Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I had planned to post about the books I've been reading lately yesterday, of course, but in a good news/bad news sort of way, I ended up writing so much on the new novel that I lost track of time. As I was telling my writing accountablity Zoom group, I don't quite know what happened, but I hit a voice that I'm super comfortable in (not previously a POV character) and I'm running with it.

Enough about that. 

I've recently gotten very into audiobooks. After finishing The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey (which I sort of disliked, though not enough to quit listening to it), I picked up We Have Always Been Here by Leah Nguyen. I also somewhat disliked We Have Always Been Here. I never cottened to the main character/narrator, Park. I found her (at least how she was read to me) to be an unlikely combination of paranoid and clueless. Like, the book opens with Park having been poisoned. Because Park has been bullied all her life, she doesn't put much mind to this, even as weird shit starts happening all around her on the ship, including other people being attacked, she never goes back to "I wonder if any of this connects to what happened to me?" I don't know about you? But I hate when main characters don't seem interested in solving the plot and/or generally forget clues that, to the reader, seem like Big Deals. And being poisoned one day and having your mentor tell you "I have a project that is going to take up all my attention, you're now the main psychologist" feels like the sort of thing that a paranoid person should reallly start deep dive investigating. you know? Don't get me wrong. Park investigates the crap out of everything else going on in this ship, but she never connects any of it back to things that happen to herself. Worse, the big reveal at the end made me realize that had she done so, she would been directly led to one of the main villains.

But, the androids in the story get a good ending. They were who I cared about, so it worked out for me.

I'm now listening to The Sculpted Ship by K. M. O'Brien. I've been describing this book to people as a science fiction version of Legends & Lattes. The stakes are so low in The Sculpted Ship that if I were not already a fan of slice-of-life manga and thus have built-up a huge tolerance for people just wandering around and doing tasks, I probably would have fallen asleep listening to this. This is not a criticism per se, however, because, given the current political situation in the United States, a story that is essentially about THINGS WORKING OUT is exactly what the doctor ordered (for me, anyway.) 

I'm not quite finished with it and there does seem to be a little intrigue a foot here in the last 20% of the book, but I am hopeful that things will just work out as so many things before this have. That would be fine with me.

Speaking of slice-of-life manga, I read two "wandering around in a post-apocaplyptic world" science fiction manga in the past week. I read Usuzumi no Hate / The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse by Iwamune Haruo and Shuumatsu Touring / Touring After the Apocalypse by Saito Sakae. Both of which I would highly recommend, with a few caveats. The Color of the End has a plague in it and there is a lot of death and dying, including suicide. Likewise, Touring After the Apocalypse has its dark/sad moments as well as some suicides. Weidly, despite those warnings, I found both of these manga to be hopeful and "quiet" in a "let's appreciate life while we have it" kind of way. Very appropriate for flower viewing season.

I also read a couple of family dramas:  Otona no Zukan Kaiteiban / Adults’ Picture Book New Edition by Itoi Kei and Kashikokute Yuuki Aru Kodomo / A Smart and Courageous Child by Yamamoto Miki. Both of which I liked, but mileage may vary. If you're at all interested in reading fuller reviews of any of the manga I've mentioned, feel free to check out my manga review site: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/

Speaking of manga, a quick plug for the old podcast. Yesterday we dropped our twenty-first episode, this time discussing the cyberpunk manga classic Blame! (https://open.spotify.com/show/11brxmJZjf3gnzltvwXI7H) I guess, I technically re-read that recently, too. Weirdly, despite the fact that the podcast is a lot of squee, I wouldn't necessarily recommend Blame! Technically, Blame! is also a lot of wandering around in a post-apocalyptic world, but it feels far less hopeful. In fact, the vibe is grim. It is interesting and pretty and action-packed, but it might not be what the soul needs right now, if you catch my meaning.

I think that's it. Otherwise, I've been writing a lot and prepping for Minicon. 

You?

I just spent about a half-hour queueing things up on the School for Wayward Demons Tumblr page.  During the process I was chatting with a friend who encouraged me to link to my other Tumblr page (which if you go there RIGHT THIS INSTANT, you'll see I did.)  It's a funny thing, my resistance to... invading this sacred fan space I've made for myself with self-promotional things.  It's REALLY silly when you consider that I have no qualms about posting links on my fan tumblr space to my reviews of manga or my podcast or my fan fic.  She asked me if I was afraid to tarnish my professional reputation with my fan one.  My response?  No, it's the other way 'round.

