2020 has been a terrible year in many ways, but it’s been fairly decent for my fiction career. I’ve sold four five stories and had three published. All three published this year are eligible for the major science fiction and fantasy awards.
My first sale of the year was in February. “Better in Every Way” is a user manual for your new clone. It can cook, it can clean, it can do so much more. As long as you treat it well. “Better in Every Way” is available online via Flame Tree Press.
Up next is “Where the Earth Meets the Sea and the Sea Meets the Sky.” It’s a combination of two fairy tales long after those stories end. At its heart, it’s as much romance as fantasy. A tale of two lonely, broken hearts helping each other mend at the far edge of the world. Ages ago I saw someone ask “what if a selkie story ended with a happily ever after.” I’ve tried to present how that could look. This one is not available online, but the print anthology can be purchased from Air and Nothingness Press. If you’re reading for awards and would like a copy, please reach out.
My final publication of the year was “Hope, Unrequested and Freely Given.” This is another story that’s as much romance as fantasy. It’s the tale of two elderly magicians in their twilight years. The woman is wracked with cancer, and her husband is trying desperately to save her. Ultimately, it’s about accepting and embracing the inevitable. It’s available online at Zooscape.
Of the three, I suggest “Where the Earth Meets the Sea and the Sea Meets the Sky” as the strongest. It’s a bit longer than the other two, and it ends full of hope and the promise of a new beginning. As 2020 winds to a close, I feel like hope is something we all need.
Cyberpunk 2077 will end up regarded as a genre-defining game, but not in the way the marketing would have you believe. It’s not the next-generation open-world RPG I expected. It’s not really a looter shooter, either. It’s more a cinematic experience where you, the player, are the co-star in an A-list actor’s interactive production. At its best, Cyberpunk is a cinematic experience played out across the gorgeous, gritty backdrop of Night City.
tl;dr: did you grow up making jokes about hacking the Gibson? If so, you’ll like this game. Read on to see why.
Caveat to this mini-review: I’m playing on PC rather than a last-gen console, so bugs and performance issues were all tolerable for me.
Cyberpunk liberally borrows ideas and systems from other games. You can certainly see the influence of other open-world RPGS, from The Witcher to Fallout to Grand Theft Auto. What the different systems lack in originality, they make up for in overall fun. They all hang together well enough that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Where Cyberpunk really excels is its integration with Keanu. He plays a major role in the main story, of course, but he also turns up on many side quests and adds pithy commentary. His role is a key part of the game’s lore and of the playing experience, and it comes with all the weight of Johnny Mnemonic, John Wick, and Neo behind it. We’ve seen good storytelling in other games, but nothing that blends action cinema and action gaming like this.
The side gigs and side characters are well done. You will come to love Jackie, Panam, and Judy. Probably more that I haven’t met yet. There are some really well-executed emotional turns in there, too.
There are multiple possible playing styles available. I started with the idea that I would play as a stealthy, katana-wielding ninja (channeling my inner Snow Crash), but I found the hacking to be so fun that switched gears to quickhacks and a tech pistol. There are also options to play as a cyber-enhanced Wolverine, complete with giant retractable claws. Or as long-distance sniper who can shoot through walls. Or a grenade lobbing pyromaniac.
At its worst, Cyberpunk is a buggy, repetitive grind to raise a few thousand eddies (eurodollars) for your next upgrade. I have had NPCs disappear mid-quest, I’ve hopped through a window and out of the world, and I’ve had special effects from some NPCs stick around after they should have faded. All these were fixed by exiting and reloading the game, but they were annoying all the same.
While leveling your character increases your power, you also need to enhance your cybernetic options, and that means collecting a whole pile of eddies. The scripted side gigs and side quests are engaging and just as fun as the main story, but they don’t pay enough to get that legendary operating system or those double-jump legs in a timely manner. And Soulkiller forbid you want to respec your perks; that costs a cool 100k eddies. A resource grind is pretty typical for RPGs, but no less annoying when the world is washed in neon.
