Let’s get your day started off with something really weird.

This is my Pickle-Me-Elmo! I keep him on my writing table, off in a corner where I catch glimpses every once in a while. I was gifted him at a White Elephant party with some college friends and my wife let me bring him home on the condition that she never see him again. Considering my work-from-home office is also the baby’s bedroom, there’s been mixed results there.

Still, I think it’s nice having a pickled smile available whenever you need it.

Bloggyness Review: Julie and Julia

Julie and Julia is an adorable movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams as Julia and Julie, respectively. Really, the movie is two mostly separate stories weaved together in a way that created entertaining connections—like seeing Julia (in the 1950s) communicate with the outside world and share her passions through regular letters to a pen pal, while seeing Julie (in the then-modern 2000s) do a similar thing by keeping a daily blog. The movie is mostly driven by a love for the characters—almost all of the conflict is internal, but Julie and Julia are both portrayed as delightful human beings that you want to follow around to see how they pull through. Their husbands also get some decent characterization, and a couple other characters, but almost all of the spotlight stays firmly on these two women.

This movie was not my first choice for movie night with my wife—I tend to prefer fantasy or sci-fi, something with bizarre or otherworldly elements, and I tend to prefer plot-driven stories (with strong characters) rather than “lazy river” plots elevated almost exclusively by the characters. This movie creates a great big exception in that general formula, because I had a great time. Fellas, you might enjoy popping this on for a date night with your significant other. I ate dried dates and buttery popcorn with my wife while watching—no idea if that will elevate your experience or not, but it probably won’t hurt.

Also, a warning: watching people cook and eat delicious French cooking for two hours is almost guaranteed to make you want to buy a cookbook and try a few of these recipes for yourself. I went to bed hungry and dreamed of steaming, buttery duck.

Inner Demon

I have line edited my way through chapter 29 today! The last chapter of the book is 34, so my goal is to be finished by the end of this week, despite the fact that I wouldn’t be surprised if I take the 4th off from editing. I’d like to get this book sent out to volunteer readers to help me with copy edits over the weekend. (Feel free to reach out if you’re interested in reading the book early and telling me where I misspelled things or where sentences are confusingly worded.)

Also…

I have submitted Inner Demon to Baen Publishing for consideration! While I still plan on making self-publishing moves with this book while I wait for a response, for financial and time reasons I may need to pivot from fully self-publishing to hybrid publishing, if I can make that option available to me. We’ll see! (If you’re aware of any other excellent SFF small- or mid-publishers, or agents looking for thick books, feel free to let me know. I’m back in the market for that.)

Projects Round-Up

Apparently Draft2Digital doesn’t do hardcovers? I emailed their customer support asking for help and was told this, which led to me fruitlessly digging through their website to discover where I found this errant idea. If we ever see hardcovers for this book, it will be thanks to IngramSpark, which may or may not happen depending on whether or not I can ever get IngramSpark to accept my cover.

Sort of in conversation with my trying to get Inner Demon (and future Third Realm books) hybrid published, my current plan is to keep Robot Cannibal Apocalypse entirely self-published. I began the series this way, it’s not going to hurt to finish it this way, I don’t think, but I will keep my ears and eyes open as opportunities reveal themselves.

Still have a TBD due date on the short stories, but I will have much more time to shift into them once I’m done with line edits for Inner Demon. Maybe I only have time anymore for one major writing project at once—plus the handful of side stuff I slowly plug away at in small bursts of open time. (More on that stuff in future posts.)

Book Reviews/Reviewers

Also, my books have begun to arrive at (and get mentioned by) reviewers! So far I’m only finding them in book hauls, but a few of these reviewers have promised actual reviews at some point during the year. (Note that I am late to mentioning these videos, I have not kept up with everyone as well as I ought to.)

The Nerdy Narrative showed off The Failed Technomancer in a book haul. My favorite quote from the mention: “I literally saw a bunch of my friends mark this on their GoodReads this morning while I was eating my brown cinnamon sugar Pop Tarts.”

Lezlie, if you ever read this, I appreciate the honesty that you agreed to review my book because of a knee-jerk liking of my name—you know what, that’s a fun story! But you also made my day with your excitement in your unboxing, and when you mentioned that you found the book on GoodReads and marked interest in it simply from the description. Thank you!

Andrew’s Wizardly Reads also showed off my book in a book haul. My favorite quote from the mention: “It’s a funny cover. It’s a funny title.”

Andrew, thanks so much for mentioning my book! I hope it fits your decision to read it around Halloween perfectly.

Alex Nieves gave me a shoutout. Not sure if this was a book haul or not—he also talked about a fair amount of DnD 5e stuff.

Alex… yeah, fair. It’s a long book. If long books just plain aren’t on your schedule, I get it—but I’m confident you’ll love it when you do get to it!

Tome Raider mentioned me a while back and I already shared that video, but I figured it doesn’t hurt to put it here. My favorite quote from the mention: “It sounds like something I have not read before… Robot cannibal. Excuse me, what?”

Mel, thank you so much! And thanks for the love for 64Bit’s name… I knew I was taking a risk with that.

It’s possible that there are videos I have missed, so I will keep looking out for those.

Send-Off

Happy 4th of July 🙂 That’s all I wanted to say to finish things off. Have a wonderful time with your families celebrating. Here’s a 4th-themed video I found inspirational.