Once again, here we go with less a full-course blog meal, and more a series of vaguely unsatisfying bloglet nibblins, like some grotesque shareable you’d order at Applebee’s that would give you vicious 3AM diarrhea. Also, my favorite Lord of the Rings character was Bloglet Nibblins, half-hobbit, half-orc, all sex machine.

I figured out some business with my middle grade book. In case you didn’t see, ahem ahem, Little Brown bought my MG novel, Dust & Grim, and I’m in the midst of edits on that book, and I rewrote the first act and wasn’t feeling it — but I figured out how to move forward on it in a way that’s satisfying. It’s weird because my BRAINTHINK comes slower at this moment in time — it’s like, the thought I need to find is in the back of the cabinet, but instead of just reaching in and plucking it off the shelf, I have to first push through a wall of pudding. The wall of pudding is gloppy and forbidding in that I cannot see what’s beyond it, so I gotta do a lotta fumbling around.

This mind pudding effect is not kept to just fiction. I get it all the time now. I sat down after lunch today, plonking myself in front of the computer, and I had a list of things I needed to do, and then the moment I sat, that list was gone. Simply inaccessible. I just sat there, slack-jawed, like, I have shit to do, I’m sure of it, buuuuuuuut. (I talk more about this phenomenon with Jared Rizzi on his new podcast, if you care to listen.) So instead I went outside and stood underneath a snow of crabapple blossoms. Oddly, it helped, and I figured out several things I needed to do.

One of the things is about rewilding our property. Found a good native plants place not far away that will deliver, and I’m picking some nice natives to start to go in around the front and back yards, either to replace junk that’s there now or to simply slot in alongside stuff to start competing. The goal is to get more birds and butterflies and buggables and such. Maybe summon a hobo or two, enticed by fragrant flowers, and then we can butcher the ol’ hobos and — I’ve said too much. I don’t want to share my hobo recipes, because then you’ll all start hoarding hobos, and I won’t be able to get any.

Hey so I found a new bird. Er, I didn’t discover a brand new bird, but rather, one that is new to me — one who roamed idly into view as I was standing there. So here I present, the yellow-rumped warbler. SONGBIRD OF THE GILDED BUTT. I’m really quite fond of that photo.

I have a bread problem. I real damn bread problem. So you remember how I did the obvious thing and cultivated a sourdough starter? Yeah, I’ve baked with it every day since. I’ve made two loaves with just starter, then another “noir” loaf with chocolate and walnuts, and with the discard I made rolls, and I made waffles. The rolls were sublime, truly some of the greatest I have ever eatenthe waffles I usually make. The waffles were… fine, not great, totally edible but inferior to , which are murderiferously good. Then I bought two 10-lb bags of flour (soft wheat and hard bolted wheat) from a local mill and seriously, I have a problem. That problem is bread. And probably diabetes, soon? Can you grow meat from a sourdough starter? Or Impossible Burgers? (Oh, these are the rolls, btw.)

I guess a meat shortage might be a thing? We get most of our meat from local providers, which is nice in that a) I’m supporting people near me and b) they’re not big factory farms subject to the problems those have. Not to say “small farmers” are automagically better people or better places, but on a whole I find they are, if only because you can go there, and see the operation, and talk to the farmers. We did try when this all started to buy a freezer and hahahaha that was fucking stupid. In mid-March, the earliest we could get one delivered was April 28th, and you’ll note that April 28th has come and gone. Our new delivery date is June 15th, so, yeah. Somewhere there’s like, one guy with a thousand freezers he’s using to keep all his toilet paper cold. The fucker.

Also, Pepcid? So someone said that famotidine cures The Cove, The Rona, The Vid, and now people are hoarding that even though the off-chance of it working means you’d need to have it delivered to you via IV, which is not what you buy from Target, you dicks. I could use my heartburn meds just for heartburn. Anxiety heightens heartburn. And heartburn heightens anxiety! Fun.

My anxiety is quieter, though, these days. That feels weird, but I think it’s smug. Self-righteous. “See, I told you this shit would happen,” it says, rocking back on its heels like a too-proud child. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back later. For now, just pickle in the world I told you would arrive.”

