Today was the first day back to work after one of the best weekends of my life, so I’m going to make it easy on myself and use today as a day of planning for the rest of the month.

Like so many Octobers, I want to create a blog post every day this month. I stumbled a little bit out the gate, but like I said before, these rules are arbitrary and I’m holding to the spirit of them. So far, so good.

I asked on Twitter and Facebook what I should talk about this month, and here is the list of topics compiled from your suggestions. I’m not sure how many are winners, but I’ll make the most of it and we’ll have a good time.

Let’s see if I can order these by day number, including the days that have already passed:

1. Baycon 2023 Day 1, Blog Year 10
2. Baycon 2023 Day 2
3. Baycon 2023 Day 3 – The Brain Weasels
4. Baycon 2023 Day 4 — Time To Go Home
5. All The Things We’ll Talk About This Month
6. Hydration
7. Celebrations
8. The 10 Year Recap
9. Gaming as Writing Fuel
10. Climate and Climate Change
11. Weather and Seasons — Setting the Mood
12. The Release of The Repossessed Ghost
13. Dragons!
14. The Pros and Cons of Different Writing Communities
15. Pushing Through Writing Struggles
16. The Joys of Semicolons
17. Favorite Whiskeys
18. Shoes
19. Romeo and Juliet
20. The Byzantine-Sasanian War of 620-628 AD
21. Mashed Potatoes
22. State of The Brian — 2023
23. The Rise of Queer Protagonists in Genre Fiction
24. The Most Common Questions I am Asked
25. Monty Python
26. Water Dragon Publishing
27. Writing in Someone Else’s Sandbox
28. Sequels!
29. The Repossessed Ghost Readings!
30. My Story Ideas — 2023 Edition
31. The Games We Play

That’s the list. I may move things around, and I may call an audible and do something not in the list and rearrange things. This is sort of how I create my outlines before a draft. It’s a plan set in clay, not in stone, and if I see a better way, I’ll do that.

Melissa and I just got home. We’ve unloaded the car, but we haven’t really unpacked. That might be a task put off to tomorrow.

What can I say about the final day of Baycon?

I had such a good time the whole weekend. I attended my final panel, “The Greatest Writing Advice I’ve Ever Received” and it may have been the best panel I’ve ever been a part of. It was certainly the most attended.

After that, I spent most of the time in the dealer room, and I wasn’t at the Water Dragon table nearly as much as I was at the Small Publishing in a Big Universe podcast table. I got to interview several people for the podcast. While I was there, a few people I met last night came buy with freshly purchased books and had me sign them. That’s never going to get old.

All good things must come to an end, though. I attended the closing ceremonies, then Melissa and I helped put away all the Water Dragon stuff and pack it to the car. Once that was done, all of the Water Dragon folk (me included) went to the patio outside the bar and had one more drink before hitting the road. We had a great visit.

It got late while we were driving home, and we wound up seeing more fireworks than I expected. At several points on the freeway, the skies surrounding us were on fire. Traffic was a bit thick when we dropped of Mike at his place, but we didn’t have a problem getting back on the freeway, and we continued to drive beneath multicolored sparks and light blossoms.

Honestly, after the weekend I just experienced, it felt like the whole world was celebrating with me.

We’re home, now. Tomorrow, it’s back to the usual routine. It’s not quite 11PM, and it sounds like the pyromaniac neighbors might be starting to wind down, too. Maybe they heard the news about the house fire just a few blocks away. Unlikely, but it’s a possibility. I turned on all the sprinklers just in case our luck turned bad tonight.

I feel inspired, and I’m looking forward to my next opportunity to write. I haven’t felt this excited to get back to writing in a long time.

This was a good trip.

We’re rapidly approaching midnight, so I need to get this finished before I’m stuck writing two posts tomorrow.

Today was another excellent day. I was on two panels, both of which went fairly well. I noticed while sitting on the panel, listening to other panelists speaking, my imposter’s syndrome reared up. The voice in my head said “You shouldn’t be up here” so loud it seemed the people in the audience should have heard it.

Several times I walked through the halls of the hotel alone, and the brain weasels were there, trying to bring me down. “You’ve been too happy for too long, Brian. You should be sad again. It’s what you deserve.”

I’m not sure where it comes from. I pushed it down and focused on the happy things. All weekend, I have visited with friends and people I admire, and they have all been so supportive that I’m not sure what to do with the positive emotions.

