It’s 4:10 PM…

On August 11, 2016August 11, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading6 Comments

…and I’m making a pot of coffee. I managed to land another two-day weekend, my second of the past eight weeks, only I didn’t know that I was getting it until showing up to OtherJob yesterday to pick up my paycheck and noticing I wasn’t on the schedule.

I am emphatically not complaining. So far today my activities have included finishing a book I was reading and taking a long nap and not bothering to shower until 2:30, so I’m working hard.

*stares into space for literally twenty-three minutes*

*gets up and gets coffee, drinks half a cup*

So. Yeah.

Let’s talk about that book for a minute, actually, although this isn’t going to rise to the level of a review: Nemesis Games, the fifth book in James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series, and the book that is, I think, finally going to get me started on buying the series in hardcover once volume 6 comes out in December. In some ways, Nemesis is a sloppy mess of a book; I don’t know if it’s because I was trying to read it as an author or what, but it’s clear for the majority of the book that a) there’s a lot of deliberate moving around of chess pieces so that the right characters can be in the (improbably) right places for the action of the book to move forward, and b) this isn’t a book itself so much as a setup for the next book or, more likely, the next couple of books. I feel like you can see the architecture on this one in a way you can’t with most books and you haven’t been able to in the previous four Expanse novels.

That probably sounds like a complaint, so let me follow it up by saying that Nemesis Games surprised me in a way that I haven’t been surprised since reading A Game of Thrones for the first time, and that it’s virtually impossible to talk about the book in any detail without spoiling how Corey wipes the status quo almost completely clean and throws every corner of his(*) universe into turmoil by the end of the book, only to then turn around and introduce a whole new problem in the final chapter of the book. It’s a hell of an ambitious thing, Nemesis Games is, and even if the story wasn’t as compelling as it was I’d respect the hell out of it for what it managed to do. My wife read it before I did, and she’s been chewing her nails for weeks waiting for me to get around to it since she wanted to talk about it and refused to tell me anything before I’d finished the book. That’s compelling, guys. Like I said, the book’s kind of a mess as a standalone artifact, but maybe as book 5 of what is probably a series with no planned end it doesn’t need to be. I mean, it’s not like anyone’s starting with Book 5, right?

…you should probably read these books, is what I’m saying. There’s a season of TV floating around out there that you should get into, too, as it’s quality stuff, even if the TV version of Amos is fighting with the Amos in my head in a way I don’t like. My Amos is better and he needs to win.

(*) James S.A. Corey is actually two people, but saying “their” in this context feels weird. They’re both dudes, so “he” it is.

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Insane Idiosyncrasies Edition

On May 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Stories3 Comments

coffee2

If we were having coffee, I’d be in a better mood than I am right now, because I’m not drinking coffee. (Note that it is probably best to interpret this post less as whining and more as look what an idiot I am. Calibrate your expectations accordingly.)

Our coffee maker took a shit a couple of weeks ago, developing a leak toward the base somewhere that necessitated its immediate replacement. The new hotness was a more expensive & more technologically complicated edition. It had a timer on it! My wife was super happy, as you could set everything up before bed and have hot coffee already brewed when you get out of the shower in the morning.

Sounds great, right? It also has an auto shutoff, meaning that there’s no more early-afternoon trips that feature one of us saying Did you shut the coffee maker off? because it automatically shuts itself off after some predetermined amount of time. And for whatever reason I haven’t taken the time to figure out how the timer works and how it can be adjusted, which means that there have been several times since we got the new coffee maker where I’ve wanted coffee and not had any, because for some reason the idea of reheated coffee creeps me out. Once that shit gets cold, it’s permanently undrinkable.

Note that I drink iced coffee every now and again. If it’s cold on purpose, that’s fine. If it’s cold because it got cold, it cannot be made hot again.

Yes. I know.

That doesn’t make any sense at all. I am aware of the problem and I have top people working on it.

I just wandered into the kitchen– yes, I know, it’s a quarter to twelve, shut up— ready for a hot cup of coffee only to be greeted with what was best lukewarm liquid that wouldn’t have been hot at all once I added milk to it. Turning the pot back on or putting the cup in the microwave is existentially impossible, and making a new pot seems wasteful. So no coffee for me this morning, again, because I’m too damn dumb/lazy to figure out how to extend that auto shutoff feature by another hour or two or, better, just disable it altogether.

I am not very bright, is what I’m saying here. On the plus side, I discovered cold pizza in the fridge that I didn’t know was there, so the morning isn’t a complete loss.

How’re you?

