Automatic

"And things are automatic when you see them everyday,

Is it the same routine, or just some fucked up dreams,

That keep you walking, mindless all the way."

*Note: Today's post was originally posted on the Patreon! Join to get early posts on top of podcast episodes and new book serializations!*

Have you ever stopped to wonder why things get made at all? At some point it feels as if we forgot the reason for many things, and why the people who came before us made them, and now we're stuck doing it because We're Supposed To, only faster, dumber, and in more pointless ways. As if we're just filling space because that's all we can do.

That's kind of a depressing thought, but it's one I keep mulling on, especially when I hear complaints of soullessness in the art and entertainment world from people who excuse exactly that every other day and have done so for decades. Every problem we work through today isn't the fault of those who came before or those who created these systems. It comes from those of us who have forgotten the Why in everything we do.

And we don't want to admit this dead end we're reaching was totally avoidable the entire time. Changing course just meant abandoning every poor decision made for decades, and admitting we were wrong. Good luck with that. This is all our own fault.

So you've probably heard the news by now. The AI apocalypse is here and we're all going to die. Art is over now that anyone can type in a few prompts in a generator and get what they need to be satiated. The sanctity of art and creation is finished because machines can do it all for nothing. It's time to hang it up and go home.

This is the current atmosphere of the world of art and entertainment now, buoyed by people who kicked up no fuss the entire time they made their way to this end state they supposedly hate so much while supporting every decision that led to this moment. Now because it might infect some billionaires in a city that hates art and meaning on principle, it's suddenly a real problem. We need to make things illegal! We need to fine and harass people into complying with our betters! We need to combat automation and soullessness in art!

But none of this is happening, and it's never happened. There is no putting the genie back in the bottle when you don't even know how long ago it was let out.

We let it happen

I watched the Telecommunications Act of 1996 happen which allowed Clear Channel to own radio. No one said or did anything as popular music was destroyed by this idiocy, just as they said nothing when auto-tune allowed corporations to bypass talent to put their own replaceable automatons on the charts instead. This was not a change that improved art.

I watched HD rob us of hundreds of talented game developers and studios because now they needed to sell millions just to break even. Nobody complained because they got their shiny graphics, even if the games became shallower and more automated. This was not a change that improved art.

I watched CG take over movies, leading to a uniform bland fake-computer image slathered over every film. Countless talented stuntmen and practical effects creators were thrown aside for sterile computer images. This happened at the same time sound mixing and acting all sunk into the grey goo of conformity. This was not a change that improved art.

I watched animation move to computers because it was "easier" and decades later no one can make a movie that looks as good as Akira or Secret of NIMH and we're supposed to ignore that truth because they can sometimes look like HD PS2 cutscenes instead. As long as we get our 9 millionth take off of Shrek with the same character designs, choppy animation, and low effort subversive snark "humor" somehow that's good enough to spout the empty catchphrase "Animation is cinema" when it has never been less cinema in its entire existence. This was not a change that improved art.

So my question is as follows: if you didn't care years ago when all of these mediums were being beaten down and flattened into conformity for corporations' ease of use, leading to what was already a factory belt-line production of effective automation . . . why do you care now?

This was always going to end here. We kept telling them it was okay, what right do we have to tell them to stop now? Why didn't we say anything earlier?

It's because we never cared about the art itself: we cared about consuming it quicker. All we wanted was more. More of what, exactly, didn't matter.

Computers have already been misused for decades to make art production easier (for the people in charge to manage) instead of smoother. They were originally sold as being able to assist artists in making what they were already making, just with less obnoxious distractions which would allow them to take less time and carry less of a load. And, as well all, know, this is not what happened at all. Was it supposed to destroy practical effects, passion, creativity, 2D art, entire genres, and make everything into one giant homogenized mud-genre meant for mass consumption by a people who otherwise no longer have anything in common with each other except what they consume?

Is this really it?

If that is the case, then why is this worth fighting for? Who cares about art made deliberately to remove the humanity from it, to fulfill a concocted outdated formula that hasn't been relevant since the twin towers falling was still fresh news? Why are we even consuming these things to begin with? To what end? What exactly is a computer going to take away at this point that we haven't already let them take away from us?

There already isn't anything left. We gave it away ages ago for automation, long before computers were even a factor. We did this because we wanted it this way.

What "art" is being defended by taking a stand against AI? I hate to break it to you but the large corpos and Hollywood are already using it. They were the first to use it and they're going to keep using it. You can get mad at an author for using an AI-generated logo for his first novel but that's not going to stop Tor Books from using AI-generated floating spaceships on their boring modern covers. But the latter, as they have been for the last quarter century, will continue being excused while those just trying to get by will be scrutinized.

It happens all the time.

This isn't AI, but what would change in this situation if it was?

And, again, I hate to repeat this, but the reason this stuff is accepted is because we've accepted every change they made solely because we just want to be left alone to consume product. We've slowly lost our standards as to to what the purpose of art even is, as long as its repeating shopworn catchphrases and Current Year phrasing we can consume it proudly, call others names if they aren't consuming it, then move on to the next corpo product we are designated to worship. That's all it is now. There is no depth or ambition in any of it.

In this climate, what does automation even imply? Automation from what? Outdated genres, tired ideas, and safe content from corporate approved creatives who will lecture you if you don't support the machine? I hate to break it to you, but they're already on auto-pilot to begin with. They already have nothing to say. A machine prompt that they then tweak without saying it out loud won't make any appreciable difference in what they do.

It's because they have nothing to say in the first place.

This is what is so frustrating about the current AI hullabaloo. It is getting mad at students not hiring professional voice actors for free college projects that aren't monetized in the first place. It is screaming at shitposters making memes instead of badly editing existing art for free. It is grinding your teeth as Normie Joe puts in a couple of prompts to slap together a joke song to send to his friends. This is the sort of thing that attracts the most ire: not a megacorp creating entire opening sequences with it to cheap out on paying their already existing employees. The only explanation as to why this exists is because we no longer even know what we're doing with art anymore.

None of the above earlier examples take anything away from "real" art. In fact, it frees up artists from wasting their time and ability from doing the bare minimum (artists not having to live off porn commissions is a good thing) and are instead allowed to focus on improving their craft and finding something to say that isn't just repeating the talking points from their favorite streamer or news source. In contrast, a corporation generating an entire opening sequence to get the product out the door faster shows they don't even have a reason for said opening existing in the first place. AI or not, there was never any attempt at art here in the first place.

