Weekly Roundup: January 22nd - January 27th
Well, the votes are in and we’ll be reading Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun for the foreseeable future! I’ll make an introductory post around the beginning of February but we won’t start the actual readthrough until March. This should give people time to get the first book and read the first chapter.
Anyway, more to come!
This Week’s Posts
Tuesday: NOIR: Another Excerpt - Another excerpt from Noir: A Love Story, which comes out on Tuesday. Have you ordered a copy yet?
Wednesday: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - I will always understand that things like this are very niche and probably not interesting to a wide audience, but this is some of my favorite thing to write. I discuss the history of Arthuria, how it traveled Europe, and how the Gawain Poet brought it home to Britain (and Wales, specifically). I name Simon Armitage’s translation as the best one, and then I use all this as a sledgehammer against David Lowery’s adaptation that everyone loved.
Thursday: Over at the Dadpod Gamescast, we discuss Chapters I-VIII of House of Leaves.
In two weeks, we’ll be discussing Chapters IX-XIII, which is the real meat of the novel.
From the Archives
Thinking and writing about nostalgia, and I think I captured part of that feeling in the final quarter of this essay about Final Fantasy V.
Listening
This song hit me like a punch and I wrote about 3,000 words about it, which I was going to publish here, but I’m going to submit it to a contest instead. If it gets rejected, I’ll post it here.
Reading
Reread Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and been bouncing around some Arthurian Romances.
Watching
Honestly? Just watching Yu Yu Hakusho.
What Else?
I started this substack last year and for the foreseeable future it’s devoted to Varney the Vampyre, the grandfather of vampire fiction.
This week has been one of me submitting stories and novels to publishers. I also feel quite drained by the above Blink-182 song and the essay I wrote about it. I’ll be excited to share it someday with everyone. It’s not very often that writing something takes so much from me, but this is one of those things that hurt to write.
Sometimes you bleed a bit into your keyboard.
Oh, too, if you’re going to be in Kansas City the week of February 5th, you can come meet me at AWP. I’ll be at the Broken River table selling my books.
That’s it from me.
Be well.
Anyway, read my books that are currently out. Then review them.
Thank you.
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl.
Sleeping Giants - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse and The Blood Dancers
Broken Katana - Sequel to Iron Wolf.
Libertatia; or, The Onion King - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse, The Blood Dancers, and Sleeping Giants
Noir: A Love Story - An oral history of a doomed romance.
Some free books for your trouble:
Wolf.
Howl.
Whoa, that song has me in tears. One of my oldest, closest friends has terminal cancer, and she just sent out a long message in which she outlines her thinking about what kinds of treatments she will be choosing going forward, which I read just before reading your post. That song helped to bring out my feelings. Thank you for sharing it.
I have not had time to read your Gawain essay yet, but it is top of my list!
Looking forward to the book club. Looks like all pieces of the book are available on biblio and alibris for good prices. I assume the read-along is going to be for the entire work and not just the first part?