Some injuries are funny. I’m sorry, it’s just true. For instance, this thread where I asked last night, hey, what’s your weirdest or most embarrassing injury? It’s got 3,000 responses and hooooooly shit.

Wanderers in paperback. Boom, you just got suckered into reading a sales pitch. You fools. Ahem. No, seriously, Wanderers? It’s coming out in paperback this month. Aaaaand I don’t know if that’s gonna work or not, because print is weird right now? But if you’re so inclined to grab a copy, your local indie store would surely welcome that business. So would Doylestown Books, where you can pre-order it. Comes out May 19th. Tell your friends! And your vague acquaintances!

We’re okay here. Again, lucky and privileged and mostly fine. A lot of floating. Distance learning is hard — everything feels like homework for the kid, because now, everything is homework, and his bedroom is his classroom, and that just sucks. It’s nobody’s fault. Everybody’s doing their best. But it’s definitely an act of jogging on a fractured leg, and everyone pretending that, nope, you’re just supposed to run like that, it’s fine, the herky-jerky gait is normal, keep running, it won’t hurt, ow, ow, ow. We got toilet paper. We went from none to a lot in short order? We have food, though what’s available week to week is erratic and odd. I’m trying to cook healthy meals, but veggies have been the real hard one to get — we’re trying Misfits Market for the next month until the CSA we subscribed to kicks into gear. These are all very privileged problems, I know. Just the same, things are weird, and the industry in which I work is going through some paroxysms, and as the country’s economy wavers, so too do theoretically luxury items like books and… well, just grabbing onto the cliff’s edge as tight as I can, is all. As I imagine most of us are doing. I think that’s it. I’m out. Here are dogs.

Trina Warren didn’t think she was going to be a hero. She thought she was going to go to fourth period, hopefully avoiding any more hassle from the jocks about dropping their plates at her waitressing job the night before. Then there was a bang, and an overturned chair, and everything was different.

Now Trina finds herself in a fantasy world, pursued by a faceless, nameless monster that only she can stop. But she doesn’t know how to stop it, she doesn’t have any weapons, and her only clue is the necklace that arrived in a mysterious package that morning, with no return address and a cryptic note inside. She must navigate an unfamiliar world full of monsters, magic, and danger if she is to defeat the mysterious Soulless One and save her friends. And herself.

* * *

In extraordinary circumstances, ordinary people show themselves to be extraordinary

Just under a year ago I survived a mass shooting on the campus of the university where I teach. I say survived, but that feels wrong. I mean, it’s not like I got shot. I was in a building a couple over from where the attack began where I hid in a locked room with my students. Though it took a couple of hours for us to be freed by the police, the incident itself was over very quickly. We just didn’t know it. For us it was two hours of watching our (muted) phones, trying to figure out what was going on and just how much danger we were in, and listening for footsteps outside. What we learned later is that the speed with which the police were able to take charge of the situation was due to the actions of one of the victims, Riley Howel who overpowered the shooter, running at him, and taking eight bullets to various parts of his body. Eight bullets, and he kept going, driven by what? I can barely imagine. In those horrific moments his will power, courage, greatness of heart—call it what you like—allowed most of the other students in that room to get out alive.

Writing is my way through trauma

Not for the first time in my life I came out of a bad situation with the need to talk about it not as it actually happened, but through the distorting lens of fiction. I did it after my wife’s cancer. I did it after the death of my father. And I did it after this glimpse of the appalling fragility of normal life. It’s a fantasy novel, swords and sorcery meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except that it’s finally not at all. It’s about the terrible and arbitrary ordinariness of certain kinds of violence. And I’m not kidding when I said I needed to write it. At the time I was ok, but within a few days I was very clearly not. I would suddenly be overcome with grief, panic or terror. I wrote the first draft in two breathless weeks, and felt a little better.

