Amazon's Vox Machina Starts Off Light and Then Gets Heavier...But Not Too Heavy

 Despite Michael Offutt's efforts, I have not gotten into Dungeons & Dragons.  I never really was a big fan.  I played some of the video games in the early 90s, but that was it.  The reason is mostly that I'm lazy and except for the computer games it seems like so much work with the maps and character sheets and dice.  Plus you need to know other local people who play it, which is also a hassle.  Playing Empires & Puzzles on my phone is close enough for me.

But I still know enough about that stuff that I could enjoy watching The Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon Prime.  The first two episodes are basically the pilot that establish the characters.  Something has been killing people and all the parties sent to stop it have been obliterated.  The ragtag mercenary team of Vox Machina take the case because they're desperate for money while the king lets them because they're expendable.

The team is made up of different races like humans, elves, gnomes, and maybe a troll or something who have different skills so most of the classes from D&D and the like are represented.  They don't really have a strong leader or plans and basically just do whatever works and hope for the best.

• Here's the roster:
• Vex & Vax are half-elf twins.  Vex is the female who is the closest to a leader the group has.  Vax is the male twin who is good at picking locks and sneaking around--and is bisexual. (They have longer names I'm not looking up.)
• Scanlan is a gnome who plays a lute and when he does, it creates a sort of Green Lantern-like effect, usually a purple hand that he can float around on.  He also considers himself a ladies (and mens) man.
• Pyke is also a gnome or some other short race, but she has healing power through a deity called "Everlight."  When the Everlight stops working, she has to go to a temple and then beams a projection of herself across the land like Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi.
• Grog might be a troll or something.  He's a big blue dude with an ax who's really stupid but also fearless.  Pyke is his best friend who often has to use her power to heal him.
• Percival used to be part of the royal family of Whitestone until they were overthrown and he escaped.  With a little mystical help he made a crude sort of revolver.
• Keylith is my favorite character because she's a cute redhead.  She's a mage who mostly can control plants, summon light, and change into an animal form sort of like Beast Boy in Titans.  She could probably do more if she actually knew what she was doing.

Needless to say their first attempt to stop the menace does not go well, but they survive and eventually find the source of the trouble:  a blue dragon that takes the form of a prominent human.  You can kind of use the Law & Order logic they pointed out in Family Guy to figure out who it is by looking for the biggest name guest star.  (One who was on a very popular British sci-fi series and then in one of Marvel's Netflix shows.)

After the first two episodes I thought this was going to be kind of a D&D/LOTR-flavored Lower Decks thing where it's parodying the property with these lovable losers.  But the third episode starts a longer arc where shit starts getting real.  Years ago a pair of vampires called the Blackwoods took over the kingdom of Whitestone and killed the ruling family--or so they thought.  One named Percival got away and eventually joined Vox Machina as their sort of steampunk guy who has a gun.  After running into the vampires at a royal banquet, Vox Machina sets out to liberate Whitestone.

The Whitestone arc takes up the rest of the season as the team fights vampires, zombies, giants, and a demon.  There are a lot of twists and turns as they try to liberate the kingdom, destroy the Blackwoods, and then free Percival of a demon curse.  It gets kind of dark sometimes with characters seeming like they might die, but none of the main ones actually do.

The show keeps its potty-mouth humor and for the most part Vox Machina are still a bunch of dumbasses, but there's also some drama.  And some grisly murders.  This isn't really for kids because there's a lot of un-bleeped cursing, graphic violence, gore, and some nudity and sex.  Kind of like if the writers of The Orville wrote an episode of Game of Thrones and had it animated by the people who did Comedy Central's Moonbeam City.

So at times it can get kind of heavy, but it doesn't get too heavy that it's not fun to watch even if you're not a huge D&D nerd.

(Fun Facts:  Besides the British guy I mentioned, Arrested Development's Tony Hale appears in the first episodes; Stephen Root of Office Space, King of the Hill, and Book of Boba Fett plays an evil professor in Whitestone; and the new MST3K's Felicia Day has a small part as a captain of the royal army.  Unless you're into video games, none of the main characters is played by anyone famous.  The feature on Amazon Prime Video that lets you see the cast is always kind of neat for stuff like that.  Most original shows on Amazon they release one episode a week or they'll do a couple episodes the first week and then one a week after.  For this series they did 3 episodes a week, maybe because they're only about 30 minutes.  Anyway, the 12 episodes is actually more than a lot of shows these days.)

More Streaming Choices Means More IP Mining

 Wednesday I talked about brands making their own streaming services, which only increases the number of streaming services.  A problem for the streaming services as the number of them multiplies is the problem a lot of us authors already deal with:  how to get attention?  Having a lot more resources and money than someone like me, streaming services do what movie studios have done for decades now:  find an Intellectual Property (IP) to mine.

Like for instance, Hulu (owned by Disney) announced it was going to bring back Futurama next year.  The announcement got a boost when Bender's voice actor (John DiMaggio) refused to return without a big pay raise.  Which if you think about it is pretty much in character.  If they don't work things out, then I guess the first episode will have Bender lose his voice and get a new sound card.

Meanwhile Amazon has a new Lord of the Rings show coming.  Peacock has a Quantum Leap reboot.  Paramount+ has a bunch of Star Trek shows, a HALO show coming out next month, and signed the creators of South Park to do a bunch of movies exclusively to their service, despite that the actual show is on HBO Max.  Speaking of, HBO Max is greenlighting DC Comics movies like Batgirl and shows spinning out of movies like Peacemaker.  Disney+ has a ton of new Star Wars and Marvel shows in the pipeline.  Netflix has had a bunch of IPs like Cobra Kai, Fuller House, He-Man, She-Ra, Voltron, and of course Marvel shows before Disney+ was created.  Even House of Cards was based on a book/British miniseries.  Apple is taking a different tack by doing less IPs and just bringing in a lot of big stars like Tom Hanks, Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd, etc. as noted in a commercial starring Jon Hamm, who was complaining about being left out.

The thing is that if you want to get attention, brand new original content isn't going to cut it.  You've either got to bring back something that already died (2-3 times for Futurama) or it has to at least be tied to something that already existed like the DC, Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek stuff.  Wholly original content just isn't going to get attention--until it does like Squid Game or Ted Lasso.

With so many services there's the need to attract consumers and so you need to find some big attention-getting announcement.  Just saying, "We have a new show" doesn't make the grade.  Saying, "We're bringing back this cult favorite show that died 10 years ago!" gets a lot more attention.  Or, "We're adapting this comic book not that many people read!"

