Melissa and I are sitting in a bar at the Embassy Suites, not far from LAX. We have a giant Blue Moon between us. She’s looking through submissions sent to Cupid’s Arrow. I’m thinking about the next Mel Walker novel.

In a few hours, we’ll meet up and mingle with others in the Writing Excuses Retreat community. Tomorrow, we’ll board the Navigator of the Seas and enjoy a 7 day cruise.

What did it take to get here? I have a lot of ways to answer that question.

Physically, we drove here. Melissa, Mike Baltar, and I got up very early in the morning. Melissa and I took an Uber to the airport, grabbed a Ford Expedition from Dollar rental at 6AM, and we picked up Mike on the way. We dropped the car off at LAX and then joked about how much taxiing we endured before arriving at our destination. As Mike said, our stewardess did a great job.

Financially, Melissa and I spent some money several months ago, because this is our one big vacation we like to take in the year. Since so much is covered by the up front cost, it feels like a bargain. I consider us extremely fortunate to be able to afford taking the week off from our respective jobs and spending the tuition that allows us to take part.

With regards to our responsibilities, we both had a bit of extra work we needed to do with our day jobs in order to make this trip possible. Melissa had to wrap up as much of her work as possible, then prepare her other assistants to take up her slack while she is away. I had to work some insane hours in order to get the development to a point where it would go on without me for a week and a half. Monday this week, I worked from 6AM to 11:30PM. It didn’t feel great doing it, but the work was necessary.

As a writer, it took a lot of hard work and dedication to my craft, though that’s not strictly necessary to join the Writing Excuses community. They take people at all skill levels, and there is no expectation of me to perform as a writer. However, this is our sixth year attending, and I feel like if I hadn’t done something to advance as a writer, I would have a hard time justifying the cost of the trip.

We have the opportunity to learn quite a bit during these events, but it really is the community that is the true treasure. These are my friends. These are my people. It feels like coming home when we get together.

For the last several weeks, I’ve had this trip coming up, and I’ve had to put it out of my mind to keep the anticipation and excitement from distracting me from all the things I needed to do in order to make the trip acceptable. I’m here now, and it’s almost time to board the ship, and I’m having a hard time suppressing the instinct to suppress my emotions. It’s a barrier I’m going to need to topple pretty soon, so I can enjoy this trip to its fullest.

I’m a little afraid of getting Covid again during this trip. Everyone’s been getting it lately. It’s everywhere. Bryanna just had it. A few weeks ago, Mary Robinette picked it up during one of the events she attended. DongWon Song isn’t able to join us this year because they picked it up recently. If you’ve been looking around and seeing it spread like it was 2020 all over again, it’s not your imagination. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Sitting at this bar, Melissa and I are both masked up. We didn’t mask in the car, but we’ve been masking while we’ve been around people. We also both got our vaccinations, just a couple of days after the new vaccine became available. We’re taking all appropriate cautions, but it still seems like some of our group are going to get sick this cruise, and we have to hope it won’t be us.

I think that brings me to the real trick with this whole trip. I need to relax and let down my guard, so that I can connect with other people and really enjoy myself. At the same time, I can’t stop worrying about a highly contagious virus floating around, a virus that almost killed me two years ago. And, as much as I love this community, there’s a part of me that feels like I have to perform, to meet their expectations.

First world problems, I guess.

I’m here. I’m glad to be here. I’m here to work the job I wish I had, so let the vacation begin.

As someone on Twitter put it:

Obviously, this is going to be one of my political opinion posts, so if you’re not into that, skip along.

Trump said some truly outrageous things tonight. He talked about illegal immigrants eating dogs, cats, and pets. He claimed that Harris wants to perform transgender operations on illegal immigrants. Trump had a lot of unsubstantiated things to say about immigrants. Harris rightly called Trump weak to his face, but in such a way that she still maintained Presidential poise.

Trump’s Gish gallop didn’t work that well tonight. The moderators fact checked him occasionally, though not all the time. As usual, Harris had to work harder and was under higher scrutiny and pressure, but she did it with dignity. She came across as the candidate of hope and the future, while Trump… couldn’t complete a sentence as the crazy voices in his head compelled him to say outlandish, foolish things.

I’m relieved to see Harris do well in this debate. It’s still going to be a close fight, but it’s not because Harris is the weaker candidate. It’s close because too many people in this country are unwilling to put country over party. It’s this close because too many people aren’t listening to the words coming out of their chosen candidates intolerant mouth.

Listening to Trump speak for so long gave me an outrageous headache. When the debate ended, I sat back, sweating and nauseous from the head pain, and I mused over how we as a country arrived at this point. There is a clear candidate that is actually decent and good. There is another that is a clear and present danger. And yet, the race is close.

Brace yourselves, because I’m going to say something controversial: I think our country is teetering on the precipice because Bill Clinton couldn’t keep it in his pants.

I will explain.

As President, Bill Clinton did some amazing things for the US economy. For the first time in ages, we had an economic surplus. We were enjoying peace, to the point where our military shrank to its lowest size since the 40s. His legacy should have been impeccable, and it should have been easy for Gore to succeed him, based on record alone.

But, Clinton abused his power and position, took advantage of a White House intern, marring her reputation and destroying her privacy and her name. Clinton’s horniness created a public spectacle. This empowered people like Grinch and Star, and it distracted us from his actual policy wins. It led to the 2000 election, in which the Supreme Court handed the election to George W. Bush, a man that has publicly stated that he believes humans and fish can coexist together.