My excellent friend Mike Baltar bought my book this weekend and read it entirely. He told me it was a page turner, and he was excited to get to the end. It’s everything I want and hope to hear, and I thanked him with as much grace as I could while a part of me wanted to reject the praise, the way someone’s body might try to reject a transplanted organ.

Nothing at this convention has been bad, for me. All of my internal drama is internal, and I don’t know why I do this to myself.

I’m winding down now, getting ready to go to sleep. There’s one more day, and one more panel for me to attend, and it’s one I’m looking forward to as it is The Greatest Writing Advice I’ve Ever Received. I think that one is going to be a lot of fun.

Tomorrow, Melissa and I will need to return to home and all of our normality. There’s been so many good and happy events this weekend, I should have plenty of fuel to fight the brain weasels for a long while.

Woops! I didn’t get this posted yesterday. Has my post-a-day challenge for July already failed?

Not really. I’ll post this one now, and another later today. Life happens, and it’s important we forgive ourselves, especially when the rules we made up for ourselves are arbitrary.

Besides, the main reason I didn’t post yesterday was because the day was exceptionally full, and when we got back to my room last night, I immediately went to sleep. Baycon Day 2 was a full and happy day.

The biggest highlight of the day was in the evening, when Melissa and I took several wonderful people to dinner. Once every convention, I try to take a group out and treat them, so it can just be a time of low stress, good food, and happy conversation. Last night was no exception. It was a fabulous time.

I attended a panel earlier in the morning on How to Make Believable Characters, which was interesting and engaging. I found myself nodding my head a lot, agreeing with what was being said.

I participated on one panel a little later, on Noir in Science Fiction and Fantasy. When putting the program together, I’m not sure they knew my particular set of qualifications for that panel, since Spin City isn’t out or broadly known, but based on the experience of writing that novel, and because that particular combination of noir and SciFi is my catnip, I had a couple of things I could say on the subject. I think the panel went well. Attendance was light, so it was low stress and low stakes, which is fine by me.

In the evening, I briefly attended Rebecca Inch-Partridge’s party for the release of her book, Escaping the Dashia. Years ago, when Rebecca and I were in a writing group together, I read early versions of that book at the same time that group was reading early versions of The Repossessed Ghost. It’s great to see both books taking physical form and going out into the world.

Melissa and I went to Michael Gallowglas’s poetry slam, but I only could stay briefly. The poetry was excellent, and I wanted to stay for more, but my body simply said No, so I listened to it. We came back to the room and I immediately passed out.

All in all, I would say Day 2 was an excellent day. Highly recommend it. Would do it again.

When I started this blog, it was after talking with Jim Doty. He basically gave me a tough-love speech, which amounted to, “If you want to be a writer, don’t whine about it. Do the things that writers do.”

It’s exactly what I needed to hear. After talking with him, I came home, set up this blog, and I’ve been keeping at it for the last 10 years. To celebrate, I’m going to try and write a blog post every day of July.

I’m currently at Baycon 2023 in Santa Clara, so these first 4 days of July, I’m going to talk about that.

Today is an especially powerful day, because today represents the realization of a dream, and a whole lot of firsts.

Today is the first time I received a convention badge that marked me as a guest of the convention.

Today is the first time I’ve ever been on a panel.

Today is the first time I’ve ever done a reading at a convention.

Today is the first time I’ve been able to hold a novel, written by me, with my name on the cover. By the way, the book is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

Today is the first day I’ve ever had a book signing. To my amazement, several people visited me with books freshly purchased from the dealer’s room, just for me to sign them. Several of these people were strangers to me.

Today is the first day I’ve ever signed a book that bore my name on the cover and the spine.

That is so many firsts!

Frequently, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. I saw myself doing all of these things, living the dream, and it felt like someone else. It felt like I could wake up any moment and have to go back to work.

Imposter Syndrome plagued me several times today, but I managed it relatively well. I saw this more as a celebration of a book I wrote and still happened to love, and that made it easier to be in the moment.

So many friends and acquaintances I’ve made over the years are here. These are people that I have met and grown to know at these conventions. They seem truly happy for me.

In a few minutes, I’m going to go see Michael, and I think we’re going to share some Scotch. It should be safe. I didn’t have to take any hypertension medicine today, and if I have to take some, the pharmacist said it’s safe for me to imbibe a little.

It’s hard for me to describe how blessed I feel right now. There is a short unboxing video that I need to get off of Melissa’s phone and post here. It might show, to some degree, how the joy of the day is overwhelming.