As the number of streaming services grows and the competition increases, services are only going to feel more pressure to find more and more IPs to mine.  Which is good if you're someone who created or worked on a TV, movie, or comic book in the last 70 years.  Your turn at bat is probably coming, which means it's pay day!

But being a Grumpy Bulldog, a lot of these don't really excite me.  I loved Futurama, but it ended almost 10 years ago with a brilliant finale.  Why piss that away for 2 10-episode seasons before it gets cancelled again?

Streaming services being owned by big, faceless, heartless corporations don't really care about issues like that.  They just want attention because attention means more subscribers, which means more money, which means higher stock prices, which means more bonuses.  I'm sure the people who actually work on these shows will try their best, but a lot of these things are destined to fade away.

People like me whine, "Why can't they make anything original?"  But how much original content do I watch?  Some, but probably not as much as I could.  In part it's because with all these IPs it's harder to find original content; the IPs suck up a lot of the attention and who's going to drill down menus to find something else if you don't have to?  I get home from work, I don't feel like surfing menus to find something; it's easier to just click that big ad for whatever new IP show on Disney+, Hulu, or Amazon.

I've said it before, but this is the problem for authors too.  People aren't going to take the time to search for new authors and new stories.  After a hard day's work they'll just pick up whatever Stephen King, John Grisham, or James Patterson is at the top of the bestseller list.  Which keeps those authors at the top of the bestseller list, so people keep buying them...it's an endless cycle.  Sometimes not even death can stop it, as in the case of Tom Clancy, who by now has probably put out more books in death than he did in life.

Anyway, tying back to Wednesday's entry, those IPs that don't get picked up by a big streaming service (or get cancelled as in the case of MST3K) can always go it alone if they can raise the money.  That just keeps blowing the bubble bigger and bigger and you know it's eventually going to burst.  Hopefully a lot of people who worked on IPs can cash in before that happens.  You can see why then John DiMaggio wants more money; he knows the gravy train isn't going to last forever.  Got to get what you can while you can.  That's the American way!

Self-Publishing Is the Newest Trend on TV

 For writers, self-publishing has been around pretty much since the beginning of the printed word.  Maybe technically even since the beginning of scribbling words on clay tablets or papyrus.  But it was pretty limited until the Kindle came along in the 2000s.  That opened up a whole new avenue for self-publishing and has led to a flood of titles from people of varying skill levels.  A few have made millions while most make almost nothing and some like me make a few bucks.

For TV, the closest to self-publishing was public access, where people would make their own shows to air on some local cable channel.  This was made famous by the Wayne's World SNL skits and movies.  And like self-publishing books in the 80s and 90s, very few people ever succeeded at it.  For most it was just a vanity project. 

A while ago, Michael Offutt talked about the Warhammer franchise launching its own streaming service where for $5.99/month you can watch TWO(!) series.  Wow!  Two!  Sign me up!

It also reminded me that during the annual Turkey Day Marathon broadcast on Pluto TV, Xumo, and wherever else, Mystery Science Theater 3000 announced this year it would be launching its own streaming service that would feature the classic episodes as well as 13 new episodes.  I wouldn't really sign up for it as you can watch all the classic episodes on Pluto TV or TubiTV right now; maybe they will eventually get those pulled to force people to sign up for this.

I already mentioned back in 2020 how Rifftrax created its own streaming channel that also charges a monthly fee to watch a lot of their various VODs.  At this point they're up to 2019 ones so they have about everything except the last 3 years.  A lot of these you can stream on Pluto TV, Xumo, Tubi, and Amazon but except for Amazon they have commercials and they don't necessarily have everything the app does. 

All of this got me thinking that really this kind of stuff will probably become more popular and that it is really self-publishing for TV.  The difference is that the costs of creating a streaming service are a lot higher than publishing on Amazon, Draft2Digital, or Smashwords, so really only brands with a following can actually do it right now.  In the case of MST3K they raised money with a Kickstarter to make it happen.  Like the Warhammer one, this new service will have a monthly fee to pay for it, which is where this form of TV self-publishing differs from the old cable access.

Of course these streaming channels won't have the same stigma as self-publishing books gets.  No one is going to call the MST3K channel "vanity publishing."  But then since these are somewhat known brands, they are better quality than a lot of self-published books on Amazon.

The unfortunate thing is this will create even more streaming channels.  There are already so many with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Paramount+, Disney+, and so on that adding a bunch of self-published ones is just going to make things even more fragmented.  How many of these can people really support?  Time will tell.

Could the next trend be to merge self-published books with self-published TV?  Let's say I do a Kickstarter and create some low-budget movies based on my Eric Filler or Scarlet Knight or Chances Are books.  Then I could create a streaming service to air them.  I don't see that happening, at least for me, but maybe some series with more support could do that.  Like those Union Station books by EM Foner.  Maybe create some animated or low-budget live action series for the main series and its spin-offs and then create a streaming channel.  Will it happen?  I doubt it.  Could it happen?  Probably.  

The other avenue I thought of is maybe eventually creators with enough following could pull their shows from existing streaming outlets to create their own streaming channel.  Like if Matt Groening could pull The Simpsons and Futurama from Disney+/Hulu and create his own service.  Or Seth MacFarlane could pull Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, The Orville, and his movies like Ted 1 & 2 and A Million Ways to Die in the West from where they're streaming to make his own service.  Or Mike Judge could pull King of the Hill, Silicon Valley, Beavis & Butt-Head, and his movies like Office Space, Idiocracy, and Extract to make his own streaming service.  Those get more complicated because there are all sorts of producers and executive producers and so on who would probably need to agree and get a piece of the revenue and whatever.  Not every movie Stephen Spielberg or Ron Howard or Martin Scorsese directs was owned by them, so if they wanted to create a streaming channel, there would have to be some negotiation.  Going forward, though, creators might want to spell that kind of stuff out in their contracts.

The only way any of that works is if you have enough content to keep people on the hook and if you have enough following to actually turn a profit at it.

Something I noticed on Goodreads after I wrote this:  Harlequin is launching "Harlequin+" with access to books and "feel good movies and games."  So there's another avenue I hadn't even thought of.  BTW, shouldn't all games be "feel good?"  I mean who wants to play a feel bad game? I scream at Empires and Puzzles when it rigs a match against me.

Mystery...