Cyberpunk is a violent game. While you can get through much of it as a non-violent player, the inherent violence of the world is inescapable. Night City is a dark, treacherous place full of terrible people doing terrible things. It’s also full of nudity and sex. I’m not opposed to there being sex in video games, but I am not impressed with how they usually handle it, and Cyberpunk is not an exception. It’s mostly ham-handed fantasy with a smattering of unnecessary violence. But hey, you get to choose your character’s penis size, which is a nice change of pace from the more-typical choosing of breast size.
On balance, I like the game. The good outweighs the bad, and much of the bad feels as if it will be patched over the coming weeks. The game really shines with the story and movie star intersection. I don’t want to say Cyberpunk is a turning point in game/movie interaction, but it certainly feels as if has let the genie out of the bottle, and I’m betting we’ll see more of a blend of games and cinema in the future. Add VR to the mix, and the next generation of entertainment will really have arrived. There’s a famous line from William Gibson, the father of the cyberpunk genre, that says “The future is already here–it’s just not evenly distributed.” Cyberpunk 2077 makes that feel true in a way few games have previously.
–End Review–
–Begin Lessons Learned–
Money is important! (So say we all.) There’s a gimmick for making money fast, too. You can buy soda cans from the 10 eddie machines, disassemble them, and sell the components for far more than the cans cost. It’s a little tedious, but it makes eddies fast. I won’t be shocked if this is changed in one of the upcoming patches. If you want to take advantage until then, head to the ripperdoc in Watson’s Northside for easy farming. There’s a collection of vending machines out front.
Once you have a stack of eddies, buy yourself something nice. Cyberpunk as a genre goes hand in hand with body modification, and Cyberpunk the game leans in on it. You can–and should–upgrade yourself. You’ll need some street cred to get the better choices, and I’d wait until you hit a street cred of 12 to get the legendary operating system at the Kabuki Market ripperdoc, though there are cheaper (and less reputation-intensive) options, too. Once you upgrade, hacking really takes off. You can also upgrade your personal cybernetics. The double-jump leg implants are a nice quality of life improvement.
You’ll want to put at least 6 into Tech to help with opening doors.
There’s a perk that allows you to automatically disassemble junk loot. This means you disassemble some stuff that would sell for 750 eddies, so you might want to skip it. I took it and made up the money by recycling soda cans.
Motorcycles are great. They steer better than the cars, and you can lane split.
As mentioned above, there are many useful weapon options. I loved going crazy with hacks. Upgrade your quickhacks at ripperdocs and netrunners, and you, too, can take down an entire building from the sidewalk outside.
The game will glitch. Save, exit, and reload when it does. That has gotten me around all issues so far.
Quicksave (F5 on PC) is your friend. Use it liberally. I haven’t noticed any performance impact from it.
I have another short story out in the wild today. “Hope, Unrequested and Freely Given” is live at Zooscape. There was no rapid turn-around on this story. I wrote it in 2019 and subbed it a few times before sending to Zooscape in May 2020. They accepted it a few weeks later, and it’s out now in the December 2020 issue. This is a fairly typical timeline for many stories that reach publication. Alas, they cannot all be written in a weekend, sold a few days later, and published within a week.
It’s a story written with Missouri on my mind. Baroch and Valerie’s porch has the same view as my in-laws’ porch. The mood was inspired by the Chris Stapleton song “Scarecrow in the Garden.” Sort of a quiet hopelessness, but it didn’t feel right to end the story on the same emotional note as the song, so it goes a different direction.
2020 has been a good year for fiction for me. I had a story out in February, and I have another out this month. “Where the Earth Meets the Sea and the Sea Meets the Sky” is the closing story in the Upon a Once Time anthology of fairy tale mashups. The anthology is print only, and it’s available at Air and Nothingness Press’s website. (If you find this link after November 2020, you’ll need to search for “Upon a Once Time” anthology and hope it’s still in stock.)