I’m not interested in purely escapist fantasy

I‘ve known this for a while but it has been a little surprising nonetheless. I always loved the idea of books which took you away from the real world and put your everyday problems on hold, but as I’ve got older I’ve found that less and less satisfying. Yes, I love the unreal, the paranormal, the magical, the preposterous in art, but somewhere deep inside, like the flaw at the heart of a crystal, I like to feel that for all its un reality those TV shows, movies and books all tap into something real, something true. I’m quite capable of investing in the strictly imaginary, but I like that imaginary to have just enough of a tether to the life I lead that some subconscious part of me will make use of it as I wrestle with ordinary issues.

There’s no such thing as apolitical fiction

My other fiction has similar handholds on reality and it can piss people off. I saw a one star Amazon review for one of my Steeplejack books which actually raised the outraged question: why put politics in fantasy? To which I say, because that’s where we live, and when authors say they don’t put politics in their fiction it’s because they are either writing about a place which bears no resemblance to the world or because they think that politics is for other people. The Steeplejack example is a case in point. It was read (rightly) as political because it was about racial struggle in an unequal society, something some people would prefer not to think about, usually because they aren’t the ones being disenfranchised by such inequality. For me, ignoring such things is political; it’s wishful thinking of a particularly insidious kind. So yes, people will attack Impervious for being a political book. Fine. Show me a book that isn’t, and I’ll show you a book so utterly divorced from reality that I have no interest in it.

You can’t please everyone

No surprise there. What I realized in writing this book, however, is that the desire to please everyone is not just foolish, it’s cowardly. You have to pick your battles, for sure, but there should be a point where you say, this is the hill I’m prepared to die on. Hell, if Riley Howel can take eight bullets to save his classmates, I ought to be able to write a damn novel with an ounce of integrity, and if I can’t, I should hang it up.

* * *

Author A.J. Hartley is the bestselling writer of mystery/thriller, fantasy, historical fiction, and young adult novels. He was born in northern England, but has lived in many places including Japan, and is currently the Robinson Professor of Shakespeare studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, where he specializes in the performance history, theory and criticism of Renaissance English drama, and works as a director and dramaturg.

AJ Hartley: Website

Impervious: Amazon | Everywhere Else

Sooooo, hey, look at that? If you’ll remember a little while ago I tweeted that I’d written a middle grade about a girl who inherits a funeral home and cemetery for monsters? Welp, it sold! And here I’m able to announce that Dust & Grim is the first SEEEECRET BOOOOK I had waiting in the wings.

(Only three more to announce!)

I’m excited to see how people react to this — it’s very plainly a kids’ book, as I wanted to write something in line with what my son could read by the time he’s of that age, and this should time out pretty well for that. I’m in the middle of editing the book now, and am very pleased to be working with Deirdre Jones, who like my Del Rey editor Tricia has sought to bring out the best version of the vision I’m putting into the book, which is to me the ideal editor-author relationship. Thanks to Deirdre and LB for wanting this book, and for my wonderagent, Stacia Decker, for helping deliver that deal. Hopefully you all will dig it. We initially considered using a pseudonym for it, but there was the feeling that though I’m traditionally an adult author (though I’ve written YA, and those books are on sale this month at Amazon, btw) with a adult social media presence, it shouldn’t impact what kids that age look for or care about. But maybe that’ll change and you’ll find this book coming out under my carefully-crafted pseudonym, RICK RIORDAN. I don’t think anyone has taken that one yet! Failing that, I could always go with the name of my great grand-uncle, JOHN KENNEY ROWLING, though I think it’d be classier to use the first two initials? Whatever.

More as I have it, folks.

Also P.S. the name Michelle under that photo is not my name, but rather, the photographer credit.

Listen, I think my favoritest urban fantasy book of all time is Stephen Blackmoore’s Dead Things. And it’s since bloomed into a bad-ass series for LA necromancer Eric Carter, who is usually in deep with supernatural shenanigans — ghosts, gods, Death Herself. You know, the usual. I’m a book behind (as I’m awful about keeping up with series), but today the newest is out — Ghost Money is here, and so Blackmoore emerges from the ash and the mist to drop a guest post in your lap. Here, then, is a post about death and dying. (And check out his series — it’s important to support authors right now, and with a huge bonus, you also support yourself too because hey, BOOKS ARE AWESOME.)

