Where Am I Today?

Over at A Writer's Life answering questions about, er, my writing life. And giving people a chance to win that $15 gift card.

Brynnde Begins Her Blog Tour

And YOU can win a $15 Amazon gift card by following along! Every Monday between now and June 5, Brynnde and I will be making a stop or two. Today you can find an interview on Christine Young's site and a guest post on Long and Short Reviews. I hope you'll swing by and visit!

Books: Peter on Blog Tour

I'm going on tour this month with my novel The Fall and Rise of Peter Stoller, and I hope you'll travel with me to a few of the stops. Today's in particular is a great one. It's a Q&A about me and the book, and I had a lot of fun answering the questions. Bonus: a photo of my reclusive writing partner!

Peter and Charles's Travel Scrapbook

So in April 2013 I participated in the A to Z blogging challenge over on PepperWords, and my theme was to explore the places my character Peter Stoller and his lover Charles traveled to during their exile from the UK. It was a lot of fun.

But of course, now those vignettes are lost in the bowels of the blog, and what's more, one would have to read down to up to get them "in order." (The entries are necessarily alphabetical rather than chronological, so maybe order doesn't really matter, but still.) So I decided to collect them in a handy PDF. Which you can access here.

My favorites are H, O, and W.

Enjoy!

Random Stats

Every now and then I like to look at my site stats. A lot of people visit this site, 150 to 200 unique hits a day on average.

Today I decided to look at my All-Time Most Read Posts.

1. My review of R.I.P.D. (Why? Anyone? I'm far from the only person who thought it was a bad movie.)
2. My review of the Summerland Concert Tour.
3. My Matchbox Twenty album art reveal for North.
4. My recap of Elementary's "The Woman/Heroine" (Season 1 double-header finale).
5. My coverage of the first episode/chapter/whatever-you-call-it of Parade's End. (The later posts about the doughnuts are way better, guys.)
6. More Matchbox Twenty: "She's So Mean." (It's grown on me. But my kids still think the song is about me.)
7. My review of Thor: The Dark World.
8. My recap of AHS: Coven episode "The Axeman Cometh." ::shrug::
9. My recap of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "Girl in the Flower Dress."
10. My meandering thoughts (not really a review) of Wreckers.

As you see, a kind of strange amalgam of stuff. I should do more music coverage maybe? For a while the Train concert from Berkeley was on the list; it only got bumped by Wreckers this past week.

Also this past week? Like, 20 or so hits for Oblivion. What was that about?

Seriously, people, enlighten me. What is it about these posts that draw you in? Then I can give you more of what you seem to like.

Books: Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

Allie Brosh
Touchstone, 2013
384 pages
Hardcover
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If you've read the incredibly popular blog that spawned this book, you more or less know everything you need to know about this book. There's really not much to say to the "already fans." About half of the stuff is the favorites from the site (though, sadly, no Kenny Loggins ruining Christmas here), and the rest is, I guess, new content made especially for the book.

If you don't know what Hyperbole and a Half is, you can find out by clicking here. I found the site a few years back, can't remember how (one of those things where maybe someone else linked to it) and laughed so hard at "The Party" that I had to go back and read ALL the posts. And as with pretty much anything in comedy, some posts are funnier than others, and a lot of it depends on your mood at any given time and/or your personal tastes in comedy. I guess the fact that HaaH is so hugely popular at least means Brosh uses a broad enough brush that a large swath of the populace can appreciate her brand of humor.

The book, then, is pretty much more of the same. It's interestingly done as each "chapter" (what would be a post on the site) has its own background color, so the book itself is kind of a rainbow. (No, don't taste it.) I didn't laugh as much as I hoped to while reading it, but that could be because I'm stressed out by visiting family. Or maybe content just isn't as funny when one is forced to create it so a publisher can meet its deadline. I don't know.

Brosh has been pretty forward about her battle with depression, and I'll say she hits that nail rather squarely. Sometimes the truth isn't funny. But corn can be. (I say this as a fellow sufferer. And if you've never sat and laughed for no reason except that your brain broke and settled on something mundane as the funniest fucking thing in the world, well, you just don't get it.)