George W. Bush looked at this incredible economy and budget he inherited and thought, “You know what? Instead of using this money to keep advancing America’s interests, and maybe investing in health care, how about I give it all away and screw around with tax breaks, setting us up for future financial ruin?” So that’s what he did. And very briefly, his policies received scrutiny for being stupid, short-sighted, and not in America’s best interests.

Then September 11th, 2001 rolled around and we lost our damn minds. Republicans shifted harder into patriotism as religion. Low-brow red voters put a giant flag in the back of their truck and drove through the streets, because the way we were going to get to the other side of this national tragedy that killed just over 2000 people was by putting up flags. This is also when we had folks like Toby Keith sing about America putting boots in asses, conflating racism with patriotism in ways that I’m not sure we ever really cleared up.

Patriot Act, War on Terror, a newly created Homeland Security agency, and racism pretty much stayed in fashion throughout Bush’s presidency. Kerry was a relatively weak candidate that Bush narrowly beat. But during Kerry’s run, at the DMC, we caught our first glimpse of Obama. He spoke, people listened, and Democrats started wondering how he would do as a candidate.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, after weathering the embarrassment of her husband’s behavior in the White House, after becoming a senator and continuing her service to her country, looks at returning to the White House as President instead of as First Lady. She runs a good campaign, but sexism gets in the way. Also… she’s a huge nerd, and comes across as a huge nerd when she speaks. This detracts from her presence. Whenever Obama speaks, people claim their acne is cleared up, their posture is better, and they keep finding loose change in the couch cushions.

The fight to become the Democratic candidate could go the distance. It could be Clinton, or it could be Obama. If one does not relinquish, though, McCain the war hero could take the presidency.

So, Obama goes to Clinton and makes a deal. Drop out of the race, and Clinton can become Secretary of State and get setup for 2016. Biden is in on this deal, and doesn’t run in 2016. Clinton agrees, McCain’s VP candidate turns out to be a crazy woman with “good foreign policy experience” because she can see Russian from her house, and Obama wins.

Fox News becomes the mouth piece of a conservative movement. We had Rush Limbaugh for forever, but Fox News stepped up their game and fomented the Tea Party, which gives us fart smellers like Ted Cruz. People willing to shut down the government from a minority position in order to force issues. Obama takes Romney’s state medical plan, tweaks it a little bit, puts it forth as the Affordable Care Act, and even with a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, it barely passes. It does some good things, but it is not a great plan. It remains as the law of the land, to this day.

Obama inherited a tanked economy, and he turned it around. After 8 years, it’s booming. And it’s now Hillary Clinton’s turn.

But, there are other contenders. Bernie is buoyed by his Bros, which forces Clinton into positions she is not entirely comfortable. Obama endorses Clinton, but there’s only so much he can do. Bernie keeps his campaign going long past its viability, which does irreparable damage to Clinton’s campaign.

Trump, after tricking the Genie into giving him another wish, is the Republican candidate, running as a hateful, ruthless, businessman. He’s a bigot and a monster, but he’s not a politician like anyone has seen before. He gets billions in free advertising from the news media, because he’s good for ratings. At that point in time, I don’t think people really thought he’d do as well as he did.

Clinton, still a big damn nerd, tells people to Pokémon Go to the polls. She is absolutely correct in her assessments of Trump and his basket of deplorables, but she had a weird affectation that put people off. Clinton wins the popular vote, but loses in the electoral college.

And so, we get Trump, the worst president this country has ever endured. He loses to Biden, incites an insurrection, and continues to pollute the air with his terrible voice and his terrible lies. Biden and Trump were our oldest candidates in 2020, and then they were our oldest candidates in 2024. We nominated Biden in 2020 because he was the “safe” choice. And we kept ridin’ with Biden because of the power of the incumbency and his very effective results, but because of a remarkably terrible debate performance, combined with the courage to put country over party, Biden dropped out, delivering us into this Harris versus Trump world.

All this history lesson was to say that if Bill Clinton had kept his Little Willy under control, George W. Bush might not have become president. Even if Bush did win over Gore, Gingrich wouldn’t have been empowered, and Gingrich’s political stylings wouldn’t be in play today, which is where much of Trump’s playbook comes from.

If Gore had been president instead of Bush, we probably wouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan or Iraq. Hell, the tragedy of September 11th might not have happened at all. We might have focused more on climate change. We might have even expanded Medicare so that we have a single-payer option and better healthcare for everyone.

Without Kerry running in 2004, we wouldn’t have had the introduction to Obama. If Obama did not run when he did, then Trump wouldn’t have been carried up in the news media with all of his birtherism bullshit.

Anyway, the game of what-if is fun, but it focuses on the past while the present is where it’s at. In this moment, this timeline, we have a clear speaking candidate in Kamala Harris, and we have an incoherent buffoon in Donald Trump, a monster that in tonight’s debate, said he’d be fine with going door-to-door with the National Guard and local police to deport 3% of our population. Maybe let’s not do that.

Recently, I went to my friend’s house to play some board games. I love board games, almost as much as I love tabletop roleplaying games. However, heading out and trying to be social might not have been a great idea. I was still dealing with the wave of emotions from Chris’s accident, and when I’m feeling that raw, I’m not always the best person to be around.

I did my best. I told everyone what was up, and we did a little bit of a vibe check on the games. I said I was hoping for something cooperative, or at least, not exceedingly cutthroat. They all got it, though I could tell there was this one Dune game they all really wanted to play which was counter to my stated needs.

For those that don’t know me that well, I can be exceedingly competitive. I think it’s a trait I picked up from my mother. We’d play scrabble and she would absolutely trounce me. I was in my early to mid teens and she had forty years of experience on me. She could have chosen to keep it a friendly game but instead she cackled over her immaculately recorded score.