“Where the Earth Meets the Sea and the Sea Meets the Sky” is another of those stories that irritates other writers. Not the story itself. It’s possibly the kindest story I’ve ever written. It’s the way it sold. I wrote it over a weekend a few days before the anthology’s submission call ended. I edited it a bit, let Carissa read it once, and edited it a bit more. I do love rearranging adjectives. And then it just… sold. To the first market I sent it to. I sent it at 2:02 PM and it was accepted at 8:19 PM. That’s twice I’ve had super fast turn-arounds to the very first market I submitted a piece. It simply doesn’t happen.
So that was nice.
I have another story that I sold earlier in the year that should, hopefully, be available online next month. I’ll link it when it’s published.
In my last post I talked about the mighty Bees of Brentford and their push for promotion to the Premier League. Spoiler alert: they lost in the Championship final. Fulham played well, Brentford played well, but Fulham did a better job countering Brentford than Brentford did imposing their will. After the season ended, Brentford let two of the BMW (Benrahma and Watkins) leave for beaucoup pounds, some of which they promptly reinvested into the squad. I don’t know if the Bees will be fighting for automatic promotion again at the end of this season, but they’ll probably make the promotion playoffs again.
My usual running path is off to the right on the Twickenham side of the Thames
I was sad when Ollie Watkins went to Aston Villa, though my Villa-supporting coworker was quite pleased. And rightfully so. Ollie scored a hat trick against Liverpool a couple weeks ago. Supposedly he wanted to go to Tottenham, but the Spurs chairman wouldn’t pay as much as Brentford wanted. Speaking of Spurs, it’s hard to complain. They’ve had a couple dubious draws lately, but the team looks revitalized in a way I haven’t seen in two seasons. Harry Kane is back to being one of the top strikers in the world, Son is one of the best wingers in the Premier League, and prodigal son Gareth Bale has returned home from Madrid with a trunk full of silverware to inspire his new teammates. Add some canny transfer business, and the squad has both a fine starting lineup and depth to allow them to compete in multiple competitions. It’s just a shame I can’t go watch in person. (Maybe in the spring?!?)
The younger child and I made donuts a few weeks ago. Some with cinnamon and sugar, some with a basic glaze
The girls are both in school (in-person) and doing well. We moved from Barnes to Twickenham over a year ago to try to get them into a different secondary school, and they are both finally in it. All indications so far are positive, and they both seem to be thriving. Carissa, unfortunately, has not been able to keep up with teaching gymnastics due to the pandemic.
A little gift from the Dysart in Petersham on our anniversary
When spring comes and things start to relax I hope to continue my football pilgrimage. The original goal was to visit all the professional grounds inside the M25 (the highway that circles London). I’m well into that, having already been to see Spurs (both in Tottenham and at Wembley), Brentford (multiple times), West Ham, Crystal Palace, Chelsea, Fulham, Arsenal, Millwall, and AFC Wimbledon. I need to get to QPR, Charlton, and Leyton Orient still, plus a few of the grounds used by the Women’s Super League.
I love a good beef stew. This one has carrots, parsnips, potato, and onion. Google “Jool’s favourite beef stew” to get the recipe
I’ve also cooked up a new plan for when things reopen. I want to have a pint at every pub in my borough. The idea is to get a big map of Richmond-upon-Thames and mark each pub with a red pushpin and update it to green once I’ve visited. If anyone wants to come visit next year, feel free to use the excuse of helping me in my quest!
Who needs to go out for dinner when you can buy Nando’s sauce at the grocery store.
The cooking has, of course, continued, and in an effort to not gain 20 lbs from my food, I’ve taken up running.
I’ve always hated running.
In my book, if you were going to run, there needed to be a ball or the police involved. After not being able to play football through the spring, I started running in June and signed up for a 10k in September. The first few weeks were terrible. I wasn’t in terrible shape, but I couldn’t run a full 5k, never mind a 10k. I worked my way through one of Hal Higdon’s novice 10k plans for a few weeks, but then injury struck. After changing from broken down Adidas running shoes to a pair of Merrell minimal running shoes, I didn’t make a gradual transition, and I twanged my Achilles. It took a few weeks in August to get that healed, and I’m still not truly back to 100% (like 95%). Still, I persevered and ran the 10k in September with Carissa. I finished in 55:59, which is extremely Not Fast, but it was under my goal of one hour, so I consider it a win. Since September, I’ve kept up with the running. I’m in the middle of a half-marathon plan and running 4-5 times a week. It’s weird to wake up and look forward to running rather than dreading it like in high school.
