Ol’ Geoffrey’s Rhythm

The weather is filthy and likely to remain so for a week or two, which pleases me to no end. Boxnoggin will be far less enamored of the whole deal once we’re outside, but as soon as we get home he’ll forget his dislike and head for a nap.

Must be nice.

Wandering around in my feed this morning is an article on one of the bigger AI grifters openly admitting they can’t train their plagiarism pink sauce without stealing. The grift is reaching its endgame now, with anyone who’s going to profit already escaped with their ill-gotten gains, the rest of us left to deal with the fallout. It seems like the cycle of grifting (NFTs, bitcoin, LLM/”AI”) is getting shorter and shorter as regulation looms. A more compressed timeframe means the initial theft and buy-in has to be bigger and the perpetrators have to leap off the bus more quickly once they’ve gotten their payday; the theft has to be grander and grander in scale in order to provide the thieves with their accustomed payout. You’d think people would learn…but PT Barnum was right, one born every minute and that goes double for the internet.

I spent the weekend refilling the well instead of working as I had planned. The Muse and my own nervous system rose up in revolt, so I had to let both out to play. It meant a lot of action movies for the Muse (including Fist of the Condor, which was everything I’d been told) as well as Chaucer on the couch for the rest of me. I made my way through the Prologue (finally!) and the Knight’s Tale, and all I can think is that Arcite and Palamon should’ve just escaped from jail, gone home, and left Emily alone to worship Diana as she wanted to. Just leave the lady alone, boys!

But of course that wasn’t an option. Next up is the Miller’s Tale, and I think things will go a bit more smoothly now that I have ol’ Geoffrey’s rhythm. It’s like the Shakespeare muscle–each time I read the Bard I have to go slowly for a short while, catching the beat before hopping in to jump rope. I’m looking forward to it.

The best thing about Chaucer is seeing the throughlines. A lot of other phrases and allusions I’ve noticed elsewhere make more sense. I enjoy seeing how “classics” morph in later works; the organic process is fascinating to witness. And no, before some AI-apologist asshat gets it into their head to email me, that is not the same as “training” an “AI”. A human being investing their precious, finite time on earth to read, interact with, and digest a work before creating their own unique art is a thousand percent different, and your false equivalencies and strawmen are not welcome here. Go, thou, with thy tiny gods; fucketh right offe into the sunne.

This week will be all about Highlands War chapters (big set-piece battles looming!) and Chained Knight revisions. Plans for the latter are firming up; I’m thinking June will do for a release date. Which reminds me I’ve got to get the cover sorted soonish. *to-do list chimes as it grows longer*

But that’s a slightly Future Me problem. Right now brekkie is due, walkies must be had, and my own corpse must shamble through wind and rain at a slightly faster pace than walking. I had to take a recovery break from running and it was awful. I need the endorphins liek woah.

And so it goes. Time to swill coffee dregs and be about the business. Happy Monday, everyone.

Influencers, Main Characters, Symptoms

Part 2 of Mugshot and Trashmouth is going to have to wait. I know SquirrelTerror episodes take a short time to read, but they take a while to write and today I just don’t have those particular spoons.

Don’t worry, though. It’s coming. *cue Jaws theme*


Yesterday did not go according to plan. I didn’t even get my usual second jolt of coffee, what with publishing fuckery taking up my morning and a video meeting I had utterly forgotten about striking the instant I got home from a rather late run. But the fuckery has been dealt with–at least provisionally–and the meeting was very good, so that was a silver lining. By the time it was over, the afternoon had well commenced and more caffeine was a Bad Idea, so I chose to be Adult and Reasonable and Rational.

It was a difficult decision to make and even harder to stick to. Damn adulthood–I’d shake a fist at it, but that would take energy and might engender joint pain. Easier to just ramble onward.

The Princess dropped this video about the growing delusion of Main Character Syndrome into our family group chat, and while I was initially reluctant (since anything even “influencer”-adjacent threatens to give me hives) I ended up watching it after dinner, and the kids drifted into the office to share the experience. And boy howdy was it an Experience. Both kids had at least heard the names of everyone involved, and the Prince was familiar with some of the antics (the guy calling himself Mister Beast in particular, a moniker which makes me snort-chuckle sarcastically every time), but I was entirely blissfully unaware of most of this.

No longer can I claim that grace. But I was mordantly fascinated by the whole thing, and I have Thoughts. Here are a few of them, in no particular order.


