My day in a .gif

On July 7, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

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In which I’m an asshole but I’m trying to stop

On July 5, 2018July 5, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, PoliticsLeave a comment

91f2oZK0TIL I used to discover new books by going to physical bookstores and spending a pleasurable hour searching through the shelves. That method is effectively obsolete now, as damn near everything I read is something I discovered online (on Twitter, more often than not) and added to my Amazon wish list. Sometimes I end up at Barnes and Noble anyway, though, and for whatever reason every time I set foot in that place nowadays it leads to a blog post.

I came across Christopher Ruocchio’s Empire of Silence at some point in the past few days; I don’t remember exactly when, but comparing something to Dune is guaranteed to get my attention and I added it to my wishlist. We ended up celebrating my birthday tonight with steak and book-shopping, and I happened to find a copy of the book on the shelf somewhere. I wasn’t familiar with Ruocchio– I think this is his debut novel, but I’m not 100% sure, and he’s definitely a young guy– and my first thought upon seeing his author picture was … well, judgmental. I’m not gonna bother saying how, but he’d done nothing to deserve said judgmentalness.

And then I noticed that his author bio mentioned his Twitter feed, and so I pulled my phone out and went to look at his Twitter, specifically to see if he was posting anything on Twitter that would give me an excuse to not buy his books. And I came across this Tweet:

I’m also trying *very* hard not to talk about politics. We’ve all our positions and beliefs, and in my view it’s not wise to go to storytellers for advice on how to vote.

If I slip sometimes, be patient. My primary role here is to entertain, not preach.

— Christopher Ruocchio (@TheRuocchio) July 5, 2018

Here’s the thing: my opinions on politics are very very apparent from my Twitter feed, and still pretty goddamn apparent from my blog posts. I am absolutely certain that there are some people out there who might enjoy my books but won’t/wouldn’t have given me the chance because of my politics, and that’s okay. Anyone who doesn’t want to read my work for any reason whatsoever is absolutely free to not do so, as none of you owe me anything.

My personal rule on the politics of authors and various and sundry other artists who I support is You Don’t Want None There Won’t Be None. I’ve never deliberately gone looking for someone’s political ideas before deciding to check out their work before, but there have definitely been some authors– Orson Scott Card and Dan Simmons come to mind immediately, and I threw away a John C. Wright book unread once I found out what a piece of shit he was, and I’m sure there are others– whose work I no longer read or never started because I find them to be such odious people. But if you either keep your shit to yourself or if you put it out there you do it in such a way that you don’t immediately convince me that you’re a boil on the asshole of humanity, I’ve never been one to go looking for bullshit. But if you put it out there, well, there might be consequences.

But that’s exactly what the hell I was doing– trying to comb this dude’s Twitter feed for a reason not to buy his book, because something about the way he looks set me off.

I don’t like the fact that I’ve turned into that person.

Long story short, I bought the goddamn book, which I was gonna do anyway, but as soon as I realized I was trying to find a reason to write this dude off and not buy his book I decided I had to buy it. And I’m gonna try harder to rein in my own dickishness in the future, because this shit is ridiculous, and I don’t want to do it again.

Now I just gotta hope to hell I like the thing. 🙂

IT’S MY BIRTHDAY

On July 5, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn life

“The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

…and if there’s a better way to describe me, on this, the first day of my 42nd year alive on this earth, than “infinite majesty and calm,” I want it caught and shot now.

I feel like as a lifelong devotee of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I should be greeting this year with a certain amount of fear and trembling, or at least enthusiastic anticipation. 42 needs to be big, right? But my plans for today amount to sitting around and maybe watching The Last Jedi on Netflix. I don’t even think we’re going out for dinner tonight. So … not so much. I’ll probably do something awesome eventually, though. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I haven’t sold a book on Amazon in a minute, so if you were interested in buying an inexpensive-yet-entertaining ebook or perhaps contributing to my Patreon, it would be much appreciated. Whatever you end up contributing will be worth it, I promise. Or, if you’ve read my books, reviews are the greatest thing ever. Please?