* * *

This is a bad time for all of us. The world is in a swirling shitstorm and when the dust, poop, whatever just go with it, settles the world is going to look very different than it does today.

The middle of a pandemic is maybe not the best time to release a book, and certainly not a book where death is a central theme. I recognize this, and I hope this doesn’t come across as flippant, or in any way disrespecting the very real fact that someone reading this may very well have a friend or a loved one sick, in the hospital, dead.

Yes, this is marketing. Yes, I’m writing this because I hope some of you will be interested in my writing enough to buy my books. But stay with me for a minute, if you would. Marketing or no, I do have a couple of things to say on the topic of dying.

The Eric Carter series is urban fantasy about a modern-day necromancer in Los Angeles. His parents are dead, his best friend is not only dead but had his soul ripped to shreds, he’s married (read: shotgun wedding) to the folk-saint Santa Muerte / Aztec goddess of death Mictecacihuatl. He and Death are on a literal first name basis.

For all that death you’d think there’d be more talk about an afterlife. There’s some. Most of the third book, HUNGRY GHOSTS, takes place in Mictlan, the Aztec land of the dead. In Carter’s world gods are real, the dead go to wherever the dead are going to go, Valhalla, Heaven, Elysium, or the Void. But what does that mean? Carter knows about Mictlan firsthand, but beyond that? Hasn’t a clue.

And, of course, neither do I. How much of Carter’s view on the world is mine, just as how much of any character’s viewpoint is the author’s, is hard to nail down. I know I wouldn’t do half the shit he would. Mostly because he can be an idiot. But also because there are lines he’ll cross that I won’t. I’ll keep to myself which ones those are.

One place I know where he and I are in sync, however, is in my view of death and dying.

Regardless where a soul, if it exists, goes, if anywhere, when someone dies, they’re dead. I know that sounds like a remarkably stupid thing to point out, but how many times have you heard someone say, “They’re in a better place.” Really? Better? 24/7 booze fountains and cocaine roadways? Strippers of every stripe giving out lapdances and handjobs?

I don’t know if they’re in a better place. I don’t know if it’s all sparkly unicorn shit, or fire and elephant farts. All I know is that they’re gone. Elvis has left the building, as they say. They are gone and I will never see them again. They’ve left behind an empty shell of rotting meat and we’re supposed to take it stoically and say, “Oh, they’re in a better place.”

Fuck that.

GHOST MONEY opens with the line, “Dying is easy. Grieving is hard.” I believe that. Not saying that dying can’t be agonizing. I know it is. Whether it takes five minutes or fifty years. Our bodies don’t want to die. They fight, sometimes far longer than anyone else will. They’ll sacrifice key systems in a desperate bid to keep the brain alive. But I think it’s still easier than being left behind.

Grieving IS hard. I have a feeling that right now some of you are grieving and it is the hardest thing you have ever done. And I am so, so sorry for that. You are being forced, and I mean forced like ripping a door open with a crowbar is forced, to say goodbye to someone you love. How dare they be taken away from us. How dare death tear them out of our lives and leave a gaping hole that nothing is going to fill.

Death is RUDE. Who said you could come into MY house and steal MY love, MY memories? I don’t care if they’re in a better place, they’re not HERE. They’ll never be here. It’s over. It’s done.

That’s how I see death. Rude. Insolent. The greatest of faux pas. A discourtesy that cannot ever be forgiven. You are, will be, and have been grieving. You and I share that if nothing else. We all know loss. We know what it’s like to have our worlds upended because someone was ripped away from us. Your grief is different from my grief, but it doesn’t make it any easier, any less valid.

I hope that as time goes by, you’ll grieve a little less. You might, you might not. You might mourn the rest of your life or wake up in a week and feel fine. Those rages of gut-wrenching emotion coming out of nowhere might ease. I won’t blow smoke up your ass and say that they will.

But I sincerely hope that they do.

* * *

The Los Angeles Firestorm killed over a hundred thousand people, set in revenge against necromancer Eric Carter for defying the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. Carter feels every drop of that blood on his hands. But now there’s a new problem.