“Main Character Syndrome” started out as a term to describe the quite reasonable psychological process of taking control of one’s own life, and of one’s own emotional responses to said life. In that usage it’s actually very useful, and a powerful tool. Since then it’s also morphed into describing a particularly noxious form of pathological, toxic behavior: treating other human beings as NPCs and side characters.

Psychopathy, narcissism, and sociopathy all share a critical core failure of empathy: simply not understanding, believing, or being able to grasp that other people are real, too. It sounds bizarre, because anyone with functioning empathy gets this at a basic foundational level. But to many varieties of toxic asshat, other people–ALL people, other than themselves–are simply ego extensions or cardboard cutouts to be manipulated into place, and the refusal of other living, breathing beings to do what the toxic person wants engenders world-ending rage. I use the term world-ending deliberately here, since many if not all toxic people are fully convinced the world will simply wink out of existence when they die–if they grasp their own mortality at all, which is uncommon among them. (That’s a whole ‘nother blog post.)

The bafflement some wannabe “influencers” display when things don’t go according to their plans or wishes is part of the core failure. They are truly, honestly befuddled that the world will not do as they want, especially if they’ve had any early success in manipulating others or breaking social norms. Toxic people tend to mistake reasonable people’s refusal to engage with their norm-breaking as a victory, and when it stops working–when society or a friend group finally mounts an immune response against their toxicity–their response is yet more escalation, yet more manipulation, yet more rage, because it’s the only strategy they have and it appeared to garner some initial success. The magical thinking of “this got me what I wanted once, so of course it will again if I just apply more pressure” is another core feature of these personalities.

What fascinated me most in this analysis is the footage of a wannabe “influencer” coming right up to the brink of a realization, a little self-knowledge, and yet being apparently unable to take the last whisper of a step over into said realization or knowledge. In particular, a wannabe who did not successfully use the tools of stalking, manipulation, and norm-breaking to get his “hero” to recognize him (and therefore magically let him into the circle of “rich YouTubers”) stares into the camera and snivels a version of, “It’s like they don’t even care if I die on the street.”

I had to pause the video and take a breath because, my dude, how is this news to you? You’ve seen how this “influencer” treats other people–the same way you do in your quest for clicks–and yet you thought you were somehow special, different, a “main character” to him? Yet this fellow was patently unable to take the last step into realization or self-knowledge, and I was most exercised wondering why. Is it a refusal or a literal incapability stemming from lack of empathy? It is absolutely fascinating to see someone soooooo close, just a bare whisper away from a potentially life- and personality-changing epiphany, and yet so unable or unwilling to move that final less-than-a-centimeter.

Another interesting part of this whole thing is the deep and abiding hypocrisy of “influencers” who have achieved their goal of YouTube stardom (and my gods, babies, can’t you dream a little bigger than that paltry goal?) and have the absolute cheek to finger-wag at the masses of fan-wannabes using the very same methods of toxic social norm-breaking, stalking, and manipulation that the said “successful influencers” did. A prime example of this is the voice message from one saying “we keep our private lives sacred and separate from our YouTube stuff.”

Now, this is fine and perfectly right, I am the first person to be all in favor of keeping one’s private matters off the fuckin’ internet. It’s also stunning, world-grade hypocrisy from people who have built their careers trespassing social norms, using stalking behaviors, and being absolute shits to innocent bystanders “for the lulz” to suddenly turn around and say, “don’t you dare use these methods that I used to achieve fame on me, how could you, I have a right to privacy!”

Yes, you have a right to privacy. Some part of me thinks one abrogates that particular right the instant one starts shitting all over other people’s right to go about their lives without your “pranking” bullshit interfering with their days and jobs. It’s a grey area and a slippery slope, but what is not in the grey area is everyone else’s right to call out your massively hypocritical bullshit.


I’ve used a lot of quotation marks above for a specific reason. The term “influencer” irritates the living bejesus out of me, because the only thing you’re “influencing” is an algorithm designed to keep people angry in order to pump ad money into a corporation. I really don’t see how this is something to be proud of. And the whole “it was just a joke” thing infuriates me as well, because I grew up in a household where constant, severe, ongoing abuse was minimized with that very phrase and when I’m forced to watch someone being shitty “for the lulz” all I see is a toxic abuser who deserves real-world consequences applied, and sooner rather than later.


