Month: February 2018

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing

I’m Luther Siler.  I’m a writer and an editor.  Welcome to my blog, infinitefreetime.com.

I’ve written several books you might be interested in, ranging from short story collections to near-future science fiction to fantasy space opera to nonfiction, all available as ebooks or in print from Amazon.  Autographed books can be ordered straight from me as well.

I can be found in several different places on the Internet.  Here’s the important ones:

  • You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page.  Warning: Twitter is where Politics Luther hangs out.  I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
  • Sign up for my mailing list here.
  • My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
  • My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
  • Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here.  It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts.
  • And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog.  You can click here to be taken to a random post.

Thanks for reading!

Prostetnic hi-res cropped

 

It is cold and snowing like the wrath of God outside

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing3 Comments

…so you may be interested to learn that BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES Vol. 1 and THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE are both free ebooks at Amazon through Sunday.  It’s a good weekend to spend inside reading, yes?

51X7vJ8S0SL._SX373_BO1,204,203,200_    51yHchbYJTL._SX373_BO1,204,203,200_
More later, but I figured I’d make sure this was out there.

Unreasonable and unfair early impressions of the Nintendo Switch

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek

Nintendo-Switch-Console-Docked-wJoyConRBI am, it seems, a miserable old man.

I’ve had the thing right around 24 hours at the moment and have spent maybe three or four of those hours playing games– mostly Zelda– so take this with as much salt as you feel necessary, but it’s interesting that this is the first game system that I’ve ever played that didn’t feel like it was for me, if you know what I mean.  And actually, seconds after typing that, it’s already not true, because I’ve owned a Nintendo handheld at a couple of points and those felt the exact same way.  The last Nintendo system I really embraced was the GameCube; I’ve felt like everything I’ve touched since then was too gimmicky to be worth a damn and right now that’s the vibe I’m getting from the Switch.  The Joy-Cons are godawful (and I don’t have especially large hands) and Zelda in particular has a really butt control system.  Mario’s feels a lot more natural most of the time but the Mario game really wants you to hold a Joy-Con in each hand with nothing connecting them and that feels really, really weird.

Also I fucking hate the cartridges.  Hate them.  Can’t wait until one gets lost; it’s inevitable.

I’m at the point where I can leave the first landmass on Zelda and past the first boss fight on Mario; I think the Mario game is going to get a lot more play out of me and the boy certainly seems to enjoy it quite a lot too.  I think the Zelda game has too much reading for him just yet and too complicated of a control system, which is a bit of a shame as the original Legend of Zelda was the first Nintendo game I ever actually beat.  The fact that so far it’s actually kind of boring and frustrating (whoever came up with the “weapons should break after fighting one enemy” thing should never work in video games again; I don’t care if it was Shigeru Miyamoto himself) isn’t helping at all.  That said the game’s gotten 10/10 review scores basically across the board so I’m going to assume it gets a lot better and keep playing for a bit longer.

Or maybe I’ll go back to Nioh again.  I paid, what, $80/hour for my Switch so far?  That’s worth it, right?

I am a grown person

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek4 Comments

Went to Target tonight and bought a Nintendo Switch, along with the newest Zelda and Mario games.  I have high hopes that eventually I’ll want to buy more than those two games but this is a Nintendo console so who knows.

Why, yes, we did get our tax refund this week, why do you ask?

On doxing myself

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, Work2 Comments

job-huntThe two-year anniversary of my formal resignation from teaching passed without comment a couple of weeks ago.  It took six months of looking before I found the job I have now, and I basically have not stopped looking for work since then, as I’ve never really felt like furniture sales are a viable long-term career for me.  The hours are killing me, in particular; I can count the number of weekends I’ve had with my family in the last two years on one hand, and there are still multiple days a week where I don’t see my son at all in between dropping him off at school in the morning and putting him to bed immediately when I get home at night.  Plus, while I am actually pretty good at my job– I was #61 in the company in overall sales for the year, and this is a company with over 250 stores– the economy is slowly starting to collapse and I really don’t like working for commission.  We get paid on delivery, not on initial sale, and right now a huge percentage of the stuff I’ve sold in the last few months is still backordered to March.

To wit: I made less than minimum wage this week.  I have two Master’s degrees, and I made less than minimum wage for the 42 hours that I was at work this week.  My boss is barely 30 and my two assistant managers are both in their mid-twenties.  I have already been offered chances to move up to management but the simple fact is I honestly don’t want it, because every time I wargame it out it becomes clear that it would actually lead to less money for more hours and more responsibility, and … nah.  I can keep calling the kid who is young enough to be my son “boss” instead.  It’s just not that big of a deal.

I’ve applied for several dozen different jobs in the 19 months or so since I started at my current job.  I’ve had, I think, two interviews.  I did not have a second interview for either position and heard through the grapevine that one of the jobs ended up going to a relative of one of the people who interviewed me, which was fun.  I’m at the point where I’m so deadly tired of writing cover letters that I’m having to scan them carefully for sarcasm before sending them out, and I was so annoyed by a rejection later that I got today that said they’d “evaluated my skills” that I was halfway through a go fuck yourself, you assholes sort of response before I got control of myself.

You didn’t “evaluate my skills,” you fucks.  You glanced at a cover letter and a resume and didn’t immediately see the boxes you wanted checked so you moved on.  If your letter had said that, I wouldn’t be pissed off.  But I wouldn’t have applied for your job if I didn’t have the skills to do it.  I assure you that my skills are fine.

