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Books for the new year

Posted on by Patrick
A photo of the books A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers and Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher

I stopped by the pub­lic library to return a cou­ple over­due books, and since they were open[1]I was­n’t sure they would be, as it’s New Year’s Eve., I checked out the Staff Pick shelves. I found a cou­ple books to take home with me: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Cham­bers[2]A sequel to A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which I adored. and Net­tle & Bone by T. King­fish­er[3]I’ve nev­er read any­thing by her, but I’ve heard she’s very good..

What are you read­ing in the wan­ing hours of 2025 and the open­ing month of 2026?

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
↑1 I was­n’t sure they would be, as it’s New Year’s Eve.
↑2 A sequel to A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which I adored.
↑3 I’ve nev­er read any­thing by her, but I’ve heard she’s very good.

Arcs

Posted on by Patrick
Star trails -- arcs of light against a dark sky

I did­n’t catch any Gem­i­nids last night, but from about 9pm to 9:30pm and then again from 10:30pm to 1:30am I record­ed some of Earth­’s rotation.

(The lacu­na is because the cam­era bat­tery died and I did­n’t replace it for about an hour.)

Did Not Finish

Posted on by Patrick
The word "nope" on a red background

I love to read, but I don’t have a prob­lem aban­don­ing a book if it’s not doing it for me.

I found a book in the library’s sci­ence fic­tion sec­tion, a title I’d nev­er heard of by an author I’d nev­er heard of. I checked out the first cou­ple pages, I read the author’s bio—apparently the author’s “name” was a nom de plume for an award-win­ning writer of thrillers, try­ing their hand at SF. OK, I thought, I’ll try it. It’s the library, it’s not cost­ing me anything.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Did Not Fin­ish” →

Review: Horrorstör

Posted on by Patrick
The cover of Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix: it looks a lot like a room staged for an IKEA catalog, except for the creepy faces and hands in the photo frames on the wall

I picked up Grady Hen­drix’s 2014[1]I did­n’t real­ize it was over a decade old till I was about ¾ done read­ing it. nov­el Hor­rorstör because I’m a suck­er for a high con­cept. The cover—as shown above—looks an awful lot like an IKEA cat­a­log cov­er, show­ing how you might stage a room with IKEA fur­ni­ture. Then you look a lit­tle clos­er and see that there’s some­thing… off… about the pho­tos on the wall.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Review: Hor­rorstör” →

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
↑1 I did­n’t real­ize it was over a decade old till I was about ¾ done read­ing it.

Hashtag AmWriting

Posted on by Patrick
Tarot card: THE TOWER

It appears that my cur­rent work-in-progress (title pend­ing; cur­rent work­ing title is “How Quick­ly We For­get”) came to me in a dream just over a year ago. Just for fun I took a snap­shot of the git com­mits[1]nerds gonna nerd,[2]speak­ing of nerds gonna nerd: appar­ent­ly tac in Lin­ux will spit out a text file in reverse order, the oppo­site of cat on the project, and here’s what I’ve done so far (no spoil­ers that I know of):

  • Ini­tial commit
  • First few ¶s — 2024-11-17
  • 2024-11-23 morn­ing
  • 2024-11-23 evening
  • Updates pri­or to 02-Sep-2025
  • Added a few notes for lat­er inclu­sion (or at least consideration)
  • A quick snip­pet for the moment right before the Time Jump
  • Intro: the diaries arrive; some notes
  • Start­ing to get into the whole swing of the narration
  • Added .git­ig­nore
  • Con­vert­ed all the sec­tion breaks to #, which is my pre­ferred notation
  • Tonight’s writ­ing
  • a cou­ple pos­si­ble titles
  • OK now it’s a roman à clef
  • Can’t find my face in the yearbook
  • Minor changes to the ‘I can’t find my face’ section
  • Diary entries and notes; pub­lic domain image of the tarot’s Tower
  • Added more to the first diary entry
  • Diary entry about the dis­ap­pear­ance of Hen­ry Lepin
  • lam­bent
  • First close encounter with the tower
  • More diary entries: Rhéal ascends and descends the tower
  • Added Olympics bit
  • Added Unsplash pho­to; added snip­pet about the door’s sud­den appearance
  • Quick note so I don’t for­get it
  • After Rheal came back down…
  • Added note about Oppo­si­tion­al Defi­ance Disorder
  • Added some notes; edit­ed the open­ing; intro­duced the tow­er a bit earlier
  • Light edits
  • Added text about why Mark kept a diary
  • Most­ly edit­ing the first bits
  • Start­ed on the next diary entry
  • Some minor edits
  • Some edits, a new diary entry, a few updates to the notes
  • Update: no explic­it men­tions of the tow­er in the diary entries proper
  • Some notes for the edit­ing phase
  • Start­ed on the climb of the tower
  • Added a note (‘Coda’) about how the whole thing ends
  • He’s climb­ing the stairs now
  • Removed extra ‘chap­ter’ titles, minor edits, tongue-in-cheek title suggestion

Update, Dec. 19th: a month lat­er, here’s the next batch of com­mit messages:

  • He’s still climb­ing the stairs
  • A bit more climbing
  • idea for a web­site (lat­er)
  • Reach­ing the top
  • Left a note about the mas­sive storm — make sure it’s in the diary
  • small edits, the view from the top
  • A bit more at the top
  • About to start the descent
  • Jot­ted down a cou­ple notes about ideas I had while wash­ing dishes
  • Run­ning into Rhéal on the way down; [dates]
  • Added TK to the date notes, for more easy regex search-and-replace later
  • Typo fix­es, added TK about an upcom­ing entry
  • A ‘manse’ is for cler­gy; also added the year to the ‘mod­ern’ date TKs
  • Added red-brick tex­ture; pos­si­ble cov­er image
  • More diary entries
  • Pos­si­ble title image
  • Moved the giant images to an ignored fold­er, made a small­er JPG cov­er concept
  • Fiz­zgig real­ly does­n’t like the ele­men­tary school playground
  • Very minor changes
  • Cleared off a TK (what a love­ly feeling)
  • Rhéal stays over
  • Punc­tu­a­tion changes
  • Minor edits
  • Notes on the coda; the new tow­er appears
  • Ignore the word­count file
  • Christ­mas diary entry
  • Start­ed the Thanks­giv­ing scene
  • Renamed the school after Mme. Chirac
  • Added a cou­ple notes; linked to the post about The Dream
  • The rest of the Thanks­giv­ing visit
  • [redacted]‘s fate
  • The next morning
  • Guilt over [redacted]‘s fate
  • Cor­rect­ed the spelling of L’Évêque

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
↑1 nerds gonna nerd
↑2 speak­ing of nerds gonna nerd: appar­ent­ly tac in Lin­ux will spit out a text file in reverse order, the oppo­site of cat

Aurora in the city, Nov. 12–13, 2025

Posted on by Patrick
Aurora above the trees

The auro­ra data looked pret­ty decent last night, but I was tired. So I set up a cam­era in the spare bed­room, point­ed east, and let it click away.

I end­ed up with 3000+ images in a bit over 4 hours. The time­lapse video below is, as usu­al, 60× nor­mal speed, so that 1 sec­ond of video is 1 minute of real time.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Auro­ra in the city, Nov. 12–13, 2025” →