First round is right here.

Second round is right here.

Third round: boom, right here.

And we’re back.

This experiment has been kinda totally awesome so far.

This is the second to last part. Only one more round to go after this…

The rules are simple:

Look through the 600-word entries from last week (round three, linked above).

Pick one.

Add another 200 words to the story.

(Easiest way forward is to copy the chosen 600 words to your own blog, then add the next 200. Don’t forget to link to your unfinished 800-word story in the comments. Someone may want to continue the tale next week, for part four.)

You do not need to have participated in the earlier rounds to participate in this one.

Try to continue a story in which you have not yet participated.

Do not finish the story. This is a five-part fiction experiment: we’ll end the year with several 1000-word stories, each built out of 200-word chunks by you guys. This is a collaborative game. It is Whisper Down the Lane. It is Telephone. It should be very interesting by the end. One hopes.

You’ve got one week.

Due by Friday, December 20th, noon EST.

Join the narrative chain, won’t you?

I know, December was supposed to be a “no writing talk” month, but it’s my blog and I’ll use it how I want to, goddamnit. *kicks dirt on your shoes*

Ahem.

So.

Digital BookWorld did a recent survey about how much self-published authors make and then Hugh Howey responded and —

Well, Porter Anderson does a nice wrap-up here.

I tend to be somewhere in the middle on all this stuff — hovering in between Howey’s admittedly infectious optimism and any writing-income survey’s overall grimness. I do think this is the best time to be writing and publishing. We have a bounty of options available to us. Opportunity is a fruit hanging fat and juicy on the vine if you’re willing to grab for it.

So I thought I’d take a couple minutes to offer a few thoughts.

a) Writing income surveys are nearly always flawed. For a number of reasons, really. I rarely see them take into account those who are doing it part-time versus full-time. Freelance versus IP ownership. Across different mediums. Across different genres. And, of course, effectively across traditional-, self-, and hybrid-publishing. (And any time I see such a survey I think, “Shit, nobody asked me.” And then I go back to work, making money with words HA HA HA.)

b) Howey’s right-on with the error on how one calculates income from traditional works (which had to be vetted through various stages) and income from self-published works (which are not whittled down by that vetting process and so represents a far larger bulk of work, roughly equivalent to the slush-piles that fail to dwindle due to the varying kept gates of the system). It’s not that we’re comparing apples to oranges: we’re comparing a bushel of apples here to a truckload of apples there. How delicious is the entire lot of apples on all the apple trees versus those that have been hand-picked and taken away from the rest?

c) While I totally share Howey’s excitement over the sheer joy and power of creating stories out of nothing, I think his posts (part one and part two), while very exciting and very interesting, maybe conflate writing and publishing, which has for a long time been one of my overall theoretical problems with not the act of but the culture of self-publishing. (It’s why I prefer the term “author-publisher” because it clearly separates out those two roles, yet keeps them joined by that magical hyphen. A hyphen is like a bridge made out of PURE PUNCTUATION.) Howey says:

How much do knitters like my sister make a year? How much does someone like my wife, who likes to strum a guitar, make in a year? What about my friends who play video games hours upon hours a day? What does your typical gardener make? Or someone who blogs regularly? Or all those people with YouTube channels who are always looking for more subscribers? What about serious home chefs? How much do they make?

Because this is how I look at it: Hundreds of thousands of voracious readers with a dream of writing a novel sat down and did just that. They wrote out of love and passion, just like a kid goes out and dribbles a basketball for hours every day or kicks a soccer ball against a garage wall. Of these hobbyist writers, thousands now make a full-time living from their work. Thousands more pay a huge chunk of their bills from their hobby. These are part time artists who have thousands of fans and hear from readers all over the world. Some of them go on to get offers from agents and publishers and score major deals. All because they are doing something they love.

