Lit City Blues

So, I decided to do something a little different for New Year's Resolutions this year. Instead of starting 2024 with a list of things that make me go, "Oh yeah, I forgot I planned that" I wanted to increase my personal accountability a little bit by tracking my progress throughout the year, so I'll post quarterly updates so I (and you, dear reader) can see how I'm going on my goals for the year. At the end of the first quarter of 2023, this is where I'm at:  1. Big Writing Goal for the Year: Get Book 4 into the draft format by the end of the year. I'm currently working my way through Chapter 5 and I'm sitting at 25,744 words. It's been challenging so far: I'm sticking to a single POV for the first time in a book, I'm writing well outside my usual genre preferences so far, and writing consistently and well is hard, y'all. But enough is enough-- time to light this candle and git 'er done. Update: Currently I'm sitting at 40,999 w

With the return of HBO Max to our streaming menu and the Missus' continuing obsession with the dark and twisty crime drama, after she caught up with The Bodyguard over on Netflix, I suggested we give True Detective a go on HBO Max, so we plunged headlong into the first season. We haven't gone back for the subsequent seasons yet because I think we got distracted by something else- possibly the new season of Working Moms and then we tripped and fell into Ozark and now we're... I don't know what we're doing now, to be completely honest.  We did get through Season One, however.  The season focuses on Lousiana State Police Detectives Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson.) Seventeen years ago, they investigated the murder of the prostitute Dora Lange and seemed to be on the verge of connecting to several unsolved murders and crimes and seemed to have solved the case. The stress and strain of the case impacted both men very differently: Rust

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I feel like the last sane person in the asylum some days, but occasionally, there are little glimpses of sanity that peek through the white noise of the internet outrage machine and there was nothing more heartening that the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the news that the works of Roald Dahl were edited to "make them more acceptable to modern readers." It's hard to be completely repulsed by the idea since the author's estate did sign off on the idea, but at the same time, as someone who writes and hopes (if I'm very lucky) to be a published author one day, the idea of someone changing my words decades after I'm dead is frankly gross. Dahl wasn't opposed to editing his own works: the Oompa Loompas were originally from Africa and not orange (I'm sure you can guess what color they were) and if authors change their own work, I've got no problem with that. (J.K. Rowling sort of making Dumbledore

 If I was being a good podcast listener, I would have purchased this book- but happily, I get a pass on this one because I purchased Mike Duncan's first book ( The Storm Before The Storm ) and thus, don't feel too bad about using an Audible credit to download his latest- a biography of the Marquis de Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds. As always with audiobooks, I've got to touch on the narration- at least briefly: it's Mike Duncan. He did the History of Rome, and he's wrapping up Revolutions (both of which are must-listen podcasts even if you're not into history, the latter more so than the former, imo.) So this is a man who is practiced in the art of narration and he doesn't miss a beat with this book. If you like how he sounds on his podcast, you'll have no problems with his narration of the book. This brings us to the book itself: I didn't know much about Lafayette going into this book- other than what I saw in Hamilton , if I'm being totally hon