I have more I could say, but I think I’ll close this tonight with the acknowledgements that I wrote in The Repossessed Ghost.

This has been a long time coming. When I started this novel, Obama wasn’t that far into his second term. Most people had cell phones, but they were not quite as ubiquitous as they are today. The world has changed so much that I considered writing a prologue just to establish when this story takes place.

It’s been a long time, and I have a lot of people to thank for helping me see this through. Michael Todd Gallowglas, for example, has always believed in me, even when I had trouble believing in myself. Richard S. Crawford, Andrea Stewart, and several other writers I’ve worked with in critique groups, helped me shape this story into what it is today.

Most especially, I must thank Jennifer L. Carson. She saw something in this story that no one else did, when the novel was still rough and surly. She would not allow me to leave this story to rot in a drawer. Jennifer helped me see a dream come true.

Finally, I need to thank my family, Melissa, Bryanna, and Christopher, for helping me stay grounded and sane.

I’m still struggling with the hypertension medicine side effects. Pepto-Bismol is handling one of the worst ones, but I’m still tired most of the time. I laid down yesterday afternoon for a short nap and wound up sleeping until this morning. I need to get that under control because I can’t afford to lose so many days.

Right before I went for the nap, I opened an email from Water Dragon which had links! Digital advance reader copies (ARCs) are available! I’ve never been at this stage of a book before!

What is an ARC? It’s a near-finished version of the book, meant to go out ahead of the release so that some readers can get a taste of it and post reviews. They’re generally sent to magazines and people of influence in the publishing world to further drum up interest and get some buzz started.

Water Dragon already has a list of magazines and organizations to send ARCs to, so the number of copies I have available are basically extra.

I’ve handed out the link for the ARC to two people today, and I have more available. I’m looking for people that are interested in reading it, writing a review, and if they really liked it, help spread the word about it.

And to be clear, I want fair and honest reviews. Don’t write a glowing review if it wasn’t your cup of tea. If you hate it, put that in your review. It really is okay.

Where to write a review? Amazon is probably the best place.

If you’re interested in an ARC for The Repossessed Ghost, let me know!

It’s hard to put into words just how exciting this is for me.

I live on The Internet, which means when popular movies come out, I need to see them as soon as possible in order to avoid spoilers. That’s just life, now. I was going to see it Thursday night, but we had other plans, and Friday wasn’t great, either. So I went to a Saturday matinee.

Before I get into The Flash, I’ll just say Happy Father’s Day to all who celebrate. For myself, I had steak and eggs this morning. Once I’m done writing my review of The Flash, I’m going to get on the exercise bike for 30 minutes to an hour, then I’m going to get caught up on some work stuff I wasn’t able to finish last week. After that… video games? Going to bed early? Who knows. Tomorrow is going to come too soon.

Okay. Let’s talk about The Flash.

I had a good time. I went in with low expectations to begin with, and I left feeling like I got my money’s worth.

From this point forward, I may talk about spoilers, so if you haven’t seen it yet and you want to go in with fresh eyes, bail out now.

Michael Keaton. Holy smokes, Michael Keaton.

I had no idea how much I would enjoy seeing Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman again. I did not know that I wanted to hear that Danny Elfman score play while Batman did cool stuff. Apparently that was something I was hungry for, and I left well fed.

Sasha Calle’s Supergirl was good. Her part was a little bit understated, but Sasha worked with the material she had, and I would definitely watch a whole movie with her as Supergirl.

Ezra Miller. Before I get into their performance, I want to acknowledge that their behavior off screen has been troubling, and I don’t want to focus on the controversy of Ezra Miller themself. I think they fucked up and they need to make amends, if possible. I’m not a fanboy of Ezra Miller. I don’t really know them. Whatever is going on around them is probably complicated, so for purposes of this review, I’m only going to focus on their performance in this movie.

Ezra Miller’s performance was excellent. They brought nuance to both versions of Barry Allen, making them both characters distinct and clear. Ezra Miller’s performance throughout the entire movie was consistent, emotive, and compelling. I loved Michael Keaton in this, and I was impressed with Sasha Calle, but this was Ezra Miller’s movie.

Let’s talk about the special effects. There were two times it stuck out to me as a little bit off. The first was when The Flash went to save the babies falling out of the hospital. They looked a little bit off. The dog also looked a bit off. It was cartoony, but that whole sequence was basically a cartoon, and I was on board with it. For me, it was a good time.

The second time the effects looked off to me was whenever The Flash went into The Chronobowl. We got to see lots of characters, and they looked waxy and computer generated. They were not photorealistic.