Instead of raging at normal people using tools to make throwaway pieces of content for fun, perhaps standing up to corporations who not only have the means to do better, but refuse to, is a better use of our time? After all, they are the ones who lowered standards in the first place, and even found ways to turn consumers against patrons with their own brand of insipid insults like "toxic fanbase", "x-ist, y-cel fans", and whatever else low IQ kindergarten name-calling they can use to explain why not consuming corporate slop is evil.

It's been over eight years since Patton Oswalt insulted James Rolfe for not being interested in a terrible looking movie that flopped because it was terrible, and nothing has still changed on this front. No one could even explain why the movie should exist to begin with without checking of a list of tropes they wanted to subvert. It's nonsense.

To be extremely blunt, the reason the proliferation of AI is an overall good thing is because it no longer allows mediocrity to be held up as genius when anyone can just automate their own mediocrity instead. Artists have to be held to a higher standard, and some people do not like that. Artists who adapt, who use these tools right, and who focus instead on rising above what a machine can do, have absolutely nothing to worry about. Why would they: a machine cannot copy originality and high quality. That goes against the purpose of something being automated in the first place.

We both deserve and need this to happen, because, at this juncture, it's the only way to finally snap us out of those dull haze we've been stuck in for far too long. We need to finally start looking up again. There is more to life than this.

I know you've probably heard all this before, I'm not saying anything all that new new, but I think it needs to be kept in perspective as to why the old industries are currently dying and why newer ones are springing up in their places. It isn't due to AI--it is due to what allowed AI to spring to life in the first place. Focus on the real reason this is happening, not the end result. To do otherwise would be missing the forest for the trees.

AI is not going away. You don't have to like it, but you're going to have to accept it. We're also going to have to handle it better than this:





Anyone who can be replaced by AI, should be. It's really that simple.

The whole purpose of art is to bare your soul and stretch yourself to connect to others in a way that only you as an individual can. If a machine can replicate that then it can't be all that special to begin with.

But it can't, and we need to recognize that. What it can replace are clichés, tropes, genre checkboxes, and generic thought, all of which every industry is currently clogged with. If it finally blocks the drain and floods all this nonsense out, then that can only lead to good things. In the end, we will be forced to finally move on.

This is the end result of wanting to make everything automatic. It was never going to end any other way.

I don't want this piece to come off as mocking or insulting, but as more of a chance to stand reevaluate where we're heading and, for the first time in my existence on this planet, to try and stop letting things decay--to finally move forward in the correct direction. That is part of the reason I'm doing all of this, after all. I want to contribute to a better world, not a dying one. I've already watched the decay of all the above industries happening in real-time over the decades, and I will no longer be a part of that.

Thankfully, I'm not going to have to be.

The solution is to finally put things in their place and to strive for more than mediocrity--to stop accepting decay as normal and The Way Things Are. No, it's not normal, and it's not the way things have to be. It's only normal if you let it be, and we don't have to do that anymore. With the creation of some many independent and small creator-owned spaces now, you have an endless sea of options before you. Why would you ever want to stay on a sinking ship?

At the end of the day, there is no AI apocalypse and nothing is getting worse that hasn't already been allowed to get worse for decades. No, instead this is a wake up call and a signal for us to finally take a new path forward.

What we need instead is hope for the future, and I think we have more reason to feel confident for a new path now more than ever before.

The only thing that's dying is the old ways, and in this case it's more than earned. We've got much better things to look forward to, and it's about time.

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Weekend Lounge ~ Times Change

Welcome to the weekend! We're a mere ten days away from Christmas!

As we get ready to head towards the halfway point of the '20s, and as the internet begins closing in and breaking down, now is probably the time to take a good look at just how wild it was back then. Remind yourself on just how different it was. What better way to do that than with this look back at the figure who probably best represents the way it was in the old days, the ever-controversial, and very Gen Y, Mister Metokur AKA The Internet Aristocrat AKA . . . a lot of names!

This might be harder for younger folks to understand in an age where the internet is overrun by insane schoolmarms with loopy rules and puritans for the lame status quo of Current Year, but as infamous as the man called Jim might be for those who know him, he was actually a pretty common personality for those who grew up Gen Y and spent their late teens and early adulthood engaged in the early days of mass internet adoption. That was back when the internet was still a wild frontier yet to be conquered by the most boring people imaginable.

How was it different? In many ways.

Basically, everyone knew the internet was not real. It still isn't real, but we used to know that more deeply. You went on to blow off steam, find some cool corner of the internet that showed you things you didn't know, hang out with other like minded fellows, then you disconnected. It wasn't your life, it was more like a hobby to engage in when going out or calling friends just wasn't feasible. This was in fact how it was throughout the '00s. Gen Y, still under the yolk of the soon too be fractured Geek Culture, got together and shared their favorite products and events, and even messed with each other like guys used to do once upon a time. Things are different now, though, unfortunately, not in a better way.

What you should see in the above video of Mister Metokur's rise and . . . well, not fall--he's still around and still popular in certain circles, is someone who sees the digital world for what it is. It's a playground with endless possibilities where you can find anything. You might not disagree with how he spends his time on it, but it's clear that his approach was one we once understood long ago before we started following Influencers with Platforms, thought leaders on social media, and nauseating artificiality like that. Back before buzzword culture, we were just having fun.

And now the internet is on the way out. It probably won't even have proper recordings of how things really were before it went off the rails, so be sure to remember for yourself. It's only through building on what worked that we can build something better. And we're going to be building a lot in the years to come. We're going to have to.

Also, if you can, please send prayers his way. Jim has a sickness that has sidelined him heavily over the past few years, putting him on his deathbed more than a few times, though it's miraculously dulled none of his humor. That is a trait we would do well to imitate. Gen Y might be having a rough go at it, but I believe we are just now hitting our prime years on this Earth. Pray that we might all not only make it, but thrive and show the world just what we are capable of.

There is no limit to what we can do, a lesson that early internet should have taught us before we fell in line with those wanting to destroy it for clout and a couple of bucks. Let's finally go anywhere and do what we need to do. We've still got a decade to salvage.

That's all this week, and I'll see you next time!

My story, Mirage Carousal, is in the Fall issue of Cirsova! Bullets, hidden casinos, motorcycles, mist-covered towns, and monsters! Check it out today!

Weekend Lounge ~ Real Heroes

Welcome to the weekend, and December! The year is close to done, but we're not.

For this week I wanted to go back a little to the previous subject. That subject being heroes. There is quite a bit more to say on the subject.