Carissa after completing the Kew Gardens 10k in September
Writing has continued. I sold a story in September to the “Upon a Once Time” anthology. It’s out now, though it requires buying the anthology. I have another story I sold in the spring that should be out this winter. I’ll link it when it’s published. It will be available online to read for free. I’m continuing work on a novel, but it’s been slow going. 2020, y’all. I’ll try to get a draft done by the end of the year. Hopefully. My level of optimism about the world is being influenced by external factors, so we’ll see how things go.
Continuing my experiments with the Dishoom cookbook, this is their rajma. It’s an onion/tomato masala with kidney beans
Speaking of external factors, there’s an election coming. It’s inescapable. I follow news in both the UK and the US, and it’s Biden this or Trump that. When I get on Facebook, I see all manner of terrible articles and memes from people back home (hi Mom!), usually in support of Trump. I saw one the other day that got me thinking, and I decided it could use some improvement. I present you this:
That moment when someone says, “I can’t believe you’re voting for Sauron!”
I reply, “I’m not voting for Sauron.” (I vote for policies not personalities)
I’m voting for Grima Wormtongue and King Théoden’s Freedom of Speech.
I’m voting for Saruman and my right to defend my life and family from the radical Ent hordes.
I’m voting for the Nazgûl to be respected and to ensure Law and Order.
I’m voting for the Uruk-hai who defend us from socialist elves.
I’m voting for tax relief for Smaug and all hard-working dragons.
I’m voting to protect MOUNT DOOM and the blighted land in which we live.
I’m voting for the continued appointment of trolls who respect the sun and will eat meddling hobbits.
I’m voting for our jobs to remain in Mordor and not be outsourced all over again to Gondor, Eriador, and other foreign countries.
I’m voting for Shelob to secure our western border and enforce legal immigration.
I’m voting for the wounded orcs and wargs who fought for Mordor and to protect our freedoms.
I’m voting for unborn babies and the ghouls who will ignore them after they’re born.
I’m voting to sack the lazy peaceniks of Hobbiton and protect our way of life.
I’m voting for continued peace progress in Middle Earth.
I’m voting for the Freedom to Persecute.
Make Mordor Great Again!
The beef at the Dysart in Petersham
Do I think Trump is comparable to Sauron? Of course not. Sauron paid more taxes.
The election is barely more than a week away. If you haven’t voted, you should. Lot of people around the world–and plenty in America–that can’t.
Football is about to kick off, and I need to get up early for a long run in the morning. Catch you next time, friendos. Try not to burn down the country in the meantime.
Brentford Community Stadium nearing completion in early August 2020.
If you’re not familiar with the Championship, it’s the second tier of professional football in England, and each season the top two teams are automatically promoted to the Premier League, the next four go into a playoff for a promotion place, and the bottom three teams are relegated to League One. The Championship tends to have a vast range of quality in both teams and individual players, as well as a vast range in budgets for the teams competing. The money is nowhere near as good as the Premier League, so teams are often desperate for promotion for the giant windfall of TV money that the top flight brings.
Cue 2020, and the pandemic restart.
Brentford FC are the closest professional team to me, and the first team I saw in person after moving to England. The fact that they are named after me certainly endeared them to me, and I have followed them with interest for the last two years.
After a massive winning streak during the restart, Brentford had promotion in their hands coming into the final games. They’ve only been in the top flight for five seasons in their history, stretching back to 1889 and most recently in 1947. With two matches to play, West Brom had dropped points and Brentford needed a win to move into second place and the automatic promotion slot. Heavily favored against a Stoke side that was in the Premier League just a few years ago, Brentford managed to lose 0-1 away at Stoke. There’s an old joke in football about the prima donna continental teams: they might look good on Saturday afternoon, but can they win a match on a rainy Tuesday night in Stoke? Turns out, Brentford could not. Sigh.