Sometimes when I play games, I become my Mom. It’s not an entirely bad thing, but there’s a time and a place.

I knew on game day that the competitive asshole inside me was just beneath the surface, and I really didn’t want to let him out. That’s why I requested we go light on the competition and avoid some of the cutthroat. My competitive edge can be razor sharp, and I didn’t want it to cut any bonds of friendship.

Unfortunately, there was one guy at the table that was absolutely the competitive asshole I was trying not to be. By the end of the evening, I “won” but maybe at the expense of getting invited back, and I feel bad about that.

I’m not going to name names. I’ll refer to the other asshole at the table as My Rival. The first hint that things were going to go hard in the paint was during the first game, Scythe, when every time My Rival’s turn came up, he’d salivate and take on this tone of, “Now watch THIS” and then do some weird mechanic in the game to give himself advantage. He won the first game, and while we mostly had fun, it felt kind of icky to me, like I just watched this guy jack off on the table while he made us watch.

The next game was Codewords, and I was thankful because I see it as a very light and fun game. Our host had to step out for a little bit, so the four of us that remained paired off in teams of 2. There was a mechanic in the game I forgot, so I blundered a little during the first round, but I didn’t see it as a big deal. At one point when I was on the guessing side, the other team missed a clue, and in the course of talking about it, I gave him the answer. My Rival said that’s what “cost me the game,” which hit me as weird because until he said something, I hadn’t felt like I’d “lost.” We were just playing.

“What do you get for winning that game?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” My Rival replied.

“I mean, is there some prize for winning a game of Codewords?”

“Well, no, but–“

“You say I lost, but I felt smart for catching the clue, and it felt good to talk about it. I don’t feel like I lost at all.”

He didn’t like my response. I was getting the impression from him that the only reason he saw to play a game was to win.

The final game was Dune. It wasn’t Dune: Imperium. I don’t know the exact name of this Dune game, but it had a big map that unrolled onto the table, and it reminded me strongly of Cosmic Encounter. Each player takes on a faction which breaks the game in a unique way. This was the competitive game that they all wanted to play from the beginning. I went along with it because I didn’t want to get in the way of the group having fun.

After about a half hour of setup and rules explanation, we started the first round. Because I had never played the game before, I did not play optimally. As the Space Truckers, I should have been able to go last, or whenever I wanted. My Rival took advantage of this. My Rival sat back while everyone kind of floundered. Then he declared, “I win” and explained how he won by taking advantage of our ignorance.

After most of a day of build up and anticipation of playing this game, then thirty minutes of setup, it was truly unsatisfying. No one had fun at the table, except My Rival, because the only thing he was interested in was winning.

We agreed to run it back so that we could actually play the game, and I replayed my turn more in accordance with how it should have been played, which kept My Rival from winning on turn one. We continued playing, but My Rival kept repeating how he won the first game, and this was sort of a victory lap for him.

After the second or third time he said something like that, I broke bad. I didn’t shave my head or start a meth lab. Instead, I unchained the competitive asshole within me. It was time to live up to my terrifying potential.

I looked at the game, the board, and My Rival. There was no path to victory for me through regular game play. My Rival, who knew the game, had picked an imbalanced faction from the beginning and it really wasn’t possible for anyone to win but him. Unless I played a little bit differently. If, instead of going for a victory of my own, I played every turn to minimize his gains, I wouldn’t technically win the game, but he would never be able to get ahead of the other people at the table.

I said, “I know my win condition.”

“What do you mean?” My Rival said.

“I know what my win condition is now.”

“The rules are the rules. You either win or you don’t.”

“I’ll follow the rules, but we always get to choose our own win condition.”

He did not like me saying that.

The game continued, and I kept playing to prevent him from advancing. When an event happened that allowed alliances to be formed or broken, I revealed my strategy. My Rival did not like it, and thought I was an idiot for playing in such a way.

“You can’t win playing that way, and I already won the first game–“

“Did you win the first game, or did we have a mulligan? It can’t be both.”

He really did not like me saying that.

A few turns went by, and My Rival finally saw the merit in my gameplay. As the Space Truckers, I had passive income, and it was cheaper for me to deploy troops. I would always have money to deploy and create fights. Since I kept deploying in such a way as to keep him from getting income, he could never gain any advantage. He would win every single battle with his broken faction, but he could never win the war as long as I kept impeding him.

He rage quit. He got up and left.

“Okay, see ya!” I said. “I’m never playing with you again!”

“You’re an asshole!” he said, in the same tone. He might have added some other expletives.

I talked to the host and the remainder of the group. I apologized. They said it was okay, and laughed a little bit.

“If you never invite me back, I completely understand.”

“No way, man. You’re crew.”

Still.

As always, there are some lessons that can be taken from this. We can talk about “Know thyself,” which I did, but chose to go the dark path anyway. We can talk about doing things too soon after a trauma. We can talk about the pros and cons of a competitive nature.

I mostly want to focus on this: You can always choose your own win conditions.

It’s taken me a while to learn this, and even though I applied the idea in a semi-destructive way in this story, there are positive applications in other areas of our life. Let’s talk about how it can help a writer.

The typical “win” condition for a writer is to get published, quit their day job, and live off their labor of love. That’s the dream. Unfortunately, there are a lot of moving pieces that the writer has no control over, so they really have no way of guaranteeing such a “win.” Statistically speaking, almost no one wins that game.

