Lit City Blues

Once again, TikTok annoyed me so much with clip after clip after clip of a show that I finally sat down and watched it. Before that, I had no real interest in watching Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty , because honestly, I'll watch basketball, but it's never really been my primary sport. Growing up, one couldn't escape Michael Jordan and The Bulls and I remember Magic Johnson having to retire from playing due to contracting HIV, but outside of that, the NBA didn't really have that much of a hold on me. I knew all the names (Sean Kemp, Charles Barkley, Dikembe Mutumbo, etc) I can't say that I watched that many of the games.  (I'm also convinced that the NBA used to be better back then, in the way that older, crusty types always are- but I still hold to the notion that they should bring back the Super Sonics, damn it.) The first season of  Winning Time focuses on the 1979-1980 NBA season, where new owner Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) takes control of the...

I'm a bit past the deadline for this update because this is landing in the middle of July instead of the start, but as promised, here's the Second Quarter Update on my Goals for 2023.  I feel pretty good about 5-6 of these, so I'm feeling like 50% is a pretty decent accomplishment, but it could go as high as 7 or even 8 if I get my act together, which would be a very productive year indeed!  Anyway, here's the update: 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:  Okay, so the good news is that I'm sitting at 43,826 words. There's not really b...

I've been trying to keep politics off the main feed, because with two degrees in Political Science, sometimes my nerd brain runs amuck and I find myself talking about it way too much. So, most of it (if you're interested) is over on Minds , where I'm trying to become more intentional and more focused with my writing about politics. I don't know how successful it's been so far, but I'm trying. However, we've got to talk about what happened last night in Des Moines . I know, I know, right at the outset: politics, religion, and abortion are three things that always lead to sane, sensible, and civil discourse in our society. I'm also a dude talking about abortion and when dudes talk about abortion we have this unfortunate tendency to talk out of our own assholes, so I'm going to do my utmost to avoid doing that. Obviously, I've never been faced with that choice as a woman. Obviously, I have no idea how agonizing that can be for women in those situati...

The Broken Earth Trilogy is brought to an incredible conclusion with the final volume of the trilogy, The Stone Sky . Picking up where the events of the last book, The Obelisk Gate left off, the former inhabitants of Castrima-under are moving north, after their battle/invasion from rival comm Rennanis compromises the geode they were using to power and live in the city, making it uninhabitable. Essun, who falls into a coma at the end of The Obelisk Gate (from using it to save the people, but not the comm itself of Castrima) finally awakes to find that her arm has turned to stone. She realizes that she is destined to suffer Alabaster's fate and be turned to stone and ingested by a stone eater for purposes unknown. (We get some hints that maybe, perhaps, both Alabaster and she will be reborn as stone eaters, a fact confirmed at the end of the book.) She can't risk using more orogeny/magic because it will turn her to stone faster and she has a mission to accomplish. The moon is...