A quick reminder that you could subscribe to the newsletter and get my random monthly thoughts and updates mailed right to your inbox two weeks before they show up here. And if you don’t want to get them, no problem. Just don’t subscribe, then throw a tantrum and write a “hurr hurr, me clever” email when I write about something you don’t like.
Not that anyone did that over this month’s newsletter…
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Well, in so many ways this is not the November newsletter I originally thought about writing.
I’m guessing a lot of you, like me, are sort of in post-election shock. Some folks are kind of numb. Some are (rightfully) scared. Some are just yelling and pointing fingers. I was talking with my partner this morning, trying to figure out where the past month went, and she pointed out that we both were sort of numb for the two or three days before the election and the four or five after it. So there’s that.
Honestly… I’m not sure what else there is to say about the whole mess that hasn’t been shouted a hundred times in the past ten days. It’s going to be bad. Lots of people are going to get hurt. A lot of people are probably going to die, directly or not-so-indirectly. I’m going to keep doing everything I can to help people. I hope you will, too.
Speaking of loss and grief…
Our cat Julius died six weeks ago, not long before I sent out the last newsletter. I know people like to use euphemisms like he passed, he went to sleep, he’s at peace now. But he died. That’s what happened. He was sick. He’d been slowly wasting away for over two months (cancer sucks, especially for FIV cats), but he only knew he was getting pampered constantly with attention from everyone. His condition took a sharp dive at the end, and we were glad we did things when we did. He never suffered. He was him until the end, and he got to die at home, which was probably a lot rougher on us than on him.
I know a lot of folks share this sort of loss in the moment, and social media makes it really easy to do that, but the simple truth is I didn’t want to. I don’t like to share negative stuff in general, but I also didn’t want to dilute it. It was my grief. It was the last thing I’d ever have from Julius, and—no offense—I didn’t want to lessen it by sharing it with a bunch of strangers. It was mine, and I wanted to wallow in it all on my own. I posted one of our last pictures of him, but that was more for me than any of you. I’m only talking about it now because… well, to be honest, I wanted to point out that sometimes it’s okay not to share stuff. There’s lots of things I don’t talk about on social media, and the Peter Clines you see is the a curated, hopefully slightly better version of me (who still makes mistakes, but fewer very public mistakes).
And speaking of social media…
(wow, this newsletter’s had some great transitions)
The great Twitter eXodus seems to finally be happening. Millions of folks flowing to Bluesky over the past few days (seriously, millions). I’ve been there for a year now and highly recommend it. It’s made me very aware of how much the Twitter algorithms were shaping my online experience. And how much they’d been shaping my online reactions/ behaviors/ expectations. Feel free to come find me there and leave all those bad habits behind.
And wow… as I’m typing this out it’s just a solid page of kind of gloomy topics. Let’s get to the happier stuff you actually signed up for.
I just completed my editing pass on God’s Junk Drawer. Like, last night, as I’m writing this now. Toni, the editor, made some smart observations about a few things I’d inadvertently set up and a few places I’d gone a little excessive with… well, you’ll find out next year. Anyway, she already thought it as pretty tight, but we still managed to cut another 4000 words out of it (maybe 16-20 pages, depending). I’m really happy with it. At this point we’ll probably do one last back-and-forth, make sure we agree on everything, and then it’s one step closer to being in your hands or ears or however you absorb books.
Worth noting I am very tentatively thinking of a west coast/ New England signing tour for this book. It’s all going to depend on finalized dates and where things fall, but… I’m thinking about it. I’ll talk about it a little more when I’ve got more information.
And this means I can get back to TOS, my current work in progress. I’d hoped to do a little bit of light work on it while I was doing God’s Junk Drawer edits, but with all the election static in my brain (see above) I… didn’t. So it’ll be my main focus for the next two or three weeks.
Also, as some of you might already know, I have a story in the new issue of Weird Tales! This is the bucket list project I’ve mentioned a few times, and I still have trouble believing it actually happened. When I first started to get this vague sense of writing and publishing (way back as a pre-teen aspiring writer) one thing I noticed was how often Weird Tales cropped up in the forewords and afterwords for this author and that author. It was where soooo many legends got their start. Even when my writing career actually took off and I became something of a low-level name, the idea was in the back of my mind but ha ha ha let’s be real. I’m never going to be in Weird Tales. So thanks to Jonathan Maberry for reaching out and seeing if I had a story that might fit this issue’s theme.
Oh, yeah. The story. It’s called “Straw Man” and it’s about a pair of location scouts who run into a few problems when they’re checking out a small town for a movie. And one or two of you might catch something familiar in it…
And here’s another reminder for Combat Monsters, the anthology I’ve got a new Carter and Kraft story in. It actually got a nice write-up in Publisher’s Weekly, and they mentioned “The Night Crew” (my story). It’s out on February 11th.
What else have I got for you…?
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching
Kevin Smith’s The 4:30 Movie was sweet and nostalgic and kind of painful, in a certain way. The end of Star Trek: Prodigy was really wonderful, and I think it’s a shame it got abandoned so quickly by so many people (including some at Paramount). It did strike me, I wonder if it was partly because of perceived potential conflict with their new Starfleet Academy show? Ahh well. Also, between this and She-Hulk, I’m absolutely loving Jameela Jamil’s villain phase.
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading
Very little (again, see above). In fact, I realized this morning I completely missed a blurb deadline for someone (so I’ll be writing an apology email for that). Did get to read Mike Chen’s new What If.. book just before Halloween (What If… Marc Spector was Host to Venom) and it was a lot of fun. Also found out Mike gave me a little cameo as one of Jake Lockley’s web of informants, so that was nice.
Cool New Toys
My Operation: Monster Force figures finally showed up and they are fantastic. So many options. The worst thing about them is they’re making me rethink how I want to set up shelves when I redo my office sometime in the near future. That and I want the next wave here now.
And I think that’s it for this month. Sorry it wasn’t as upbeat as some have been. So many thanks, as always, for subscribing to this nonsense.