Here are things a writer can do that can constitute a win:

• Write 2000 words a day in the month of November (I’ll talk about NaNoWriMo in another post)
• Attend 4 conventions or retreats in a year
• Submit 1 query or submission every 6 weeks
• Read 1 book a month outside your typical genre

Pick any or all of these things, do them, and consider it a win. Or pick something else that’s in your control that positively leads towards the dream.

When you choose something to focus and make that your win condition, there is nothing outside your control to keep you from winning. This works everywhere.

• Maintain your diet for 4 days in a row
• Get all of your work tasks logged by the end of the day
• Spend 15 minutes a day researching that project you’ve always wanted to do

Anything can be a win condition if you need it to be.

Finally, if you set yourself up some goals as win conditions and you fall short, it’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up, because you can go again. And the next time, you can win.

It is another Sunday morning, and like last week, I’m sitting in Pachamama’s, writing a blog post before jumping back into The Psychic Out of Time. It has been an eventful week. There’s been a lot to process.

Last week on Sunday, as Melissa and I enjoyed our time in the coffee shop, Chris laid his bike down. He, a novice, rode with a group of bikers on a very technical route. His friend Nico rode ahead of him and went down first. Chris didn’t know Nico crashed until he went down himself. Chris got a little bit of road rash on his right arm and some deep bruising on his shoulder, but was otherwise unharmed. Nico sustained much more serious injuries. Nico died in the ambulance. Chris was the last person Nico spoke to.

Melissa and I didn’t find out until later that evening. Chris went to the hospital, and they gave him fluids. He didn’t call us. The accident occurred around 9:30AM, and Chris walked in the door at home a little after 9PM. He didn’t want to talk about it. He definitely didn’t want to talk to his Melissa, because she has been critical of his decision to get a motorcycle the entire time. He went outside to call his boss. I went out after him, hugged him, and gave him an opportunity to grieve. He told me he hadn’t been able to cry about what happened until that moment.

The next day, I had some processing to do myself. I almost lost my son. He was fine, physically, but it could have gone the other way. Chris walked away from the accident, but his friend died. Somewhere out there, a father that lost his 21 year old son. There is no denying that I could have lost Chris.

Tuesday and Wednesday, I went into the office and worked. My boss was in town, so I met with him. We had a couple of new people join Trimark, and I needed to train one of them. I navigated some unnecessary drama concerning where I was going to sit while in the office. Mostly, the normal stresses of work helped me deal with the abnormal stress of a near-death experience of a loved one.

I continue to process, but Melissa struggles. She had to go to the place where the accident happened and see it herself. She questions details of the story. Chris said he didn’t see Nico until after he went down. The other people riding with him and Nico kept going because they didn’t see Chris or Nico on the ground. Melissa can’t wrap her head around that. She’s having trouble getting to the other side. She doesn’t seem to want to feel relief from the fact that our son is alive and still with us.

Chris’s motorcycle sustained some damage. One of the front spokes is bent and will need to be fully replaced. There is quite a bit of cosmetic damage. With some money and some TLC, I think the bike will function again. Chris wants to ride again, and that also bothers Melissa.

How do you deal with a trauma like this? What’s the right thing to do?

There may not be a right or a wrong answer here. The way I see it, getting a motorcycle was Chris exercising his ability to be an adult. He did the research, bought the gear, took the courses, and made all of the decisions on his own. He picked something and exercised a little bit of ambition and free will to make it his thing. He found a community of people enthusiastic about riding and he joined them. He chose to make this a part of his identity. As a parent, isn’t this what I want my children to do?

Melissa thinks that he shouldn’t ride again. He could have died. Motorcycles are dangerous. How can he go back to it?

I think he should continue making adult decisions. I don’t think he should let fear control him. He should acknowledge the fear, learn from his mistakes, and evaluate what’s best for himself. He could have died, but he didn’t. He wore protected gear that helped him. I’m sure that when he was going down, he followed his instincts and training, preventing the situation from getting worse.

Choosing the safest way isn’t always the best choice. Letting an accident define your choices and redefine who you are isn’t the best way to handle adversity. Chris chose to become a biker, sort of how I chose to be a writer. He now has to choose whether or not he wants to keep that identity.

There is still more processing and healing to be done. Chris doesn’t have complete mobility in his right arm yet, and needs a doctor to sign something saying he can go back to work. He still needs to deal with the loss of his friend. Melissa still needs to process the shock of nearly losing her son, and to a certain extent, deal with the loss that comes from one of her children growing up and choosing their own path, even if it’s a path she disagrees with.

I probably still have some processing to do, too. This isn’t the blog post I meant to write, but I think it’s the one I needed to write.

Before I get to the review, let me talk about what’s going on with me and my writing.

It’s Sunday, almost afternoon, and I’m sitting in Pachamama’s coffee shop downtown. In a little while, there should be a Shut-up and Write here. I think my friend Mike Baltar will show up then. Unless he reads my blog beforehand, my appearance here today should be a surprise.

Yesterday, Melissa and I celebrated Bryanna’s birthday by taking Bryanna and her best friend for a ride. We went through the Jelly Belly Factory tour, something we haven’t done in ages. We spent some time in Benecia, sampling fancy oils, looking at art, eating tasty food, and sitting by the water in the bay. Once back home, we went to the Tower Cafe near downtown. We did our best to make Bryanna feel special, and I think we did a pretty good job.

While on the road, I had some time to think about the next Mel Walker novel. I’ve been a little bit stuck on part of the outline, so I haven’t drafted any of the new story yet. Yesterday, while I sat on the passenger side of the car with my laptop open and my mind focused, I did some free indirect writing and realized that my current outline is probably enough. I’ll revisit it once I get going, but Mel Walker stories rely on my wit in the moment of discovery.