Even better, this hobby costs nothing. Many of the other hobbies I listed above might cost you thousands of dollars. Everyone has access to a pen and paper. Most people already own a computer for other reasons. It just takes time and imagination. Some of us didn’t set out to become wealthy from doing this . . . it just happened. There are tens of thousands of authors out there now making $20 or $100 a month doing what they would happily do for nothing. In fact, if you told me I had to pay a monthly “writing fee” for the privilege of making stuff up and pounding it into my keyboard, I would do it.

…and abstractly, I’m on board with writers who just want to write. We are free to tell whatever stories we find compelling. Thing is, we’ve always been free to do so. Publishing those stories in a different matter. Publishing is an act of business. It is — to me, at least — a professional endeavor. Writing is craft, storytelling is art, and publishing is business. More to the point, that means publishing isn’t a hobby. If you’re looking for money for your work — which is what publishing and charging money for your work suggests — then you’ve changed the game. You just made it serious. Self-publishing is often viewed as the domain of amateurs frequently because folks treat it like that’s what it is. But I don’t want to sell my shit at a flea market. Do you? Publishing isn’t Craigslist where I’m trying to sell you a jizzed-on couch. I want to sell my work at proper professional venues. I want to take this seriously and, in a perfect world, I want you to take publishing seriously, too. If we’re going to assume that author-publishing is viable and professional, then we damn well better treat it that way.

d) As a result of all this, I worry the “just click publish!” meme takes the reader out of the equation. It puts a great deal of excitement and energy on the part of the writer, which is great. But it fails to take into account the readers who are ostensibly going to pay for this work. A lot of this might be semantics, but I don’t want to subject my readers to my hobby if they have to pay to play. Blogging is one thing. Home cooking is another. I’m not charging anybody for that and so — you don’t like the price of free, hey, get out of my kitchen. (And why are you in my kitchen anyway? *wings a can of Spaghetti-Os at your head*) But once I’m putting something out to YOU, the masses, that should be sacred. We’ve left Hobbytown and entered into Holy Shit I Need To Respect My Audienceopolis. It should be the best version of that story I can muster.

e) Final worry is — and this is possibly just a knee-jerk twinge-in-the-gut feeling, but here it comes just the same — I worry a little about suggesting that a little money for writing is a good thing, like, “Oh, hey, that’s nice, you can buy dinner now and again with that book you wrote.” Or worse, the fact that we should be willing to pay to be allowed to do what we’re doing. That way leads to vanity publishing. That way leads to another ding in the armor of how authors get paid fairly for their work — because, even outside this one nonsense arena of traditional-versus-self, we still need to value writing across film, television, games, comics, and any other storytelling or journalistic medium. Writing is supposed to be worth something. Stories are supposed to have value. Not just to the ones that write them but to the audience beyond. Suggesting that it’s a privilege to write and get a few ducats here and there suggests writing and storytelling deserves to be a hobby instead of an art. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to do it to make money.

(Someone in the comments of Howey’s blog said that self-publishing was a lottery ticket, and I can’t get on board with that. Your book isn’t a Willy Wonka golden ticket. It’s not an audition on American Idol. It’s so much more, and so much different, and should be treated as precious — not a cheap piece of paper that will most likely end up in the trash.)

Not much more to add here except the takeaway that I’m finding is:

Acting as author-publisher to your own work is entirely valid and helps to confirm for me why, like Howey says, this is one of the best times to be a writer.

But it won’t be one of the best times to be a writer if we don’t continue to treat the publishing of our stories with seriousness. Not because of the writer, but because of the reader. The reader deserves our very best. As Ron Swanson says: “Never half-ass two things. Whole ass one thing.” (Or, if you’d rather a gem from Mike Ermantraut: “No more half-measures, Walter.”)

Writing a story is for you. But the moment you publish it: it’s for everyone else.

Be professional. Be awesome. Don’t fuck around.

This is a real thing, and if you do want to make money at it — which, by the way, is for absolute real and I know a whole lotta authors who are doing very well for themselves financially — then you need to treat it that way, and not like a hobby. Mindset matters.

If we’re going to ask for efficiency and professionalism in our publishing surveys, then it behooves us to ask for the same across all of publishing, no matter what form that act of publishing takes.