This whole video analysis also clarified a big problem I have with publishers telling authors to “just BookTok” or “get on YouTube” to do marketing. Part of the deal an author makes with the publisher is to provide economy-of-scale for certain necessary features of quality control, like copyediting, cover art, and the like. This is the entire reason we enter into these agreements. And part of the agreement is the publisher doing marketing, because they have the resources and again, the economy-of-scale to do so effectively.

Trad publishing has decided to take those resources that should go into marketing and instead funnel them into CEO and shareholder profits, while offloading the actual work and effort onto the poor overworked authors themselves. A crowning indignity is that BookTok and YouTube don’t even really work for marketing; the few who “hit it big” are lottery winners, sweeteners to keep the rest of the rubes pouring in their attention/ad engagement/cheap content creation. Just as the lotto is a tax on the poor, BookTok and its ilk are a tax on the already strained resources of authors and artists.

This is bad enough, but then comes the gaslighting blame game when a book sinks like a stone because the trad publisher did not hold up their end of the bargain. It’s exploitative bullshit, and one of the things that’s going to cause a massive market shift sooner or later–but not before a lot of already marginalized authors are pushed out of the industry, and we’re going to lose so many great voices and stories because of simple greed.

I mourn those losses. We all should.


The toxic form of Main Character Syndrome is prioritized and rewarded by the ad-engagement algorithm, and as it spreads it gives publishers and other media corporations another way to exploit authors and artists already staggering under an insurmountable weight of fuckery, just like rewarding sociopathic bullshit in politics leads to the breakdown of the rule of law and a rash of policies that oppress, maim, and kill. These things are the same. They are symptoms of the same underlying problem; they are features of the same mechanism. The terrible thing is not that the internet has allowed us to witness the problem clearly to a degree unprecedented in human history; no, the terrible thing is that this is the system working as intended. The cruelty is the point, the rewarding of bullshit “pranking” and stalking behavior “for the lulz” is part and parcel of the same systems that reward fascist sociopathy and norm-breaking in politics. The system benefits this type of behavior for a reason, and that reason is profit and control.

Whether the people engaging in this fuckery cannot or will not take the last step into self-knowledge or realization is to a large degree beside the point. The point is mitigating the damage they do–or ideally, stopping said damage. That starts with applying consequences for shitty behavior, which is one thing our society is overwhelmingly reluctant to do for a variety of reasons, some practical and others habitual. A collective response is necessary, and yet one of the timeworn tactics in the (very thin, though very effective) playbook shitty people use is divide-and-conquer: isolating, exhausting, and harassing targets to the point where a shitty person can get away with shitty behavior for years. By the time an immune response is mounted, the wreckage extends far and wide.

The people watching these “influencers”, gamed into providing “engagement” for ad dollars, are not quite victims. They’re resources being harvested in order to shift wealth to corporations. Maybe they’re even comfortable with the process; maybe they don’t mind being reduced to the battery Morpheus holds up in that classic explaining-the-Matrix scene.

I do mind. I’ll be glad to go back to being blissfully unaware of “influencers”–but I can’t ever be unaware of what they’re a symptom of. That’s thrust in my face daily, as a mother, a working writer, and a human being. I hold out no particular hope for change in my lifetime, but at least I’ve articulated the problem at length. No doubt it’ll be ignored, since it’s not a YouTube video or outrage-inducing TikTok/Insta short. Still, I take what comfort I may in the act.

And now the dog needs walkies. Onward to Thursday.

Maybe Three For Three

I am thisclose to finishing Tomb of Night. The carnivorous scarabs and giant tentacle-infested rats have shown up, the villains are about to reach the tomb, and the quasi-angel isn’t far behind. It’s going to be fun.

I want this zero done by the time I go to sleep tonight. It probably won’t happen, but at least I can get closer, and my irritation at several other things–the damn stove, the bloody mortgage company, publishing in general–can be poured into supernatural combat and the sinking of an entire tomb older than prehistory. Because if I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that a city falling into the endless sands is good for the plot.

Come tomorrow the bulk of my time will have to go into revising Gamble, but I might steal a day or so (since December’s starting so close to a weekend) to really put this one to bed. The decompression on two zero drafts in as many months is going to be a doozy, but maybe it can be ameliorated by revision? (Famous last words…) There is rather a lot to revise, especially since I’ve gotten some…well, I don’t know if it’s bad news but it’s certainly unpleasant and hard to hear. Giving myself time to absorb and just sit with things would probably be best, but there’s work to be done instead.