 I really don't know why this book isn't selling.  People don't like figure skating?  Or the Olympics?  Or the cover isn't "sexy" enough?  It's a mystery.

Hurm...

A Nic Cage Movie Gave Me an Idea for a GI Joe Reboot Movie

 Last month on Hulu I watched another of those straight-to-streaming Nic Cage movies called 211.  The movie is about some mercenaries in Afghanistan who rob a bank in Massachusetts after their client tries to screw them by sending their money to a bunch of random banks.  Nic Cage is a cop who helps to stop the robbery.

Anyway, I got this idea for a GI Joe reboot movie.  I already had an idea a few years ago, but obviously no one is going to do that.  (Ironically, I suggested Nic Cage could play Cobra Commander in it.)  Nah, let's just half-ass some Snake-Eyes movie and release it during the pandemic so no one watches it. [eye roll]

Anyway (again) I got thinking that these mercs were kind of like GI Joe guys gone bad.  That started me down the road with how to do this.  Basically the setup is in the war in Afghanistan, Duke and the guy who becomes Cobra Commander were in the same unit.  They were probably buddies, though maybe you'd want a scene where the Cobra Commander guy is being a dick to the locals while Duke is more friendly with them.  But when their tours are up, the Cobra Commander guy becomes a merc; he offers Duke the chance to go with him, but instead Duke goes home to try to live a normal life.

A little while later, the Cobra Commander guy like in the Nic Cage movie gets betrayed by a client.  Let's say it's a US government agency so he has some anti-American motivation.  Only in this he gets badly burned and disfigured.  So he covers his face with the silver mask thing and decides to take revenge on America.

First he needs money so he and some of his guys knock over a bank.  Then he goes to an arms dealer called Destro to get a bunch of guns and stuff so he can really do some damage.

Meanwhile, Scarlett, working for Army Intelligence, tracks Duke down.  They have some kind of proof that the Cobra Commander guy is his old buddy.  They want Duke's help to track him down.  He reluctantly agrees and then meets the rest of their special missions team that has Snake Eyes (of course) and maybe some others like Stalker and Breaker and Roadblock and Beachhead or whoever.  I would use some of the more normal ones but whatever.

There are a couple of action set pieces where the good guys get close but can't stop the bad guys.  Then there's the big final battle where Cobra Commander and his guys attack something big.  I'd say the Capitol but that might be tacky after January 6th last year.  Maybe they want to steal a nuclear submarine or raid the Pentagon or something like that.

And then of course Duke has to face off with Cobra Commander, who reveals his gross face.  He "dies" and the bad guys are defeated but of course he isn't really gone forever.  Meanwhile, Duke, Scarlett, and company are offered the chance to keep their team together to track down more bad guys.  Yo Joe!

Maybe not as big as my previous idea, but probably more affordable.  I'm just saying.  Thanks, Nic Cage!

When Reasoning Fails, Disaster Can Follow

 Long ago, when the World Wide Web was still in its infancy and we had never heard the phrase "fake news" before, The Simpsons provided a good definition of specious reasoning.  After Homer brags about how there have been no bear attacks since the Bear Patrol was established, Lisa accuses him of specious reasoning.  Then she picks up a rock and suggests the rock prevents tiger attacks because there aren't any tigers around, are there?  Homer, of course not getting it, offers to buy the rock.

With the Internet, specious reasoning like this is pretty common.  Most of the time it's pretty harmless.  Like when someone says that the CW is up for sale because of its "woke" shows.  While this makes for a cute slogan, "Woke equals broke," it most likely is not true.  It's just taking two facts and assigning one as a cause and another as an effect, like Lisa with her rock.  Except for those who rant about "wokeness" and "SJW"s, this doesn't really pass the smell test because it completely ignores all the other factors, the largest of which is streaming services that have largely made broadcast TV obsolete.

Where specious reasoning gets dangerous is like with Covid.  You get people or groups who say horse medicine or drinking urine or some other crackpot cure "works" just because someone somewhere used it and didn't die.  The facts someone drank urine and didn't die from Covid are not necessarily related.  The same for Ivermectin or whatever other "cures" they've come up with.

A big aspect of the specious reasoning for Covid is what's known as "anecdotal evidence."  That's basically one or two people's experience with something.  Statistically the experience of one or two or even ten thousand people is not necessarily significant depending on how large the sample size is.  That's why actual FDA-approved medicines and vaccines (like the Covid ones) have to go through rigorous testing with large sample sizes.  

Anecdotal evidence is if someone says, "My uncle took the Covid vaccine and got blood clots."  Statistically that uncle is only one of millions of people who have taken the vaccine.  But you get people who weigh that 1 case in a million as if it's the only one.  On the flip side, I can say that all I got was a sore arm from the vaccine (and booster) but that's still anecdotal evidence.  It's not looking at the data in total.

Most of the reason the lawsuits about "the Big Lie" (ie voter fraud) were tossed is they didn't have anything more than anecdotal evidence to support them.  It was mostly a few people claiming they saw something.  Literally anyone can sign an affidavit saying they saw something; I could sign an affidavit saying I saw Bigfoot or a UFO.  That doesn't mean it's true.  Few besides other like-minded people are going to believe it without real proof.  That's the difference between "circumstantial" evidence and actual evidence on crime shows.  It's also why traditionally eyewitness testimony has been one of the least reliable forms of "proof" of a crime.

So you can see that sometimes poor reasoning leads to big trouble.  Other times it just causes us to say something dumb on the Internet.  Or maybe it causes you to buy or not buy a product.

The latter is something that does actually relate to books.  If you see a book that has a thousand good reviews (4 or 5 stars) and a handful of bad (1 or 2 stars) then you can probably assume the book is good--at least to the general public.  In the few bad reviews you might see someone whining about it being "woke" or "political" or whatever and you can probably take that as anecdotal evidence that can be ignored.

The point being whenever there's a debate about something, consider the evidence.  Is it real evidence or is it a rock to protect against tigers?

The Dangerous Gap Between Reality & Fantasy

 With all forms of fiction, whether it's books, TV, movies, video games, or anything else, there is often what's described as "escapism" or the idea that people indulge in fantasies to escape reality.  It's usually harmless because people know they can't fly like Superman or shouldn't steal cars and shoot things up like a Grand Theft Auto game.  But occasionally you'll get that one person who doesn't realize there is a difference between reality and fantasy or just takes their fantasy a little too seriously.

Last week I talked about the documentary Naughty Books on self-published authors who wrote...naughty books.  One important point is there is a big difference in what women read versus what women want in real life.  