I did not outline The Repossessed Ghost, and I had a very short outline for The Psychic on the Jury. Why do I think I need a broader plan for The Psychic Out of Time?

The next Mel Walker novel is more complicated than the previous stories, no doubt about it. But I already figured out the complicated parts. My outline describes a coherent story. It’s just missing a handful of details, which I’m certain to figure out after I’ve started, and not before.

So, it’s time to start.

Before I begin drafting, I want to talk about The Acolyte since we just received news that there will be no season 2, and I think some people (probably Disney) will walk away with the wrong lesson from the first season.

I sort of wrote a short review once already. It looked like this:

I can go deeper, though, so I will. Let this be your spoiler warning. Hereafter, I will dive into the details of Star Wars: The Acolyte – Season 1. If you haven’t seen it yet and you want to watch it without spoilers, now is the time to bail out on this post.

Let’s talk about some of the things I liked, and some of the things that are quintessentially Star Wars.

• Some fun lightsaber stuff
• Twins are a common Star Wars trope, which works about half the time
• The show looked good, and the scenes on Coruscant were consistent with what we’ve seen of that planet in other movies and shows
• Good choreography
• Good ship designs

There are other good things, but this list feels safe. If you tell someone else that watched the show that you liked those things, they would probably nod in begrudging agreement.

I personally like that they visited new places in the galaxy. No time or mention was made of Tatooine. The new places reminded me places we’ve seen before in the Star Wars galaxy, but that’s fine. There should be multiple forest planets and moons beyond Kashyyyk and Endor.

I like that we got to see Force users that weren’t just Jedi and Sith. The Force is mystical, powerful, and everywhere. There should be other people with connections to it that are different and interesting.

Now let’s talk about some of the things that didn’t work for me.

Starting with some minor, arguable points, I think the Jedi should be good guys. In this story, they… weren’t. Should they be perfect? No. Can their arrogance lead to them making mistakes? Absolutely. How about invading a family’s house, murdering everyone inside, and then covering it up for years and years? No. No, that’s a bridge too far.

To write a good story about the Jedi, it is best to treat them like Superman. There are deconstructions of Superman where they take away or reduce his morality, but then you’re not dealing with Superman anymore. I think the same can be said for the Jedi. Unlike Superman, villains can overpower a Jedi, but the Jedi should continue fighting the good fight with The Force as their guide. They can be corrupted and fall, but then they’re not Jedi anymore.

Does that mean that I did not like the antagonist, Qimir? No. Qimir was a Jedi, but then he “fell” and became something else. He said the Jedi would call him a Sith, but I don’t think Qimir was a Sith, either. He was something different, not entirely evil, but definitely not a good guy. There was a kind of fairness to him which made him a more compelling character.

So far, I’ve talked about minor things. I have a great capacity for forgiveness for most things Star Wars, and everything I’ve mentioned so far, I could handwave away, if necessary.

Not this next point, though. Let’s talk about our main characters, and the real failing: Mae and Osha.

We start with Mae tracking down Indara in a weird bar and trying to kill her. Indara is a Jedi Master, but Mae holds her own for the most part. The choreography is good. I enjoyed the action. Then, at the end of the fight, Mae gets the better of Indara by throwing a blade at the bartender, an innocent bystander. Indara, acting as a hero, changes her focus to save the bartender, and then Mae uses the distraction to kill Indara, a true act of villainy.

After this, we’re introduced to Osha, who seems like a nice person. We’re given an extremely minor mystery in the form of, “what’s up with Osha and did she kill those people in the bar?” The mystery is resolved very quickly, which leaves us with twins: one that has done an unforgiveable act in the process of murdering Indara, and one that we want to see reunited with her master so that she can continue learning the Force and become the Jedi she once wished to be.

This is a fine setup. There’s nothing wrong with this. But then, through the course of the show, we’re shown more of Mae and Osha. The story tries to make us like Mae more, but she’s already demonstrated that she’s willing to kill innocent people to achieve her goal. If she hadn’t tried to kill the bartender in order to kill Indara, I might have been able to get on board with her redemption. She was, after all, going after “bad” Jedi, right? The people that were responsible for the death of her family and stranding her alone all those years ago, right?

Then Osha kills Sol and goes off with Qimir. She turned to the dark side, corrupting the crystal in her old Master’s lightsaber. This leaves us with zero characters to root for and care about.

That is what went wrong with Star Wars: The Acolyte. We had no hero.

In the original trilogy, we love Luke, Han, and Leia. We will go to the ends of the galaxy with them and back. They are heroes, and we love them.

In the prequel trilogy, we love Quigon until he dies. We are on board with Anakin, until he becomes Darth Vader and kills Jedi children. We love Obiwan, but he’s not really given that much screen time. And we mostly love Padme, until she disappears in the third movie, showing up at the end to die giving birth to our next set of heroes.

I’m not going to talk about the sequel trilogy at this time.

The point that I’m trying to make is that Star Wars is best when we have a character to root for. It’s best when we have someone to get invested in.

The Mandalorian series has been good because we like Din Djarin. He’s a hero, and we can follow him around and enjoy his stoic heroism.

We didn’t get a hero in The Acolyte that we could latch onto and root for. That’s the biggest failing of the series, and the lesson Disney will fail to learn. Other Star Wars fans may air other grievances, but I think everything else could have been forgiven if we’d just been given one character to love without reservation.