I think the producers said that was an intentional artistic choice, and I believe them. When you look at the effects everywhere else in the movie (except the cartoony “save the babies” sequence), the effects are fantastic and photorealistic. Compare the Chronobowl effects to Batman sliding on the freeway while chasing the bank robbers. Ben Affleck’s Batman was a fully rendered special effect, and it looks excellent. When we see Ben Affleck in the Chronobowl, he looks plastic, like an impression of the events that happened in previous movies. I believe it was an artistic choice, and I’m fine with it. It didn’t pull me out.

I liked the explanation of time travel. I’m not sure it’s realistic, but it worked for me as far as explaining the details of the movie, and I was able to groove with it.

I liked getting to see the alternate worlds. I loved getting to see Nic Cage as Superman, fighting a giant spider. I think it’s the only time in the movie I made a sound, and it was unintentional.

The ending bit with George Clooney as Batman made me smile. Of course there would be ramifications to Barry saving his father. It ended the movie on a joke, and I appreciated it, because the movie wasn’t taking itself too seriously, and neither was I.

What else can I say about this movie? I had a good time! I felt some feelings, I had some laughs, and I enjoyed the spectacle. Why wouldn’t I like this movie?

Is it my favorite? Heck no. Am I going to be thinking about it for a long time? Probably not. There are really good movies that I have seen that I don’t think about much, like The Godfather or Citizen Kane. Then there are relatively bad movies that I do find myself thinking about from time to time, like Ashton Kutcher’s Butterfly Effect. So, I might think about The Flash in the future, especially with regards to what it had to say about how time travel works, but I’m not sure that means anything.

Would I recommend friends go out and spend their money to see The Flash?

It depends on the friend. I would not recommend Michael Gallowglas go and see this movie, for example. He doesn’t enjoy movies the same way I do. I would absolutely recommend the movie to Melissa and Chris. It’s a coin flip as to whether Bryanna would enjoy it or not.

I think The Internet is going to continue to be hard on The Flash, mostly because The Internet does not like Eza Miller. I think The Internet is going to criticize The Flash’s special effects and say it is trash because it is not as realistic as they demand, which is Dumb with a capital D.

In summary, and tying this back to my own stuff, The Flash was a light, fun story that didn’t take itself too seriously. It probably won’t leave a lasting impression on the world, and I doubt it’s going to win many awards. These are the same ways I describe The Repossessed Ghost. I think it’s okay for The Flash to exist and just be a fun thing. I feel the same way about The Repossessed Ghost, and I hope other people find light, fun value in it, too.

Behold!

In just a couple of weeks, at Baycon 2023, people will be able to buy my book and hold it in their hand.

Look at that cover! Isn’t it beautiful?

Water Dragon Publishing hired the artist that did such an amazing job. I’m so happy with how it came out.

The official release of the book is the middle of July. It will be on Amazon. Formats include digital, hardcover, paperback, and trade paperback.

From this point forward, it’s just a celebration.

Along with this cover reveal, let me provide this shiny link, with which you can order your very own copy direct from the publisher: The Repossessed Ghost.

Everyone that orders from that link before July 4th will get a signed copy. I’m numbering the first 100 copies I sign.

July 4th is when the convention ends and all the pre-orders get shipped. To be clear, if you see me at the convention and buy a book, I’ll sign those, too.

Here is the first time I talked about this novel as The Repossessed Ghost. July 17th, 2014. Almost exactly 9 years later, it will be available everywhere. It’s still hard to believe.

I have talked about this book a lot, and I have to get ready to talk about it some more. If you have any questions, send them my way! I’m hoping to post a vlog before July 1st, which will be a brief reading.

Thank you to everyone that has believed in me and encouraged me on this journey. You mean the world to me.

I feel like I’m behind. There’s topics I should be writing about. Melissa’s birthday was yesterday! My book is coming out next month! Why am I not doing anything?!?

Let’s begin with my health, which hasn’t been completely awesome. As I said in my last post, I have hypertension. I’m taking blood pressure medicine, and while it is effective, I haven’t felt right for weeks. I don’t feel like I have any energy, like I’ve been hollowed out, and it’s even harder for me to focus. Through that lens, everything is distant and difficult. That includes celebrating Melissa’s birthday and promoting The Repossessed Ghost.

We did celebrate, though. On Saturday, we went to Lodi and picked blueberries, then returned home and had some easy food and played Skipbo. We had a cake, though I didn’t have any candles for her to blow out. Yesterday, her actual birthday, an Edible Arrangement arrived.