Last year I did up 25 Gifts for Writers, and may have accidentally suggested you kidnap Neil Gaiman. WELL NO MORE OF THAT, says this very specific legal writ. This year I’m back with another ten suggestions for the penmonkeys in your life.

Freedom

What if I told you that there existed a piece of software that slammed a giant glacial wall between A WRITER and the INTERNET so that said writer could write? BOOM INTERNET BLOCKING SOFTWARE. Which sounds strange, I know, because it’s like a cookie jar that bites you every time you reach for it, but dang, it does the trick. Sure, the first few days the writer will be greasily pawing at her monitor trying to get at that sweet sweet Facebook game she’s been mindlessly playing instead of writing, but after a week she’ll settle into the warm productive bliss of hot, fresh word count. Get this for a writer and help them eliminate distractions. (Bonus points: actually give the writer in your life time to write!)

Tonx Coffee Subscription

A writer needs coffee. Tonx has amazing coffee. They will send it to you automatically. Yay.

Evernote Subscription

Give somebody the ability to take notes and gasp keep them anywhere with the magic that is Evernote. As writers, we all basically have brains that look like 10-year-old underwear, all ratty and ragged, so give us this. Help us out. (If not that, then an iTunes or Android gift card to get us other writing or note-taking apps. Or maybe just porn. Who doesn’t need more porn?)

Wonderbook

A book that explodes and dissects story in the most visually-explosive of ways. The writer in your life may not need this book, but they’ll damn sure savor it. Wonderbook, baby.

A Houseplant

Houseplants give oxygen. They make excellent silent companions. And in a pinch they can be eaten for various hallucinogenic benefits. Ta-da! Health! Nature! Hallucinations!

A Corkboard

Plus pins, markers, string, whatever. A corkboard on the wall — or a whiteboard or a chalkboard — make a damn good receptacle for a writer’s thoughts in a very physical, present way. You know how detectives or CIA agents or conspiracy nuts sometimes have that crazy wall with all the photos and all the strings connecting them? Writers are like that, too. Forget that thing I said about Evernote: an outline or mind-map right on your wall is magic stuff. The writer will appreciate this. Check Etsy for home-spun versions.

Noise-Canceling Headphones

Life is distracting as all fuck. Kids screaming inside. Lawnmowers roaring outside. The wails of those you’ve trapped down in your basement. And so: ta-da, noise-canceling headphones. Also don’t be upset that when the writer in your life ignores you for a while — it’s nothing personal, it’s just, THE STORIES WILL SPOOK IF YOU SCARE THEM WITH LOUD TALKY TALKY.

External Storage Device (or Dropbox)

Redundant backups are powerful voodoo for a writer, so get them a USB key, an external hard drive, or a paid Dropbox account. I also use a robot monkey, an NSA drone, and the photographic memory of a 125-year-old Buddhist monk to store my writing, but I understand if you don’t want to take it that far. … Poser.

Solar-Powered Bluetooth Keyboard

I fucking love my solar-powered keyboard. Note I didn’t say “I love fucking my solar-power keyboard,” because I figure that would hurt. Never tried it, though. And my  mother always said I should try everything once? Hm. Anyway. I’ve got the Logitech one for Mac, though larger ones are available. I take it with me wherever I go — er, I mean, when I travel, it’s not like I’m bringing it to the fucking gas station and shit. But it’s great. No batteries required. Very responsive. Will bludgeon an interloper in a pinch. The word-herder in your life may diggit.

Writer Dice

Daniel Solis created these great physical dice — d6 “Writer Dice” — that work to help a writer continue pushing your story forward. You’ll find varieties other than these, too, like Rory’s Story Cubes. Related, but different: also awesome to get a writer word-bases games like Balderdash or Scrabble, or even awesomer, get them hooked on tabletop roleplaying games.