One of the major topics has been the failure of enshrining subversion as a storytelling idol. The mainstream has been trying, in increasing efforts, since the 1990s, to cast doubt on and talk down on heroism and the Good as storytelling essentials. 

They've used every trick in the book to warp taste and reshape the audience, from the anti-Tolkien flatline that was People Are Bad And Nothing Matters to the superhero turds of Heroes Aren't Real And We'll Prove It Through Our Strawmen, to even failed satires of books like Alien Bugs Are Good, People Are Always Bad, where the audience satirizes the satire to reaffirm the original book's message and the big brain subverters think not being able to understand that reaction makes them smarter than everyone else. It's pretty much a mess, and it all stems from having a class of creators that hate Creation. And as a result, the audience has left them behind.

Because despite it all, the truth slowly seems to be coming clear. Despite how hard they've tried over the past quarter century+ to do it, heroes cannot seem to be truly subverted. Even the modern "smart" attempts always end up failing in the end.

For a more concrete example of what I'm talking about, I highly recommend watching the above video that shows exactly that. Despite an iron grip on the audience's attention, the tired attempts at talking over them and flipping over what they love has ended in a disaster. No matter what they do they can never escape the truth: heroism is real and it will never go away, be poisoned, or made "grey" with "complexities" by people who have yet to truly do anything interesting or new with their so-called creativity. All they do is make muddier versions of things people already like, and that's quickly losing audience members in the modern day.

What does this mean, in the end? You already know the answer, it's been clear as day the entire time. Despite our endless insistence on jangles keys and Being Surprised, at the end of the day we still want the same thing to happen. Everyone always wants Good to win, and Evil to lose. That hasn't changed, and it won't change, no matter how much one wants to blur the line to make themselves seem greater than they know they truly are.

Nothing really changes, even when it does.

That's all for this weekend and I will see you next time! We've only got one months left to close out 2024, so let's make it count!

My story "Fade Away to Anywhere" is in the newest issue of Starlight & Starsong! Check it out here!

Gratitude With a Surprise!

Out Today!

Surprise!

This is a time for gratitude. In fact, this whole time of year is. We become grateful we have families, friends, opportunities, good fortune, and, yes, even bad fortune. Just the fact that we're alive at all is a blessing.

For me, being a writer has been a more fruitful endeavor than I ever thought it would be. Just that that there are some people willing to spring on an ebook, paperback, or anthology, simply because I wrote something in its pages is very humbling. Even more so to those very generous readers who joined the Patreon. You are more appreciated than you will ever know.

Today, my newest published short story, "Fade Away to Anywhere," has been released in the newest issue of Silence & Starsong. The description of the story is below:

fade away to anywhere 

JD Cowan Fantasy, Teens and Up 

To Tony, the mall was a home away from home. What will he do when a mysterious danger threatens it?"

This one goes in some strange directions. I can't really go into this story without doling out spoilers, so I'll refrain from it this time. I can say, however, that it has a link with two stories released earlier this year in Cirsova and Sidearm & Sorcery. A lot of these stories are related to each other in ways that will become clear eventually, but you also don't have to know that to enjoy them on their own. I always wants to make sure every story is a good jumping on point for new readers, and this one is no exception. Check out the issue here!

At the same time as this, the Big Black Friday Book Sale is on, like it always is, running until Monday. You can find a full list of books here. There is no shortage of books but you also have a whole week to parse through the entire list. Have fun! There's quite a lot of good stuff.

As for me, I have Y Signal on sale for a dollar for the next week. Now is your chance to finally pick up this weird adventure of time and mortality set in the past.

Find it Here!

That's it for this week! Not much to update on other than I just recently got over a weird 24 hour bug that totally leveled me. It sure isn't fun losing a whole day out of the blue. No idea where that came from but I'm thankful it's over.

And that's what it's all about, I suppose. Just being thankful. We are exactly where we're supposed to be doing what we're supposed to be doing. There's comfort in that knowledge.

Anyway, have yourself a great holiday and a very well deserved rest and I will see you again very soon.

Also pick up Sidearm & Sorcery Volume One for a buck! Classic stories of adventure in a modern setting!

Weekend Lounge ~ The True Hero's Journey

Welcome to the weekend! It's time to talk about writing.

Every since those terrible space opera franchise movies started came out back in 2015 there has been a lot of discussion on the "Hero's Journey" theory and how it is instrumental to making any story with a protagonist in it good. Without following this formula you were doomed to fail. The conversation was understandable given how little those movies understood how to make compelling characters and stories, but it also revealed that somewhere along the way our perception of what a hero was supposed to be became skewed.

No longer did we await new stories from the machine with baited breath--now we started to question how they would fail following the Correct Formula. In many ways, we still do this, but it does seem to have clamed down in recent years. Regardless, it was an enlightening time to be paying attention to what the audience thought about this shifting culture of storytelling.

Was there really only one formula to write a hero story? Had Joseph Campbell set out to write a handbook that all writers had to follow in order to make a story worth anything? Were we all doomed to failure unless we slavishly copied his One True Path to mythmaking? Was he actually infallible unlike every other man Earth?

What is it about men named Campbell that spur on slavish devotion? Seems to be a very odd modern phenomenon. Does this name give you insight to the inner workings of writing stories? These questions are getting weirder and weirder, aren't they?

Regardless, it turns out that all of the above was wrong. In fact, this modern conversation of mythmaking does not even originate from Joseph Campbell at all, but by a Hollywood screenwriter who reshaped his ideas into a completely separate formula. Somewhere along the way we attributed things to Campbell that he never actually said.

Yes, much like the insipid "Save the Cat" formula that posits audiences cannot understand or process protagonists without having their skulls caved in with a subtlety sledgehammer, a Hollywood screenwriter invented a new formula from whole cloth based on an interpretation of his writings and all writers outside the system now rush to defend said very system currently falling apart from slavishly following said broken advice. "Don't Read Anything After 1980" indeed. I don't know how this bait and switch happened, but it happened.

Let's go into it a bit.

What the Hero's Journey was started as Joseph Campbell's attempt to find underlying patterns in all stories that form an overarching myth for all of humanity. What did stories have in common and what could be shared between them in a large overarching monomyth? He did not cobble a one size fits all formula to write stories, in fact not every story has the same mechanism or tropes, but each has at least some aspect that resonates with others. They all, in the end, point to the same Truth overall. What he was doing was seeing that no matter how different a story was they all played into the overarching monomyth of the human race, but in different ways and with different approaches. What he was doing was the opposite of what everyone expects from the Hero's Journey today. There was no one size fits all formula created by Joseph Campbell.