In a lot of romance and erotica books, the man and woman probably don't get along at first.  In books like Fifty Shades of Grey, the man demeans the woman physically and emotionally in a variety of ways.  It can include things like handcuffing her and spanking her and so on.  Some books take this to extremes where the man actually rapes the woman...but she secretly likes it or it's OK in the end because they decide they love each other.

But for the most part, women do not actually want this to happen to them in real life.  That's why in personal ads you're always seeing women saying they want a nice guy with a sense of humor, not an asshole to treat them like shit.  If you are a handsome billionaire with six-pack abs a woman probably will let you treat her like crap for a little while, but it's unlikely you'll be riding off into the sunset Happily Ever After.  (Certain women will marry an old, fat disgusting pig because he has money and stick around for the good of his political career.)

I do not want to side with rapists or assholes in general, but you can see where this could be a problem for guys to understand.  If they see Fifty Shades is so hot with women or just other books, movies, TV shows that have a guy being a dick and eventually getting the girl, they might come to the conclusion that this is what women want in real life when it's not.  They might think even when a woman is saying no, she's secretly loving it because that's how it is in books, movies, and TV, right?

When you think about it, the root of almost all of our fantasies is a desire for power or control.  Even in these books aimed at women there's that fantasy of being able to control the narrative, so that no matter how ugly what the guy does is, in the end they live Happily Ever After.  It's not really much different than fantasizing about being on the Enterprise or Millennium Falcon or having superpowers or maybe just imagining how an encounter with some jerk could have gone differently.  In the end we imagine these things because we want control of the situation.  Now more than ever there is so much that's out of our control.

While it would be nice if women had healthier fantasies, that isn't likely to happen.  It's up to guys to realize that what they see and read and such isn't any more real than Superman or GTA.

Infectious & Other Comics

 A few months ago my Blogger buddy Arion had a Kickstarter to launch a comic called Infectious.  It's 4 short tales about superheroes in the pandemic.  I contributed to the Kickstarter to help out a little bit.  Unlike Arion's other comics I got this one in print then--and got my name in the thanks on the back.  I'm finally getting in the comics! lol

So anyway, the first tale is about a former superhero who slowly gives up his powers for legal liability reasons until he has none left.  This brings to mind Watchmen where Dr. Manhattan was accused of causing cancer in people around him.  It's also a problem heroes like Superman have faced because he's so powerful.

Another story is about a Batman-type who really doesn't have much to do during the pandemic.  There's another problem that hits close to home.

Another story is about a Wonder Woman type who's trying to get a potential cure from a former bad guy.  (I'm not sure I really understood this one fully.)

The last one is about some sidekicks violating the lockdown for a party.

I'm sure a big inspiration for this was the Common Grounds comics I talked about in January as these stories are smaller stories not really big slugfests and stuff.  It definitely gives you something to think about.  

With the Kickstarter over you should be able to get it soon for regular price.

Annuals:

DC had a big sale on Annuals, which are extra issues that are released once a year, usually with a separate story or something just inspired by whatever the big story of the year was.  I bought a few that looked interesting.

Green Lantern Elseworlds

This one looked cool, but really turned out disappointing.  The idea was that old idea of if the Nazis had won WWII, only in this case because of Himmler summoning a demon that gave him a magic ring with the power to turn the tide of the war.  In the present, Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner are Nazis while John Stewart is part of an underground movement called the Green Lanterns that was led by Oliver Queen. (Why Green Lanterns?  I don't really know.)  Hal and John are both going out with Carol Ferris, the latter on the sly.

It could have been a really good story, but it got bogged down in weird details about the rings and how they worked.  Really to me it should have been simple where John is working in a slave camp or farm or something and Abin Sur crashes and he becomes Green Lantern and has to stop the Nazis.  But it doesn't work that way and instead is overcomplicated and unsatisfying. (2/5)

Justice League Elseworlds

This was a little better story where the Justice League of America is killed by the wizard named Faust.  A hundred years later, rebels create a new Justice League to fight back, most of them descendants of someone related to the original hero like a great-granddaughter of Steve Trevor is Wonder Woman and a descendant of Harvey Dent is Batman, and so on.  Weirdly the only one who isn't revived is Green Lantern; shouldn't the ring have already picked someone else?  One of them is a traitor planted by Faust as a mole.  And it turns out that Martian Manhunter is alive; I knew which character he was pretty early.  

I think this was a simpler story and actually short enough that there was a secondary story where Starro tries to recruit an Injustice League of dudes whose names end with 'O" like Bizzarro, Sinestro, and so on.  But infighting derails them before they can ever be a threat. (3/5)

Batman Annual 1989

This had an interesting cover with Batman fighting the KKK akin to Superman Smashes the Klan.  He doesn't really fight the KKK directly.  I guess that would have been too obvious.  This story written by Mark Waid is mostly a flashback to when Bruce Wayne is 17.  He's working with an old detective in the South under the name "Frank Dixon," aka the author of the Hardy Boys books.  People start dying in a small town and eventually the trail leads to the son of an old racist guy who had his own KKK-type group.

A confusing thing was because this was an old comic.  One character is supposed to be mixed-race but the problem is sometimes he looks really white and a couple times his skin tone is colored a lot darker.  Maybe if this were a newer comic and not an old one that's probably been scanned into Comixology it would be more consistent and less confusing because that is a pretty big plot point.

Batman doesn't really show up except as a framing device to haunt a bad guy.  Overall it was still a decent story even if some stuff didn't quite work as well as it could. (3.5/5)

Batman/Detective Comics Annuals 2009

This was a two-part story I got because it features Azrael, the Michael Lane version that looks sort of like the Assassin's Creed guy.  This was from the brief period when Dick Grayson was Batman and Damian Wayne was Robin.  When a priest is murdered and a rich kid is threatened, the trail leads to a weird religious group, which is what draws the new Azrael in.  Renee Montoya as the Question also helps Batman to stop the bad guys.  

It was a decent story, a good reminder of what was before of course it all had to be rebooted with the New 52. (3.5/5)

Other Stuff:

Loki, Agent of Asgard, Vol 1:  I don't know if this was on Amazon Prime Reading because of the Loki TV show and I just missed it or not, but I finally downloaded it to read on a slow day.  It's from 2013 or so, shortly after the Avengers movie.  This is the first volume featuring a new, younger Loki more in line with the MCU one.  Instead of Odin, three women are running Asgard when this takes place and they assign Loki to do stuff and for each task he completes, they'll wipe something off his permanent record.