Na na naaa na, na na naaa na, hey hey hey

On July 4, 2018July 3, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Work12 Comments

giphy You have probably forgotten, because my life is not actually all that important to anyone outside of my immediate family no matter how much time you spend on this blog, but I did myself a bit of vagueblogging a couple of weeks ago. As of yesterday morning, the need for vagueblogging has passed! I can stop holding onto this goddamn secret that has been making me nuts since IndyPopCon!

I put in my notice at my job yesterday. As of August 8, I will no longer be a furniture salesman, and I’ve got another week of paid vacation between now and then.

Thank Christ.

I will say, to be fair, that I like the people I work with a lot, and despite my frequent complaints about it there are a lot of much worse jobs than selling furniture. But after a hair more than two years of three 11-hour days a week and working every. single. fucking. weekend I have had enough. My son will turn 7 a few weeks after I quit. He is starting to notice that Daddy is not ever around on the weekend. And regardless of how I might feel about any other aspect of the job, I can’t have that.

What am I doing, you ask?

I am returning to education. I’m not returning to teaching, or to administration, however. I won’t be working directly with kids, at least not much, although I will be working in a school. The job is primarily tech related, meaning I get all the advantages of being a teacher– including the pay, which should be substantially more than I’m making now– and very few of the disadvantages that drove me out of teaching a few years ago. I am not a teacher, though.

I have known about this since the Saturday of IndyPopCon. I applied for the job on that Thursday, had a number of email back-and-forths on Friday regarding scheduling an interview, and on Saturday the principal called me, cancelled the interview, and hired me on the spot. After two years of applying for half a dozen jobs a month and getting no interviews at all, to be hired without one was immensely fucking gratifying. It’s almost like I have skills that are useful in certain circumstances!

At any rate, I’ve been waiting for a few ducks to get their lazy asses lined up regarding the job becoming a bit more official before quitting and announcing it here, and considering that I started getting emails from my new employer today, I figure that’s as official as it needs to be. I also needed to make sure I got that second week of vacation scheduled on a certain week where my wife will be in Boston without me and it will be much easier to make it through life if I’m not at work, so today turned out to be a great day to make everything official. I figure I’m giving just under five weeks of notice; finding someone to replace me in that time shouldn’t be that hard.

(That said, if you know me in my Clark Kent guise and know anyone who would be good at sales, we’ve got a couple of open jobs. No particular education or experience necessary other than a high school diploma. Hit me up.)

So. Yeah.

*tremendous relaxed exhale*

Feels good, man.

#REVIEW: TRAIL OF LIGHTNING, by Rebecca Roanhorse

On July 3, 2018July 2, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews9 Comments

trail-of-lightning-9781534413498_hr Here’s a one-sentence review of Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse, that ought to tell you basically everything you need to know: I started it Saturday night at 10:30 PM, reading before going to sleep as I always do, and I had finished it by dinnertime the following day, and I worked from 11-5 on the day I finished it.

I woke up at 8:30 on a Sunday morning and rather than roll over and go back to sleep I grabbed a cup of coffee and took this book out onto my back porch to read outside for an hour or two before it got too hot. I realized after I’d been out there for an hour that I’d left my phone sitting next to my bed. Do you have any goddamn idea how rare it is for me to be more than ten feet from my phone for an hour?

(Okay, yeah, you probably do, but still.)

If that’s not enough, and if that gorgeous cover isn’t enough, how about the genre? Trail of Lightning is Navajo post-apocalyptic urban fantasy. And hard core Navajo, to the point where I feel kind of bad saying “Navajo” and not “Diné”. There are words in this book that contain letters that I don’t know the names of, guys.(*) A pronunciation guide would not have gone unappreciated.

Right, the story.