Most of y’all know that “Luther Siler” is a pen name.  I had perfectly good reasons to take some steps to conceal my identity when I started the blog, but while I’m not considering abandoning the name (I’ve written six books as this dude, and have an actual network of real people who only know me by that name) it’s occurred to me that if I really want a different job, this blog and my Twitter following probably legitimately do represent my best networking opportunity for finding one, and I haven’t used it at all because I’ve always wanted to keep Luther’s and “my” lives separate.  I may need to reevaluate this conceit, is what I’m saying here.  Because this furniture selling thing is really getting old, and I don’t seem to be having any luck finding any alternate work as me.

Somewhat related anecdote: we have a Saturday morning meeting every week as a staff, since everyone works on Saturdays, and this week we did this little team building exercise involving our goals and fears.  One of my co-workers noticed that I more or less dropped out of the exercise entirely when the “write about your fears” bit came up, and asked me about it later in the day.

I told him the truth: that damn near all of my legitimate fears right now involve being stuck selling furniture forever, and that I hadn’t really thought that sharing that little detail with the rest of my co-workers was the smartest way to start my day.

#REVIEW: JADE CITY, by Fonda Lee

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews1 Comment

34606064Every so often, shit ends up working out the way I want it to.

I bought Jade City effectively at random– I was at a Barnes and Noble with a gift card burning a hole in my pocket and desperately searching for anything at all in the sci-fi section that looked like it had been written by a person of color.  Jade City was on my Amazon wish list, so I’d come across it the title before somewhere, but at the time couldn’t remember where– and, in fact, still can’t.  So I really bought the book for no other reason other than it was there, and it took me a while to get around to reading it.

You should go grab it and read it right now.

A Goodreads friend asked me the other day what “flavor of fantasy” this book was.  It’s a trickier question to answer than one might think, because here’s the thing: this isn’t really all that much of a fantasy book.  The best comparison I can make for it, honestly, is The Godfather.  Except in pseudo-Japan, which in this book is called Kekon, and while the Corleones were pretty explicitly all criminals, the No Peak clan, which all of the main characters in the book are members (or aspiring members) of, is almost more like a local governing agency than a mafia family.  The trappings are there, sorta?  And no one in the book is ever averse to using violence or various other forms of street mayhem when it’s necessary?  But there’s really no element in this book of having to hide from police, and if anything the book goes out of its way to emphasize how the clans help regulate the actual criminals.

So, the fantasy element: Kekon is the world’s only source of jade.  Jade, in this world, provides superpowers to certain people, known as Green Bones, who keep it in contact with their skin.  The more jade you can handle, the stronger you are; powers include strength, invulnerability, speed, enhanced perception, the usual bundle of Superman-esque abilities, more superhero-style than magical.  Not everyone can use jade, though; some people are simply immune to its effects where others (including most foreigners) are quickly driven crazy by exposure to it.  Jade exposure can also harm veteran Green Bones if they wear too much jade or go too far when using it.

So, yeah: Kekon is controlled by clans, and the clans tightly regulate the supply of jade and how much each clan has access to, and also how much can be exported to other countries.  There’s also a drug, called Shine, that cuts down on jade’s negative effects somewhat, allowing foreigners to use it at high doses and cutting down on jade sickness in Green Bones in smaller doses.  The drug is also pretty tightly regulated, although other countries are working hard at synthesizing it so that they can have their own Green Bones.

Take all of this and drop a clan war on top of it, along with a subplot hinting at no small amount of international intrigue– like, I can see future books in this series easily incorporating spy elements– as one clan begins smuggling jade to other countries without the others knowing and the other countries make plans to take control of Kekon’s jade production entirely.  Throw in a pretty damn compelling intergenerational family story that doesn’t even need the fantasy elements, a couple of awesome woman characters, and a subplot involving a petty street thief and you have what is easily my favorite book of the year so far, and an early frontrunner for best book of the year.   Fonda Lee is the shit, guys, and I can’t wait for the second book in this series.

Go read it.

Don’t read this post

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

awful-clipartIt’s not a terribly common thought for me to have, but this is probably beneath you floated through my head as I was contemplating writing this post earlier.  Let it never be said that I have any standards for what I’m willing to whine about over here, guys.

To wit: I’m at the point where I’m seriously considering contacting my local radio station and begging them to move their stupid advice column segment to literally any other time than the fifteen minutes or so where I am driving my son to school and am thus guaranteed to be in the car five days a week.

Yes, I know I could listen to something else.  This particular local morning show is terrible.  It is the worst station in the universe, except for every other station I could be listening to, most of which are less “radio programs” and more “war crimes.”  Sometimes I don’t feel like screwing around with my phone because I’m in a hurry to get the boy to school and choosing something to listen to makes my brain hurt.  And therefore just about every weekday morning I’m exposed to a crowdsourced advice column, starring a question by the stupidest people on earth and responded to by people who think those people need their help.

This morning’s question was about whether the flu vaccine was “propaganda,” for example.  Earlier in the week someone wanted to know if she was terrible for asking half of her bridesmaids to lose weight before she allowed them to be in her wedding.  These are always questions that a sixth-grader with a modicum of emotional intelligence should be able to answer easily, only apparently there are no sixth-graders with a modicum of emotional intelligence listening to the radio in the morning.  It is terrible and it ensures that I begin every single day by questioning the worth of civilization in general and American civilization (my opinion of which is lowering on a daily basis anyway) in particular.  I need them to stop and I need them to air their dumb program at any other time, or at least restrict the advice-giving to the hosts and not the howling apes who are calling in.

Also, I need to start an advice column, most of which will consist of me telling people that they are morons who should have solved their own simple-ass problems before writing to me.