Category Archives: Writing

Vampires, billionaires, & entrenched power, 9/10/26

Posted on by Henry

Vampires and billionaires were a thing in the 2010s, objects of fascination and fantasy. This was exemplified by the Twilight and 50 Shades books and movies. Those stories were part of a return to a fascination that we’ve had before, and part of a larger pattern of fetishizing terrifying concentrations of (abusive) power. As has been true previously, the themes that reached the larger zeitgeist were fantasies about some powerful and implicitly dangerous hunk who would obsess over us, sweep us off our feet, and (romantically) ravish us while also offering us impossible financial security. We might also have the personal validation of being able to “fix” the bad boy / billionaire / vampire or make him feel true love for us (they’re kind of the same thing, and they’re evidence that, first, we were right that he wasn’t totally unredeemable, and second, that we were special somehow because he changed for us). The overtones of contagion (and the fear of disease) from earlier vampire crazes still lingered in the background, but they were downplayed in favor of emphasizing the weird power dynamics between a mortal and a mostly-immortal lover.

I don’t think it’s surprising…

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Music for thinking & writing to, 8/27/26

Posted on by Henry

I do listen to a wider variety of music, but when it comes time for me to focus…

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Lyme disease, & humor in Dungeon Crawler Carl

Posted on by Henry

This is a week for arthritic pain, fatigue, and wondering what makes “funny” things funny in Dungeon Crawler Carl (which I wrote about last week).

I’m pretty sure I’ve got Lyme disease. I’m already on doxycycline. I don’t yet have a positive test for Lyme disease, but I’m not waiting for one either.

I have enough circumstantial evidence. I walked through scrub forest and near tall grass in a high risk area—Cape Cod—while on my way to the beach. Two days later Ley noticed I had a weird bruise. About a week after that, stiffness and pain started spreading through my left leg and up my left side. I also got even more sleepy.

Weirdly, some part of me is relieved.

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Class, classes, LitRPGs: implications of game systems 7/16/26

Posted on by Henry

I’ve gotten so behind in tracking what I’ve read in my reading journal, I’m not sure where to begin.

The problem? LitRPG books.

No wait, the problem is that I don’t have the focus to keep up with my usual book logging commitment. I don’t have that focus because baby. And I don’t make time for logging the books I’ve read because… baby. Baby, and everything else that needs to be done.

Another part of the problem is that I can read ebooks on my phone while I’m doing other things, including while I hum and rock my baby to sleep. That works just fine. It works far better, far more easily, than…

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The Creator (2023)

Posted on by Henry

I finally watched The Creator, a movie directed by Gareth Edwards (the director of Rogue One). I’m a fan of Rogue One. I’ve also long loved stories that use AI and cybernetics to dig into our tender, fleshy explorations of humanity and the soul. I’m clearly the target audience.

If anyone were to love a movie about one person caught up in the conflict between AIs living in syncretic coexistence with humanity, and a fearful and hardhearted imperialist anti-AI America, it would be me. And I do! I do love this movie. But… it’s complicated.

I jotted down this note immediately after finishing The Creator:

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Why you tilt the camera, Spider-Noir, 6/4/26

Posted on by Henry

I’ve been enjoying watching Spider-Noir with Ley.

I was adamant that we should watch in black and white. Ley was willing to follow my lead. After finishing the first episode we spoke again about whether the show would look as good in color, and they said “No, it’s art.”

It’s not hard to find people who agree with this position online. I happen to think it’s the right one. I’d heard that the show was filmed with black and white in mind, and that seems obvious to me on watching it.

I wanted to be sure, though. I went through different scenes, rewatching them in color. I admit, the color version looks good too! Working in black and white obviously has a cost; I kind of like knowing that Robbie is wearing warm and punchy reddish hues in episode one, and I wouldn’t have known that without going back to check the color version.

But the black and white version sings. Yes, the color version looks good, but it’s a different kind of good—and I’d argue that the color version isn’t the right kind of good for this show. The team that made Spider-Noir knew what they were doing when they shot for black and white. 

That raises some questions though. Clearly, reality isn’t black and white. The filmmakers aren’t working with purely black and white source material. How then are they getting such incredible results?

Like Ley said, it’s art. It’s art, and a lesson in the importance of knowing one’s craft and intended genre. How can we apply that lesson beyond film?