Going into the final day, Brentford no longer had their own fate in their hands. They needed a win and for West Brom to drop points. West Brom had played well all season, but their form was patchy during the restart. All the matches on the final day of the season were played simultaneously, and West Brom struggled to a 2-2 draw against Brentford’s local rivals QPR, and Brentford were at 1-1 against Barnsley, who were fighting for survival. With only minutes remaining, it was less a football match and more a basketball game. The ball and the players were moving from end to end of the pitch as both clubs were desperate for another goal. Brentford, at the last, had a defensive breakdown and Barnsley scored at 90+1 minutes. The celebrations from the Barnsley players were rapturous and hard to begrudge. After spending most of the season in the relegation places, they survived on the final day.
Brentford’s season was not done, however. Enter the playoffs. Brentford, 3rd in the league, traveled to Wales to face Swansea, 6th in the league, who managed a small miracle to sneak into 6th place and the playoffs on the final day. The Swans were all over the Bees, continuing Brentford’s run of poor form. At halftime the match was goalless, but around 60 minutes the Brentford left back, Rico Henry, made a (stupid) lunging challenge on a Swansea winger. Henry got the ball, but he also clattered the player. It looked worse in real time given that he started his slide about two meters from the Swansea player. Henry was shown a straight red, and Swansea made good on their advantage to score a goal and take a narrow lead back to Brentford.
The second leg was last week in Brentford at the side’s historic home ground. Griffin Park is a proper, old stadium in the middle of a block of houses. It famously has a pub on each corner and includes the only standing terrace in the Championship. The standing area was a special dispensation from the Football League given Brentford’s recent promotion up from League One and their plans to move to a new stadium. Next season (mere weeks away at the time of writing), the Bees move to their shiny, new Brentford Community Stadium (17,250 all-seater) about a mile from Griffin Park.
Brentford’s attack this season has been a poor man’s Liverpool, powered by a front three of Ollie Watkins, Said Benrahma, and Brian Mbeumo, who scored 57 goals between them. Unlike Liverpool’s front three, Benrahma, Watkins, and Mbeumo have a snazzy nickname: BMW. Behind the BMW Brentford have a midfield core of Josh DaSilva, formerly of the Arsenal academy, who has been outstanding, as has Danish international midfielder (the poor man’s Cristian Eriksen) Mathias Jensen. 2019 signing Pontus Jansson from league-winning Leeds has been a rock in the defense, helping Brentford to the second best goals against record, behind only Leeds.
Fifteen minutes into the second leg Swansea had a corner. David Raya, the Brentford keeper, caught the ball cleanly, threw a laser beam pass to the right flank where Jensen waited. Jensen took three touches and played another laser beam 60 yards on the grass to a sprinting Ollie Watkins, who finished his 26th goal of the season coolly. Four minutes later, a lovely little chip from Benrahma found previously unmentioned Emiliano Marcondes wide open for a glancing header to make the match 2-0. Swansea picked up the pace and played well going into halftime, but were still down the two goals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y3aTPpGWE8
Four touches and a goal
Prior to the match, Brentford appealed the Rico Henry red card. I was watching it in real-time, and when it happened, I turned to my wife and said, “That’s a yellow.” It was a bad tackle, but the ridiculous slide made it look worse than it was. The club were convinced it would be overturned, and with nothing to lose, lodged the appeal.
Seconds after the kickoff, Brentford worked an overlap down the left wing. Rico Henry, having successfully dodged a ban for his red card, ran onto a great pass and hit a great one time cross to the edge of the six yard box. Brian Mbeumo, a man with a damned good left foot and absolutely no right foot, connected with his left foot to a ball about waist high and put it in the net. Brentford 3 – 0 Swansea.
