Lit City Blues

This book has been lurking on my shelves for years and I've taken a few runs at it now and again but I finally finished it. I've been thinking about this and I can't remember when I purchased this book, but if I could pinpoint a reason why, it was probably moving to Mankato for grad school. No, I didn't buy this for a class, but once I moved there, I decided to try and learn a little about my new place of residence and that's when I found out that the largest mass execution in US history took place in Mankato. That's when I found out about the Great Sioux Uprising that tore apart southern Minnesota in 1862 . I grew up, attended elementary school, high school, and four years of college about 200 miles away from where a lot of it happened and none of it ever came up in any history class I had ever taken, ever. For people of color in this country, that's probably not all that surprising- given how many people had to learn about the Greenwood Massacre thanks to

PRESIDENT/VP: Harris/Walz: I keep meaning to respond to a tweet that floats up in our pre-election nausea/anxiety phase. It's something like, "Tell me why you're voting for Harris without using Trump as a reason." Well, okay, then random Twitter person, as the kids say: Bet. Leaving aside the fact that she's excellent on reproductive rights, and housing, has actual policies on her website, and doesn't just verbally diarrhea her way to half a dozen different policy positions a week, I have a couple of very simple reasons I'm back Harris/Walz this time around that have absolutely nothing to do with Trump.  First, it's a hammer blow to our current primary system. As currently constructed, the primary system rewards and encourages partisanship. To a certain degree, that's to be expected, but it's metastatized beyond the point of lunacy now. Candidates who run for either party's nomination are forced into positions that are wildly out of sync wi

Almost forgot about this, but here's the Third Quarter Check-In: 10 For 2024 1. Book 4: Get this book into draft form (close to, if not ready to launch-- fingers crossed!) by the end of the year. I have some other writing goals as well, but this is going to be my big, main focus for the year. I'm still grinding with Book 4. (Currently on a draft of Chapter 7) after getting some eyes on what I have, I'm fairly sure that the final draft is going to be structured differently than the current story I have in mind, but for now, the big picture goal here is to get it all down on paper and then see what I've got to work with and go from there. In big, genuine, real-life news: Paid Posts are live on Substack. I don't think I did the best job with the first two rounds, but I'm getting better at this (always the goal) and should have them nicely packaged with free previews moving forward. Speaking of: my first novella launches over there today! (I'm planning on wide-r

I have had this book lurking on my bookshelf for years and I've made an attempt or two at actually reading it, but have never made it all the way through- at least until now. It is, I will confess, an abridged version, which some purists may have an issue with, but I didn't.  The story begins with Edmond Dantes who is returning to the port of Marseilles after being at sea and his future is looking very bright indeed He is on the verge of becoming the master of his own ship. He has a young lady that he loves (Mercedes the Catalan) who accepts his offer of marriage. Good fortune, stable finances, and a prosperous life seem to be ahead of him.  However, not everyone is happy with Edmond Dantes. His crewmate, Danglars wants the job that Dantes is on the verge of getting. He's also got a rival for the affections of Mercedes: Fernand Mondego. Together, they plot to undo him and in this, they are helped by an unusual fact. On the way back home, at the behest of the Captain (now d

Okay, this going to seem like a tangent, but stick with me, because it's part of a larger point I think is worth making. I never left Twitter. Some people I know did, but I sort of stuck around to see what would happen and when I didn't see an appreciable decline in the quality of the septic tank fire that it always had been, I shrugged and kept going. On impulse a few weeks back, I downloaded the Threads app, because I find the Threads web interface incredibly clunky and MAN OH MAN is Threads so much better on the app. But I've been running them side by side for a few weeks now and I'm starting to see what people are talking about when it comes to the declining usefulness of Twitter. Now, it's not all bad. Full credit to Elon, Community Notes was a brilliant and much-needed feature that honestly, more social media platforms should copy-- and it should be a lot more widely used than it is on Twitter. But man... it's getting rough. Either my algorithm is breaking

It's just a game, but at the same time it's not. I think it would blow people's minds the number of moving parts involved in making sure a stadium is ready to go for 70,000 people to walk in, sit down, and watch a sporting event for three hours. But last Saturday, I worked the day job for nine hours, holding the baton (in my case, my trusty tactical spork) and dealing with the symphony of gameday chaos. It went better than week one, as it always did, but there was an extra fillup of crazy in the air because it was Iowa State and that's just how the world works. But after my shift, I drove home, grabbed a burger, poured myself a generous measure of single malt whiskey, and wandered down to my firepit where the Missus was waiting for me. The kids eventually joined us, and Smores were made. We listened to music, looked at the stars and it was just perfect. The tension of the day bled out of me and I realized that it was just a game. I walked away from downtown and drove do