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Middle Grade & Adventure Fiction, 5/21/26

Posted on by Henry

I received really helpful feedback last year alongside a rejection of Bury’em Deep. The agent said (I paraphrase) that she really liked the story, but wouldn’t represent me because she didn’t know an editor who was looking for it. She went on to say that middle grade was an exceptionally difficult market at present; acquiring editors were extremely picky, and she didn’t have the right contacts for upper middle grade space adventure.

I appreciated her candor. Frankly, I think her position is a good one—if she doesn’t know where or how to sell a work, she’s not the agent for that work. She remains the only agent (in over five years of on and off querying) who has given me such clarity in her response.

But all of that left me wondering: what the heck is ”upper middle grade” fiction? Have I been using the wrong term for my story this whole time?

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Pain, progress, & Truby, 5/14/26

Posted on by Henry

Success! Since my post last week, I’ve prioritized prep work during my writing time. It’s been good. I haven’t had that much writing time, and I haven’t answered all my questions. I definitely shouldn’t jump back to the story yet. But I have identified several problems that were eating at my subconscious, and I may have resolved one of them.

Unfortunately, that resolution could be painful.

This prep work hasn’t felt satisfying in the same way as putting words on the page. Something about the work has even felt a little hollow. It’s like I’m merely whetting my appetite, and now feel even hungrier for “the real deal.” And yes, I agree, that’s unhelpful terminology for reinforcing my prep work habits.

It doesn’t help that I’m spending a lot of time and effort looking at the holes in my hopes and plans. Realizing that something’s going wrong, that I need to cut or make big changes, isn’t precisely inspiring. But every so often, I get little insights—yes, they sometimes hurt, but I’m excited to try implementing them, to see whether they solve even bigger problems that I’d only barely glimpsed on the horizon.

Let me give you an example.

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Cooking, writing, prep work 5/7/26

Posted on by Henry

Here are two scenarios.

First, you’re in the kitchen. You need to make dinner—food for tonight, and leftovers for several days. You’re working from a recipe that you haven’t read before. You haven’t done any prep. You’re sure you have most of the ingredients you’ll need, but you haven’t even pulled any of them out of the cupboard.

Second, you’re in the kitchen again. You still need to make dinner—food for tonight, and leftovers for several days. This time you’re cooking a familiar dish; you know the recipe, you know the flavor palette you want, you know what you’re doing. You’ve already prepped all your ingredients. Each one is on hand, in a bowl or dish or whatever, ready to add when the time comes.

In the first case, you are going to be stressed, and frustrated, and the whole thing is going to take way too long. Forget improvising; you might make changes to the recipe but they’ll be by accident and you’re probably going to burn something.

In the second case you’re relaxed, you’re having fun. You have enough free time and spare brainpower to play around with a few ingredients you thought of as you were cooking. You know what you’re doing well enough that you can track the results of your improvising and experimentation as you go.

If I had a choice, I’d pick the second option every time.

So why do I keep picking the first option with my writing?

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Distractions, 4/30/26

Posted on by Henry

I’ve once more been waylaid by other things this week.

I’m excited to see my friend’s book coming together (she’s working on book three of three). I’ve enjoyed reading another friend’s current work in progress (they’re retelling Lady & the Tramp as lesbian werewolf romance, and it’s great). My own writing has suffered the usual fate of being sidelined by other life duties… and when I do have time to sit down for it, my mind runs off to chase the chores and tasks still undone.

That said, I am changing my current approach to a story I’ve had bouncing around my head for a year. I’m looking forward to ignoring the plot for a little bit, and instead simply focusing on world building and hashing out who some of the relevant powers-that-be are (and what they want). I realized that I’d been chasing story ideas that kept coming to me, without building the foundation that I usually need (and delight in making). I hope that switching approaches will gin up some excitement again and let me focus on the story and its world instead of being distracted by chores.

Well, I should say ‘instead of being distracted by chores when I have time to sit down and write.’ I do still need to do all the other work.

Fortunately, doodling out a few ideas regarding the schemes and motivations of NPCs for my Worlds Without Number game reminded me of just how much I enjoy that side of things. With any luck that enthusiasm will carry over to similar work for a different story. Honestly, I’ll probably use a few of Crawford’s generation tools for my creative process. I’m a little nervous, but I’m looking forward to it.