Too many ghosts in one spot and the barrier separating them from the living cracks. And when they cross it, they feed off all the life they can get hold of. People die. L.A. suddenly has a lot more ghosts.

But it’s not just one or two ghosts breaking through: it’s dozens. Another mage is pulling them through the cracks and turning them into deadly weapons. Eric follows a trail that takes him through the world of the Chinese Triads, old associates, old crimes. And a past that he thought he was done with.

Carter needs to find out how to get things under control, because if more ghosts break through, there’s going to be even more blood on his hands.

Stephen Blackmoore: website | twitter

Ghost Money: print | eBook

I’m a pretty inventive guy and so I think we can all agree that I’m the first person who thought to bake a loaf of bread during these here Quarantimes. I’m a pioneer on this one, a bonafide frontiersperson — I thought, gosh, there’s all this flour around, and there’s yeast in the fucking air like a miasma of squirming microbial mist, and so I decided to invent the very concept of baking bread during lockdown. I know, I know. You don’t need to thank me. Acknowledging my originality is enough.

Okay, not really. I have, as Maryn McKenna said of herself on Instagram, become a quarantine cliche. I decided it was time to join the CARBOLOADING MASSES and make some goddamn bread.

I’ve always wanted to do it, and never really had the courage or the patience to try it — I’m generally not the baker in the family. I do all the cooking, but nearly zero of the baking. My wife has an orderly, well-kept mind, and my brain is like a box of otters shaken up and dropped into a tiny tornado? So, cooking works for me. Lotta improv. Lotta feeling your way through it. Lotta just… having a sense of how to build and layer flavors over time.

Baking is unforgiving, though. YOU FUCKED UP, say the baking gods. YOU DID NOT ACCOUNT FOR HUMIDITY AND THE AGE OF YOUR BAKING SODA AND NOW THOSE COOKIES ARE LIKE SOFT LUMPS OF HALF-ROTTEN TREE BARK, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. I do not know how to appease the gods of flour and sugar. Just the same, I’ve always wanted to smell the scent of baking bread in our house. Just to see. Just to try it.

We of course couldn’t find yeast, so I decided to, as all of you have, make my own sourdough starter, and at about seven days it was looking aerated and frothy, and smelled good — but I was also not sure it was ready for primetime. So, I decided to use some discarded starter and put that in this recipe that I found from author and awesome human Amal El-Mohtar’s Twitter feed. (You follow her, yeah?) And I’d long been taking inspiration from Seamus Blackley, who, sure, whatever, is the father of the Xbox and all that, but who also has made BREAD from ANCIENT SUMERIAN MOON YEAST (I might be misremembering the details on that). So, I knew I was not the person for this job, but I decided, fuck it, let’s do it anyway. Lockdown Quarantimes are all about experimentation and failure and so away I went. (I did eventually find yeast thanks to a friend.)

The key to the recipe I used above was the sourdough starter discard replaced a 1/2 cup of the water and 3/4 cup of the flour — and in that recipe I cut the yeast requirement in half, too.

And then I did it in a Le Creuset enameled dutch oven, 7-qt.

And this is what emerged:

It was… pretty great?

I tried it: plain, with butter, with butter and strawberry-basil jam, with cheddar cheese, and then this morning with melted cheddar and a runny egg and a splash of olive oil in a breakfast sandwich and damn. It was really good every time. Soft on the inside, crusty on the outside. A little overdone in some patches on the bottom in terms of its toughness (not flavor), but for a first loaf, I’m exceedingly happy. And proud of myself just for trying it.

THEN I was like, fuck it, I’m doing it again. So this morning I baked up a proper sourdough loaf, starter only, using bolted wheat flour. Stuck to the enamel a little, but got it out. Haven’t consumed it yet. Visual results here.

I’m pretty geeked. Might fuck with some pretzels or even bagels, I dunno. I did find that breadmaking was closer to cooking than traditional baking — there’s definitely some improv in there, some culinary carbo-jazz, some room for imagination and fuckery. A bit of art to go with the science. Which I like. That suits me. Maybe it’ll suit you too.