With promotion to the Premier League on the line, Swansea weren’t done. Chelsea loanee Rhian Brewster capitalized on a wretched mistake by Pontus Janssen and chipped the ball over David Raya to make it 3-1. At about this point I pulled out my phone to lookup the Championship Playoff rules in the event of a tie. It turns out, there’s no away goals rule. Any tie results in extra time being played, and if the match is still tied, it goes to penalties. (The away goals rule applies in European competition, and it means that in a two-legged tie the team with more goals scored at the opponent’s stadium wins a tie. If that number is equal, the match proceeds to extra time and penalties.)
Swansea pushed hard and had a couple of chances, but Brentford held strong to win 3-1 on the night and 3-2 aggregate. They now face local rivals Fulham.
The final is next Tuesday, August 4th at 19:45 local time, 2:45 PM EST. Brentford have beaten Fulham twice this season, and go into the match as favorites, but no Brentford supporter will forget the three match losing streak that nearly undid a season of superlative football.
If you can spare a couple hours of your afternoon next Tuesday, tune in!
Recently I had to see a doctor. There are several local surgeries (American translation: doctor’s offices) within a mile of me, so I registered at one, waited a day for the paperwork to process, and called in for an appointment. With the pandemic still very much a concern, the office offered me an in-person appointment, but also suggested they could have a doctor call me back within two hours for a phone appointment. I took the phone appointment. The doctor called about an hour and a half later, I explained the symptoms, and she suggested I go to the hospital to be examined where they have more diagnostic capability.
I took the train to Kingston A&E (Accident & Emergency; American translation: Emergency Room), where I was triaged within ten minutes of arrival. Twenty minutes after triage, I was having blood drawn, and ten minutes after that I was speaking to a doctor. The doctor did an exam and sent me to radiology, where I waited about five minutes for an x-ray. Results came back negative within a half hour, so the doctor treated me with medication on the spot, had me wait around another 45 minutes for observation, and sent me off with a prescription. I was there about three hours in total, including getting the prescription filled.
Total cost for all this was £9.15 to fill the prescription. (American translation: about $11.60.)
That on its own doesn’t seem too unusual, compared to America. Ten, fifteen dollars for a prescription is pretty normal, in my experience. But here’s the thing: that was the only cost. The hospital won’t send a separate bill. Neither will the doctor. Or the radiologist. I spent under $12 to go to the emergency room, be seen in a timely manner, and be treated. That is, in three paragraphs, why the British love the National Health Service so much. You get sick, you get treated, and you don’t worry about the bill.
But they’re so slow, you’re thinking. I was in and out of the ER in under three hours, and a fair chunk of that was observation time after I had seen the doctor. But you pay so much more in taxes, you’re thinking. So I decided to compare.
Let’s talk about taxes
I’ve tried to make this comparison as apples to apples as I can, so I used my 2017 US tax numbers (the last full year I lived in the US) and my 2019 UK tax numbers (the first full year I lived in the UK).
Income tax is the most obvious tax, but in the US we also pay Social Security, Medicaid, property tax (on real estate), personal property tax (on cars, boats, etc). But don’t forget the hidden tax: healthcare. It’s easy to ignore, but every dollar you spend on premiums, copays, deductibles, and scripts is effectively a tax. Look, I can’t go without health insurance. I’m a cancer survivor, my wife is a cancer survivor, and I have two kids. We get sick, we get treated, and we continue contributing to society. My opinion is that everyone should be so fortunate.
I totaled up what I paid in the US, including my employer’s contribution to my insurance. We had no major healthcare expenditures in 2017, so I’ve used what I put into my flex spending account (which was used only for health-related expenses).
I then did the same exercise for the UK. This included Payroll tax, National Insurance (which funds the healthcare system), council tax (like property tax, but also include my trash service), and TV tax (yep, I pay £13 a month to fund the BBC).
The result
UK effective tax rate: 37.2%
US effective tax rate: 38.7%
The US is slightly higher, but honestly, it’s mostly a wash. I had two cars in the US, but none here. I lived in a low cost of living part of the US in Southwest Missouri, and I’m in a high cost of living area in southwest London.