So the schedule to the end of the year includes revising Gamble, getting a workable zero of Tomb of Night, getting close to zero-draft territory on Highlands War (if I pull this off it’ll be three in three months, though technically Highlands is at its midpoint already), thinking about the next serial (a problem for 2025, but I need to start planning now), and getting a few sample chapters of a romantasy together for my agent. That last will likely be what I spend Friday Night Writes on, and it will feel like playing hooky, I’m sure. Oh, and the Monthly Sales page will need attention tomorrow, there’s a whole tranche of holiday discounts and the like to highlight.

Once the year turns over, there’s Hell’s Acre to think about, and whether or not I want to bring the portal fantasy out. The betas like it, and I should probably hold to that above all else. No need to decide right away, and it won’t do the book any harm to sit on my hard drive if that’s the way it’s got to be.

And now, for somewhat of an announcement.


There’s a lot going on in the news cycle, and I should take this chance to reiterate: Just because I don’t say something publicly does not mean I do not notice or care. Sometimes I’m not qualified to give an opinion, so I keep my damn mouth shut. Sometimes I feel very strongly, yet it’s not my place to speak, so I don’t. Sometimes the risk of harassment and death threats if I say something is one I’m not willing to run at the particular moment. Sometimes–and I know this may sound strange–I just do not have the time or energy to get into it with a bunch of randos and Reply Guys, so I refrain and focus privately on the things I can do as well as my own goddamn work.

So, coming at me with a, why haven’t you said something about X, do you not even care? is unhelpful, unwise, and will only earn a big juicy block. I am not here to service random strangers’ emotional needs.


For one thing, there’s a Boxnoggin who needs walking instead, though he will be quite irate at the weather. There’s supposed to be rain, and the poor fellow holds me entirely responsible for that. I wish I had even a fraction of the power this canine attributes to me. A whole lot of things would be sorted Right Quick if I did.

Onward to Thursday, then.

Next Year’s Work

I should know better than to post while cranky; things tend to go semi-viral and then my mentions are a mess for some time afterward. Still…some things are worth getting visibly irate about, I reckon.

Anyway, I finally managed to get everything out of the way and sink back into Cain’s Wife yesterday, to the tune of 2.7k words. It was lovely, especially since things in the story are jelling at a rapid pace. I was a bit sad that I might not be able to to do the train chase, but then things took a turn in the middle of the rooftop scene and I realised just how I could get the protagonist on the damn train. Which was a splendid relief.

Technically it’s not a “train” but a chain of floating cargo-cars in an industrial flightlane, but that’s beside the point. The point is, she’s going to be on the roof, going pretty fast, fighting off a king sorcerer, when the quasi-angel appears (again) and things go pear-shaped (again). Fortunately, this protagonist has a good way of looking at her own limitations–her greatest power isn’t sorcerous ability or her flawed abilities as a witch, but her mind and how she uses it. She’s generally a hop ahead of everyone else–but only a single hop, and honestly she’s more like Aeon Flux in Goodchild’s Habitat, a cat loose in a lab experiment.

Sometimes one just needs a cat loose in an overly regimented environment, though.

Plenty of things I had planned for the back half of the book have turned out to be unnecessary, though I’m glad they were there to provide weight and heft to the incubation period. The old paradox–no plan ever survives contact with the enemy, and yet planning is indispensable.

I’m even managing to forget how awful publishing is now, what with the sheer joy of creation. And let me tell you, I sorely need that. When the dust settles in December I’ll be revising Gamble and will have two more zero drafts to do things with; by that time I should also know about Hell’s Acre. If it goes to the publisher it’s resting with now, great, if it doesn’t it’ll go into the self-pub queue. By the time that’s sorted I’ll have an answer on the portal fantasy that tore its way out of my head in two weeks, and by the time that’s done I should have an idea of whether or not Cain’s Wife is going to sell. I’m not going to sit around waiting for long; if trad wants to leave money on the table, fine, let them. I’ll be busy bringing out the books myself.

Anyway, that’s next year’s releases sorted, along with the next two Cain’s Wife books and the serial in there somewhere. Always assuming the dystopia and failing empire don’t take me off the census first.

