I could have sworn I’d done a review of Building Baby Brother by Steven Radecki before, but I can’t find it here. I found a place where I said I would do it, but that was about a year ago.

After spending a day with Steven yesterday, selling books — including Building Baby Brother — it’s time I posted my review for all to see. Or at least, the people that visit this blog.

The Short Review

Here is the short review in case you don’t want any of the story spoiled: This is a fine, short, soft SciFi novel that doesn’t overstay its welcome, and deviates from some of the typical tropes you usually see in similar stories. It’s not a perfect story, but it does its job well enough that I’m comfortable selling it and recommending it.

The Long Review

A young boy, Josh, asks his recently divorced father for a little brother. The father distracts Josh with the promise of more toys, dodges the bullet, but the idea is stuck in his head, further complicated by watching the movie AI by Kubrick and Spielberg. As a software developer by trade, he gets the idea that maybe, just maybe, he can give Josh exactly what he wants.

If you’re hoping for some harder SciFi around building the robot and AI, you’ll be disappointed. The story sort of handwaves the construction of the child robot away. There probably could have been a version of this story where we see the father struggle more to bring his constructed child to life, but this is a shorter story, and we don’t spend too much time lingering on overcoming the technical achievement.

Josh is introduced to his new robot baby brother, which is named Gavin, and they hit it off. Gavin’s prime directive, as it were, is to make Josh happy, and part of that is learning and growing, to become a better brother to Josh over time.

Gavin grows beyond his creator’s expectations, and there are several sections where the father and Gavin converse about Gavin and Gavin’s perspective. These sections remind me the most of stories about Data in Star Trek:TNG, which I very much like.

I don’t want to go too much more into what happens next. I don’t want to spoil the whole story. I will say that other stories like this, where the robot is created and begins to grow beyond its creator’s intentions, the robot turns evil and has to be put down for the good of humanity. That’s not where this story goes.

In fact, this story is less concerned with science, engineering, robotics, and AI. It’s really about the experience of being a parent, watching your children grow, and learning to let them go when they no longer need you. In that way, the story is very sweet.

I have a few nitpicks I could go into with regards to some of the details, but none of what I have to say on that is important at all. And some of those nitpicks include spoilers for the end of the story, so I’ll keep those to myself.

I will say that I was reading a version of Building Baby Brother that was rife with formatting and editing mistakes. I found those very distracting. The version that is out there now has those things fixed. While at the table yesterday, I had both versions available to me and was able to look and see how the editing mistakes were fixed.

Here is a link where you can buy Building Baby Brother directly from the publisher.

Here is a link where you can get it from bookshop.org.

It’s also on Amazon, but I’ll let you find that link on your own. Bezos doesn’t need the extra advertisement.

It’s short. It reads relatively quickly. And Steven Radecki is a great guy, and I think it would make his heart swell if you were to buy his book and give it a read.

When you do, let me know what you think of it.

It’s Saturday night. I’m sitting at my desk, having just eaten junk food for dinner, and I’m listening to a bunch of acoustic Chris Cornell songs. This is what I look like when I’m trying to quickly recover from an event.

The event today was Wordstock, the 1st instance of this annual event, in Stockton.

Let’s turn the rest of this into an informal Q&A. We all love those.

How was the event? It must have really been something if you’re binging on soulful, sad music and eating cheeseburgers.

The event was okay, but very lightly attended. There were panels, and live readings, both prose and poetry, and there was a taco truck, and pizza, and soft drinks, and a pitching event. Lots of good stuff.

Just not a ton of people, so we didn’t have a ton of sales.

Also, it was ridiculously hot. Too hot for an October afternoon in Stockton.

Are you bummed out about the sales?

Not really. Most of the people that came to our table bought something. Compared to the other vendors, we did really well, at nearly $100 for the day. Other vendors averaged around $45. It didn’t cost us anything, other than our time and gas, so that’s basically a win.

It did cost me $80 to fill my mustang, but I needed to do that, anyway. I wasn’t going to be able to put off fueling my vehicle forever.

Also, I wouldn’t say I’m bummed, per se.

Then what is all this recovery business about?

The event was lightly attended and easier than many I’ve done this year, but it still took a lot out of me. I was recently sick, and I don’t think I’m at 100% yet. Helping setup, and staying present physically and mentally took a toll on me. Driving to Stockton was the longest car trip I’ve taken since coming back from the cruise. And I had to get up early in order to get there by around 7:30AM for setup.

Once I got home, I needed to sit down and recharge, in all ways.

And sometimes these Chris Cornell binges just sort of happen on their own. No one sings like him anymore.

Are you sure you’re okay?

I’m good. Just tired, kind of emotional, and needing some comfort food and comfort music. By tomorrow, I should be right as rain. I hope.

Anything else about Wordstock?

Yeah, I think the event has a lot of potential. The world is still hungry for books. San Jose recently had a book festival, while Melissa and I were on the cruise, and I hear it was phenomenal. The Sacramento book festival has been incredible year after year, and it keeps getting bigger.

I think Wordstock has the potential. It takes a few years for events like this to build up word of mouth and inertia. The staff was extremely friendly, helpful, and even provided a bunch of free food for us vendors and participants. They have the right stuff.

For them to succeed in the future, they’ll need to find more ways to get the word out. And, from what I heard, they’ll need to figure out ways to get the event to pay for itself, maybe through charging vendors like us a small fee.

