A Year of Books 2019 — Ships of Sea and Sky

I like boats.

Maybe it was the heavy-handed Star Trek novels I read when I was young that constantly talked about the love between a captain and his ship, but… give me a starship or a tall-masted man o’ war, and I’m hooked. And I read some of those books this year!

In today’s list, I’ve gathered up any book related to Star Trek along with other books I read that involved boats of one kind or another!

***Continue reading “A Year of Books 2019 — Ships of Sea and Sky”

A Year of Books 2019 — The Best of the Year

The time has come.

Every year about this time, my Bride and I assess.. the BOOKSHELF OF DOOM!

Actually, it’s not very doom-y. It’s this bookshelf that sits next to our bed. The goal every year is to fill it with what we read. Finish a book? It goes on the shelf!

(Other than my professional reading for the ministry… those reviews go up every week over on my other blog.)

And now… it’s time to look at what we’ve read! I’m starting with what I consider the best of the year. These are the books that touched me the most. That doesn’t mean that everything else I read this year is bad. It also doesn’t mean that these are the books that will win the most awards. They’re the books that held my attention best and made me go, “Hm.”

These aren’t in any particular order, so don’t read into that at all. It’s just, as I said, the best of what I read this particular year.

Without further ado… Continue reading “A Year of Books 2019 — The Best of the Year”

Submit Again

In 2003, Marvel Comics established an initiative called Tsunami Comics. They released a number of series all at once, including Mystique, Runaways, Inhumans, Emma Frost, and I’m probably forgetting a few. I remember complaining at the time that it was like they were throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what would stick. It was like they were setting up most of the line to fail by putting out so much all at once. (I should note, that of the series I read, I thoroughly enjoyed them all, particularly Brian K. Vaugn’s Mystique.)

Throw a bunch of stuff at the wall. See what sticks.

It doesn’t work with everything. It didn’t seem to work particularly well for Marvel; most of the series were canceled pretty quickly. I don’t do that with the food my Bride makes for me. I think I might get kicked out of the house. I don’t do that in my ministry. I think it might cause some problems.

But with my stories…Continue reading “Submit Again”

Not a Writing Vacation

So I didn’t write a single word on vacation.

I’d like a writing vacation, where the goal is to just… write. But for the last two weeks I have written nada.

It was not a useless vacation in the least. I got to visit my wife’s great-grandfather on his hundredth birthday. I got to visit a mountain summit. I got to see the wonders of the Arizona desert. (Well, some of them, at least.)

The nice thing about visiting a place very different from where I’m living is that it got the creative juices flowing in new directions. Wandering through a saguaro forest clicked off a very different world in my head. Standing on top of the summit of a mountain changes a person if they’re not used to it. (And I grew up in eastern North Dakota. We don’t have mountains there.) Continue reading “Not a Writing Vacation”

Writing Vacation

Lock me up; just leave me a word processor, all right?

We’re going on vacation soon, and I’m looking forward to it. I get to spend a chunk of vacation with family that I honestly do enjoy spending time with. I get to spend a chunk of time with friends I haven’t seen in years. None of it is going to be very restful, but it’s going to be good.

But it would be nice if I had a vacation where I got to lock myself away with the opportunity to just write. Continue reading “Writing Vacation”