Tag Archives: reading

Standard New Year Hullabaloo

Posted on by under Misadventures in Non-Fiction

Happy New Year! To those of you reading this in the year 2015, on January 1st, in a world that hasn’t devolved into some sort of post-apocalyptic Hellscape, I bid you good tidings. To those of you who are in such situations: best of luck, and embrace your new robotic/insectoid/alien overlords in hopes that good behavior will be rewarded.

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day mean a number of different things to a number of different people, of course. That’s a fairly obvious statement, I should think. There’s the easy way of viewing New Year’s Day as the start of a new calendar year. Another day that will, in all probability, be followed by three-hundred-sixty-four similar days. It’s a series of weeks in which the previous year sneaks into dates on virtually every document until, damn it, those guilty of such forgetfulness finally move forward and accept not being time-travelers. Some people view this as a time to enact change, small or large in their lives via resolutions while others view it as a time to continue with more of the same. Neither of those options is particularly bad on its own. It’s all a matter of how the resolutions or staying the same (which, in itself, is a resolution of sorts) are carried out. I’ve established I prefer to set goals that feel more achievable and moving forward from there. Such behaviors, I feel, were instrumental in the completion of my first novel, achieving my first paid publication (upcoming at a presently-unknown date), and surviving one hundred consecutive days of blogging, among other victories. However, I did allow myself a fair few more naps than I care to admit, more cheat-days with my writing, and other grievous creative and personal sins. However, I aim to make gradual, and hopefully very productive, changes this year. My goals for the year, as of now, will follow. Before that, I’d like to encourage the sharing of goals in the comments as well as the sharing of encouragement. Continue reading →

Writer seeks good reading

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Today was a good day, more or less, and the less parts will be left out for the sake of not ruining a perfectly good post. Ahem.

I met an old high school friend for lunch, as he happened to be in the area for work (which I assume means his company also employs yetis as there are an abundance of those living in these here mountains). We had relatively tasty food and caught up, talking about nothing and everything just as people who haven’t seen each other for greatly extended periods of time often will. It was an enjoyable time that, in hindsight, seems to have gone by too quickly. I’m immensely fond of visitors as well as lunch outings, even if they contribute to my financial stress more than they alleviate it. Instead of heading home immediately after lunch I stopped by Barnes & Noble. I had nothing in mind in terms of purchases, but I hadn’t wandered around a bookstore in far longer than I care to admit and so it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I ran into the problem I often run into at Barnes & Noble, or any other bookstore for that matter. I had an idea of the kind of book I’d like to buy, if I were to end up buying something, but I couldn’t quite put a name or specific author to it. The end result involved a fair bit of wandering around the store without aim or idea of where I should be looking. I eventually left without buying anything, which is just as well as I shouldn’t be buying too much for myself. I’ve been given the dreaded pre-birthday warning, and god help me if I choose to ignore that.

Part of the problem is this: as a writer, I have stories I’d like to read, and I know I’d like to read them, but some of them are stories I just haven’t written yet. Looking for some sort of comparable tale only works so well, especially when I can’t think of an author or title or genre even. It’s a big part of what drives me to continue writing. So I can one day hope such a story sits among the shelves of a bookstore, waiting to meet the expectations of a story-hungry reader.

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day 42

Posted on by under Misadventures in Fiction, One Hundred Days of Blogging

I’m starting my morning off by enjoying a bowl of cereal while I read through the Spam comments that Phil’s Misadventures in Fiction has accrued recently. It’s oddly entertaining, although the spammers certainly do have nice things to say about my posts. Even if some of those kind words don’t really make a lot of sense from a grammatical standpoint.

Speaking of kind words: the professor I sent Joshua Harkin and the Wicked Nightmare King off to got back to me with his critique today. It’s not something I feel should be shared in its entirety on here, but I do have to say seeing the phrases “I thoroughly enjoyed it” and “you have great characters” really put a stupid grin on my face.