So how did that come about? How did we get the exact opposite intent of what Joseph Campbell wanted from his work into enshrining it as a one note formula meant to be slavishly followed to create Good Stories? This couldn't have happened organically.

Well, it didn't. The warping of the "Heroes' Journey" came from a book by Hollywood screenwriter Christopher Vogler. What he did was take Campbell's work then build his own formula around it by bending and warping the original purpose into a one-size fits all screenwriting guide. He hammered it in awkwardly to get the result he wanted out of it. That's right, this mutation didn't even come from a formula for novel writing, but one for screenwriting--an art that has been in free-fall since the 1980s ended. And this book being published in the 1990s might give you a hint for why that might have been the case.

Not only did Vogler misunderstand Campbell's intent with his work, he also twisted and mangled several aspects of the Hero's Journey idea, and just plain got a large chunk of it wrong. To understand how that happened I would suggest viewing the above video. After watching it, many of the mistakes of modern writing will come into clear focus, including many of our perceptions of it. In essence: we don't know what we think we know.

There are many ways to learn how to write. Some learn by ear and some study intently to become the writer they want to be. There are even some formulas that can help you become the writer you wish to become. Clichés and tropes exist and are unavoidable in writing. All of this is true and no one is denying any of it.

However, there is not one correct way to write a hero or a hero story. This was the whole point of Campbell's original theory to begin with. All stories shade in different aspects of the overarching Monomyth in various ways. But that is not how we look at it today! In fact, we have warped this into formulizing that which was never meant to be formulized. And why not? Everyone's got books to sell and selling to writers is a profitable gig.

To bend and misshape an idea into the formulaic monstrosity it has become by modern writers and, even worse, writers outside the system this mutation has already destroyed, is a sign that we are going down the wrong path. We are dumbing down the monomyth for no real gain. All we're doing is dumbing down what a hero is and what stories are.

It goes without saying that this will not lead to better stories. The proof of this claim is the obvious fact that it hasn't done so. This will not magically change if we keep doing it repeatedly for yet another couple dozen years. It is a dead end.

You might find this controversial to say, but it is what it is. Over the past half century we have made a lot of mistakes that need to be undone, and travel new paths away from failed ones. It will do us no good to continue mockeries like this if we want to build new roads to travel down these abandoned trails. We need to stop giving credibility and attention to a failed system that is currently bottoming out into the abyss. We need other ways. 

I think we can do it, but we're not quite there, and lionizing mistakes like the above failed formula is one of the exact things holding us back from moving on. We need to "Retvrn" harder than emulating years of a decline that had already been set in motion before many of us were even born. It is time to accept hard truths.

Genre expectations, what makes a hero, morality, purpose, and the meaning of good and evil, have all been bungled by the big dogs in charge and were done so long ago. If we want to move past them we're going to have to go even further back while simultaneously pulling even further ahead into uncharted waters. 

We are close to the fringes of a new Golden Age. In fact, we are so close I can just barely see it over the horizon coming ahead. But we aren't going to get there with these old failed roadmaps. It is time to throw them out the window and leave them behind.

Keep awake and we'll get there eventually. I just hope we can stop with all of these detours so we can get there sooner.

8 exciting tales of magic, monsters, guns, swords, crime, and heroes! What awaits in the cracks of reality? Check it out today and be sure to leave a review!

Weekend Lounge ~ Delinquent!

Welcome t the weekend. Short one today!

The following is a three hour video that covers the delinquent genre of manga. It starts from the beginning and purports to be definitive as it is meant to go through the the past to the present. In a sense it does because the creator covers a lot of material to the point where it's actually a bit overwhelming to watch the full thing.

That said, I don't actually recommend watching the entire thing. The first third of the video about the beginnings of the genre and what is considered a "delinquent" manga is the best material. After that the creator gets far too opinionated and misunderstands the appeal of many genre staples (and misses many crossover hits that expands said definition) because he has a very narrow view and specific set of expectations he wants out of it. So if you are interested in learning about what the delinquent genre is and its appeal, you're not going to get much out of watching the whole. Particularly if you've read some of the series covers and find his opinions on them off or bizarre.

But the first hour or so is very informative and a good sum up on where it came from and what the general appeal is. It also show the difference from other forms of delinquent culture across the world.

You see much of the appeal of delinquent stories isn't from bad kids doing bad things but from teenagers learning what it means to live in a world that doesn't have much use for masculine behavior, leaving the young stranded and alienated on how they are supposed to fit in. This atomized feeling is that heart of the genre which then can lead in any direction: from the split between good and bad kids, to traveling down the wrong path, or even learning to channel that energy in a direction that benefits everyone.

You can go in many directions, and the genre definitely has over the years. It's how you get entries as varied as Ashita no Joe, Akira, Yu Yu Hakusho, Tora Dora, and Slam Dunk, and characters from other related and bordering genres like One Punch Man, School Rumble, Fruits Basket, and Saiki K. Its themes are universal enough to be folded into even series that don't focus on delinquents. They remain an important staple in their stories.

The closest equivalent I can imagine in the West would be the works of S. E. Hinton. Most other stories over here tend to miss the appeal of these sorts of stories or characters, opting instead to make them heartless monsters or generic villains. Probably because we tend to see such characters as "bullies" and bullies are treated as very one dimensional. But while there can be overlap, they are usually not the same archetype. Regardless, that is usually how they are used and they always strike me as being very boring characters with not much to say.

That is a shame, because in my opinion, these kinds of characters always end up being my favorites, and I assume they do for many others as well. Feels like a missed opportunity.

Not to say Japan always does them well either. A large chunk of them simply stop at making said character a loud idiot with no redeeming features, and that's as far as it goes. But dig a little deeper and you usually find, in my eyes, the character who always ends up being the best one. I would be ecstatic if we would write more characters like these over here. In case you are wondering, yes, I actually do have many characters like this. And I probably always will. They highlight a specific failing of modernity that more writers need to touch on.

Plus they are always the coolest and funniest characters. There has to be a reason for that! Why else would they be such an important staple in so many stories?

Anyway, that's all for this week. In case you missed it, check out the new post from earlier in the week! It's a good one.

Have yourself a good weekend and I will see you next time!

Reminder that I will be in the next issue of Silence & Starsong coming out in just under two weeks! You can preorder it here!