I am full of cheerful thoughts like that lately. No matter, Boxnoggin desires his walkies (he was a right little brat yesterday, my gods) and I should run my corpse at something above a fast walk afterward. Then it’ll be all train scene, all day. I’m considering whips of sorcerous chain, not to mention several narrow escapes. I do rather wish this protagonist believed in carrying something rather larger than a knife, but she’s philosophically opposed to such things and in any case doesn’t need them. (Much.) Especially not with the mercenary crew following her around, armed to the teeth.

But first I’ve got to get there, and in order to do that I need to finish this coffee and perhaps swallow some breakfast. So much to do before I can burrow back into another world. Sure, it’s escapism, but don’t we all (as ol’ JRRT himself pointed out) have a duty to escape in times like these?

Off I (and Boxnoggin) go.

Annoyance Unmitigated

I woke up ready to step out the door swinging, and so far nothing has mitigated that state of affairs. For example, I’m getting really close to recommending self-publishing authors not list separately through Kobo, though we desperately need Amazon alternatives for the good of the (rancidly monocultured) publishing ecosystem. Of course, listing to Kobo through Draft2Digital is currently still a reasonably good idea, since every penny helps, but I’ve listed a lot of things separately because I never want my eggs in a single basket. Unfortunately, the bait-and-switch in Kobo’s “Promotions” tab, as well as the ongoing clunkiness of their interface (how is it possible to get even WORSE after you’ve thrown so much money at your UI, dear gods, how?) are both terrible. I’m hoping they’ll mend their ways, but as it stands I don’t know if I can recommend listing separately through them anymore.

I’ve heard Kobo’s stellar for Canadian authors, so that’s a mild point in their favor. And I really, really want there to be some kind of alternative to Kindle. I just can’t deal with the constant “oh, we had TOO MANY people sign up for this promotion!” nonsense. If that’s happening 70-80% of the time, the problem is your promotions signup structure, and that needs to be bloody well fixed so self-publishers don’t have to waste effort.

Anyway, that’s a niche complaint on a Monday. And sure, I’ve got a broader one. I’m absolutely irate at the privatization of Covid vaccines and treatments–you know, the ones funded by massive taxpayer investment, now being “privatized” and turned around so some fat-cat pharma execs can buy another yacht while the rest of us run the chance of successive reinfections triggering Long Covid? Yeah, those. The proper price for a Covid vaccine is $0. The proper price for Covid treatment is $0. We’ve already paid, not only in taxpayer cash but in blood, death, and fear. Charging again is just murderous greed.

But what else is new? Oh, well, in the US we’re getting another paltry round of (possibly expired) at-home test kits, as a sop. Marvelous.

In short, I’m bloody well irritated today, and I suspect even a morning run will not ameliorate the feeling. Retreating into the NaNo book is pretty much my only option right now. Worse than the irritation is the knowledge that nothing will be done, that all my attempts to warn were (and will be) in vain, and the murderous cycle of repression and profit will continue unabated. It’s enough to drive one right into the bog. Oh, for a cottage with a mossy roof; oh, to come into town only every six months to drop off manuscripts for one’s agent and then back into the peace of the venomous swamp.

Unfortunately if I retreated to a nice bit of wetlands in order to live out my bog-witch dreams the fucking corporations would come to pave it over posthaste. I suppose I’m doomed to Cassandra my way through this period of existence.

Anyway, Boxnoggin still needs walkies and the wordcount won’t wait for the annoyance to abate, so off I go. Maybe I’ll get a chunk of this book off the plate today; the only solace is in doing the work as well as I can. That, and the dog’s utter joy when it’s time for him to stick his nose in clumps of wet greenery before peeing upon them.

It’ll have to do.

Patience and Coping, Low

Woke up with Shigeru Umebayashi’s Vendetta March playing in my head; it’s on the Cain’s Wife soundtrack and that book is attempting to claw its way out with a vengeance. Things are escalating, next comes that world’s version of Paris and a train ride that goes terribly wrong. Or maybe I’ll put the train ride first, since the protagonist has to get to Paris. We’ll see.

I did mean to go to the grocer’s today, but so much has interfered with wordcount and I want this book done. Plus there’s the subscription drop and I really oughta get the newsletter sorted. But goddammit I would just like to be left alone to write. The amount of bullshit in the publishing industry right now1 is a distinct impediment to doing the work only I can do, the creation everything else downstream depends on.

You’d think I’d be treated with a modicum of respect by the industry that depends on me as the origin point of everything their own jobs and profit depends on, but that’s not how it is. Anyway.