That’s my extended review of The Acolyte. It wasn’t worse than The Rise of Skywalker, in my opinion, but I understand why people didn’t like it.

I’m typing this post with a brand new keyboard I just put together. This will be a prize on the Writing Excuses Retreat. Here is the keyboard:

I think it looks pretty good!

I built it to match the colors in the WXR Retreat logo: black, green, and yellow. I used yellow keycaps last year, but I think this color configuration is better.

It didn’t come together easily. As I told Melissa this morning, one of the main ingredients of these keyboards is profanity. Every time I made some progress, there would be a little setback. This happens with almost every one of these keyboards, but this one was worse than most. Fortunately, once I’m past the setbacks, the keyboards turn out to be really solid workhorses, and I expect this one will be the same.

It took quite a bit to get myself into a position where I could work on the keyboard at all. I needed to clean a space in my office for doing the soldering. I needed to order more parts. Then there was wrestling with my finicky printer to produce a good base. More importantly, I had to get out of my dark headspace

I’ve been in a funk lately. And slowly but surely, I think I’m crawling out of it. Finishing this keyboard is a big part of that.

I need to start drafting the next Mel Walker story. I have a good idea. I have pent up excitement for the project. I just need to get out of my own way and do the work.

In the mean time, I’m boosting myself by getting little things like this keyboard completed. I think the next one I work on, I’ll reach for a higher difficulty. Maybe my next one will be my first wireless construction. We will see.

This keyboard is working well enough, though, so I’ll stop here, but not before reminding you that The Psychic on the Jury is out, and you should buy it. If you haven’t read The Repossessed Ghost and you’re afraid to commit $15 or a few hours into that story, Psychic is a short, cheap introduction to the world of Mel Walker. And if you have read The Repossessed Ghost, well, Psychic is the next story, and it lays some of the foundation material for the next Mel Walker novel.

It’s Friday. WorldCon is going on in Glasgow and I just finished working an extremely daunting schedule. About 78 hours last week, around 50 hours this week, with just a little bit more to do this weekend. Ouch.

Exhausted and punchy, I keep seeing posts from friends at WorldCon and the FOMO is not only real, it is bitter. So to distract myself, I’m cleaning my room and working on the keyboard for the Writing Excuses Retreat. I’m also thinking about A.I.

Before diving into this topic, let me get some things out of the way:

• I’m not a tech-bro
• I don’t have a ChatGPT subscription. I played around early on to see what the buzz was about. I don’t use LLMs (like ChatGPT) and I don’t advise people to use them
• I have no skin in the game
• I know the difference between different types of A.I., and I think there should be more nuanced discussions about them. While LLMs are A.I., not all A.I. are LLMs
• I think artists should be paid for their work and stealing content to train A.I. is wrong

With that out of the way, let me take one more step towards clarification and say that this post is about LLMs. Most of the chatter online about LLMs, especially ChatGPT and the OpenAI products, simply refer to those products as A.I. That’s why I’m titling this post the way I am.

The enshitification of Google search (and other online services) has to do with plugging LLMs into the mix. LLMs don’t do any actual thinking or analysis of a topic the way humans do. When given a query, an LLM will start generating text that is related to that topic, and it will continue generating text based on interpreting what the next word in its response should be.

If the quality of the source material is high and accurate, the LLM will generate responses that seem well reasoned and sound. If the LLM has been trained on shit-posts from Reddit, it will respond with fantastical, insane answers that no one should take seriously. That’s how we wind up with Google telling people to put glue on their pizza.

This is not new news. LLM and A.I. advancement in general is suffering from bad press and righteous anger from users that really, really do not want this garbage in their browsers, desktops, or phones.

Also, in this post, I’m not considering the environmental consequences of maintaining servers for A.I. What I mostly want to talk about is training LLMs without the developers having to steal from artists, creators, writers, etc.

The Idea

We create a company that will manage an ethically sourced LLM. This might not be a company. It might be a government resource. I’m not sure yet. The main idea is that people can submit their own work to this organization to be part of the training material.

“How do we incentivize people to submit their work to the machine?”

We pay them. It’s not going to be a lot. The person submitting the work retains rights to what they created. It’s like when publishers buy the rights to print and distribute an author’s story. The LLM entity will buy the rights to train using the work, so the author/artist gets some compensation.

“So anyone can just submit anything and get paid for it? That sounds like it would be easy to exploit.”

Before the person submitting the work gets paid, there is a vetting process. Again, we’ll pay people to do this work, which involves three main parts:

1. Make sure the work has not been submitted before
2. Make sure the work belongs to the person submitting it, or that the submitter has the authority and legal rights to submit the work
3. Make sure the material is not poisonous

We have examples of companies/publishers handling the first two tasks already. And, strangle enough, we have an example of the third being handled as well: Wikipedia.

If we pay for the kind of work that people already volunteer to do on Wikipedia, we might be able to make sure only high quality content is fed into machine.

“This sounds like it is doomed to lose money.”

That may be true. The value of this LLM will certainly be low at the beginning, and the entire program will need to be subsidized before it can produce anything of competitive quality. If the endeavor manages to last long enough, however, we can start licensing the use of the LLM to companies and individuals.

Google, Microsoft, and Apple would probably pay significant sums of cash in order to take advantage of an ethically sourced LLM. One that isn’t telling people that pythons are mammals.

“What problem does this solve?”

My suggestion addresses at least part of the problem of stealing content in order to train the LLM. This idea also offers a way to compensate creators for their work, even if the compensation is very small. If we’re going to live in a world with LLMs, I think this is a way to do it without theft.