Shameless Plug #1: The Kick-Ass Writer

My book, The Kick-Ass Writer, will punt a writer’s netherquarters into the wordosphere with 1001 hard jabs of writing, storytelling and publishing advice. It exists in physical format, which means the aforementioned writer-type can get naked with it and rub it all over themsleves to absorb its dubious wisdom via fleshy osmosis. Details here.

Shameless Plug #2: Terribleminds Merch

Mugs and shirts terribleminds-style, baby. Certified Penmonkey! Art Harder, Motherfucker! And now I’ve added a new mug: the Art Harder Safe-For-Work version, where FUCKER gets a bunch of fancy asterisks. Whee! Asterisks! Asterisks look like cat buttholes!

HERE IS THE STUFF I LIKED THIS YEAR OKAY THANK YOU BYE.

Novels

As my writing career has deepened, my reading habits have changed. I finish far fewer books these days. That’s not down to the quality of the books, necessarily, but in part due to an increasing persnicketiness when it comes to what books I like and what books I don’t. A story gets very little room to breathe in my world — I generally like to give a book till page 50, but realistically, if I’m not into the book by page 10, I put it down and find another.

This might seem like I’m overly impatient. And maybe I am, and it’s entirely possible I’m missing out on great books this way — but with a toddler running around and way too many books of my own to write, I don’t have that kind of time to grant to a novel that just isn’t burying its claws in me. Some books click. Some don’t. I’ve got a teetering tbr pile threatening to crush me daily.

(This is why I don’t buy the bullshit meme that writers are beholden to review other books negatively. If you do — more power to you, but it’s not an obligation. If you can’t trust my positive reviews because I also don’t contribute negative ones into the world, that’s your problem, not mine. My job is to write books, not criticize somebody else’s. Realistically, my negative reviews would be full of shit anyway. My tastes, as noted, are increasingly finicky. And if I don’t like a book? I don’t finish it. What kind of a review is that? It’s no kinda review, is what it is.)

Point is, if I make it through a book, then for me it was a damn good one.

Below are the books that I finished this year, which is to say, the damn good ones.

Twelve-Fingered Boy, by John Hornor Jacobs

A very serious candidate for favorite book of the year. I fucking devoured this YA sorta-kinda-coming-of-age novel about a pair of psychic boys in an Arkansas correctional institution. It’s dark and twisted and funny and violent and the writing is downright powerful and the characters are grip-your-throat compelling. It’s a little bit horror novel, it’s a little bit X-Men, it’s a whole lotta Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn. I’ve liked JHJ’s earlier novels quite a bit, but this one really buried its hooks in me. Bonus: already read the second in the series, The Shibboleth, which takes the small seed of mythology in the first book and grows a whole goddamn tree out of it, turning up the volume on the X-Men / Chronicle vibe. Go find the first book now, now, now.

The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes

The second very serious candidate for favorite book of the year. I think Zoo City is an amazing achievement and deserves its very own pedestal — but Beukes really ratcheted things up with The Shining Girls. (How to sell it in brief: “A survivor of a time-traveling serial killer’s attack attempts to understand what happened to her and soon finds herself hunting the hunter.”Rich and layered, creepy and poetic. Full of complex and compelling characters — many (most) of them “shining” women who the serial kill wants to rob of their spark. Contains one of the most brutal, cringe-worthy scenes I’ve ever read. (Like, in a good way. I still get the shivers thinking about it. LAUREN BEUKES IS ONE OF OUR MOST BAD-ASS DANGEROUS WRITERS. Read her.)