#WeekendCoffeeShare: VD edition

On February 14, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories3 Comments

Let’s be honest: if we were having coffee, we would absolutely be talking about politics in one way or another, but I’m not super interested right now at 10:00 in the AM on a Sunday in talking about politics. I’ve entered the Two Weeks of No Romance period of the year, guys; my wife’s birthday was yesterday, today is Valentine’s day, and this being Leap Year we actually get an anniversary on Feb. 29th this year. We’ve been married 8 years, but this is our 2nd anniversary.

What do we do to celebrate these august (heh) events? Well, nothing, really. My wife and I both agreed that Fat Tony’s death was the best birthday present the universe could possibly have arranged for her, we’re dropping the boy off with his grandparents and going to see Deadpool today, and as for our anniversary … hell, we’ll come up with something. What did I get her? Nothing. We aren’t gift people. (For the record, she didn’t get me anything for my last birthday either, and we didn’t exchange gifts at Christmas.) What will we be getting each other for our anniversary? Chances are nothing, although we’ll certainly go somewhere and do something fun together.

Valentine’s Day? Bah. Neither of us care.

I married correctly, is what I’m saying here.

This was an odd week. I got nothing done on either of the two fiction projects I’m working on during the week, a combination of exhaustion, depression, and what was probably a very mild flu completely taking me off my game from Monday through Thursday. I had my son at home with me all day on Friday and somehow between Friday and yesterday managed to get something like four thousand words done on the new Benevolence Archives novella I’m working on. Sunlight is still a little stalled, but I ought to be able to get back to that this week and I still have high hopes (ha!) of being able to get it done before C2E2.

Note that at one point I wanted it available at C2E2. So that tells you how good I am at keeping on schedule for novel projects, if you weren’t already aware of it. For what it’s worth I love the hell out of the BA story that’s responsible for my recent distraction.

The Walking Dead is back tonight, and I have the boy again tomorrow (he gets a four-day Winter Break weekend) and so somehow I have to manage to avoid spoilers for 24 hours. This will be harder than usual, I think. I’m glad the show’s back, although I think The Expanse may have supplanted it as my current favorite TV show.

(Are you watching The Expanse, fellow coffee-drinker? Or, rather, did you, since the first season’s over? I strongly suggest that you get on that right now.)

So, yeah. That’s where I’m at. How’re you?

#Weekendcoffeeshare: Blood Pressure edition

On January 17, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories4 Comments

If we were having coffee, I’d for damn sure be having tea or juice this time. I had a day earlier this week where I was so tired and half-dead that I made a pot of coffee at 11 AM– a full two hours after I’m usually done with coffee for the day– and drank the entire thing myself. You may recall a recent coffee chat we had where I showed you my new Walking Dead mug. One of the things I’ve done a lot of this weekend is home improvement tasks; I hung a new mirror in the bathroom yesterday and we went to my parents’ today and tore out the old toilet and installed a new one. My wife and I were greeted with those two monstrosities above. The coffee cup on the right is a reasonable person’s coffee cup. I can fit two full Walking Dead cups into each of those ridiculous bastards. They aren’t for coffee. That’s, like, a pot each. They have to be for, like, soup or something.

I wouldn’t have a whole lot to talk about, actually; a not-infrequent theme of these posts and the natural consequence of writing about my nonsense life every single day on the blog anyway. I somehow still have not sold an ebook in January, and that issue might come up, because it’s starting to get to me. I did sell one book in print, and I picked up a really nice review of Searching for Malumba today (check the previous post) but I have sold a total of three ebooks on Amazon in the last month, a drought of nearly-unprecedented nature. Please, for the love of God, if you ever read ebooks and have $5 to spare, check something out. My confidence is starting to take a hit here. 🙂

Let’s see. Writing on Sunlight has gone well, although I’ve officially reached the part in the outline where it just goes ??? DRAMA ACTION SCARY STUFF MYSTERY ??? MAYBE A HAMSTER ??? and part of me feels like I’m closer to the end than I really want to be. I wrote 1100 words of something today, unrelated to anything else I’ve done, that popped into my head whole and complete while I was taking a shower and came with such intensity that I rushed through shaving my head so that I didn’t lose anything and ended up cutting the shit out of my scalp.

You would have noticed the Band-Aid already, and so that part might actually come up first. But seriously: I wrote 1100 words of fiction during the time it took my wife to take a shower. If you know anything about my process, you know how ridiculously, insanely fast that is. I don’t know what this thing is yet; I mean, it’s a short story, but I sort of feel like it’s a proof-of-concept for something bigger. You’ll probably hear more about it later.

Maybe I’ll get called for a job interview this week. That would be nice.

How’re you?

#Weekendcoffeeshare: 2016 edition

On January 3, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories12 Comments

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If we were having coffee, we’d be talking about the same thing everybody else is talking about: it’s 2016! What have you been doing with your life for the last couple of weeks? What do you want to do with your life next year?