Meowiarty is hanging out with me while I type this, as he sat at my bedroom door and meowed until I let him in. He may be a touch spoiled, I’m willing to concede, but he behaves like a dog enough and I miss having dogs around…so by that reasoning it should be okay that he’s in here. Probably. I’ll remind myself of that when I’m cleaning cat hair out of my PC’s tower.

Naturally, today’s post will involve 42 in a way. Hopefully not too predictable a way, but we’ll see. Continue reading →

This Week in Misadventures – A Self-Intervention

Posted on by under Misadventures in Fiction, Misadventures in Non-Fiction

Oh, hey. It’s Sunday, which normally means it’s time for me to stumble through all of the writing, reading, and other nutty antics I’ve gotten into throughout the past week, highlighting both victories and failures alike. I enjoy those posts, because they were a start to me making sure I was regular (toilet humor goes here) with posting to Misadventures In Fiction while also making sure I kept up with my writing, reading, and…miscellaneous antics? Whatever. Continue reading →

This Week in Misadventures

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It’s been a mostly-exciting, somewhat headache-inducing week. Let’s just leap into the actual post. I’m entirely too tired for this early, which is embarrassing, but I want to finish this post before I fall asleep on my Surface 2.

Writing

Do tweets count here? They still don’t, do they? Damn. Ignoring that, there’s “The Maskmaker’s Apprentice”, “Another Starstruck Misfit”, the cannibal story I still haven’t officially named…something else. My brain’s gone a bit soft. I need to get back into setting goals for myself in terms of weekly writing, which sounds mildly suicidal since I’m working on my One Hundred Days of Blogging posts as well. “The Maskmaker’s Apprentice” doesn’t count towards the goal of twenty stories posted, by the way, because I’m apparently challenging myself to write and rewarding myself by making it as punishing as possible. On the plus side, I’ve received so many new commenting readers. Mostly spammers writing comments in Russian, but I’m not too picky when it comes to comments.

I’ve got no particular plans for writing in this coming week, but I might just be lying there. We’ll see.

Reading

So many books, so little time. I’m rereading Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir), and I picked up The Long Mars. You may be saying “Phil, you buy a lot of books and you should probably read them instead of buying even more books,” to which I say I will never stop buying books. I should, however, get working on reading them. I think a great starting point would be to start over on The Long Earth, move on to The Long War, and then get to The Long Mars. I’m impatiently waiting for Bryan Lee O’Malley’s new graphic novel, Seconds, which sounds like it’ll be a terrific fun read.

Important Miscellany

Car inspection happens this week, which is important for my planned Chicago adventure at the end of August. I’m anxious that something will go horribly wrong, but when am I not? Don’t answer that, anyone. It’ll be the longest road-trip I’ve ever taken, and I’m going solo so it’ll be something else. We’ll see, once all is said and done, what something else turns out to be (good or bad). I’m considering a travel journal to post on here, as there’s still enough time for me to actually plan it out. Or put off planning it and just haphazardly meandering through it like I do with many other things.

The plans for this week include writing, reading, and a little recovering from last week. I’m more excited, I’ll admit, for the week after this one, as I work three days (thanks to a couple leftover paid holidays). Making a trip home to see my family, and I’ll have plenty of time to work on getting some additional writing done. None of which will be spoiled here, of course.

Here’s to a pleasant, hopefully peaceful week for everyone, and remember to keep the Kaiju population under control by getting your Kaiju spayed or neutered.

PS: I’m sorry, but I refuse to see this post linger just beneath five hundred words. Nope. Had to fix that.

This Week in Misadventures

Posted on by under This Week in Misadventures

Or “The post that almost didn’t happen because I have to be up for work at 5:30 tomorrow morning” with a dash of “Oh god, why am I still awake? Because I’d lose sleep if I tried skipping this post”.

It’s well past the 4th of July, which means everyone should be fully recovered from their red, white, and blue hangovers. Pet eagles should have been returned to the wild by now, free to soar high above the freedom and liberty of America until next year, when they return to their rightful owners to drink beer and cook burgers made from the crushed hopes of terrorists. I have no idea where all of that came from, but I’m not even kind of sorry.