NOS4A2, by Joe Hill

It’s a book big enough to bludgeon a bull elk, and that’s a damn good thing because it’s one of those books you never want to end (and also, you might get attacked by a bull elk and trust me when I say, those guys are assholes). I’m guilty as a writer of encouraging folks to get to the story, to step on the accelerator and move this motherfucker along — and certainly Hill knows how to do that, because with a book like Heart-Shaped Box he took what I woulda thought would’ve been the whole novel and collapsed that part into the first 30 pages, which gave that particular book a surprising amount or urgency and surprise. But NOS4A2, which offers up a young girl’s lifelong battle against a vampiric wretch bound to a candy-cane hellscape known as Christmasland, is an epic horror story that takes a lot of time to grow compelling characters before plunging you into the dark and icy waters. (In fact, it is the protagonist’s struggle against herself that is as fascinating as her battle against the monster, Charlie Manx. Powerful writing, inescapable horror, grave dread punctuated by the small-town life made famous by the novels of Hill’s own father. (In fact, this book has some loose tie-ins to the Dark Tower mythology, if that tweaks your nipples.) Great, great book. One of those books where I wish I was a time-traveling serial killer, actually, so I could go back in time, murder Joe Hill, and claim this book as my own.

The Waking Dark, by Robin Wasserman

“Hey, what would it be like if Stephen King wrote YA novels?”

*drops The Waking Dark in your lap*

I’ll say no more except: holy shit read this book.

Vicious, by V. E. Schwab

Here’s generally how it works if you ask me to blurb a book: I will take the book and make it very clear, “I probably don’t have time to read this,” which is true, but also a way for me to insulate you against the reality that I may not dig the book, or I might just forget because I have a brain like a hamster-nibbled cracker. The books I inevitably do blurb often get blurbed because of one reason: because I pick it up on a lark and idly read the first couple pages.

Or, that’s what I think will happen

What really happens is suddenly I look up from the book and I’ve wolfed down like, 50-100 pages.

And I blink and go, “Whoa-dang,” and then I devour the rest like pie at Thanksgiving.

Books like that get blurbed because I fall into them. Because any and all of my critical response levels are shut-down and dazzled by the powerful prestidigitation and misdirection of a damn good story. And that’s this book. A supervillain book as much as it is a superhero book. A book about bad people and nemeses and redemption. Crackling writing and pinpoint plotting. Needs its own comic book, TV show, breakfast cereal. Doubly upsetting is that Schwab isn’t even 30 years old yet GODDAMN IT who let her in the club was it you?

The Thicket, by Joe Lansdale

I’ll read anything Joe Lansdale writes.

You could say, “He wrote this Chinese takeout menu,” and I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and read every line of that menu penned by Champion Joe. The Thicket is one of his best and he’s in nearly perfect form here. I don’t like giving out the plot details but this is pretty grim and hilarious turn-of-the-century take on the “coming-of-age” story. Read this. And then if you haven’t read any other Lansdale, read all of it with an aim to savor but a plan to gorge.

Abaddon’s Gate, by James S.A. Corey

Abstractly, I care nothing for space opera. But I read the first book in the Expanse series (Leviathan Wakes) on a trip and found myself swiftly addicted to the story. The second book, Caliban’s War, was even better. This is the third book and it continues the horror-tinged space opera epic with all its magnificence intact. It’s a little slower to build than the second book, but once it kicks into gear — sweet motherless goatfucker, it gets cray-cray.

In other news, James S.A. Corey is like, fifteen people or something. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck I know for sure. But I also think there’s like, some kind of alien hive-mind at work here, and maybe a talking llama, and definitely a supercomputer housed in an ancient glacier.

Apocalypse Now Now, by Charlie Human

I can’t explain this book using words. I can only use my mouth to mumble and mutter while my eyes grow larger and larger. I blurbed this and, quite seriously, that was basically my blurb: “NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK TO SAY.” It’s like, if you took Zoo City and made Neil Gaiman rewrite it but first you made him read Naked Lunch and eat a lot of hallucinogenic drugs? Cape Town supernatural weirdness. There. That’s all I got. I don’t think this has a US deal yet?