I basically pay the same amount of taxes in the UK as the US, when you consider the cost of healthcare. If I have a cancer recurrence while I’m in the UK, not only is it not going to bankrupt me, I don’t even need to worry about the deductible. I chose my primary care physician in the UK, just as I would in the US, and I was assigned the rotation doctor at A&E, just like I would in the US. I was treated professionally and quickly. The only real difference is that my £9.15 bill would have been a $500 or $1000 deductible in the US, plus a percentage of the total hospital charge.
I’m going to leave you with a parting thought: If I made less money in the UK, I would pay less in taxes while receiving the same care. If I made less money in the US, my insurance premiums, deductibles, and general healthcare expenses would not go down, and might in fact go up if I had worse insurance.
I’ve been meaning to write a “what we’ve been up to in London” post for a while, but it’s been hard to find the motivation when there’s a raging pandemic, America is on fire, and the UK has the worst covid numbers in Europe. I’m sure you can all relate, at least to two out of three.
Watermelon sharbat from the (wonderful) Dishoom cookbook
We have largely been at home for the last three months. Exceptions have been trips to the grocery store, to the post office, and one trip to A&E (the emergency room for my American audience) in Kingston. For the most part I’ve seen people doing their best to maintain social distance, though that tends to break down in the grocery store. Maybe 25% of people are wearing masks. The UK government has now mandated that masks should be worn on public transit from June 15th, so I expect to see a general uptick.
Professionally, Ye Olde Day Jobbe has continued with little interruption. I feel fortunate to not just continue my employment, but to continue to grow and learn. It’s been nearly two years in the UK now, and I’ve been forced to stretch and grow on a monthly basis. It’s been good for me.
Two boules made from the King Arthur Rustic Sourdough recipe
Personally, I’ve been up to my usual things. Lots of reading, writing, cooking, and video games. On the reading front, I thoroughly enjoyed Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth and Martha Wells’s Network Effect (definitely read the prior four novellas before diving into Network Effect). I have written a few short stories in the last three months, and I have made my second story sale of the year. It should be out late this year; I’ll post about it when it’s published. I also wrote a novella in the vein of The Witcher and The Black Company. It’s a secondary world fantasy set in an analog of the middle east during the late bronze age collapse. The initial feedback is that it has some pacing problems, but that’s fine. I was planning to expand it into a novel, anyway.
Homemade, soft pretzels. Alas, the lack of sea salt
I don’t tend to buy newly-released games, but Steam (and lately Epic Game Store) sales usually see a few of my shillings. Recent favorites are XCOM 2 and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. AC Odyssey is the first Assassin’s Creed game I’ve played, and my understanding is that longtime fans of the series give it mixed reviews. It works well for me because I wanted an open world RPG with bronze age technology. (See the novella I wrote earlier in the year.)
For the cooking, well, see all the pictures littering this post. My coworkers are talking about all the running and cycling they’re doing, and how they’re losing weight. I have found the weight they’ve lost. I need to find a better routine than work all day, cook a high-calorie dinner, and read/write/game all evening.
Almost eggs benedict, but we were out of bacon. The crumpet is the King Arthur sourdough crumpet. The Hollandaise is Kenji’s recipe.
The girls are all doing well. Carissa is eager to get back to gymnastics, but her gym hasn’t reopened yet. She is dragging me on plenty of walks and spending a good bit of time in the garden.
The eldest child has been playing Animal Crossing New Horizons non-stop. I’m starting to worry about her relationship with Tom Nook. Her school took a few weeks to adapt to online learning, but has been moving along reasonably well for a while now.
A closeup of the roses in our garden
The youngest child has been playing everything under the sun other than Animal Crossing, including the Sims 4. I gotta say, though, she’s an enabler. I wouldn’t be doing nearly as much baking if she weren’t encouraging me by eating everything I put in front of her. Growth spurts will do that. I think the child has grown six inches this school year.
Piper continues wandering in and out of the house, pretending that he’s starving if he hasn’t been fed in the last two hours, and getting into scuffles with the neighbor cats. He is definitely London’s second-least-favorite orange American.
