Baby is taking his time to evacuate his current residence (at the time of writing this newsletter), so I have time to prepare a post or two in advance for July. Isn’t that lovely?

Also, happy Fourth of July, everyone! I’m a little late, but I just want to take some time to mention how much I love my country. I truly believe the United States of America is the greatest country on earth, and I believe we owe that to God and our divinely inspired Constitution. As long as we as Americans strive to understand the principles behind the Constitution (as our Founding Fathers understood them, not as they’ve been reinterpreted to suit modern ideologies), and strive to live those principles—principles of individual liberty, of separation of government powers, of representative government, and of explicitly restricting government powers (and explicitly recognizing inalienable individual rights, such as freedom of speech, of religion, and to bear arms)—then America will always be a guiding light to the world. I don’t think it’s any coincidence at all that the founding of the United States was shortly followed by absolutely massive leaps in technological advancement and worldwide prosperity; I also don’t think it’s a surprise at all that as the USA incrementally verges from principles of a free market, minimum government, and maximum individual liberty, that things aren’t going so well.

But I’m solely optimistic about the future. Happy 250th!

If you want to keep up with me and my slowly developing writing projects, or if you want to keep up with my reviews (and occasional articles), please consider subscribing below!

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Writing and Publishing

Looking Back

My goal for June was to finish rewriting Halfwhisker, part 6, before July. At the time of writing this blog post, I’m a little behind on that goal—about half of the month is left, and I’m a little under half of what I predict the end word count is going to be. Fortunately, my last few writing sessions were amazing—I wrote over 3,000 words last Friday—so I’m hopeful I can get back on track.

Looking Forward

Since I’m at the point of waiting for baby to come literally any day now, it’s very difficult for me to plan out the short term with any degree of accuracy—even the month-by-month term. Assuming I can finish writing Halfwhisker, part 6, before baby comes (which could happen as I write, or it could happen early July), then the next step is to do some rereading and editing of that part before sending it to test readers. After that, I plan to put the whole book together, give it a read-through (hopefully there won’t be a need for larger-scale adjustments of any sort), sort it into chapters, and start work on pre-chapter quotes and between-part interludes. After that, the story will be about as far along as I can get it, alone—I’ll need to send it to an editor.

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The Blog

I prepared a whole lot of stuff in advance for June, predicting that to be the month that I’d be most out-of-pocket, but that hasn’t turned out yet. I doubt I’ll keep that sort of productivity up going into July, but we’ll see!

• Piranesi: Piranesi is the second Susanna Clarke book I’ve ever read, and I’m not sure what to say about it. It’s a well-written, thoughtful novel, and I’m not surprised at all that so many people like it as much as they do; but for me, I find it a little too small in scope and lacking in ambition, particularly when compared to Clarke’s debut (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell). For me, this was a nice palate cleanser between other reads, and not much more.
• The Sheep Detectives: A family friend murder mystery whodunnit (say that five times fast) featuring both sheep and human main characters, The Sheep Detectives is my favorite movie this year (thus far), hands down. It’s funny; it has heart; and my enjoyment of it was completely unexpected, as I originally wanted to make fun of this movie when I saw its trailer. I’m glad my wife was more perceptive than I was!
• Gameoverse: Glitch continues pressing forward with animated series’ that no one else would produce, and I’m on the fence whether or not I think this one will prove to be for the better or for the worse. It has aspects I loved, but also that I hated. If nothing else, the concept sparks my imagination: In this video game universe, winning the game results in the game being over, and thus the death of everyone in that game. As such, the Farcade makes it their mission to travel from game to game with the sole purpose of ensuring the hero never wins so that everyone else in that game is saved; meanwhile, sinister forces seek to partner with the heroes of said games, “benevolently” bringing about their total destruction…
• Zootopia 2 Sucks, But At Least It’s Kinda Funny: Zootopia 2 exists in the supremely awful middle ground of just being a bad movie, but not being good bad—or, maybe better said, interesting bad. It’s never going to achieve a cult status, not like The Room. And I have thoughts about that.

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My Reading List

I just finished reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell—that reread was directly inspired by Piranesi—and you can bet an excited reviewticle is coming up for that.

But, in the meantime, what’s next on the list?

I’ve really liked pretty much everything of Larry Correia’s that I’ve read, particularly Saga of the Forgotten Warrior and The Grimnoir Chronicles. So of course I was excited when he announced a new series, and the fact that the sorta-prelude comic that released in January (Dust Sacrifice) made for a solid appetizer only heightened my excitement. There’s some obvious DNA shared with Monster Hunter International, but Dust Sacrifice, I think, hinted at something weirder, and maybe even a little scarier—I’m excited to find out what to really expect from the rest of the series after I dive into American Paladin.

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Finally—What Else do I Recommend This Month?

German pancakes. And German pancake waffles.

German pancakes are a delicious, eggy breakfast that are famous for how much they puff up in the oven—leading them to also sometimes be called “fluffy” or “puffy” pancakes. (According to Google some people also call them Dutch baby pancakes, but I’ve both never heard of that before and have never met anyone horrible enough to source a Dutch infant as a pancake ingredient, and I’ve been eating these pancakes my entire life. In my family, it’s a tradition to eat them most Sunday mornings.)

The recipe for German pancakes is really simple:

Set the oven to 425; when the oven is anywhere from 400 to 420 (depending on how frozen your butter is), put the butter in a glass casserole dish and put it in the oven. (This both melts the butter and pre-heats the dish as the oven finishes heating.) Mix the eggs, milk, and flour into a mixing bowl and completely combine. Once the butter is totally melted in the glass casserole dish, pull the dish out of the oven and make sure the bottom of the dish is totally covered in butter, then pour the batter on top. Put back in the oven for about 20 minutes, longer if you prefer a crispier/crunchier texture. Serve with syrup, fruit, sweetened condensed milk, whipped cream, lemon juice, peanut butter, yogurt—such a wide variety of toppings work well with this meal.

If you’re cooking German pancake waffles, you just need to make two changes: first, add a half-teaspoon to a full teaspoon of baking powder to the mix; second, after melting the butter mix it in with the rest of the batter (thoroughly). And, of course, cook in a waffle maker instead of an oven. The result is something really unlike both waffles and German pancakes, despite being almost the same ingredients as the German Pancake, and despite being made using a waffle maker. It’s fluffier than German pancakes, but not as crispy as waffles… it’s pleasantly eggy… I like it as it’s own thing, rather than as a replacement for either.

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1. Note that these are minimum ratios—for every three eggs, use a half-cup of milk and a half-cup of flour. Technically the butter should stick with the ratio, but sometimes I increase or decrease the amount of butter based on the size of my pan.
   I usually make my pancakes with six to nine eggs. ↩︎