This was written by Al Ewing, whose run on Immortal Hulk the last few years made him an author I like and so it's not a surprise that this is pretty good.  Ewing's Loki has a lot of the same swagger and banter of the Tom Hiddleston character while at the same time it works in a lot of the character and Asgardian mythology.  There's a big twist at the end of this volume.  I'd read the other two volumes in the series, though I think the second one probably got derailed a bit by Marvel's big events.

Like Tom King at DC, I think Ewing is a good writer who's underappreciated by most of the "fans" who just want big slugfests.  Definitely someone I want to read more of. (4/5)

Speaking of Immortal Hulk...

Immortal Hulk, Vol 8:  I had a coupon to use on Google Play and this was pretty much the only fairly cheap comic they had that I would want.  This volume continues the story as "the Leader" basically kidnaps Banner from his own mind, leaving some of Bruce's lesser personalities in charge.  It was an OK volume but it's the kind where on its own it's not that interesting.  It's mostly just moving the pieces on the chessboard to help set things up for the future. But like with Grant Morrison's Batman RIP 13-14 years ago, what's really great is how Ewing weaves together all these different versions of the Hulk and other characters and stories from previous decades into something coherent.  (3/5)

Justice League by Scott Snyder, Vol 1:  I hated Snyder's Dark Nights Metal, which was the lead-in for this.  It's just a bunch of pseudo-intellectual blather about "the Totality" and "Source Wall" and opposing forces like a "Still Force" to oppose the Flash's Speed Force or the range of unseen emotions to oppose the various Lanterns.  Just so tedious to try to get through it.  At least I got it free from Amazon Prime Reading. (1/5)

Justice League Odyssey, Vol 1:  I only read this because it features Rebirth's Azrael, who is a little different from the 90s version.  Why a former assassin like Azrael is part of this adventure out in deep space is a little strained.  Basically some group of planets are worshipping him, Cyborg, and Starfire for...reasons.  And Darkseid has brought them out there to find out what's going on.  And there's probably something in it for Darkseid.  This is written by Josh Williamson, not Scott Snyder, so it's a little less stupid.  Maybe at some point I'd read more. (2.5/5)

The Book of Boba Fett is Not the Show Fett Fans Wanted

Though it's probably not true, I got to thinking early on in The Book of Boba Fett that all along Jon Favreau really wanted to make a Boba Fett show and The Mandalorian was just his placeholder.  I imagine him meeting with Kathleen Kennedy and Disney execs in 2017 or 2018 and saying he wanted to bring Boba Fett back from the dead but they weren't sold on that idea because they still had hopes of making a movie.  So then he pitched a show about a guy who's pretty much the exact same, except alive and not a clone.  And they agreed--as long as he also agreed to do their "live action" Lion King movie.  

But then once The Mandalorian became a hit and Grogu merchandise was flying off the shelves, and Solo was a dud and the sequel trilogy was in ruins, they went back to Favreau and said, "Hey, remember when you wanted to do a Boba Fett show?  Why don't you do that?"  And so he finally got what he wanted.  And it's what a lot of fans thought they wanted for a long time.  Boba Fett is back from the dead!

And yet, this show doesn't really follow through on the promise of what people had long hoped for.  Instead of Boba roaring around the galaxy in his ship and blasting dudes with his flamethrower and rocket launcher, we get a sad old man with a dad bod lying around in a bacta tank in Jabba's old palace.  

It's not until the fourth episode until we learn why Boba killed Bib Fortuna and took Jabba's throne.  Basically he was sick of taking orders from idiots.  But if he has enough credits that he can fight a war for the throne, why not just go to wherever Space Boca Raton is and retire?  

Along with Boba's attempts to become the Godfather of Tatooine, we're treated to his flashbacks to when he was rescued by some Tuskens.  It's basically a replay of Avatar, Dances With Wolves, and so on as first he's a prisoner and then he gains their trust and then he starts adopting their ways.  Shouldn't cancel culture be calling them out for the whole appropriation thing?  And for invoking the "noble savage" thing yet again?

One of my problems with the show is that other than Fennec Shand, the supporting characters are kind of lame.  He keeps a couple of Jabba's green pig guys and then recruits a gang of teenage cyborgs who ride on colorful Vespa-looking speeders.  Ugh.  Kind of wonder if Kennedy and Disney didn't come up with the latter so it wouldn't get too dark and there would be more toys to market.

I groaned in the fourth episode when Boba and Fennec sneak into Jabba's palace and Boba comically chases around a small rat catching droid like a fucking Looney Tunes cartoon.  That's some Episode I shit, like having Darth Vader as an annoying little kid--or Episode II with Boba Fett as an annoying little kid. 

At the end of the fourth episode there was a musical sting to foreshadow the Mandalorian and the fifth episode is called "The Return of the The Mandalorian."  It was basically a backdoor season 3 premiere as it focuses almost entirely on Mando trying to get back in his old order but getting kicked out when he admits he took off his helmet.  He goes to Tatooine to get a new ship, which turns out to be an old Naboo fighter (Wizard!) which made no sense to me as there's no cargo space for bounties or anything.  Fennec meets him at the end to hire him, but he wants to go visit Grogu first...so he's not going to help them right away?  We don't even see Boba in this episode except for the recap.  WTF?  I mean it was nice knowing what Mando was up to but you could have saved that for his show and just kicked off with Fennec finding him on Tatooine to recruit him.

I assumed the sixth episode would get back to the main story and it does--a little.  But the first half continues season 3 of The Mandadorian as Mando goes to whatever planet to find Grogu.  There's a ton of fan service then:  R2D2!  Grogu!  Ahsoka Tano!  And deepfake Luke Skywalker!  That's great and all but it doesn't really have a lot to do with what's supposed to be Boba Fett's story.  Boba is at least seen in this episode during a war council, though he doesn't have any lines.  Besides that, the parts relating to this show and not that other one with a Mandalorian is the Pykes are trying to move spice through Cobb Vanth's turf--him being the guy who had Boba's armor last season of The Mandalorian.  As a bit more fan service, bounty hunter Cad Bane from The Clone Wars shows up to gun down the marshal.  So now the marshal's town will come to Boba's side.  Maybe then something is finally coming together.