Annihilation, by Jeff Vandermeer

This isn’t out yet but it lands on shelves in in January, so, fuck it, it counts. If you let David Lynch write Lost, or you made H.P. Lovecraft and Michael Crichton have a book-baby, this is what would result. A cold and poetic story of a woman’s descent into a mysterious zone called Area X where other teams have gone before and (often) not returned. It’s like, weird biology and archaeology and psychology and it’s another book where I’m pretty sure I ate like, a fistful of psilocybin before reading it. I read it fast and it blew me away. It’s part of a trilogy, too, which weirds me out even more because — what? What the hell happens now? *grabs at the air*

Yay Other Awesome Books But I’m Going On Too Long Already: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone; City’s Son and its follow-up, Glass Republic, by Tom Pollock; Dreams & Shadows, by C. Robert Cargill; Parasite, by Mira Grant; The Testing, by Joelle Charbonneau; Shambling Guide to NYC, by Mur Lafferty; The Age Atomic, by Adam Christopher; certainly a bunch of other books that I read and adored but am forgetting because dumb.

Comics

Leaving Megalopolis, by Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore

Listen, I kinda didn’t pay much attention when I backed this on Kickstarter. I was like, “HEY YAY GAIL SIMONE” and then I flung some money at the screen. I was probably drunk. It doesn’t matter. What I got — just the other day, actually — was a graphic novel that scared the genitals off my body. Imagine an apocalyptic horror novel where the superheroes are the fucking monsters and holy crap what. I tweeted the other day: “Sweet gore-soaked fuckmittens, LEAVING MEGALOPOLIS is batshit whoa-dang scarymazing.” Beautiful. Bloody. Soul-wounding. And bad-ass every step of the way.

Lazarus, by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark

Only a few issues deep yet, but so far so awesome. The future-flung world is controlled by a handful of superpowerful families, and the lead in this one is a woman of one such family who has been engineered into… well, I don’t know exactly what but let’s go with “the human equivalent of a Terminator.” So good.

Saga, by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan

It’s trippy space opera with TV-headed royalty and sex and naughty words and rocket ships made out of trees and dongs and cool bounty hunters and uber-violence and why are you still here?

Fatale, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

When this first came out I kinda thought it was a straight crime story but oh shit it’s all occult-magic crazy. It’s like L.A. Confidential as painted with the blood of Aleister Crowley.

High Crimes, by Christopher Sebela and Ibrahim Moustafa

The first comic series I’ve ever blurbed, actually: “Sharp as an ice ax, taut as a climbing rope. The writing and art have a vertiginous quality as if at any moment the characters — and you with ’em — will drop down into a dark canyon abyss. Let me put it another way: if you’re not reading High Crimes, we probably can’t be friends.” I think that’s my favorite blurb I ever done blurbed, actually. I love this series (from the awesome folks at Monkeybrain) so hard. Everest + crime + spy thriller conspiracy + wtf.

Locke and Key, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez

I’m not caught up but this is one of those comics that you think is one thing but then kinda becomes another? At least, it was, for me. I expected something straight-up Lovecraftian but it soon leaves horror and becomes fantasy and creates wonder before circling back and becoming even more horrific and it’s really amazing — but again, not caught up, so if you spoil the last arc for me I’m going to shit on all your pets. Yep, even the guinea pig.

Wonder Woman, by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang

The New 52 is hit or miss for me — though one supposes that’s to be expected given that no comics company bats 1000 every day of the week. I like a lot of the Batman titles but I was wary of this one. I dig it — I think it takes WW down the right road, which is to say, epic and mythic, but not hyper-powered, either? Check it out.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks

YA high school story about a friendship ruined by a battle over money that will go toward either a robotics competition or the cheerleading squad. So good. Very wow.

Thrillbent, Anything By Anyone

Go to thrillbent.com. Start reading comics. Give them money. TA-DA YAY.

Other Awesome Comics: Fairest, Hawkeye, Manhattan Projects, Detective Comics, Bandette, Sweet Tooth, Sixth Gun.

Kid Books

I read a lot to the Tiny Human and I, as an adult who writes stories, happens to like books for him that actually tell a story. Go figure. And so I recommend: Little Blue Truck and Little Blue Truck Leads the Way by Alice Shertle and Jill McElmurry; anything by Mo Willems ever; Little Miss Spider, a Christmas Wish by David Kirk; and probably a bunch of others I’m forgetting.