It is The Future. Global warming and sea level rise has gone way way worse than anyone imagined (it is hinted, but not explicitly stated, that something supernatural may have happened to make it worse) and as a result huge swaths of what used to be the United States– like the entire midwest– have drowned and Dinétah, the Navajo nation, is an independent nation-state on its own again. Maggie Hoskie is a social outcast who hunts monsters.

There are monsters, by the way.

I’m no hero. I’m more of a last resort, a scorched-earth policy. I’m the person you hire when the heroes have already come home in body bags.

That paragraph is from page 2. It was at that precise moment that I knew I was in and this book was going to be something special. Maggie is a bit of an asshole, so if you’re not the type to like abrasive first-person protagonists this may not quite be your cup of tea, but watching her hunt monsters and argue with trickster gods and do magic stuff and navigate the fascinating world that Rebecca Roanhorse has created was absolutely one of the biggest pleasures of the year so far with me. Trail of Lightning joins two other debut novels by women of color– Jade City and The Poppy War— that are guaranteed to be on my top 10 list at the end of the year. Roanhorse’s prose is clear and accessible and the book absolutely flies; this is the kind of novel that I want to write as much as I want to read it.

I’m just not going to try and read it out loud. 🙂

(*) hataałii, for example– I have no idea what to do with that L–, or yá’át’ééh, which has accents and apostrophes. No italics for the Navajo words, either, which is great, unless you’re scanning for words you don’t know and don’t have that to help you. (**)

(**) Audio on the web is inconsistent, but the ł may be pronounced like a W.

#REVIEW: EVERYTHING IS LOVE, by Beyoncé and her husband

On July 2, 2018July 2, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reviews1 Comment

1529188714_5c1de0914dc0d389b19ae56fe7cc046c It must be so weird to be Jay-Z, guys. He is, by any standard, one of the most successful and well-known rappers of all time and an insanely talented businessman to boot, and he still managed to somehow marry up, to a woman who is better than him at damn near every single thing the two of them do. Don’t get me wrong; I married up myself, and my wife is also better than me at goddamn near everything. It ain’t a bad thing. But to be as successful as this guy has been, and still be #2 in your house? Crazy.

So here’s the thing: although I don’t talk about her all that much I am a big fan of Beyoncé. I’ve phrased that very deliberately. I am a fan of Beyoncé, not so much of her music. As an entertainer, she’s amazing, but I’m not necessarily going to reach for Dangerously in Love when I’m looking for something to listen to. She’s had a couple of songs on each of her albums that I like; sometimes a couple that I really like, but Lemonade was the first of her entire records that really clicked for me and even then if I’m playing it it’s to listen to Daddy Lessons or Formation and not to listen the whole way through.

And despite all the good stuff I just said about Jay, I’ve always thought he was kind of overrated as a musician. Him and Nas both fit into the same headspace for me, guys who have been around forever and been obscenely successful in hiphop (although Jay is a level beyond Nas, I think) but who I just don’t think are as good as everyone thinks they are. Don’t @ me. I bought 4:44 just like everybody else. The dude’s still huge. I don’t get to decide that, and he doesn’t have to give a shit what I think. But still.

So it’s kind of fascinating to me that Everything is Love is my favorite Beyoncé album and my favorite Jay-Z album, and by a substantial margin. I have always and always will preferred hiphop to all other forms of music, and it turns out that when you take Bey’s talents and turn the dial a few notches toward rap you get something that I really fucking like. Here’s how much I like this album: I’ve not only had it on damn near constant rotation in my car since I downloaded it, but when I’m not listening to it I’ve been revisiting everything else I have by both of them.

I dunno if I even really have anything else coherent to say about it. I’m terrible at reviewing music; I always have been, and it’s not like this album needs my help, right? If you were gonna cop this one you had it two hours after you found out it existed and nobody is going to try it based on Oh, Luther liked it! But still. Do it anyway. This is something special, and these two need to make music together more often.

The general theory seems to be that me doing an advice column would be entertaining, but I need some people with problems! Drop me a line and let me know how your life is Wrong and I will fix it.