I'm really protective of my fan spaces.  BUT I don't mind people knowing about them.  In fact, I will happily give out my fan name or my AO3 account handle to anyone who asks me at con.  I'm very, very proud that at CONvergence last year, in the women's bathroom, I had someone shyly ask if it was true that I was "junko from AO3."  It turned out, the woman asking was the person who podfic'd my Bleach/Free! x-over, and, once I confirmed and she told me who she was, we did the dance of squee with each other.

So, it's not like I care if people who are my fan friends find out I write professionally, or vice versa.  

I guess it's strange, but I almost feel like self-promoting my original fiction on my fan sites sullies them somehow.  I mean, I should get over that, because, as my friend said, "The data stream is so fast.  No one will really notice."  Which is VERY, very true.  I used to worry that if people found out I was a professional writer on my AO3 account that the tenor of the conversation would change.  The very last thing I want is for people to stop telling me when I suck because, you know, I guess you know better because you're some kind of pro.  Which is, of course, bull.

I sometimes wonder if that's partly why Rachel and I don't get many comments over on entertheunseen.com or why they're not more critical on either of my Wattpad entries.  (It could be, too, that both those venues require some kind of log-in.)  But, I think, often people are reluctant to tell someone they perceive as a professional that they'd like to see the story go another direction... face-to-face/directly.  Obviously, people are happy to say all sorts of things about professional writing on review sites once a book is done and dusted.  I mean, I can understand this hesitance.  People are afraid of being yelled at.  But, I THRIVE on critique.  I love it.  And fan fiction has been a great place to be treated like a peer by a large number of people again.

At any rate, I suspect I've said all this somewhere before.  It's one of my favorite topics to hold forth on. But, so if you want to tell me what-for (and check out some of the new content that's been added) on Wattpad, there is a new installment of School for Wayward Demons up:  Gabe Runs (into Darkness.

Also, my review of the latest chapter of Ao no Exorcist (#64) is up on MangaKast.

In other news, I finished reading Memory of Water by Emmi Itaranta.  It was the first of the books I've read so far that are on the Philip K. Dick award nomination list that I would call straight-up science fiction.  It's also a very... subtle, quiet book, despite having a LOT of tension woven in throughout.  I found it very interesting.  The story follows a woman who is the tea master's daughter in a future Scandinavia where we've depleted much of the Earth's viable drinking water.  There's been a kind of post-oil apocalypse and the 'past world' is shrouded in mystery, mostly understood by the things recovered in the plastic graveyards on the outskirts of town.  I would totally recommend the book without any reservations, so long as you weren't expecting a rip, roaring, page-turning thriller.  The ending is also very much a downer, and the only sense of hope comes from the prologue and the implication that there might be a second book to continue some of the threads that don't really get answered.  But, I didn't mind that, surprisingly.  

Now I'm waiting for Book of the Unnamed Midwife to show up through Inter-Library Loan.  Then, the last one will be the Jonathan Strahan book (which he seemed to have edited, Reach for Infinity which I'm reading last because I'm not a big fan of short story collections.)  In the meantime, I think I'm going to start a Melissa Scott book that Shawn nabbed off Amazon when the Kindle version when on one of those 99 cent sales.  

Not much else is going on.  I finished up the two seasons of Tiger & Bunny that Hulu had, and have, on recommendation, started watching Zenkyou no Terror/Terror in Resonance while I wash the dishes.  It's quite a shift in tone, I must say.  Zenkyou no Terror follows two very disturbed and unusual young men (who to refer to each other by numbers because they were raised in some kind of horrible orphanage) who are exacting their revenge on society by... well, by being terrorists.  So you know, from heroes to villains.  It's a bit of whiplash, but I'm enjoying Zenkyou no Terror the same way I enjoyed DeathNote.  It's kind of fascinating to go deep into the criminal mind.  Like in DeathNote, there's a smart, vaguely outsider to root for on the other side, on the good-guy side.  So, I've got that to cling to.  I'm very, very worried for the female character in Zenkyou no Terror, but you know... it's early days.  I'm only on the fourth or fifth episode so far.

Like much of fandom, I'm anxiously waiting for the arrival of this month's Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan.  The things I've seen on Tumblr from the raws make me kind of happy (*anxiously grabs abs*)... I'll have a review up as soon as we see in English.