‘Murica.
Happy 250th, everybody! Yeah, I’m a month early—what can I say? I love my country. Also, I thought this picture was amazing, and I wasn’t sure I’d remember it come next month.
Also also, I have no idea if any posts are going out next month, since my wife is due to give birth at the end of this month, and anyone who has had a kid fully understands just how much even a planned-for baby can disrupt life. I’ve a handful of posts planned, at least at the time of writing this newsletter, but we’ll see how things shake out in reality.
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Writing and Publishing
Looking Back
In May’s newsletter, I noted that Halfwhisker: The Man-Laboratory (part 5) was finished. The rewrites and edits were completed at that time—but since I do much of my editing by hand, writing notes into margins and marking up pages with editing symbols, actually applying those edits can sometimes take a while. So I spent a lot more of May applying the finalization of part 5 than I would have liked.
I did get started on part 6, though. And that was a ton of fun.
Looking Forward
Halfwhisker: The Rattankoig (part 6) is still in process, and I’m going to do everything I can to finish before the baby comes, because most likely the baby will nuke my productivity for a while.
Unlike the other parts, this one is largely being written entirely from scratch, for several reasons. Not only did I not complete the ending of the last draft (beyond a detailed outline), I also decided to scrap most of what I had, and to rewrite a lot of the outline; I thought Halfwhisker deserved better, and, after spending so much time in parts of Halfwhisker that I wrote literally a year or so ago, I’ve got the whole of the story much sharper in my head, preparing me to make a solid finish.
We’re getting closer and closer to the finish line, folks!
The Blog
May was not a good month for raw blog productivity, but I already explained myself last month: I was disappointed by how much blogging time was eating into novel-writing time. That shift of focus hit May pretty hard. This month won’t be as hard hit, at least.
- Red State Mars: Military science fiction, grounded (and hard) sci-fi, colonial sci-fi, and a family saga all woven into one—Red State Mars juggles a lot of things, and I enjoyed it enough to comfortably recommend it.
My Reading List
At the time of writing this blog post, I have no idea what I’m reading now. I recently finished Piranesi. It was good, but I think the ridiculously glowing praise it received does it a disservice. (More on that in the eventual review.)
Ark Press sent me another ARC novel called The Hunt for Confederate Gold. It’s pitched as a YA novel that’s supposed to evoke something similar to the Hardy Boys meets National Treasure,1 and the few pages that I read were actually quite engaging, despite me not being particularly interested in the premise.
On the other hand, a friend of mine asked me to give The Starless Sea2 a try, describing it as “Utterly weird, and I can’t decide if I like it or hate it, so I need someone to talk about it with.” My limited research of the book tells me I’ll probably dislike it, but, if I’m right, the question is whether the experience of disliking it will be fun or if I’ll just DNF this thing early on. Since the wait time at the library is several months, and I’m certainly not spending money on this thing, we’ll see!
I’m also strongly considering The Ambergris Cycle.3 Though I bounced off the other VanderMeer book I tried (Annihilation), a friends’ review of the former omnibus made me intensely interested in Vandermeer’s earlier work, which appears to be a cult classic. Alas, all copies I have found thus far are both expensive4 and only on sites with DRM, meaning no downloading and side-loading for me.
Listen, if you’re reading this—please recommend some excellent fantasy novels to me. Please, please, please, I’m dying of thirst in such a terrible drought! Part of that is difficulty in sourcing stories that I’ve heard are quite good, but part of it is that modern fantasy… It’s just lacking, in my experience.
Finally—What Else do I Recommend This Month?
Toast, buttered, with cinnamon and sugar. I don’t think further explanations should be necessary.
- It released May 19th, by the way. ↩︎
- I wonder if the author, Miss (or Mrs, I don’t know) Morgenstern bears any relation to the S. Morgenstern of The Princess Bride fame… ↩︎
- And, upon further review, I think I’ve changed my mind. The book apparently has explicit sexual content in it, and that’s generally a no-fly zone for me. ↩︎
- Paying much above $5 for most ebooks just sounds outrageous to me, and this one is $35 on Amazon. I don’t care that this book was traditionally published, I’m not paying a premium for a brand, and I’m not paying the cost of a mass-market paperback book for a digital book that cost nothing to print because all the vendor has to do is copy a file. ↩︎
Boo Ludlow 
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