Also: apps by Toca or Callaway Digital Arts are always a winner.

Music

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Mosquito

NIN, Hesitation Marks

Lorde, Pure Heroine

Haim, Days Are Gone

Kacey Musgraves, Same Trailer Different Park

The Civil Wars, The Civil Wars

The Lonely Island, The Wack Album

Gin Wigmore, Gravel & Wine

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, The Heist

They Might Be Giants, Nanobots

TV

Orphan Black, because holy crap. Breaking Bad, because double holy crap. Uhh, what else? Parks & Recreation. The Mindy Project. House of Cards. Homeland. I think I’m done with Walking Dead but will remain adoring the gut-punch that is Game of Thrones. Luther. I’m sure there’s plenty more I watch that I’m spacing on because whatever this shit is getting long so shut up quit lookin’ at me.

Oh! Fuck. Hannibal. How the hell did that show even get to be a show? It’s so good and so shouldn’t be. Nobody was asking for this. And yet, what the fuck? It’s great.

Adored the Sleepy Hollow pilot but haven’t gotten deeper yet.

Oh, some kids shows that are actually awesome and not crappy: Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Sarah & Duck (so fucking cute). Pocoyo. Curious George.

Movies

I feel bad, but film is grabbing me less and less where TV is grabbing me more and more. Riskier storytelling being done in the television space, I think. The Heat cracked me up. Stoker was a trip. Wreck-It Ralph ruled.

I liked Pacific Rim a lot even though I have a lot of problems with it.

Eh? You know, part of it too is that my wife and I have time for TV in fits and starts but watching a full two-hour film is a luxury with the toddler running around. And if we have a toddler-free two hours, we’re not watching movies IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

I mean we’re probably eating a meal in peace, you savages, jeez.

Food

I love anything from Jeni’s Ice Cream.

And all of the Noosa yogurts.

And Dogfish or Stone beer.

And Vosges chocolates.

And La Colombe coffee.

If it’s gin, it’s Bluecoat.

If it’s Scotch, it’s Balvenie Doublewood.

If it’s bourbon, it’s Basil Hayden’s.

And if I see you with a pack of Tim-Tam cookies (“biscuits”) I’ll stab you for them.

Games

I still buy games like I don’t have a toddler — and I continually forget that I have damn near zero game-playing time beyond, say, two or three hours on a Sunday afternoon after I write this blog. Still, I do manage, and got some time with some solid entries this year: Far Cry 3, GTA V, Bioshock Infinite, Minecraft, Tomb Raider.

And that’s all she wrote, folks.

Healthcare-dot-gov, as we all know, is something of a clusterfuck.

I applied very early, within the first week, and my identity verification took until about two weeks ago. And then, promptly thereafter, the website wouldn’t let me log on anymore — though that has been fixed again, and now I can log on.

But I see no next steps. Like, everything just says IN PROGRESS, with no “Click Here For Plans!” magic button. I called the number (it should be noted that every phone conversation has been immediately connected and very helpful with excellent customer service) and they told me they will now review my application and physically mail me paperwork so that I can apply — she swore this would happen before the deadline of December 23rd (which is what would be necessary to get me onto a plan by Jan 1st in order to stop paying the monthly chest of gold and blood to COBRA).

Anyone else have experience here? This accurate to your experience? I was made to understand the whole thing might be online, though perhaps this represents a shift in how they’re mitigating tech fails is by ushering some of the burden to physical paperwork.

(For the record, this blog post is not an excuse to get into the OBAMACARE SUCKS or YAY ACA discussion. I’m looking for practical information based on some kind of evidence here. Thanks!)

Here’s your assignment:

In the comments, I want to know:

A book you read in 2013 you’d recommend.

A comic book you dug in 2013.

A TV show.

A movie.

A game.

One of each.

Just one.

Get shut of the idea of “best” — just, you know, if you had one of each of these that you could recommend to me or to everyone else reading here, what would it be?

Bonus question:

And why?

Your 2013 list:

GO.