Tag Archives: Books

Country, Romance, & expanding my palate, 10/1/26

Posted on by Henry

I used to think I hated country music. Johnny Cash made me reconsider. Now I admit that I do like some country, even if most of it isn’t to my tastes.

But what the devil got me into reading romance genre novels?

When I was younger I volunteered at a library (my hometown’s Fletcher Free, with the wonderful Lorrie and Bill). I handled everything that came through Circulation’s check-in during my shift, and I would shake my head every time I scanned in another Harlequin bodice-ripper—figuratively, not literally, because that would have been too much head shaking. They were extremely popular, getting comparable traction to the detective novels & legal dramas. Those old paperbacks were well-worn and much-loved, with technically-still-clothed beautiful men and women on their covers. Given how close the books were to falling apart back then, I wonder whether any of those books have survived the intervening decades.

Romance novels did not appeal to me. I was still in middle school, and I did not have the imaginative empathy necessary to wonder (much less understand) why people might like them. This, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure younger-Henry had already discovered internet porn.

I had lots of judgments. I never explicitly stated my judgments to the readers, but they were probably obvious to anyone paying much attention. Most readers returning romance novels wouldn’t have seen this, because they didn’t drop off their returns face-to-face. They preferred the anonymity of the off-hours book return. Given the alternative I offered, I get it.

These days, my relationship with romance novels is more like how I feel about country songs. I still don’t enjoy most of them, but I do read a few. Some I even really like. Obviously I didn’t dip my toe into the romance-waters just because other people like the genre—if that were enough, I would have devoured these books long ago. As I mentioned above, romance is popular. It sells.

So what changed?

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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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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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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.

Project Hail Mary (book and movie)

Posted on by Henry

I have read the book. I have seen the movie. I love both. Despite this, I find the movie a more appealing piece of art.

Why?

It comes down to emotion.

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The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Posted on by Henry

“To put this into perspective… The Sirius has 5,600,000 parts and close to a million systems, subsystems, and assemblies. Even if everything was 99.9 percent reliable, that would still be 5,600 defects. It wasn’t a question of if something would go wrong on the way to the moon, it was a question of when and what.”

Page 329, The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

This book has been on my to-read list for years. I somehow never picked it up. That paragraph above is the perfect encapsulation of why I love this book so much. I will try to explain. But honestly I was hooked upon reading the first page.

I found a used copy at Boskone. I knew that the title and author were familiar, that I’d been meaning to read the book, but then I thumbed the thing open and… here, try this for your first two paragraphs:

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