Like I said on Facebook, when they give you the toy box that is the Star Wars universe, there's that temptation to want to play with all the toys.  While that might be fun, it doesn't really make for the best stories.  The fifth and sixth episodes really neglect the main character--and largely the main point--of the show.  It does placate those infantile viewers who just want to see references and don't really care if there's an actual story to go with them--like most No Way Home viewers.  (Those who didn't watch because they think Tom Holland is cute.)

The final episode almost makes up for the previous two episodes as it finally gets down to brass tacks with the war between the Pykes and their allies and Boba and his allies.  First the other underworld leaders of Tatooine turn on Boba and then Cad Bane shows up to taunt Boba.  Boba and the Mandalorian hold off the Pykes for a while until the rest of his people--except the green pig guys--show up.  And of course the people of Freetown show up to avenge the marshal.  

That's still not enough when the Pykes bring in "Scorponeks" or larger versions of those shielded Destroyer droids from the prequels.  With the shields and heavy firepower, Boba and his crew have to go on the run.  Boba returns to the palace, which I thought was for his ship while the Mandalorian finds Grogu, who was sent back to Tatooine by Luke's X-Wing, though I guess they didn't have the budget for deepfake Luke in this one because R2 flew the ship by himself.  Which is too bad because if Luke had been there, he and Boba could have buried the hatchet over the whole thing with Han and Jabba.  Maybe if there's another season they can deepfake Harrison Ford to do that.

When they brought in the rancor a few episodes earlier and Boba said he wanted to ride it, I thought to myself a few times, "He had better be riding that rancor by the end!"  I mean it's a twist on that old Chekov thing that if you show a gun in act one you have to use it in act three.  In this case if you're going to say you want to ride a rancor in act one (or maybe two), you had better fucking do it in act three.  

So I was happy when the rancor comes stomping in like a kaiju with Boba Fett on its back.  What's funny is to think that Luke killed the first rancor with a metal door, but this one takes several heavy laser blasts in the chest and is able to go on rampaging.  The rancor weakens the shields of the first Scorponek enough that Mando can kill it with the darksaber and then the second one it just goes into full berserker mode and takes apart.

The problem then is there's a rampaging rancor on the loose.  It nearly eats Mando until Grogu comes out of hiding to use the Force to calm it down.

As epic as that was, the best part was probably the confrontation between Boba and Cad Bane.  I don't remember all the details, but they crossed paths in The Clone Wars when Boba was still a boy.  They have a Western showdown that Cad is winning until Boba gets out his Tusken stick and takes him down.  (Because if you show your character making a Tusken stick and learning to use it in act one, he had better use it to kill the bad guy in act three.  This is just Screenwriting 101.)

Meanwhile, Fennec Shand has gone to Mos Eisley, where she assassinates the Pykes and their allies.  That makes sure the Pykes don't regroup to come after Boba again.

The show ends with Boba being greeted and given a melon by his constituents as he finally has control of Mos Espa.  Hooray?  Mando flies off with Grogu to parts unknown.  And in the cookie scene, apparently Cobb Vanth is being revived with bacta and cyborg parts by the guy who fixed Fennec when she was injured.  Did the Freetown people put the marshal on ice or something?  I mean it's been a while since Cad Bane shot him, wasn't it?  Whatever.

I was thinking later that the problem with all this fan service is that it kind of weakens the story to have the people of Freetown save Mos Espa from the Pykes.  Wouldn't it have made more sense for Boba to appeal to the people of Mos Espa and for them to join him to save their homes from the drug dealers?  But then we wouldn't have need Mando to go visit Cobb Vanth and that whole thing, right?

Anyway, the whole point really seems to be to "redeem" Boba and make him an anti-hero instead of a bad guy.  But sometimes people like rooting for the bad guy--like they literally did with Boba for 40 years.  In the documentary on Disney+ Under the Helmet, it talks about how people went nuts for Boba after only an appearance in a parade, a brief spot on the horrible "Holiday Special," and like 3 lines in Empire Strikes Back.  It turned out that less was more in his case, because people were intrigued by the mystery.  By contrast, I think in this case the more they use him and try to develop him as a character, the less mysterious and awesome he is.

In the end, this is like Better Call Saul where they took a fun character people liked and ruined it by trying to make him well-rounded.  In the end they just made him sad and lame.  Sometimes you just need to let a bad guy be a bad guy.

Fun Facts:  Besides characters from The Mandalorian, the series also introduced a live action version of the ex-gladiator Wookie from the Darth Vader/Dr. Aphra comics.  As I said on Facebook, that makes my idea of a Dr. Aphra live action series a lot more plausible.  Probably because Robert Rodriguez was a producer/director of the show, Danny Trejo (Machete) appears as a Rancor trainer.  Veteran character actor Stephen Root (Office Space, King of the Hill, Man in the High Castle) appears as an official in Mos Espa.  The servant droid in Jabba's old palace is voiced by Matt Berry, who I recognized as the second boss on The IT Crowd.

Naughty Books Shows the Ups & Downs of Self-Publishing

One my naughty books

 As someone who writes naughty books, I was of course interested when I saw the documentary Naughty Books on Hulu.  (It is also on Amazon Prime, YouTube TV, and free on Tubi according to Google.)  As I said on Facebook, even if you aren't into writing or reading naughty books, it's still an interesting look at self-publishing because this focuses mostly on three self-published authors.

After 50 Shades of Grey, there was suddenly a lot of interest in erotic literature.  Big Publishing was mostly caught flat-footed so this being the early 2010s, there was an opening for self-publishers to fill the void.  And they did!  And some had a lot of success and even crossed over into the mainstream.

One author who started out in Washington state was the most successful of the three main authors profiled in the documentary.  After making quite a bit publishing an erotica series on her own, she got a contract with Pocket Books (part of Simon & Schuster) and had some mainstream success and even achieved her dream of signing at an event with traditional romance author Nora Roberts.

But there was initially a cost in that her boyfriend or husband or whatever at the time became really jealous of her success.  He started demeaning her in public and so she left him and moved to Montana, which then became the setting of her mainstream series.  Eventually she found someone else to marry and maybe she's still married; this was from 2020 so who knows if they got Covid or burned up in a wildfire or had a meteor fall on them.

Another author in South Dakota, CJ Something, had a few successful books.  The problem then became in coming up with more material.  It didn't help that her husband became a whiny baby sitting around the house or whatever all day.  Eventually she quit writing.  The movie is kind of vague about what happened with her husband.  It says they "still raise their kids together."  Does that mean they're still married or just that they're both involved in raising the kids but living separate?