Life as a Novelty

*Note: Today's post was originally posted on the Patreon! Join to get early posts on top of podcast episodes and new book serializations!*

I've been doing a lot of thinking, as I usually do either while working or just when I'm not at writing or at Church (which is why I watch and read so many adventure stories: I need a break!), about a subject I don't think gets touched on a whole lot these days. I've especially noticed it goes unmentioned when speaking with others about important subjects. That being the idea of novelty, in that it has become the default view of life to think of everything as frivolous.

For the longest time I've thought about why this subject particularly gets under my skin, and I think it's because it's gotten more obvious as the years have gone by, especially after the Greatest Generation left us years back. The world still feels a little bit smaller from their absence, and I think there are several reasons for that.

A while back I read a comment on X that read about how Baby Boomers thrive off of being subverted, as if it is their default view of life. This post was tagged with a video of a criminal chasing a scared young woman down an alleyway only to present "twist" at the end. He wasn't chasing her! This faux criminal was giving her a lost wallet she had dropped. The video was tagged with some sort of heartfelt message about how things in the world aren't so bad or whatever, which isn't an altogether incorrect message, but the problem is that this video gives a false impression of how the world works. This is not how a situation like this plays out in the real world.

If you lose your wallet and someone is going to give it back to you, they are not going to chase you down like a psychopath before having a whiplash mood change at the last moment as if they were some kind of joke on an old episode of The Simpsons. I know this because I've had someone return my wallet to me before. It's very anticlimactic, as it should be. This kind of situation isn't like a plot twist in some old movie. But the above video had to be presented a certain overblown way in order to get its (generally true) message across to its audience.

The above example highlights a problem, an expectation in reality that has been at the forefront of mass culture since at least the 1970s or so when Baby Boomers properly began making culture themselves. It's a the need to have reality subverted, for the natural order to be thrown off, to be tricked and shown how wrong "common" sense truly is. In other words, if you look at the history of mainstream and pop art (and yes, even "High" art) you can see how important escalating the shocking and explicit content is baked into how these stories are told. Everything needs to always be more extreme, ratcheting up to the point where there will be no taboos left. And when you get there eventually you have a free-for-all of atomized folks with different levels of power demanding their own morality reflected in the mainstream and what they dislike stamped out.

An obvious truth here should now be apparent to anyone younger than this generation. Escalation cannot continue on forever. Eventually you either run out of building materials and leave yourself stranded at sea, or you trip and fall down the other side into bottomless nihilism. Either way ends unsatisfactorily for all involved.

This is not referring to horror, specifically, but everything from rock music to romance stories. We talk about how "tame" things used to be when they weren't ever actually "tame" at all. We've simply desensitized ourselves to what normality is and can only feel new emotions by demanding to have our expectations be constantly subverted.

And now you know how we got a generation of people (well, at least a chunk of them) who think telling a normal story, but doing The Opposite of what a normal story would do, is peak art and creativity. It's been this way for ages. This is where the nadir of Subversion bottomed out in the 2010s to the point that even those who had swallowed it up to that time had enough. And now we sit unsure in the '20s just where to progress from here. After all, most of us have never known a climate of anything else, and those that did are long gone now.

So what do we do? The answer is to stop treating life, and entertainment, as a novelty.

Hope I Never Lose Myself

I'm not being facetious when I say part of the reason for the current state of rotting culture is that we have been dependent on this Baby Boomer idea of constant subversion and escalation to the point that there is nothing there anymore. It's over. There's nowhere left to go. The answer is not throwing away the past and only consuming the next escalated sensation in its place. That idea was never sustainable, and I don't know why we ever thought it was. We need another way.

So where do we go from here? You can't create an ecosystem where being surprised is the only thing that matters. Eventually you will train yourself like a viewer of an M. Night Shyamalan movie to the point where the "twist" is all you're looking for. This leads to expecting that twist above all and nothing else about the movie mattering. This is what actually damaged his career more than anything. Novelty above all is not sustainable. If we want to put away obsession with surprise as the greatest need, what else can we hope for? This is what we need to figure out.

Well, the point of stories, despite popular opinion, is not to Make You Think. It's not to entertain either, though that is a very appreciated side effect. Stories are meant to reinforce the Good, the True, and the Natural Order. They exist to boost and support a healthy society and allow it to keep functioning as it is. When you notice so much modern art is about destroying the past or the current norm for Something Better, it makes sense as to why so many argue between themselves over its value. The divisiveness is not a feature, it's very much a bug, at least for society itself. Those indulging in this very clearly see it a different way.

We live in a fractured society, therefore the power of our art is diluted from the get go. Artists and creators now have to work around both this hostile climate and the constant need for Surprise in a flooded market with no real way to reach a higher level of presence to pierce the wider mass audience that have been trained to think of everything as novelty. Of course, there isn't even a "mass audience" anymore and there hasn't been for decades, some would say since Cultural Ground Zero. Artists are hobbled from the start of their journey to the end while navigating a shattered field with no clear sign post or direction to grow in.

How do you relate to an audience that doesn't relate to each other anymore, never mind the competition glut of endless choice? Obviously there is no easy answer to that. I'm not even certain there's an answer at all, other than things will only begin to change when the culture itself finally does, and that can only happen when we leave Boomer World and the climate created by its living corpse. Things will change, they have to, but what comes next when it does?

Personally, I think the only way forward is to return to a healthy expectation in regards to art. Desire the Good, the True, and the Imaginative, and put aside the need for subversion and twists, since those are not the purpose of storytelling. Desire more from entertainment than mere Surprise and eventually artists will get the hint.

And, to be fair, I do see things changing. However, that change is coming mostly from the younger generations coming up. That cohort of Gen X, Y, and Millennial, all seem to be stuck in the same mode as ever, though there are exceptions. Half are adapting while the other half dig our heels in further. Soon enough we're all going to have to face the younger generations that have already moved on from the Land of Subversion.

We're not as clever as we think we are, and it's okay to admit it. But we still have to move on from that old idea of art as novelty.

Let me give an example of this refusal to let go.

Awhile back there was a new cartoon in crowdfunding about "adulting" and it was a typical animated sitcom of that The Simpsons started . . . from back in the 1990s. One of the comments on this project said, effectively, "Millennials should not be allowed to make cartoons anymore. They had their chance and they've blown it." They've had the chance to do anything, and they keep wasting it on doing nothing at all.

Of course, the comment is hyperbolic, but is it wrong? Said generation (including Ys above them) have been making cartoons, at this point, for nearly two decades. What did they make? Comedies that "flip tropes", subversive adventure stories where the heroes are "just as bad" and everything is upside down, and despite growing up with 2D, have helped bury the form in the grave for uninspired and well beyond tired CG animation that looks like everything else. They're just managing the decline and it is time to call it out for what it is.