This month’s reading pace has taken a hit (like last month’s), but I have finished McIntosh’s Beyond the North Wind and Robichaud’s Pan: The Great God’s Modern Return. The latter was far more useful for my purposes, though the former did bolster one or two points for the Viking werewolves. I especially appreciated Robichaud calling out some of the bullshit in the 70s pagan revival; it’s not often one finds such declarative statements and they are most welcome indeed.

My levels of patience and coping are at an all-time low. It might be because of tomorrow’s release day; book hangover (from the portal fantasy) mixed with the white-hot pace of the current work was holding off the worst of the nerves, but it seems that grace was short-term at best. Ah well, if I distract myself with work today I won’t have much time to get more nervous, right?

RIGHT?

The news cycle isn’t helping2 so it’s probably time to submerge until I get this zero draft done. I had a lot more I wanted to say, but it’s going to have to wait. I need to blow up a train and get this witch to Paris with the heist item safely in her luggage. Before that, Boxnoggin would very much like his walkies. I’m sure the corvids down the hill are wondering if I’m going to show with a pocket full o’peanuts today, too.

I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised, once I finish my coffee and get underway…

Hangover to Resentment

I appear to have gone straight from the “book hangover” stage to the “resenting anything keeping me from writing this other book” stage, with very little pause between. I’m not quite upset with this turn of events, as the resentful stage is in many ways the easiest and most satisfying–except for, of course, the resentment itself–but it would help if the book possessing me was actually one I’d planned on writing instead of a bloody portal fantasy.

Frankly, I blame Elric of Melniboné. Reading all the novels for the first time in basically one go gave me the blinding realization that if other writers can do variations on a theme to that degree, why on earth can’t I? So another tale of the Underdark is busy cramping my fingers and destroying my wrists right now. I had planned to put Cain’s Wife in that particular working slot, but since trad publishing is dragging its feet, I can slide that trilogy to later and get another book out of the way now.

It’s better to keep the Muse happy, and this is apparently what the bitch wants now. Plus, if trad isn’t going to run itself with proper business hygiene, why should I give it priority?

I can hear my agent’s long-suffering sigh as I type. She would point out, quite correctly and not for the first or last time, that this is the state publishing is in at the moment. It’s always been a dilatory endeavor on the publishers’ part, and since I can’t personally change it the only thing to do is trim my sails for the prevailing gusts. And she’s right–as ever, as always.

I’m also right not to wait around. Or so I devoutly believe, since the damn book is burning in my brain and fingers. For some reason, my “variations on a theme” experiment is taking the portal fantasy route, which is partly Elric’s fault. (Yes, I’m blaming someone else’s fictional character. I think Mr Moorcock would be pleased at the independent life that particular prince has taken on.)

Anyway, 3k words dumped out of my head yesterday on Chained Knight, even with all the socializing. Normally days with a heavy social component drain the internal pressure and energy needed for that kind of effort, but in this case I think the bleedoff actually helped? Heaven alone knows what damage I might have done to myself without the distraction of playing nicely with other humans. I’m making decisions about the worldbuilding in Cain’s Wife as well, letting that process happen organically before I put another word on the page, and of course Highlands War is going along at its own pace. (I believe a couple giants are going to start whaling on each other in the next scene. That’ll be fun.)

This morning is a fog-wreathed wonderland, common in certain autumns. Warm days and damp, very chill nights mean the earth exhales vapor as the sun rises. I like heavy fog, though I’m not fond of driving in it–not for the earthbound cloud itself, but because of other drivers. It’s good writing weather. I know what happens in all three on-deck books, though I’m only going to pay attention to two of them today. I suppose I can also use the portal fantasy’s pressure to power other stories by holding off on it until I make other daily wordcount, a balancing act I’m quite familiar with.

So much of this career–or even adulthood itself–is finding out how to game one’s own responses. I’m going to file that under “using one’s powers for good” and carry on with getting this protagonist scared out of her wits by a giant castle, a man wrapped in iron (I used the term “chain burrito” yesterday, then just about laughed myself into a coughing fit), and clockwork knights. Oh, and if I can get two giants, both possibly treacherous, to beat each other up with axes and warhammers, it’ll be all to the good. Plus Boxnoggin would really like his ramble sooner rather than later, Mother.

My schedule, she is packed. I suppose I’d better gulp the rest of this coffee and get to it.