I’m not super interested right now in looking back at 2015. I blogged every single day last year, most days more than once; feel free to start with January 1 and work your way through. The year had high points and low points much like any other and was, I think, on balance more high than low despite the chaos of the last few months while I’ve been on medical leave.

I don’t do resolutions. Resolutions happen in January and are abandoned by February. However, if you ask me what my current goals are in life and I don’t have any, it means I’m probably deeply depressed. I always have a couple of goals that I’m working on; right now is no exception. Most of them are related to my writing and I’ve already discussed. The rest, right now, are job-related.

I want a new job. Preferably soon. Real soon. I’ve put a hold on stressing out about it over the holidays; there was no point, as the holidays are a deeply bad time to be unemployed. You have to be unemployed through the whole several weeks; all the folks with job openings, on the other hand, are looking at piles of resumes and going “Yeah, we’ll deal with that when we get back.”

(The exception that proves the rule: my brother recently moved to Illinois to be with his fiancee, and has had some trouble finding work too. He had a series of interviews last week in rapid succession, and when the third interview in three days was “go downtown, talk to this person, and then do the paperwork for your background check” I told him he had the job and to not worry about it. Why? Because they pulled in teachers over winter break to interview him, and they did three interviews in three days, and that means they’re in a huge damn hurry to get the job filled. I was right. Most of the jobs I’m applying for are not jobs that are going to lead to death or dishonor if they’re not filled this week.)

Well, at any rate, tomorrow’s Monday, so everybody will be back. My suspicion is that every office on Earth will start with a horrible three-hour meeting and then 80% of the people at work will spend the rest of the day looking around their desks, bleary-eyed, and trying to remember their passwords, and that therefore the earliest any “Hey, come interview with us!” phone calls could possibly happen will be Tuesday.

I am desperately hoping to get a phone call on Tuesday, especially for one particular job that I applied for the week of Thanksgiving and was explicitly told not to hold my breath about until after New Year’s. We’ll see, I guess.

At any rate, I’m going insane over here and I need a new job. So that’s goal one, even before any writing stuff happens: get a damn job.

I kinda feel like that’s enough for right now. How about you? What are you working on right now?

#Weekendcoffeeshare: At least I think it’s the weekend edition

On December 26, 2015December 26, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories14 Comments

I think it’s Saturday. It may not be, and if it turns out that I’m wrong and it’s not Saturday, I won’t be surprised at all, because as bad as my ability to tell what day it is has been damaged by my prolonged period of not going to work, this weird thing where now the boy is on vacation too and my wife is having random four-day weekends is just completely screwing with me.

That cup up there is my coffee cup. There are others like it, but this one is mine. The crayon is included for scale. That coffee cup is so large that it’s actually difficult to hold one-handed; it needs a second handle. It holds an enormous volume of coffee. Sugar is added to it via multiple scoops of the largest spoon we have.

I have lost track of the amount of coffee I’ve consumed this morning and I still do not feel remotely human. I think at some point in the last couple of days, maybe more than one of them, Christmas was celebrated in the homes of various relatives, but most of it is a blur. There is only The Couch for me today, or at least there will be once I decide there has been enough coffee.

So, yeah. If we were having coffee, I doubt I’d be fully cognizant that you were in the room. That kind of morning.

It’s 1:00 PM.

Whatever.

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Reasonable Positivity Edition

On September 19, 2015September 19, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories5 Comments

If we were having coffee, I’d be pretty happy. I badly want to be having coffee right now, but our coffeepot wants for a vinegaring, and it’s running slllooooowwwwww.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad week. The boy made it through a week of school with no poopery issues. At my school, we had a couple of notable suspensions that kept my afternoon class functional all week, and the first math test of the year went way better than I thought it was going to. My homeroom girls ate the thing alive, and my afternoon class showed a somewhat unexpected haves-and-have-nots pattern, where the kids either did great or very poorly. I was expecting the poorly part, mind you, as they don’t pay attention and there’s way too many special ed kids in there to be able to teach them effectively, but the number of them that did really well was really gratifying. What I didn’t see was kids in the middle. They either missed one or two or they missed eight.

I would probably point at my wrist at some point and remark about how there wasn’t a brand-new Pebble Time Steel on it, because the post office is screwing with me (if you want to take it personallly) or having some issues with their tracking system if you don’t. The tracking on the package is simultaneously insisting both that my watch is in California (where it has been since “shipping” on Tuesday) and that it will arrive yesterday. I’m crossing my fingers that a slew of updates will pop all at once and I’m getting it today. We’ll see.

I am looking forward to being mugged when some nitwit mistakes my $250 red and gold Pebble for a $17,000 Apple Watch, by the way.

And then I’d point out that it’s #SilerSaturday again, and Skylights is free, and since Skylights is my favorite of my books you really ought to download it and give it a read because it’s great.

How’re you?