What, exactly, have we added to the medium? What is our distinct mark? What is it we even have to say? Why do we refuse to ask any questions or push beyond the same ones we're "allowed" to ask and have been repeating for decades? We can aspire for more than this.

While I agree with the growing assessment that Gen Y is more of a scribe generation, meant to record and carry on knowledge, than it is in actually applying fresh creativity to anything, I do think we are in a very real danger of leaving behind the wrong things while we take useless garbage with us instead. We're old enough that reassessment is due. And it's a problem that needs course correction now before we lose yet more important things.

As we've touched on before: nobody needs to know about or endlessly analyze tropes. We've been doing it for a quarter of a century and it has not produced better art, just people who want stories to be checklists that are "subverted" because audiences think the point of stories is to be tricked or "made" to think. Art has become a quest to find the next jangling set of keys for the ever distracted audience that just want noise to fill the silence.

This isn't what art or entertainment is supposed to be.

Perhaps this is an unfortunate side effect of being brought up in a post-War society where comfort dulls the senses, but it is the reason despite having more art and entertainment made in the last century than the rest of recorded history combined, so much of it is so awful and only getting worse as we get further along. And no, it has not "always been that way" or whatever similar nonsense you are told, not when your modern industry prides itself on not understanding the past and willfully distorting and dismantling the work of the dead. It's far more insidious now than it ever has been, and this is not something to pride ourselves on.

It is because art is no longer made to reinforce cultural standards and beliefs and lift up your neighbor in fellow man: now it is meant to shape them to be like you. While that might have worked for awhile, the Baby Boomer generation was completely hoodwinked by this psyop after all, their children were then thrown up in a world of unreality, the safest and most improbable time in all of recorded history. Now that this false world is falling apart around us, still we cling to the hope that screaming into the void will accomplish anything as long as we tug on bootstraps and give a firm handshake to people we won't look in the face otherwise. All this in an atomized world where everyone is constantly talking past each other to make a little more pocket change.

No, the only way forward is to throw out the bathwater, not the baby. We don't need to obsess over the jangled key of tropes: they show up in everything regardless. We need to remember what stories are made to point towards, to enforce, and to lift men into. They do not exist to fill shelves that will be dumped into the landfill in fifty years for the next batch to take its place. This is purely temporal thinking, and it is not sustainable.

Man's destiny is Eternal. We are more than pieces and parts. We are more than this. Our art should reflect this, not point away from it.

Life isn't a novelty, it's a Blessing, and it's time we start acting like it.

Check out Star Wanderers for 8 tales of adventure, magic, bullets, and futuristic action! You won't find this in OldPub!

Weekend Lounge ~ Book Moralization

Welcome to the weekend! It's been a wild week. Time to unwind!

With the destruction of OldPub over the last few decades, many have wondered exactly what comes next. How do we get people to read again, and how to we change the image of the hobby being for anti-social weirdos who make the hobby their entire personality? That is a tall order, but we might be starting to have some answers for it.

The main goal to get people to read can only be accomplished if it seems inviting from the outside and is seen as a "cool" hobby to get into. Right now, reading is neither, and that is because it has turned into a clubhouse for people without personality. In essence, like everything else currently being destroyed, it is being run by fanatics that wish to be looked up at and considered purely because they engage (or are seen to engage) in the act of reading. This is because of the (false) image created by 20th century Baby Boomers mad about movies and video games who wanted Reading to be seen as Above and Beyond such low brow art forms. It didn't matter what you read (as long as it wasn't men's adventure, genre, or horror!) but the act of reading by default made you a more imaginative and smarter person than someone who doesn't.

I don't know how I can accurately explain this worldview that mutates into the clownshow you see today, except to watch any entertainment that features books from the 1970s or so to the end of the 1990s (when it abruptly ceased due to Gen X getting in control of entertainment). You will see the act of reading treated as a sacred act on par with attending Church, where as long as you read a book you will Get Smarter. It doesn't matter how, but it will happen. Therefore those who write books are not only smarter than normal people, those who read books, and a lot of them, is not only more informed and brighter--they are who who should inspire to be.

Of course we know now that this isn't true. This mentality lead to the Kid Who Reads, a midwit type of person who believe engaging in an act raises ones IQ and should be inducted in the high priest class because they Read Books. It's been a disaster for the hobby.

The above video highlights where this mentality has landed today in the modern climate. Books are seen as status symbols for Smart People, again, largely from lame Baby Boomer propaganda, and used as little more than as an aesthetic for Likes and Shares on social media. Reading has gone from a hobby based on imagination and wonder into being nothing more than another fad on social media. And it was never going to end any other way.

Check out the above video, and ignore some of the comments that miss the point, to see just how off track the hobby has gotten and how much work we have to do to bring it back. It's going to take some work, but it can be done.

What we have to make sure of is that we never allow arts and entertainment to fall to this level of shallow novelty ever again. The last thing we need is more disposable culture.

That's all for this week. I'll see you when we're deeper into November and hopefully the weather stops flip-flopping from one extreme to the other. I want my fall weather already. Enough of this in between nonsense.

Have a good one!

Have some fun this fall with the newest issue of Cirsova! I'm in this one with my story Mirage Carousal! Nick's got a motorcycle, an Uzi, and a town ran by magic ahead of him. Can he find his way out? Read on and see!

Weekend Lounge ~ Long Live Pulp

Welcome to the weekend! And welcome to November as well, I suppose. I hope you're having a fantastic All Souls Day.

This time I wanted to share a different sort of video than I normally do. I wanted to tackle the change in mainstream opinion on pulp happening in real time. 

We've spent a good chunk of the last few years going on about the importance of the pulp era while the mainstream narrative since the 1960s has been how much of a joke they were and how disposable the era was. Not only that, as per our old friend Sam Lundwall, they were poor pretenders of the past and it was their duty to correct the gross injustice of allowing readers to have their stories. They did this by cratering the genre into the ground and making their "genre" irrelevant and dead in the process. I'm not going to go through that again. If you've read The Last Fanatics, you already know all of that. If you don't, I highly recommend reading it to be informed on how we got so off track over the last century. You won't see the past of the old and dying publishing industry in the same light.

