June is always a slog. The kids are out of school, but I’m not. I have to find an air-conditioner to huddle under while I plan lessons. I teach, I write, I try to compose invoices, always besieged by my adorable daughters, who only want to be played with before we grow too old for these games, Dad. Next year we’ll be going out with boys and studying for our high school entrance exams, but this summer, this last golden solstice of childhood, while the swallows swoop low across the sweet stalks of new-mown hay, now, Father, we want to eat ice cream and go roller-skating.
So, there I was, wiping blood from Ellie’s knees and helping her back into her shoes. She wasn’t crying any more because her mouth was full of ice-cream. I let her finish it while I went to play basketball with Maggie and my nephew Stefan.
Maggie has the advantage of extensive, Go-Go-Gadget arms and legs, but Stefan has the advantage of knowing how to play basketball. He’s seven years old and shares a name with Steph Curry. He wishes I would call him “Stef” instead of “Stefi” or “Stefcho,” and retaliates by not calling me “Chicho Dan,” but “Uncle Cheech.”
Maggie felt better when she teamed up with Stefan against me and Ellie, and could learn the joy of beating someone taller than you. After they told me it was against the rules to stand one step back from the basket and bounce the ball again and again off the backboard until it finally goes through the basket, her team won.
By the time they beat me, the sun had set behind the school and the basketball court was in the cool shadow of the school. I’ve spent a lot of time in that park this year, working out in the bitterly early morning. In September, I’ll return at 6 goddamn 30 AM for more woozy chin-ups every weekday, but in June, school was over, and the cousins were visiting. We could just play.
In other news, I have finished Wealthgiver. It is done and polished, ready for publication, and it’s going to work like this: on August 18th, paid subscribers and $3+ patrons will be able to read the last chapter (as well as all the previous ones). Free subscribers will have to wait until the 23rd of October. Then, in time for Halloween, we’ll celebrate the launch of Wealthgiver on Amazon. Tell me if you want to join the lunch party.
New stories are also incoming. Subscribe if you aren’t already for my next post, which will be about my plans for the year. If you join my discord server, you’ll be informed, and you’ll be able to talk about scifi and fantasy. Also, if you haven’t already, please fill out my reader survey to get a signed book plate shipped to you.
And I read some things this month.
Written in Fire* by Marcus Sakey - This is the last book in a series that, in spite of itself, was almost very good. At its heart, the Brilliance Saga is a story of inter-generational war, with Baby Boomers trying to brainwash and annihilate super-powered Millennials (Xers are just doing their best, man). In this last book, however, moralizing took over. Again and again, Sakey takes us to the edge, then says, “don’t worry, the disaster didn’t happen. Oh, you wanted to see it happen? You enjoy reading about this sort of thing, you sicko?” It’s insulting.
Giants of Pangea by John C. Wright - Sometimes I just gotta read another of John C. Wright’s pulpy candy bars. In this one (second of a series), Colonel Preston Lost, soldier, millionaire, ace pilot, and daring outdoorsman, continues to nearly get killed in all the ways a man can die on a far-future super-continent inhabited by post-human mutants, god-tech artifacts, and dinosaurs. Maybe the demon-worshiping giants and GM super-monkeys would leave him alone if only this guy would stop righting wrongs and defending the defenseless. He won't, though. This is how you write a hero.
Cræft by Alex Langlands - Unfortunately
’s review was much better than the book, itself. The author is an archaeologist who participated in a couple of “what life was like back then” documentaries, and has done many more re-enactments in his own time on his farm. His descriptions of hay-making, wall-building, and hedge-maintenance were the best part of the book, but I was disappointed by the lack of stories about working on the documentary set and in the dig-site transect. Maybe Langlands was afraid of being sued? Compared to The Craftsman and even The Wood for the Trees, Cræft is disappointingly thin. And I know this annoys no one but me, but the Old English letter æsċ did not represent a diphthong, Langlands. It’s /æ/ as in cat.In the Palace of Shadow and Joy by D.J. Butler - The fun of speculative fiction is when you read it and think, “Ah yes! This is all in free-fall.” Or “Electricity hasn’t been invented yet, so…” or “he has to drink blood every day, which means…” But in Shadow and Joy, there are no implications in the premise to solidify into action. There isn’t much of a premise at all. Characters: check. Setting: okay. Plot: sort of. But this story never comes together. It felt like a novelized run-through of an RPG campaign.
Mr. Monday by Garth Nix - I read this in my twenties and now I’m reading it to my daughters, which is a bit spooky. “Did he know the Pandemic was going to happen?” Then there’s this point in the first chapter where the introduction to the Will of the Architect runs across an angel’s foot, and the angel realizes how very badly things have gone wrong. Yeah.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - More fun than Tolstoy and more piercing than Twain, with the added trick of getting us to enjoy our ride with a fairly unlikable person. Scarlet is cunning, not intelligent, lustful, not loving, and so selfish she comes out the other side and saves the lives of everyone in her family. Like a lot of fallen woman stories, this one loses steam near the end when everything bad happens, but whatever. It’s a masterpiece.
One Blue’s Waters by Gene Wolf - Horn isn’t quite as much fun to follow as Silk, but, well, no spoilers. In this short review, the one thing I’ll call to attention in this generally excellent book is the way Wolfe dealt with the diary aspect of the story. Unlike Book of the New Sun, which was supposedly written by the narrator over the course of a few nights, The Book of the Short Sun was written as series of confessions interleaved with accounts of whatever the narrator happened to be doing in his old age the Raja of a small kingdom. Now I want the narrators of all the first-person books I read to take some time out between chapters to go fight a war.
Phrenotopia - Why do we have brains above our mouths and squid have brains around their mouths? On an alien planet, are brains (or mouths) likely to evolve at all? This channel narrates the evolutionary story of the main branches of our tree of life (as guessed-at based on DNA, fossils, and comparative anatomy) and discusses which outcomes were random chance and which weren’t. Pure gold!
Kiabugboy - I have never seen extinct marine invertebrates portrayed better. Look at this Mosura swim around. Look at that wobbly little guy!
Tomosteen - My kids introduced their cousins to this Japanese guy who makes lego food and pretends to eat it using stop-motion. Don’t eat legos, kids.
*Links to books are Amazon affiliate links
See you next month