However, what do we actually need LLMs for? What problem do the LLMs solve?

I can’t think of a compelling need that LLMs satisfy. It is an extremely geeky way of generating text. I think it is interesting, but I’m not sure it’s useful.

If I was forced to guess, I would say that successfully navigating searches with a handful of keywords has always been something of a challenge to non-technical people. There have been attempts to make searches use more natural language since ask.com (Jeeves) was created in 1996.

An LLM tied to a search engine, therefore, allows natural language in and out, without requiring the user to drill through a potentially long search result to find the answer they’re looking for. Maybe there is a little bit of value there. It’s dubious, but I think I can see it.

I’m not sure it’s worth the time, investment, or cost to the environment, though.

That’s my idea. Let me know what you think.

Melissa and I saw the movie on opening night, and I took Chris to see it last night. Both times, I had a huge grin on my face. It’s Monday night, work has been hectic today, and I want to talk about this movie.

I’ll start with high-level stuff, then put up a warning and drive straight into spoiler territory. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I’ll tell you this and then you can close this tab/delete this email: I had a really great time and recommend it to anyone that liked the previous Deadpool movies or the Fox era of Marvel movies.

Non-Spoiler Stuff

This was fun comedy that looked great, sounded great, and met all of my expectations. The movie contains some surprises. Hugh Jackman has always been an amazing Wolverine, and I think this performance was more nuanced than I expected. Ryan Reynolds also does great, and offers hints of emotion and depth between the 4th wall breaking humor. The story is good, as long as you don’t think about some of the details too much.

About My Movie Tastes

Before I get into spoilers, I feel like I should talk about what kind of movie-goer I really am. In short: I’m just looking to have a good time.

I don’t need a perfect movie to enjoy myself. I don’t expect every Marvel movie to be Endgame. I don’t need every movie to be Marvel, either. I like movies, and I’m willing to turn my brain off and have a good time if I have to.

For example, I can appreciate the movie Lucy. The premise is flawed and as dumb as a bag of hair, but I enjoyed the spectacle and thought Scarlett Johansson gave a good performance. I really enjoyed The Butterfly Effect, and still think about it sometimes. I enjoy Star Treks, and almost all Star Wars movies. I loved Oppenheimer and pretty much everything Nolan does. I enjoyed Viola Davis in The Woman King.

I go back and watch classics like Citizen Kane and Twelve Angry Men. If we use food as the metaphor for movies, I have the palette and appetite to enjoy fine dining, but I’m not going to turn my nose up at some greasy fast food.

Deadpool & Wolverine is a cheeseburger, but one that has been crafted with love and attention to detail.

Spoiler Stuff

From this point forward, I’m going to get into spoilers.

This is your last warning.

****

Okay.

Obviously, a big part of this movie’s success is sticking the landing with the cameos. And I really think they did it.

I remember hearing a rumor they got Chris Evans to come in and reprise Johnny Storm rather than Steve Rogers, but I forgot about it until I saw him leap into the air covered in fire. It didn’t feel forced or shoehorned. This cameo and the others felt like a celebration of the things that came before. The parts weren’t as large as Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in No Way Home, but still enough to satisfy.

While this movie brought Deadpool into the MCU, it was more a love letter to the Fox movies that came before. We get one last celebration with the old and could-have-been characters in The Void, and the movie signs off with a mid-credits reel that ends with the 20th Century Fox logo.

Wolverine is the perfect straight man to Deadpool’s wackiness. It really worked for me. I loved that they spent half the movie trying to tear themselves apart, but they’re victory in the end is them holding hands while an epic version of Like a Prayer is pumped out of the speakers by a choir so powerful, it blows Wolverine’s shirt off his body.

Final Thoughts – Marvel Isn’t Dead

This movie knows what it is, and it’s fun. Is Deadpool “Marvel Jesus?” No. He’s a violent clown that winks and nods at the audience while giving a proper sign off to the franchises that came before.

Will this save Marvel? I’m an unapologetic Marvel fan boy, and I do not believe Marvel needs saving. What they need to do is let creative folks like Shawn Levy tell fun and interesting stories with their own style and unique voices. It’s why Guardians of the Galaxy 3 worked last year. Other movies I think worked since Endgame: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in 2022, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness in 2022, Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021, and Shang-Chi in 2021. Different voices, different styles, all successful.

What about the ones I didn’t mention, like Black Widow in 2021? I found that movie to be ultimately forgettable (since… you know… I forgot it existed until just now), but I remember having a good time when I saw it. And some movies received unwarranted hate, like Thor: Love and Thunder and The Marvels.

Marvel movies are like pizza. Even when it’s not your favorite flavor, it’s still pretty good. And I would say that Deadpool & Wolverine contained some of my favorite toppings.

Last night, I spent a few hours at Michael Gallowglas’s party, hosted by Dr. Will Brandon. Melissa and Mike Baltar came with me to the party, and it was a good time! It was also my first opportunity to give Michael a copy of The Psychic on the Jury, which I’d been holding since Baycon.

I’m still giddy over an experience at Baycon, where an older woman that bought The Repossessed Ghost last year sought me out, excited and eager to see if I had anything else to offer. I have lots of wonderful, supportive friends that have said many nice things about my stories, and I feed on the praise the way the desert drinks the rain. It’s something else when the positive feedback comes from a complete stranger, that has no social obligation to be nice to me.

Speaking of feedback… I sometimes get asked how my sales are going, and I honestly don’t have an answer. My publisher will tell me any time I ask, and I get statements every few months with detailed information, but it’s not something I have easy, direct access to all the time. I know what the numbers looked like at Bacyon because I can track the inventory of those physical books. Amazon sales, though? I won’t know for a while.

