Hello, friends!

I take pride in the nuclear family this month.

May 30th was a travesty, an embarrassing perversion and weaponization of “justice.” The current POTUS (and many others) are wearing red and carrying a hammer and sickle:

Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.

~Lavrentiy Beria (Soviet secret police chief)

Devon Eriksen does a pretty good breakdown of one part of this gigantic mess here. A quote that decently sums up his points:

In a free society, we investigate crimes to see who can be charged with them. We do not investigate men to see what they can be charged with.

Because the law is intended to be a shield to protect the people, not a sword to attack them. [Emphasis added.]

~Devon Eriksen (author of Theft of Fire)

Anyway. That’s as far as I wanted to go on those two topics. I previously avoided politics on this blog, and a lot of issues that I’m very passionate about have come and gone without me mentioning them, but—hmmm. Maybe I’m having a slight shift of perspective. I have no intention whatsoever to become as politically loud as authors like Devon Eriksen or Larry Correia—I don’t want to. I’d rather talk about books, movies, video games, and other topics related to writing and creativity. Things that are critically important, that affect culture, that move people in thought and passion—which, yes, do have a downstream effect on politics.

But if the most free and prosperous nation in the world gives up its freedom and prosperity, then I lose that option, and a lot more besides. So maybe it’s worth the risk of annoying a few people on the internet to add my voice to what’s right. I certainly never want to become an idiot lecturer a la George RR Martin or Stephen King—pretty sure you can lose IQ points reading their hot takes—but I won’t want to be silent or squishy like Brandon Sanderson. There’s got to be a good middle. A middle where a creative can have values and express them without preaching, without perverting the craft, because I don’t write to preach or lecture, I write to entertain and provoke thought and passion.

Or, at least, that’s the goal. I’m still sharpening my pencil, so to speak. And, abandoning the metaphor, learning to advertise… outside of my personal fulfillment and the enjoyment of those I directly share my work with, my writing (and other thoughts) means little if no one sees it.

Bloggyness Review—Agent of Change

Agent of Change (Sharon Lee & Steve Miller) is a Baen-published space opera about a brainwashed spy who rescues a deeply in trouble mercenary, and then the two of them get into a lot of misadventures as their respective troubles catch up with the both of them—and mix together.

Also, there are really cool turtle aliens.

Here’s what worked best for me in Agent of Change: the world building. I kept thinking of the book Santiago, in different parts, as well as Star Trek, and I consider those positive comparisons. I also enjoyed that some of the tech in this book felt very retro-futuristic—which may or may not be a result of the book being published in 2007. And, of course, I loved the long-lived, slow-speeched, somewhat-oblivious-to-human-customs turtle-aliens. These elements combined kept me interested enough to finish the book, and open to reading a sequel in the future, though not necessarily enthusiastic.

I struggled a bit with many other aspects of this book. A lot of things felt like they just happened, almost like I was reading series of vignettes grouped by chronological order. I technically knew that there was something bigger going on, but I didn’t feel it while reading, so Agent of Change never felt plot-driven to me. The characters also frequently confused me, particularly the aforementioned spy who, thanks to the also aforementioned brainwashing (and him slowly undoing said brainwashing throughout the book), changes personality a handful of times.

And finally, the POVs in this book were sometimes baffling, with a handful of memorable scenes appearing to come from no one’s perspective, referring to main characters exclusively (and awkwardly) by “he” or “she” and not by name, putting a glass wall between me and what was happening in the scene.

All in all, a mixed bag. But I started with the positive for a reason—I’m still interested in trying future books in the Liaden Universe, although I’m less motivated to chase down those sequels than I am to finish Larry Correia’s back catalogue.

Agent of Change is another book that’s part of Baen’s free ebook “library.” If you have an ereader, if you like galaxy-spanning sci-fi universes that are unique enough but still have familiar elements, you have essentially nothing to lose by giving it a try. (Which, in retrospect, isn’t the highest praise, but I also admit that I don’t know I’d be interested in paying for book 2 if I had paid for book 1.)

Discussions—Paper Mario and Bug Fables

This is not a full review, just a recommendation for my video game–loving friends out there. Do you like funny writing? Stories with heart and plenty of goofiness? Great characters? Extremely engaging gameplay? Secrets to discover, unique places to explore? Then I highly recommend Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door‘s remake on the Nintendo Switch, as well as Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling.

Bug Fables and Paper Mario are both turn-based RPGs with similar genetics—actually, Bug Fables was made as a spiritual successor to the original Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and innovated on its mechanics in many ways. (The remake of Thousand-Year Door handily proves that the original is still extremely engaging on its own.) Both feature combat where each side takes turns choosing and launching attacks, with the added feature that each attack involves a (very brief) mini-game: do it well and you’ll be rewarded with extra damage (or other effects), and the same applies for defending yourself from attacks (but in reverse, of course). I am usually quickly bored by turn-based games, but adding “action commands,” as the games calls them, apparently is all that it takes for me to get excited again. Add the large variety of enemies, items, moves, and powers, and you receive so much to sink your teeth into and have a great time with.

Bug Fables is a lot more affordable than Paper Mario, so, if you have any interest, that would be a better place to start, in my opinion—but if you like one, I’m very confident you’ll like the other.

And, again, I’m just recommending these games because I like them and I want to talk about them. I’m not getting paid for this.

Writing Updates

Hazel Halfwhisker… draft 1… is… FINISHED! WOOHOO!

…

Thanks to a whole lot of meta-notes. [Insert explanation of what meta-notes are here.]

Yeah, so that means the current word count of not quite 100k is a lot smaller than I think draft 2 will be, particularly since in draft 2 I want to take most of my notes and turn them into full scenes—as well as make other changes, such as add viewpoint characters, cut out plot threads that weren’t working, fix others that had potential, etc. There’s a lot of work to do. This is a very messy draft. But, as a discovery writer, I needed to get to the end in some way in order to know what needed to be fixed and revised in future drafts, and this exercise accomplished that result.

This is a huge relief!

I spent a lot of time this week reviewing notes (from myself and from my writing group), making plans, and otherwise preparing to go into draft 2 strong. This book will still be far from being ready for publishing at the end of draft 2, but it will be much stronger, and at the end of draft 3 I’ll start sharing it with a wider audience than just my writing group. Draft 4 or 5 might be the draft that ends up in my dream Kickstarter. We’ll see.

Send-Off

Have an excellent week. Do good things. Engage with excellent stories. Love your loved ones.

And tell me… Do you like Godzilla Minus One? Now that it’s on Netflix I might finally watch it, and I’ve only heard incredible things about it.