At some point in the future (when I get the time), I’m going to update this website so that there’s a “Books By Me” tab in the left sidebar (or something along those lines). That way I can recommend checking that tab out rather than regularly putting hyperlinks here for The Failed Technomancer and other books. That said, given my general knowledge of how to make and manage a website, I expect the results to be pretty wonky initially, but eventually they’ll get smoothed out.

Eventually.

The Failed Technomancer

Just in case, here’s the universal link to which you can find the ebook.

Also, print versions of The Failed Technomancer are available!… I think. Barnes and Noble has the print version of the book listed for sale even though on the backend (the screen I use to manage the book) I’m told that the book is not for sale yet and is undergoing a review process. So I’m not sure what’s going on there. But I should be receiving a test/author copy of the paperback from Amazon tomorrow, and I hope that the result will be beautiful! If so, the book will go live on Amazon not long after.

Finally, you like audiobooks? I hope you like audiobooks, because The Failed Technomancer audiobook is now available through Spotify! Woohoo! I know Spotify is a relatively new audiobook service and most people are on Audible… I’ll note that Spotify pays its authors a lot better than Audible does, but I’m still working to get The Failed Technomancer on Audible. It just takes a lot longer.

As a final note, I imagine quick readers are done with The Failed Technomancer already—please leave a review for the book, if you can! New authors need lots of reviews to get their books picked up by algorithms and to help get their careers off the ground.

Inner Demon

Gnyphe’s journey is moving along smoothly! Or, rather, revisions of it are. I should be finished with my first go-through of developmental edits before the end of the week, then I’ll go through the book once or twice more before the month is over. Mostly it depends on how busy I am with my full-time job. Work is picking up, which is both great for my ability to support myself, my family, and my writing, but also terrible for my writing time.

“Bloggyness”

Extreme Makeover, Dan Wells, was a really interesting book. I’d say I liked it a lot more than most of his I Am Not a Serial Killer books—maybe all. Here’s the general premise: a cosmetics company accidentally invents a skin lotion that can rewrite DNA, literally turning you into someone else, and what comes after brings about the apocalypse as this incredibly powerful tool (and weapon) falls into increasingly greedy, selfish, and/or desperate hands. I would describe the book as thriller rather than horror (I think Dan Wells is known as a horror writer, so maybe this book falls slightly out of common expectations), and most of it really gripped me.

I say most because the mushy middle was a little bit of a slog. Not terrible—I still had a good time—but the way the book zooms out to give you a really big picture of how the world is falling apart just didn’t interest me much. I vastly preferred the first and last third-ish of the book, which zooms in on the main character and keeps things very close to home, metaphorically speaking.

The final chapter of the book is honestly bizarre. Fair warning—you’ll either love it or you’ll wish that you had skipped it. I fall into the second category, even though I generally thought that it made sense within the context of the book and kinda predicted that something like that would happen. Vagueness from not wanting to spoil it—maybe what didn’t work for me is that the final chapter once again zoomed away from the main character, and my favorite parts of the books were always the ones zoomed in on Lyle.

A Man Called Otto, Tom Hanks as the lead actor, was a serviceable adaptation of the astonishingly good book A Man Called Ove. The movie had multiple genuinely beautiful moments of human emotion where Otto deeply connects with the people around him, and where you learn about Otto’s heart-wrenching past. Unfortunately, the movie struggles in two critical areas: (a), A Man Called Ove is a book deeply in its main character’s head, which the movie really struggles to replicate or replace with something more appropriate for the visual medium of film; (b), the movie tries to adapt too many of the book’s many interweaving plotlines, only giving necessary time and depth to about two of them and leaving the others with very little impact. In my opinion, the movie would have been significantly stronger if it had dropped most of the plot lines it was trying to juggle and instead focused much more on Otto’s past, Otto’s relationship with his new neighbors (focusing separately on the mother, the daughters, and maybe the husband), and focused more on Otto’s relationship with the cat. This would make for some significant departures from the book, which is perhaps why the screenwriter decided not to go this direction, but I think it would have serviced the movie better. It also would have removed some of the aspects of the movie that were made weird by adapting this distinctly Swedish book into a fully American setting.

Gotta end on something positive, though: Tom Hanks really sold playing a cantankerous old man with a heart of gold and strong, strong values. Despite being a departure from the book Ove in many significant areas, I think he was absolutely perfect for what the movie was going for and elevated the whole experience. The other actors were no slouches either and helped fill the movie with pathos where it really mattered.

Anyway, that’s what I have for you today.