Here’s an experience for you: I’m on a train from Trenton to DC. This travels the same track as my old commute from Trenton to Philadelphia, but after a minute I realized I wasn’t seeing the same things: some marshy areas with nothing but bare trees and a few birds of prey, the backs of… Continue reading An alternative Levittown
Author: Matt
Work week 2023-01-17
Maker: NA Manager: Transcribe HEATSTROKE HEARTBEAT to end of manuscript; if done, decide on fate of SNOWDRIFT STARLIGHT plotline Marketer: Couple of blog posts; WINDBURN WHIPLASH preorder to socials. (Sometimes it helps me to have notes on my intentions, so I can at least know I’m doing what I’m not supposed to be doing. Format… Continue reading Work week 2023-01-17
The wicked flee when none pursueth
Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW wears its TRUE GRIT conceit lightly, which serves it just as well; Supergirl was never going to be a particularly credible stand-in for Rooster Cogburn, and King doesn’t try to force it. Instead, he lets the book be about a friendship between a young woman and… Continue reading The wicked flee when none pursueth
The Nona maneuver
Just marking this as the day it occurred to me that the Streets of Flame Quartet may need to become a quintet. This all relies on very, very raw turns of events in HEATSTROKE HEARTBEAT, which only exist in my head and a notebook, so all of this is highly abstract and none is guaranteed.… Continue reading The Nona maneuver
The square-cube law
I posted some quick thoughts on generative AI on a closed Facebook group for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Then I tried to find them and, WOW, is searching a Facebook group a miserable experience. So here they are, in case I ever want to find them again: I think the philosophical question here is… Continue reading The square-cube law
2022: An epilogue
I obviously haven’t made as much use of this blog as I’d have liked since I resurrected it this summer. Figuring out how to balance this with writing, the newsletter, and the other 95% of life is an ongoing project. But I’ve got a bit of free time at this end of 2022, and since… Continue reading 2022: An epilogue
“I believe at this point they changed their language”
My doctor told me that sometimes pregnant women get itchy, it’s normal. That seemed like a banal description of my experience, so I trolled around the Internet, eventually finding a website called itchymoms.com. Here I learned about a condition called cholestasis of the liver, in which bile leaks into your bloodstream, slowly poisoning your bloodstream,… Continue reading “I believe at this point they changed their language”
The journalists, the nihilists, and the chaotic neutrals
The amount that Twitter omits is breathtaking. More than any other social platform, it is indifferent to huge swaths of human experience and endeavor. I invite you to imagine this omitted content as a vast, bustling city. Scratching at your timeline, you are huddled in a single small tavern with the journalists, the nihilists, and… Continue reading The journalists, the nihilists, and the chaotic neutrals
Leeks & lentils
The most recent episode of Maintenance Phase is a journey through a scandal I hadn’t heard of: the severe poisoning of dozens? hundreds? of people who’d eaten Daily Harvest’s leek and lentil crumbles. The episode is worth a listen end to end; Michael expands this one story out into a tour through recent changes in… Continue reading Leeks & lentils
“A bridge too far”
The resolution approving Bridge Point 8 was “memorialized” tonight. This apparently means spending an hour and a half fixing typos, then opening the floor for 15 minutes of public comment. Both sides of the issue were vigorously represented HAHAHA JESUS ARE YOU KIDDING, literally no one who’s not (a) on the planning board or (b)… Continue reading “A bridge too far”