Her birthday was okay, but there’s only so much I can do. She’s lonely. She needs more friends. I can completely relate.

On the book front, I’m going to post the cover NEXT WEEK. Around that time, I’ll start spreading around the pre-order link. I’m also planning on recording a new VLOG. I haven’t posted one since the beginning of the pandemic, and this one is going to be a reading of The Repossessed Ghost.

There’s more I still need to do. There are some swag ideas I need to follow up on. Soon, I need to contact the local Barnes and Noble again and see if I can make some magic happen.

I need to get moving. Hypertension be damned, I need to find the energy and push through, because this is my first and maybe only chance to promote a book with my name on the cover.

Baycon is in less than a month. That’s where I will get to be on the other side of a table and sell people my book. It’s where I’ll get to be on the other side of some panels for the first time, and share directly some of the stuff I’ve acquired over these years.

Here is a link to my convention schedule. When I look at it, I feel like a rock star. It feels like a celebration of all the work I’ve been doing for the last decade and a half.

If you would like to order a signed copy of The Repossessed Ghost early, straight from the publisher and to be delivered after July 4th, let me know and I will get you a link. I’ll be publicly posting the link next week, but I can still hook up friends and family right now.

A couple of days from now would be my Mom’s 90th birthday. It’s been long enough that I don’t get particularly upset at her loss. She died in 2002, so I’ve had a couple of decades to process. Still, I’ve had some recent reminders of her, so I’ll definitely be thinking of her for the next few days.

She died of complications related to her heart. It was shortly after her doctor took her off of blood pressure medicine, which I believe she’d been on most of my life. Bold move by her doctor, I would say. Did it contribute to her death? Who can say?

She didn’t live a particularly healthy lifestyle. She smoked, ate lots of greasy food, didn’t exercise, and her hobbies included reading and watching television. Towards the end, she was in and out of hospitals quite a bit.

Last week, I was prescribed medicine for dealing with hypertension. Several weeks ago, I wasn’t able to give blood because my blood pressure too high. The diastolic was over 100. I went several weeks with symptoms similar to a heart attack, and finally saw my doctor about it and started to address it.

I don’t smoke, but I don’t live a particularly healthy lifestyle. I’ve been known to eat some greasy food, I rarely exercise, and my hobbies include spending long hours in front of a computer screen. There’s nothing seriously wrong with me right now, so I can still course correct and try to live a healthier lifestyle, but it’s going to take some effort.

Last week, while we were picking up the hypertension medicine, we bought a blood pressure machine. I’ve been checking once or twice a day, and my blood pressure is actually looking great now. When I first started recording it, the diastolic was still over 100, once close to 110, which is when the danger of a stroke becomes really high. Today, my blood pressure was 127 over 87. The medicine is working, as is the diet.

I’ve switched to low sodium, which has been interesting. I’m an absolute fiend for potato chips, and those are completely off limits. I can’t really have bread like I want. Lots and lots of convenient food is loaded with salt, and I can’t have any of it.

Fortunately, I’ve discovered that a bit of vinegar on a plain salad satisfies my itch for potato chips. I’ve also found a recipe for potatoes in the air fryer that is 0mg of sodium, and while it’s not amazing, it is pretty good. The start of last week on the low sodium diet, I was suffering. The last couple of days, I’ve been eating well.

I’m changing my diet and my blood pressure is looking better after a short while, and yet I’m feeling excessively tired and unfocused. I basically lost Saturday, just feeling yucky all day. Sunday was pretty good, but today wasn’t great. Maybe it’s a reaction to the hypertension medicine, or maybe my body is reacting to the change in diet. I’m not sure. I hope I start feeling better soon. I need to somehow work exercise into my routine, and that’s not going to happen if I continue to have such low energy.

All of this is distracting me from another matter of my heart, which is The Repossessed Ghost coming out in a little over a month. Now is the time that I need to breathe it in and enjoy the ride. It’s hard, though, because with everything going on, figuratively and literally, I’m having a hard time catching my breath at all.

By the way, I have a pre-order link for The Repossessed Ghost which I can share. It goes straight to the publisher, and everyone that uses that link will get a signed copy of the book shipped to them just after the 4th of July. I’m not posting the link yet. I’ll post in later in June, once I do the cover reveal and start ramping up promotion of the book. But if you’re interested in purchasing the book early, let me know and I will hook you up.