I've received quite a few arguments over the years in regards to that controversial book. From my harsh tone (actually toned down from the original article series), to repetitive arguments (fair, but then again that's what the work is addressing), to a hidden agenda to make "Science Fiction" Christian (an argument by paranoiacs who clearly have something they want to share the class), to more general and much more level-headed criticisms detached from emotionalism. However, one thing that can't be denied is that the "genre" is dead and the roots of its death go far back--back to before anyone currently alive was even born. And the problem can no longer remain unaddressed if we wish to continue. Thankfully, it's no longer how it once was. Attitudes have changed much in less than a decade, and they're poised to change even more in the rough times ahead.

It's about time we recognize this obvious sea change more outside of NewPub and even the industry itself.

And we are! It's just taken some time.

The pulp spirit lives in NewPub!

It's not 2017 anymore.

Despite all of that, my earlier book, The Pulp Mindset, was made to combat anti-pulp and anti-audience expectations in an industry that has been trying to control its readers (and failing) since the 1940s. That book remains in fashion because everything stated in it, despite coming out half a decade ago, is still very much true. The OldPub attitude is unchanged, to its fortunate detriment.

However, times have changed since I began publishing nearly a decade ago. I could talk about multiple things--the explosion of AI flooding submission boxes, the growing viability of serialized stories on the internet, and the slow death of amazon as a mega-platform mirroring the collapse of OldPub box stores, there are no shortage of changes reshaping the industry.

But one thing has definitely changed, one thing that can't be denied, and it was the one thing the Pulp Revolution was formed years ago to do. And they succeeded at doing it. Their mission was to prove to the world that the image of the pulp era was incorrect and deceptive, formed by anti-social weirdos to tar the writers and stories and ward off writers and readers away from them. This is undeniable. You can even go back and look at old articles from before 2018 on the subject and you will find they are slathered in dismissive and even insulting attitudes. This era was garbage and why would you ever read it when Fandom made the first good fiction starting in 1939 when they took over the industry? Just ignored that it inspired almost all the best things you like from the later half of the 20th century--they somehow convinced everyone that this was the way to go. All of these obnoxious attitudes were how pulp was discussed for about 70 years, and all it has lead to is declining literacy rates and leaving scores of stories out of print for weak reasons.

This isn't the case anymore, however. The above video is one by an internet video maker who more represents the common opinions of this sector of the industry. You can tell by how he describes what he likes and why he likes it. This isn't an insult, this is why it is important. Listen to how he talks about the pulps beyond What Everyone Knows (which is now accepted is incorrect) and how he becomes engrossed in a world gatekept from him from nearly three quarters of a century. He also, correctly, links it to the stale nature of OldPub and how safe, toothless, and generic, so much of what is pumped out feels today. How did they manage to make it all so different? What happened to the wild and the weird? And how can we get it back?

It's a good video because it's one that would never have been made a decade ago. I know that for a fact because we've talked about such things on Wasteland & Sky before. The vibe shift and mood change has been quite the pleasant surprise and proof that the Pulp Revolution was a success. The industry will never be the same again.

I recommend the above video. It's surprisingly good and coming from an angle you might not expect. It also shows just how much the industry has changed in such a short time. At this point, just thinking where it will be decade from this is even more exciting.

We're finally on our way. The era of the Fanatics is over.

That's all for this weekend and I will see you next time! November is finally here, and the end of the year is a stone throw away. Surprises are still on the way.

Long live pulp!

My story, "Fade Away to Anywhere", will be in the upcoming issue of Silence & Starsong! You can see the issue here!

Happy Halloween!

Hello, and welcome to Halloween and the day before the weekend comes! I hope you're all settled in and ready for some fun.

Though I shared it on the Cannon Cruisers blog and Spotify like always, I wanted to make sure everyone caught our extra long special where we talk about the Exorcist films, particularly the second and third entries, and why they might (and might not) be worth seeing. Of course we also touch on the first in context to the others, but it's kind of needed considering the subject. Regardless, it was quite the episode and we go for nearly an hour.

In other news, you might have missed it but Cannon Cruisers also has a Letterboxd page where we input all the movies we covered on the show over the years with our most recent ratings averaged out between the two of us (this is why you see some half stars when we deliberately do not do them on Cannon Cruisers proper) as well as links in the reviews to the episodes themselves! Be sure to check out our page here!

To be honest, I'm surprised Cannon Cruisers has been going on as long as it has. I thought we might have gotten bored and dropped it, but it's still going strong, even after we ran out of proper Cannon episodes. Seven years down is quite the run. Here's to many more!

If you want an update on the writing front, there's not much to add right now. I have some posts on the Patreon I'll get around to posting here eventually, and I've still got the next part of the serialization to edit after I finish writing the pair of short stories I've been tussling with. Aside from that, things have been going the same as usual on the production front.

My next story should also be announced for release very shortly. We're still just waiting on the artist to deliver the final piece. I can't give an estimation, but it should be soon. As always I will update when I can do so.

That's all for today. Have yourself a great Halloween, a fantastic Friday, a fruitful All Saints Day, and I will see you again for our usual weekend posting!

Today is the last day for the Dream Lords Kickstarter! Check it out for three classic books of weird adventure from the 1970s!

Weekend Lounge ~ Missing Hyperborea

Welcome to the weekend!

The weather's getting colder (in some areas), and Halloween is just around the corner, so let's cover something more fun and a bit spooky today. Instead of the usual tales of blood, gore, and chaos, lets us look into one of forgotten pasts and obscure lands. Where is Hyperborea?

A lot has changed attitude-wise since the 20th century ran out, but one of the things that has changed is our consideration for how weird history and the paranormal are actually quite entwined with normality in ways we never really considered. Dry materialism has never been a good enough explanation of the strangeness we see around us, only religion even bothers to point towards it and show that it is far more natural to the state of how things are than we have considered. When you stay in your daily routine or automatic thinking you tend to blind yourself from the possibility of any existence outside your dulled narrow scope. What lies out there? We might never know, but that does mean we shouldn't forgo curiosity.

That in fact has been one of the underlying themes of some of my recent stories like the ones in Cirsova #20 and Sidearm & Sorcery Volume 3. When things finally do go sideways, things you never imagined possible will be revealed as very much possible. And once that happens, the times can never go back to what they once were.

Then we will have to move on from this neutral state of waiting for normality to return or for it to spring out of thin air like magic. In many ways we were living in a dream world before--that is what the 20th century was meant to be, after all. We were to have a new normal, a new base, that would shield us from our natural state and nature. As it has fallen apart, we now know we've been missing too much of us to continue on the way we have. You can't go home again.