A third author in Ohio is probably the one I could most relate to.  She had some success early on with erotica under a pseudonym, but then her sales started dwindling.  Tastes were apparently changing and getting darker, but she wasn't really interested in writing that.  She gave it the ol' college try only for Amazon to reject the book--something I know all too well.  So she gave up on erotica and continued writing YA and some mysteries under her own name.  It doesn't say, but I assume she's not making nearly as much money.

What you see is that you can be accidentally successful in self-publishing.  None of these women really set out to make it big; they pretty much just did it for fun.  But they wound up with hit books because they were in the right place at the right time.

And then the biggest problem is maintaining that success.  I don't think any of these women had any formal training or really had done much writing in their earlier years, so when they had to suddenly start pumping out new material, it was pretty difficult.  And unlike me they actually had families and social lives.  For most authors, especially in self-publishing, to maintain your brand you have to keep a flow of material going.  You can't be George RR Martin and put out one book every 20 years and expect to keep making sales.

A problem these authors faced--and I've faced too--is that they got in early with their books, but as they tried writing more, there was increased competition.  I think I was somewhat early into the gender swap market and that helped early sales, but there has been increased competition.  And for books like these, people don't really care about quality; they just want their fix.  They don't really care who gives it to them.  Which is again why you need a steady flow of material.

The movie also shows that traditional publishing can be a blessing, but it's not going to magically solve your problems.  The one who got a contract with Pocket had a book get into the top 100 on Amazon, but she had to do a lot of hustling and promotion to make that happen--and I doubt Pocket was very helpful with any of that.  The movie says something we indie bloggers have said for a while:  traditional publishing is good in that it gets your book into stores, but there are benefits to self-publishing like having control over prices and timing your releases and such.  It's unlikely the author's book would have made the top 100 if she had self-published it, but it probably would have still been more successful than most self-published books because she already had a brand and some social media presence.

I hoped this would have some tips that might help me improve my books.  They have some somewhat known actresses like Aisha Tyler and Allison Tolman read excerpts and...they're not really that good.  The writing isn't really any better than what you see in critique groups most of the time.  It's better than "Peterotica" on Family Guy, but not really anything memorable.  This is something else that people like me have said before:  the actual writing doesn't matter nearly as much as the story itself.  It didn't matter that the writing for these was not great; it mattered that they had the right subject at the right time.  As I've seen even with really poorly-written books of mine like First Contact, the average person doesn't give a shit about all those "rules" for "good" writing that you'll read about in how-to books or get told in critique groups.  They just want an entertaining story.  And if you're successful enough, you might even get Big Publishing knocking on your door despite they would never have accepted your story in a million years otherwise--the same for literary agents.

One thing this told me specifically is why my books can't really cross over into the mainstream.  First, I'm a guy and apparently guys aren't supposed to do this.  I mean other than spouses or siblings, there were no men in this movie.  It makes me think I should have used a female or gender-neutral pseudonym.  Second is the reason these books were successful is what women want is a story where a guy is a total asshole to them, but it's OK because he really loves her.  Or comes to love her.

The power dynamic thing is a problem for my books because in a gender swap story, the man is turned into a woman, reversing that power dynamic.  Even if there is another man, it would still be more of a man-man dynamic than a man-woman dynamic.  And apparently women aren't really into the woman being in charge.  (Which also helps explain why Trump won the white female vote in 2016 and probably 2020 too.)  I don't think I could make that work for the gender swap thing because as I said even if the guy turns into a woman who's treated like crap by a man, it's not a "real" woman and so I don't think it would really appeal as much.

Anyway, I enjoyed watching this documentary because it's one of the first I've seen to really take self-publishing seriously.  Some of the authors even talk about how self-publishing was seen as "vanity publishing" and such until ebooks came along and people started making a lot of money at it.  The funniest line, though, was when one of the authors said she decided she could be a writer because she read Twilight and if Stephanie Meyer could do it, so could she.  I mean, she's not wrong.

If you have any of the streaming services I listed above, check it out and draw your own conclusions.

(BTW, something else funny to me is one of the authors got 5 musical notes tattooed on her arm because she published 5 books.  If I did that, by now my body would pretty much be entirely black with ink.)

Star Trek Prodigy Needs Time to Gel...But It Probably Won't Get It

 Paramount+ has this scheme now where they're keeping one Star Trek series showing new episodes at all times to keep fans from doing what people like me have suggested and just sign up, stream all the episodes, and then quit.  It's kind of like one of those people who spins a bunch of plates and runs around keeping them spinning.  

To make this work, they needed more than just Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds wasn't ready yet.  And most of those shows appealed more to older fans, even the animated Lower Decks.  How do we lure in younger viewers?

That's where Star Trek:  Prodigy comes in.  Unlike the other shows it's branded with Nickelodeon for the kids.  And all the main characters except a hologram of Kathryn Janeway are children or child-like.  This group of immature aliens find a prototype Federation ship called the Protostar and manage to escape a mining slave camp.  Then while they're trying to avoid the slave camp masters, they learn how to run the ship and do Starfleet stuff.

The obvious point of comparison is Star Wars: Rebels that aired on Disney XD and was similarly computer animated and aimed somewhat at younger viewers.  And a lot of us, once we actually watched it, really liked Rebels and thought it was a worthy successor to The Clone Wars, which itself was computer animated and originally shown on Cartoon Network.  But really neither of those shows knocked it out of the park right away; they needed a season or two to really come together.  Prodigy really needs that time to gel, but I don't think it will get it.

Someone (probably my brother) shared Paramount's announcement about their Star Trek shows and it was noticeable that while all the other shows already had been renewed for another season beyond what was airing--even Strange New Worlds, I think--Prodigy had not.  To this point they've only aired 10 episodes and the announcement basically said, "We'll air the rest at some point."  Not a good sign.

And really this schedule is part of the problem for a show like this.  They basically showed 4 episodes (the first "two" were aired together), then took off for like 6 weeks to let Discovery air new episodes, and then came back to air 5 more.  If you want younger viewers, they don't typically have great attention spans.  They're not just going to wait around six weeks or six months for new episodes; most of them will just move on to something else.  The spinning plate schedule might be a good idea to keep older fans addicted to the service, but I don't think it's helping them in Prodigy's case.

