far as I can tell, from the complete disruption of my workout schedule as well as the lack of sleep, which is now well into the territory where if it were being inflicted upon me by a government agency it would count as cruel and unusual punishment. Since it is instead being inflicted upon me by capitalism it is considered being a good employee and contributing member of the team.

The part of my life I have missed most, and which I most look forward to, is waking up before the dawn, after a good night of sleep, and practicing tai chi on the front porch, then relaxing with a cup or two of coffee and reading and writing as the world wakes up around me. Three hours of quiet time before work is the bare minimum to keep my head on straight, and I have not had that since there was still snow on the ground.

So here we are in the last full week of spring, as the days are just about as long as they will get before the night starts creeping in again, and now I get to start enjoying the warm weather.

Being well-rested and healthy will also certainly be of benefit to my relationship in any number of ways, not the least of which will be that when Z proposes that we do anything at all, I will feel something other than depressed and tired at the idea of having one more goddamn thing to think about. I look forward to looking forward to things again.

Only one shipment of books this week, from Zombies Need Brains LLC, a small indie publisher which runs an annual Kickstarter where they fund and call for submissions for a trio of anthologies of varying themes. This is the second of their Kickstarters I have funded. I submitted a story to the previous round of books, and though it was not accepted for publication they sent an encouraging rejection letter. So I will try again, if and as as I have time to write.

Speaking of writing, I have a steadily growing pile of handwritten notes for the book I plan to write this summer. The plot is coming together, as well as a couple of the primary characters – protagonist and antagonist. I like the feel of it – secondary-ish world fantasy, post apocalyptic; though with enough history in the world, everywhere and everything is post- some apocalypse or other. Or mid-, or even pre-apocalypse. Kind of like right now here in the real world.

In reading I am partway through Derek Künsken‘s book The Quantum Magician, and really liking it so far! I met Künsken at ConFusion a few years back, and his book has been gathering dust on my shelves until last week. Like the other small press and self-published books I have read this year, it is really good! I look forward to snagging the sequel sometime later this year.

Now off to get caught up with the world, which seems to have moved on without me over these past two and a half months.

Maybe I’ll Build a Fort With My Books

John Winkelman

Briefly – Top left is the latest issue of Jacobin magazine, the contents of which are more and more necessary every day as Trump-instigated and Trump-led fascism comes to increasingly dominate the national discourse. Next to it is Indigo by Ellen Bass, from a Kickstarter run by the extraordinary Copper Canyon Press. Third is the newest issues of Poetry magazine, which includes a poem by local poet and professor Todd Kaneko. And on the right is The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang, which I finished reading a little over a week ago. I ordered a copy of the paperback when I was about a third of the way through the e-book, as I wanted a physical copy should I ever attend a signing. It is just that good!

In writing news I am still gathering notes, research ans musings for the book I hope to begin when my hellish project at work ends in three weeks. In reading news I am a couple of chapters into Mike Shel’s self-published novel Aching God, which was a finalist for the 2018 SPFBO awards.

Some crazy shit went down here in Grand Rapids over the past couple of days, and seems set to continue for some time yet. The national guard has arrived and in addition to the quarantine/lockdown we are also under a 7 pm to 5 am curfew until Wednesday. I will create a separate post about everything so as to not mix and dilute narratives with my day-to-day life.