Or, maybe they just need to keep doing exactly what they’ve been doing, because like I said before, it takes a couple years before the event becomes big enough and settled enough that people just know about it.

Money and attendance aside, there was one thing that happened that made the entire event worth it, at least to me. There were a couple of High School kids that came to booth, excited about books and fiction. One is a fledgling writer, and I had the opportunity to give her encouragement, the kind of encouragement that fanned the flames when I was at her point in my writing journey. She and her brother both lit up when I spoke to them.

That, to me, made it all worth it. It made my day. Maybe my whole weekend.

Will you attend Wordstock next year?

I don’t see why not. Steven and I both had a good time.

I think that’s all I have to say about the event today. I still have a query to write and send out, before the weekend is over. Not tonight, though. Definitely not tonight.

It wouldn’t do to mess up Blogtober on Day 2, but apparently I needed a nap after work that took me all the way to 10PM.

That’s okay. There’s still time, and this should be an easy one.

I went 5 years without a haircut, and my hair grew really long. The longest strands could touch my belt. Lots of dark, lots of gray, and a little bit of curl in it, my hair drew many compliments.

Melissa is the reason I grew it out in the first place. She wanted to know what I’d look like with long hair, and she often enjoyed braiding it or helping me put it up. Three years into this experiment, she loved the length. After five years, though, it was too long, even for her.

I… kind of hated it, most of the time. “It grew on me” was the joke I’d make when people asked about it, and it’s true I enjoyed it from time to time. But mostly, it was a constant inconvenience. It tangled easily. It often wanted to taste my food before I could get it to my mouth. It made showers longer, taking way more shampoo and longer dry times. I was always sitting on it, accidentally pulling it, and it made every day tasks more difficult.

I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror most of the time.

Here’s a picture from Baycon a couple years ago.

Here’s what I looked like just before the haircut.

And here’s what I looked like after a shave and a shower at home.

I think I look significantly younger. I feel like myself again.

I feel… better. Not sure how else to describe it.

Once my cough finally goes away, I want to exercise. Lose some of this extra weight. Really feel like myself again.

I think it’s doable, especially without all that hair catching on things and holding me back.

When I first grew my hair out, someone told me that it suited me, and that it softened my look. Made me more approachable. I’m a little bit worried about that, but I think feeling better and happier should help.

It’s great to be myself again. Even if it means I no longer match my cover photo.

Today is October 1st, which I personally think is a crime. But since I have found no way to turn back the clock (yet!), let’s move forward and set this month up for success!

Like several previous years, I’m going to try and write a blog post every day in the month of October. I’m doing this as part of the Ultimate Blog Challenge and hopefully, this will get me back into the habit of writing a little bit every day.

It really is hard for me to believe that October is here already. Last month, there was WorldCon, the WXR Cruise, and then the start of illness which I’m still getting over. I still have a cough, and my chest still feels like it’s in a vice. I’m getting better, but it’s impacted my ability to focus. It’s hard to keep up with the day job, let alone get any writing done.

Before I get to the Blogtober schedule, let’s get some simple house keeping complete. Namely, the 3rd episode of Write Something Good went live on Wednesday last week, and it’s where we start to get into actual, practical advice.

Write Something Good — S1-E3

Here is the YouTube link:

The list of basic advice in this episode:

• Read Widely
• Use Strong Verbs
• Avoid Adverbs
• Adjectives are Delicious

Much of the content came from this previous blog post.

Here are all the other relative links. Later this month, I’ll make a doodly-doo at the top of this page so that they’re always available:

RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/1166519d8/podcast/rss

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1Fxa7eJNO8CFbz9w5OkTMN

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/write-something-good/id6805610402

Blogtober 2026 Agenda

31 days, 31 topics.

1. Agenda
2. Back to Short Hair
3. Stockton Book Event
4. Book Review: Building Baby Brother
5. Project Zomboid – 2026
6. Therapy – How it’s Going
7. Write Something Good — S1-E4
8. My Thoughts on Write Something Good So Far
9. A Brief Visit with Politics
10. October 2026 Annoyances
11. The Anti-TERF Post
12. A Review of Lanterns
13. What I’ve Learned about Selling Books
14. Valheim 2026
15. Building a TTRPG Adventure
16. The State of the Internet – 2026
17. My Lived-In Experience – The Birth of the Internet
18. Writing Tools Over Time
19. Professions Popular Media Gets Wrong
20. The Death of Digital Gaming
21. Write Something Good — S1-E5
22. World Fantasy 2026 — Day 1
23. World Fantasy 2026 — Day 2
24. World Fantasy 2026 — Day 3
25. World Fantasy 2026 — Last Day and Summary
26. Book Review: The Tainted Cup
27. The Problems with “The Chosen One”
28. Eugenics, Royalty, and Other Problematic Fantasy Tropes
29. Book Review: Contact – A New World by M. D. Neu
30. ???
31. Happy Halloween 2026!
    

I suppose I should have said, 31 days, 28 topics. I’ve left the 10th, 20th, and 30th open to inspiration, or if someone leaves a comment with a topic they would like me to write about, I’ll do it. And, there are a couple topics on here I wouldn’t mind replacing with better ideas, so please feel free to comment and I’ll update the list.

Wish me luck, and I hope you enjoy this year’s blog adventure!