Probably her best entries in the book are about her dogs, and it's really the pictures that put these over the top; the way the simple dog thinks in brightly colored shapes is pretty damn funny, and if you've ever owned a dog, you totally understand. Even if your dog was smart instead of simple, you can relate. (I grew up with lots of dogs, some smart, some not, and even the smart ones did the stupidest things. Because they were dogs. And dogs do not apply a whole lot of logic to their existences.) Alas, most of the dog entries are already on the blog. And again, the ones that are not aren't as funny. Except maybe the bees . . . My parents' dog eats bees . . . WTF is that about?

It's when Brosh attempts to get introspective that the book sort of draws downward and away from funny. Her observations are valid and it's easy to relate; anyone who is at all self-aware (and it's difficult to guess how many people are these days, but still) has felt the same. They just aren't entirely funny. I mean, we all silently hate at things with our minds sometimes and hope that will be enough to change the circumstances. And of course it isn't. And it's pretty ridiculous when you stop and consider the fact that there is no way to alter our realities just by thinking hard enough (unless you believe in The Secret? I haven't read it, but isn't that about thinking hard enough to change things?) . . . But these entries still fell short of laugh-out-loud funny. For me. I'm sure plenty of people laughed quite audibly.

But that's humor for you. It's so much more difficult to write than drama because the sense of humor is so varied and slippery. It's dependent on culture, and on timing, and on a person's mood and receptivity at any given moment. It's dependent on personal experience as well as broader understanding of the world and how it works (or fails to work). If I had been reading the book in my office instead of my bedroom, would I have felt differently? Maybe. If I had not had guests around, would that have made a difference in my feelings about this book? Probably.

I don't know what to say except . . . This book is kind of funny? Could be funnier? Might be funnier if I read it again later? The blog is still really funny, though. And maybe that's key. Maybe it's about going to the watering hole when you need a drink—a big, tall glass of funny. Sometimes things are better in small bites than in big gulps. HaaH may be one of those things.

At least for me.

You go make up your own minds.

Blogger Book Fair: Day 1

Today is the first day of the Blogger Book Fair. I have this great interview with ML Weaver up on PepperWords, and then Tammy Theriault has also interviewed me over on her site.

Unfortunately, I have the world's worst web hosting service, and so of course today of all days my site goes down because Network Solutions (more like Network Problems) is having issues with their SQL database. They've told me they "expect" to have it fixed "some time today." Because they're helpful like that.

But please don't give up! Do try to go read the interview with ML Weaver! (I can't even access the Word Press dash to steal the post and repost it here, that's how much NetSol sucks.) I've been getting reports of spotty access, so maybe, just maybe . . . Think of it as roulette? Spin and win?

And BBF is ALL WEEK, people! Great stuff on my site, and I'll be telling you where to find content by yours truly being hosted by other great authors and bloggers. And visit the BBF site to find more great stuff, too!

Site Template Issues & Potential Move

A quick apology if you're trying to read this and are only getting the nasty grey-and-white template. For some reason my customizations are not showing up. At least, they aren't in Chrome; when I open this site in Safari, my red template loads properly. (Note: it seems to be an issue with the latest Chrome update, but considering Google runs both Chrome and Blogger, one would think they could make these work together properly?)

Blogger has been having template design issues for almost a year now, which is very frustrating for someone like me who has used Blogger for a long time and so has a lot of content here. However, I am considering moving spooklights over to my PepperWords site in some form or fashion (I also need to migrate PepperWords to a new host, so there's a lot going on, on every side). I hope if/when I do move, you'll follow my reviews to its new home. More to come as things develop.

A–Z Challenge Reminder

If you've come here looking for my A–Z posts, you're digging in the wrong place (to quote Raiders of the Lost Ark). Visit PepperWords instead. Over there, my characters Peter Stoller and Charles Toulson from the award-winning St. Peter in Chains are doing a tour of the world, one letter and snapshot at a time. Go join them. Put a few pins on your own travel map.

Books/Blogs: St. Peter in Chains Revisited

So I've started work on the sequel to St. Peter in Chains; it will be titled St. Peter at the Gate and will pick up with Peter and Charles having settled abroad in Salzburg. More than that I can't (really, won't) tell you now.

But!

If you're really needing a fix in the meantime, Peter and Charles will be central to my A–Z Challenge in April. You can read about the Challenge, and Peter and Charles's part in it, over on PepperWords. (PepperWords will also be where I'll be posting for the Challenge, so look there, not here, come April 1st.)