But, then, was it ever actually home in the first place? If not, then which is actually the dream world, and which is reality? Or maybe there's more to connect them than we originally thought. Maybe it is more complicated than 20th century materialism thought possible. In fact, that's a big part of the stories in Star Wanderers. Even in a future where we supposedly know more, there will always be much that is still out of our grasp. It's just the nature of things.

 

As the above video from the YouTube channel Midnight Broadcast shows, people have been considering this subject for a long time. It is a good reason why the writers of Weird Tales are still the most influential of the 20th century, even a century removed from the magazine's formation. They were the few still considering these questions while the pocket protector set were attempting to force convert everyone to dated Science that would rule our every waking moment. Of course, I already wrote about them in The Last Fanatics. What we are dealing with now is what they were trying to replace for their own new world order of eggheads.

So as you get closer to Halloween, consider just how much we don't know about what is waiting in the between, and how much we'll never know in this lifetime. Such a thing might seem frightening, but I consider it amazing. It gives off a sense of awe about just how wild all of this really is. We don't know anywhere near as much as we think we do, and that's great.

Have yourself a good weekend and get ready for November!

The cold is almost here.

And don't forget to pick up the recent issue of Cirsova for Halloween! I've get a creepy story inside that will make your skin crawl!

Weekend Lounge ~ Welcome to the Wolf Town

Welcome to the weekend! Hope this season has been going well for you despite the weird weather shifts. I have a few treats for you today! The first is a song. As you can tell, I've been playing around with generators.

The above is a song I generated in the newer Udio song generator I was introduced to by TheQuQu. Yes, it's a skabilly song (Ska + Rockabilly) because it's a sound I like and a sound no band seems to want to play anymore, so I decided to cobble one together. Please enjoy it at your leisure. It was a fun one to put together as an experiment, and it's not like you're going to hear it anywhere else. Perhaps these generators have more purpose than you might think.

Regardless, it exists now!

Do whatever you'd like with the track, too. The whole point was to make a fun song to do fun things with that just doesn't exist anywhere else. Not like you're going to hear a new Skabilly band anytime soon since this sound is abnormally unpopular. I also slapped together two remixes of it on the side, one acoustic and one alternative rock, so give those a shot on the site if you're so inclined. Hey, someone's gotta do something with all these abandoned genres. If this bother you, then knock me down a peg by writing some skabilly and making me happy.

But of course, this is not why I'm writing this post today. There's more to discuss. You probably want to know about writing!

In more pertinent news, the new Cirsova lineup for 2025 was announced! Who is in it, you might be wondering? Well, there is quite a list! 

Let us go through it below:

Spring 2025
Flight From Reckoning (Part 1), by Michael Tierney
The American Dream, by Rodica Bretin
Salt Roses, by Jim Breyfogle
Waegnwyrhta, by William Suboski
The Siege of Verisa, by Richard Rubin
Void Railway, by JD Cowan
The Demacron, by Gary K Shepherd
Machine Dreams for Wired People, by Jaime Faye Torkelson
Cracking the Cyber Ziggurat, by Kevan Larson
In the Last Days, by James Hutchings
Paying the Doctor’s Due, by William Drell

Summer 2025
Flight From Reckoning (Part 2), by Michael Tierney
Tigers Dream in Color, by Rodica Bretin
Black Sand, by Jim Breyfogle
Heart of the Goddess, by Harold R. Thompson
Melkart and the Rich One, by Mark Mellon
‘Twas Bato Did It, by David Skinner
Threnody Bacchant for Ruins Demoniac, by Matthew Pungitore
While the Islands Slept, by J. L. Royce
Double or Nothing, by Michael Ray
True Destiny, by Paul Lucas

Fall 2025
Drown Melancholy, by Stanley Wheeler
Labyrinth, by C. P. Webster
Ghosts in the Green, by Mike Robinson
Rossoya, by Bob Johnston
She Who Was the Sea, by J. Thomas Howard
The Whole Wide World, by Tais Teng
Ghost in the Garden, by Jim Breyfogle
Troll Fen, by Ken Lizzi
What’s He Building In There? by N. R. LaPoint
Satisfaction, by Vincent Valkier
The Merchants of Maaaw, by Mark Pellegrini
Do You Wear a Bulletproof Vest, Lieutenant?, by Rodica Bretin
Flight From Reckoning (Part 3), by Michael Tierney

Winter 2025
Flight From Reckoning (Part 4), by Michael Tierney
A Serial Killer’s Diary, by Rodica Bretin
They Always Come Back, by Frank Sawielijew
Reborn From the Blackened Bayou, by Jacob Calta
Master of the Hounds, by Misha Burnett
The Gallowsport Resurrections, Daniel J. Minucci
Pact of the Ruin Witch, by J. E. Tabor
Dreams of an Eden, by Jed Jalico Del Rosario
The Fang of Yog-Bora, by Blake Carpenter
Cool Beans, by Teel James Glenn
An Elegant Adventure, by Jim Breyfogle

That's quite a lineup, but you might not have noticed one of the stories in the Spring issue is by yours truly. That's right, I made it into Cirsova for the third time!

But what is Void Railway about? You'll just have to wait and see! It won't actually be a very long wait for this one. Suffice to say, those who enjoyed Star Wanderers (please leave a review!) will definitely be excited. It is time once again to see what our old friend Ronan Renfield is up to. I assume more chaos!

Also, in case you missed it, I also have a story in the most recent issue of Cirsova! It is called "Mirage Carousal" and is a story of a man on a motorcycle with an Uzi and a mission to complete. Things get quite hairy and intense in this one. It's also a surprisingly explicit story from me, though you'll see why that is when you read it. The end of the world is a messy place.

And if you want more, the follow-up to "Mirage Carousal" is in Sidearm & Sorcery Volume Three. It's called "What's It Like in There?" and gets even more nuts. It's one of the longest short stories I've ever written. The end of the world goes sideways--or is there more to it than you think? Read on and find out!

At this point, it's safe to assume if you read a story by me, it's going to be crazy. I like to go all out after all. All these stories are also related in ways that are not always obvious on the surface level. Though these two are probably more obvious examples.

I also have another story that is very close to release, but the publisher is waiting on the cover to come in first before the announcement becomes official. When it does, I can go into further detail. Suffice to say, there is more to come from ,e. The year's not quite over just yet!

That's all for this weekend. I hope you're having a good one, and I will see you next time. Have a good spooky season!

Don't forget that you can read the entire Phantom Mission serial as well as podcast episodes and exclusive posts on the Patreon!