Was there a bump in sales for The Repossessed Ghost or One for the Road after Baycon? Has The Psychic on the Jury been well received? Has it sold enough to justify its existence? I have no idea. All I have on that front is hope.

The Psychic on the Jury has no reviews yet. The Repossessed Ghost has 12 ratings after a year, and Psychic hasn’t even been out a month yet. One for the Road has 2 ratings, and it’s been out since February. None of these numbers are particularly exciting or uplifting, so my hope isn’t drawn from there.

Where does my hope come from, then? It’s the interactions like I mentioned at Baycon. It’s the small things. When I sit down to write, it’s the clickety-clack of my keyboard and the word count going up. It’s also the realization that this is a numbers game, a marathon not a sprint, and the fact that the difference between those that make it and those that don’t is a factor of luck more than skill.

Mostly, I choose to be hopeful and keep going. What else can a writer do?

In other news, we replaced the A/C unit in our house this last week. It was expensive. If you’re reading this and you haven’t picked up any of my books yet, it would be greatly appreciated if you did so. Will a $5 purchase of The Psychic on the Jury put a dent in the cost of a new A/C unit? Individually, no. But if you and 3600 of your closest friends all bought a copy of my book, it would cover half of my cost last week, and would honestly be a modern miracle.

As an addendum, and straying back into politics just a teensy bit, my last couple of posts talked about the assassination attempt on Trump (remember that?) and Joe Biden dropping out of the race. My thoughts and feelings at the time were valid, but I have a little bit more hope today than I had on July 21st. It looks like the Democrats have rallied around a single candidate, which is great. Also, in the first two days after Kamala announced her candidacy, she raised about $250,000,000.

One of the the things I mentioned in my last post was that I didn’t want to see a bloodbath between the potential Democratic nominees. It looks like that has been avoided. It’s still a difficult battle ahead, still harder in some ways than if Biden had stayed in. On the other hand, I haven’t seen the Democratic base this fired up since Obama’s first run.

There is good reason to maintain hope, on several different fronts. Stories will still happen, and readers will be found. The Republic as we know it doesn’t have to end. And throughout the strife and challenges that face us, Melissa and I will at least stay cool in our house even as the hot August nights approach.

Things are not easier, but there is good reason to find hope where you can, and hold onto the little things that make these times more bearable.

I’m going to talk about politics again. I know some of you hate that, so come by later and I promise* I’ll talk about something else next time.

* Unless something equally momentous compels me

Joe Biden just dropped out of the race.

Joe Biden, a guy famous for gaffes for his entire time in the public light, a guy that has definitely been showing his age, had a very bad night in an important debate, and we had weeks and weeks of coverage stating that Joe should drop out.

Meanwhile, the other guy just went on a rambling, incoherent acceptance speech, praising fictional sociopath Hannibal Lecter and demonstrating how he, too, is old and doesn’t speak so good… that guy gets a pass. No breathless stories about how the twice impeached, rapist, convicted felon should… you know… drop out of the race.

Fine. Great. Cool. Cool.

Here’s what the Democrats should have done. At every turn, they should have run on this administration’s record. They should have stuck with facts, highlighting the actual numbers. The “Fuck Your Feelings” crowd is running purely on feelings, so the Democrats should have crafted a message that is emotionless, succinct, and specific.

They should have talked about the good that’s been done the last four years, and then really talked about how things could be better in the next four. Show us a plan. Give us numbers. Be the big fucking nerds you can and should be, because we’re living in an age where nerds are actually respected. Not only respected… we’re expected to fix the problems of the world. Dems, you should have shown us how you were going to do that.

You should have focused on finance and infrastructure. You should have talked to us about how you’re going to combat corporate greed, which will in turn further drive down inflation. You should know that inflation and high rent are the things that are driving people’s decisions these days. So talk about that.

Instead, we’ve had weeks of divisiveness. We’ve had Pelosi and Schumer using their political double-speak to bring down Joe Biden, because they’re scared he can’t win against “America’s Hitler.” That’s not me saying that, by the way. I’m quoting the Republican V.P. candidate, there.

I’ve heard so much bullshit for the last several weeks about how Joe Biden is unelectable. The main stream media, fueled by corporate greed, failed to leverage the same coverage against the convicted felon and rapist.

So fine. You got your way. Joe Biden’s out. You’d think I’d be happy about that, right? Joe Biden was never my favorite candidate. I’ve been quite vocal about reluctantly ridin’ with Biden. So why do I seem so upset now?

Because the Democrats are short sighted, cowardly idiots that are throwing an election and allowing the worst person possible to have access to power. The country I swore to protect is in jeopardy. All because the Democrats couldn’t keep their shit together.

I will still vote for the Democratic candidate. I’ll do my part. But the Dems have fucked us.

They’ve thrown away the incumbency.

They’ve set up a situation where they have 100 days to come behind a single candidate, hopefully without bloodying each other and allowing Trump to cruise unscathed.

They’ve set up a situation where the focus will be on the electability of the Democratic candidate, rather than highlighting how the Republican wanna-be despot is unelectable.

They’ve set up a situation where they are not highlighting their own plan for the future, which would be a great contrast to Project 2025.

They’re most likely going to get behind Kamala Harris, which means that the American voters will have to overcome racism and sexism. This, during a time where social media is commonly joking/complaining/spreading memes about DEI hires.

Democrats, why did you have to make it so much harder than it needed to be?

If Trump is re-elected, this is why.