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Maker: Complete reverse outline of HH
Manager: Reply Thea
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Last week
Work: ✅✅❌
I think wrangling a list of inputs is going to block me from doing this post too often, like it did last week. It’s nice information, but I need to keep this low-impact.
Now that mornings are light and warm, I’m trying to reinstate the habit of early morning writing. Last week was reasonably successful on that front, 3/5 weekdays. Getting to bed early enough is the challenge, of course, with the light going late as it does, and with the revenge bedtime procrastination.
I beat RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN last night—first time in a while I can say that about a video game. What an experience. I’ll admit the logic puzzle piece of it got a little tedious toward the end, and I cheesed the last few fates by exploiting the game mechanic that confirms fates in sets of three, but the frozen scenes that you explore for clues are just so well rendered, eerie low-poly wireframes that are far spookier and, occasionally, more beautiful than any animation you could interact with. There’s a scene where you pass under a frozen lightning bolt that’s just breathtaking.
I’m listening to Catriona Ward’s book, THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET. It’s great so far, but the marketing doesn’t place nearly enough emphasis on the fact that one of the POV characters is a housecat that’s somehow also a lesbian church lady. Like, not a human lesbian church lady who’s been transmuted into a cat, but a cat who has come by this identity honestly in its 100% cat existence. Admittedly, I can see how this could be hard to market in a horror book—like yes, this sounds less like Creeping Dread & Menace and more like Dana Carvey’s third act as a voice actor for a terrible Netflix animated special. (Lesbian Church Lady Cat has yet to detract from the Creeping Dread & Menace.) But what’s life if we can’t put our best foot forward?
This week’s image might be a squash? I get a lot of what my brother calls “volunteer” plants in the garden box because the kitchen scraps that go into the compost contain seeds. We also have a garden plot with the herbs and some uncommitted space, so the likelier-looking volunteers usually go there, and I have about six tomato plants and three of these guys (the other five died after the transplant). To look at them, you’d think squash, right? But when I transplanted them, it sure looked like the roots had emerged from avocado pits. But avocados are… you know, trees.
So, you know, watch this space; if my compost has somehow produced the world’s first avocado/squash hybrid, presumably I’ll either be talking nonstop about it, or I’ll go dark as the Men in Black from the Department of Agriculture seize it for spooky Government Purposes.
Currently reading: TSALMOTH, by Steven Brust (finally!)
If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.
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