Oatmeal chocolate chip and oatmeal cranberry cookies from Bravetart
All this talk of food, and you all are thinking “how you gonna do this to me and not link some recipes, Brent?” I got you, fam. Some recipes:
How to get sourdough starter working. Pro tip: watch the temperature if you use the “put it in the oven with the light on” method. I nearly killed mine by having 105 degree (F) temps. Oops.
The opinion section is the chocolate cake of journalism; it tastes good, but you can’t eat it by itself for long and stay healthy.
I spend too much time on social media. Because of that, I’ve developed what I feel is a reasonable set of filters to tell the difference between plausible news and bullshit.
I start with what the insurance industry calls “knock out questions.” These are questions an insurer asks upfront to see if the potential risk is so high that they can skip the more-detailed assessment, saving everyone time. These are things I can assess in a few seconds to decide whether I’m even going to click the link.
Is this a link to Youtube? If it is, it’s out. While I tolerate Youtube for entertainment, I don’t for news. The site’s goal is not to help you find facts; it’s to keep your eyeballs on the screen and feed you advertisements. I feel the same way about cable news, though I’ll at least entertain the idea that cable news might sometimes show actual news.
Does the website name contain any of the following words: patriot, tea party, liberty? If so, I ignore it. Let’s be honest with each other: the tea party movement was a reactionary backlash against a black president. America is now paying with the lives of doctors and nurses for having a government full of incurious science deniers.
With the knock out questions out of the way, I look at a few general things to help me understand the potential slant of what I’m reading.
The first thing I do is look at the publication. Is it a known news organization? I’m going to give national newspapers with actual news departments far more credence than an entertainment outlet. Does this organization have a known bias? My skepticism is going to be much higher for organizations with naked political agendas, and I’ll look for corroborating stories at other outlets.
Is the article an opinion piece? I immediately slide opinion pieces further toward the bullshit side of my internal scale. The opinion section is the chocolate cake of journalism; it tastes good, but you can’t eat it by itself for long and stay healthy.
Then I look at the author. Is it someone I recognize? If not, what else have they published? Is this article trying to appear neutral when they have a history of writing things that otherwise have a clear bias? That’s a sign this is bullshit in disguise. Do they have a publishing history? If not, I’m immediately skeptical unless they are experts in their field and are speaking to their expertise.
If it’s an article about verifiable science, I like to see the sources the authors are citing. Does the article even have citations? Are those citations coming from reputable journals? Is this a contrarian view of a hot topic, and if so, what new evidence is on offer to support this view? I don’t need to understand the science, but something that is based on peer-reviewed journals is more believable than something that is plausible but untested. A contrarian opinion is just that: an opinion, not science.
Similar to the verifiable science, I like to know if this is a press release in disguise. Are the people being cited the public relations arm of some company? If so, I maintain a healthy skepticism about whatever is being claimed. If there are sources in the article, are they named? If they aren’t, I’m skeptical. How many sources are in the article? If there’s only one, this isn’t news, it’s gossip. If there are none, it’s an opinion piece.
Is this method perfect? No. Are there things I’m forgetting? Probably! Does this enormously cut down the level of bullshit I consume? For sure.
When you decide to have a go at being a professional writer you either learn to embrace rejection or you quit. The writing business beats you down far more often than it lifts you up, and if you aren’t ready to hear a hundred “nos” for every every “yes,” then this isn’t the career for you.
But sometimes, an editor says “yes.” And when that happens, you get to walk on clouds for a few days.
Another thing about the writing business that you don’t realize at the beginning is that it’s a waiting game. Short story submission sometimes take months to return a response. Novel submissions take a year or more. Even when you sell a story, the publication can take months, and you have to keep quiet while the gears of the publishing machine grind away.
But sometimes you submit a story and the editors says “yes.” And even more rarely, they want to publish the story next week.
Well, friends, lightning struck. Flame Tree Press had a submission call, I had a story, and we hit it off like a lightning strike in a stand of ponderosa pines.
My short story “Better In Every Way” was accepted last Friday, and it came out yesterday. You can read the handy user’s guide to your new clone on the Flame Tree Press website and learn how it will improve your finances, your relationships, and generally make you better in every way.