This past week had ups and downs galore, but when everything is said and done it was awesome in terms of progress. That’s why I’m glad to make this edition of This Week in Misadventures happen. Continue reading →

This Week in Misadventures…and procrastination

Posted on by under This Week in Misadventures

Or “Let’s try this again from my laptop so it doesn’t keep breaking WordPress,” and “there was a topically appropriate subtitle but backspace kept deleting everything on my Surface”.

This week has spanned the good, the bad, and the ugly in terms of motivation and productivity. I could easily say I accomplished a lot of what I’d wanted to, but the comparison of completed planned things versus completed unplanned ones is a bit askew in favor of the unplanned. Hooray, things got done. Boo, lack of discipline and being easily distracted. In light of this post being “This Week in Misadventures…and procrastination” (we’ll get to the procrastination part because I’m not letting myself off the hook there), I suppose I should get to the actual misadventures from my week. Continue reading →

The magic in The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Posted on by under Misadventures in Fiction

I’ve found myself dwelling on Neil Gaiman’s novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane a fair bit lately. It became, very quickly, my favorite of his novels, as evidenced by such things as me calling it a treasure. After much pining over the deluxe edition, and many thanks to my mother (who does far more for me than I could ever hope to repay in anywhere less than a dozen lifetimes), I now sit waiting for its arrival. No single word or phrase seems adequate to describe the levels of excitement and anticipation, or the joy and disbelief, I’m experiencing over this as I impatiently await its arrival. My first edition of the American hardcover release, however, will continue to remain one of my most cherished books (I loaned it out earlier today, issuing a death threat should it return in less-than-perfect condition). I’ve thrown in a picture, because I honestly just love everything about this book (the picture’s on Instagram, which I’m learning does not like to share).

In many ways, The Ocean at the End of the Lane has gone from being a novel I loved reading to a sort of magic. To those who haven’t yet read it, I cannot recommend a fiction novel more highly than I do this one. There are some biases at work there, perhaps, but I stand firm in that assessment. To that end, I can’t help but wonder what about this particular novel really captured my heart (forgive the cliche, please). Yes, it’s beautifully written, with wonderful characters and a narrative that swept me up to such a degree I had to set the book down and focus on nothing else but accepting I had finished reading it once I’d completed the last page, but that wasn’t quite it. Tonight, in one of my more introspective moments, I think I’ve pinpointed at least a little of the magic of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and I’m content it’s only a little. Too much understanding, I’ve learned, can spoil this sort of thing. Continue reading →

This week in Misadventures

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Or “It’s been a pretty sparse week in terms of creativity, but I’m excusing that because other good things happened and I’m good at making excuses.”

Here we are again, on a stormy Sunday afternoon, and I find myself thinking back on what writing I did (and didn’t) get done this week. There’s a couple ideas rattling around in my brain, demanding their time on the pages, so I suspect I’ll have to find time to get to those before they start shouting things like “neglect”. Anyway, let’s move onto the better parts of this post before I get distracted by shiny objects again. Continue reading →

This Week in Misadventures

Posted on by under This Week in Misadventures

Or “My adventures outside of work, which include proofreading, some writing, and a small touch of drinking. Also: Watch_Dogs, in which I remember how I am terrible at driving and stealth, but great at blowing things up.”

Happy Sunday, people! Or sad Sunday, because I don’t know a single person who thinks, “Crap, I can’t wait for it to be Monday so I can wake up early and get to work”. If you are one such lucky person, I hold no hard feelings in the sense that I want to hit you. With a car covered in barbed wire and stabbing implements.

Maybe that was a little excessive.

More important than excessive, hypothetical violence, however: Happy June! May was, as far as I’m concerned, a rather impressive piece of crap. There’s been plenty of good to it, too, so there’s that, but this isn’t My Misadventures in Personal Existential Angst. I’ll try to not hear the impressive whoosh generated by the collective sighs of relief at that. Continue reading →