The episodes themselves don't always help either.  Rebels and Clone Wars had it a little easier because they involved a war.  The Rebels are fighting the Empire and the Republic is fighting the Trade Federation.  But for Prodigy it's hard making a Star Trek show really kid-friendly.  I'm not sure how much kids really get or enjoy episodes about the crew trying to make first contact or explore a weird alien planet.  The eighth episode involves everyone getting split up and time running differently for each of them.  That's a hard concept for adults to grasp let alone kids.  Even the opening theme song and credits with its sort of drab Voyager-esque style doesn't really seem like it would be appealing to younger viewers.

It doesn't always even work for me as an older fan.  The episode "First Con-Tact" it was funny that Dal's adopted mom is a Ferengi, but it didn't make any sense from a continuity perspective.  Dal was supposed to be from the Delta Quadrant, so how did she get there?  The only Ferengi in the Delta Quadrant were two who got stuck there in an episode of TNG, both males.  Add to that the Protostar had used its protostar drive to go from the Delta to Gamma Quadrants, so how could his Ferengi "mom" be there ahead of them?  It's a plot hole the size of the Bajoran wormhole!  (Tony Laplume thought so too.)

I also agree with Laplume that it's taking too long for Dal to go from the bragging con artist to a hero.  Other characters we don't really know enough about yet.  That's why this really needs more time so the writers can maybe get things together.  Getting past the "Diviner" (who ran the mining slave camp) and coming up with a new goal of finding the Federation should probably help.

At the moment it doesn't seem like Paramount is going to give them the time for that to happen.  It's too bad, but not all that unusual for Star Trek, is it?

BTW, it was nice at the end of the tenth episode it finally explained what the title "Prodigy" is supposed to mean because it was bugging me that "Prodigy" is singular, so to whom does it refer?  From what Hologram Janeway says at the end, each of the characters is a prodigy at...something.  I guess.

Spielberg Would Have Gotten Away With It Too Except for Those Meddling Kids

 I'm kind of circling back to my post published last Friday about old directors needing to either contemporize or just quit instead of whining.

Christmas weekend, you had Spider-Man No Way Home in its second week of release.  You had Spielbergo's West Side Story musical.  And you had the Matrix sequel/reboot thing.  Guess which movie won the weekend?  [Cue Jeopardy music...]

If you said Spider-Man crushed the other movies, you would be correct.  Of course critics loved West Side Story, but most of them are older and snobbier, not really the audience that makes money.  That weekend answered something I had been wondering:  would young people want to go watch a musical about the 50s?  I'm pretty confident the answer to that was no.  I don't think that In the Heights musical set in the 90s did great either, so maybe just cool it with retro musicals set in New York City.  

I wouldn't be surprised if Spielberg joins those other old directors whining about those kids today, but let's think about this rationally.  Teenagers today were born between 2002-2009, so they've pretty much grown up with superhero movies being the thing from the original Spider-Man trilogy to the MCU.  When I was growing up some of the first movies I saw were the original Star Wars trilogy and the Star Trek movies, along with Spielberg's ET.  So naturally those were the movies I loved--except ET, of which I was never really a fan.  

So when you think about it, those pesky kids today have probably not even seen most of Spielberg's movies, just like when I was a kid I didn't watch The Godfather or Taxi Driver or Alien.  My parents wouldn't have let me for one and for another I probably would have found the former two boring and the latter scary.

The failure of the Matrix isn't surprising either because again the teens of today were not born or barely born when the two crappy sequels came out.  To them Keanu Reeves is John Wick, not Neo.  "Bullet Time" was a long-established thing, not revolutionary like for those of us in our 20s in 1999.  There's no reason they should want to go watch Generation X crap any more than Boomer crap.

Meanwhile, older audiences, probably in part because of Covid and in part because of the hassle of going to the theater in general, continue to largely stay away.  I haven't been to a movie in the theater in over two years now.  I can't say I really miss it.

Like old directors, producers and studio execs and financial backers need to start waking up to reality.  The game has changed.  Stuff that still made money in theaters in the old days of 10-20 years ago isn't making money in theaters today.  If you're going to green light a more "adult" movie then you need to keep the budget down because most of the money is probably going to come from rentals and streaming.  It'll be hard for West Side Story to make back the over $100 million budget, though rentals, streaming, and maybe a bump from awards buzz will probably help.

As far as relating to writing, you need to know your audience, and I always advise in keeping the costs down.  Don't spend thousands on covers, editing, and marketing if you can't afford to lose it.  Which you probably can't because you're not a movie studio.

The March of Time...All Over Your Back

 A couple of months ago I saw on Facebook John Irving's announcement that he's writing his last "long novel," though he plans to write some shorter fiction.  This is the pattern followed by another of my favorite authors, Lawrence Block, who a few years ago stopped writing full-length novels and did short stories.  Now he mostly just edits compilations of stories.  Another of my most-read authors the last few years, Donald Westlake, has been dead for 14 years.  Last year James SA Corey released the last book in The Expanse series though there's one final novella coming out soon.

I guess if I'm not already dead and manage to live longer, I'll have to find new authors to read because a lot of the ones I have read are no longer going to have new material.  It's sad but it's also pretty obvious:  nothing lasts forever.  I suppose even Eric Filler will eventually stop pumping out stories.

You have to wonder how much longer guys like Stephen King, James Patterson, or John Grisham will hang around.  I mean they're all probably in their 70s by now.  Writing, like acting or other creative endeavors, can take a lot of effort.  As you get older, the day-to-day grind gets harder and harder--even for me!  I think when I did the math, in 2010 I wrote around 1 million words between all the various stories I wrote that year.  Now a days, I put out more books but they're shorter, many around the 15,000-20,000 word mark.  I might do about 20 of those, so that's only about 400,000 words, or 40% of what I did in 2010.

When I wrote Where You Belong, the rough draft of the second draft was about 180,000 words.  I wrote it in about 3 months by working hours after work in libraries and coffee shops and Saturdays I'd do a marathon writing session of 8-10 hours (with breaks for lunch and dinner) that sometimes would total about 12,000 words a day!  But now I write maybe half that on Saturdays and the rest of the week not much at all.

Some of it is motivation.  I was really intent on writing that book, so I was willing to do the work.  But some of it is just getting older and not really being able to be hunched over a computer that long.  Or not being able to live on ham sandwiches, potato chips, and cookies four days a week.

That's just the sad reality of it.  It seemed like an appropriate meditation for Insecure Writing Support Group day and Groundhog Day.  For a lot of us there's really no longer any hope of an early spring.  Just an endless winter until the grave.

How's that for insecure?