It’s the end of the year as we know it, and I feel fine.

Really. I’ve been resting and relaxing since December 21st and not doing much. Recharging. It’s a real privilege to have eleven days in a row off with pay and I’m enjoying it.

How about you? 

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ORGAN OF RECORD: MASQUE

This is an update I wish I wasn’t typing but at the same time I am pleased about it. It shows progress as a writer.

I’ve had to scrap the current draft because I finally twigged that the middle of the plot was so mushy that I had lost the purpose of the book in the first place. Even though I’d attempted to stick to my plot, I was adding layers that were just muddying up an already soupy mess of a story. So, feeling recharged, I began reading the last time I’d summarized the plot, chapter by chapter, and realized how far from that I’d moved. So I began remapping the plot through the arc of each character.

Now I’m seeing what needs to happen and when so much more clearly. Scenes aren’t necessarily changing, but the focus will, and the goal of each scene is better defined, leading to chapters that are now coherent.

This happened because I’ve been distracted with work and life stuff. When I was writing, I was just writing, not paying attention to the stuff I mentioned above. I was just pumping out words. Even when I slowed down, I was still just typing away, hacking at the thick underbrush of a story that had problems from day one.

So it’s frustrating that I have to start over again, the sixth time, but as I’ve been reconstructing and restructuring the plot I’ve found myself enjoying the process again. That’s something I’d lost sometime here in 2024. I can’t promise when Masque will drop, but I’m very confident it will be sometime in the middle of 2025. 

Dear Readers, I apologize for this inconvenience. I’m really trying to make this the best it can be because I want you to see what I see in my head. Not exactly, but something very close because it’s a beautiful vision of a man coming to terms with his abilities and shortcomings as he fights for a home he’s never been to but feels connected with. 

I don’t know who made this, but thank you. I will credit them if I find out.SOCIAL MEDIA ONE

I’ve left a couple of groups on social media platforms of late because they were no longer providing the content I’d signed up for. One was writing-related and the other was science and both started posting memes that were only designed for engagement. I don’t know if the admins have abandoned the groups or if they were taken over or what, but they weren’t for me any more.

Leaving was as simple as going to the group’s page and clicking “Leave Group” with no need for a mic drop or any ‘see ya later’ drama. If a group is that far gone none of it matters anyway and what’s important is that I no longer have to see the crap that irked me.

Easy.

THE WORLD’S FIRST SUPERHERO

Doc Savage debuted in Doc Savage Magazine #1 (cover dated March 1933), a full five years before Superman in Action Comics #1 (cover dated June 1938) thanks to the talents of Lester Dent (writing under Street & Smith’s house name Kenneth Robeson). So it’s not a stretch that the Man of Bronze (the title of that first story) should own the title of World’s First Superhero. At least for the purposes of my writing about him here.

Doc and his crew were part of my formative years during the heyday of Bantam’s republishing of their adventures in slim paperbacks for 50 cents to $1.75 over the years with covers by James Bama, Boris Vallejo, and later Bob Layton. At least, those are the ones in my collection. Of the original 182 supersagas (published from ‘33 to 1949, an amazing run!) I own 66 of the stories across 54 volumes from Bantam, plus a smattering of reprints from Nostalgia Ventures and 5 of the 6 tales bound in hardcover from Golden Press. (I’m on the hunt for a copy of Man of Bronze in that format to make that run complete.) Those covers were by Ben Otero and the books retailed for – get this – $1.75. 

I watched the George Pal movie as many times as I could catch it on one of the UHF channels of my youth, and cheered when I heard Arnold Schwarzenegger was considering playing Doc around the time of True Lies. He would have been >perfect< at the time but alas, he had political aspirations that won out.

Anyway, I collected these books as much as I could as a kid and through the years, savoring every adventure, sometimes cringing at things that shouldn’t have been written and sometimes aghast at the quality of storytelling that came from the high-pressure pulp system during the Great Depression. They remain some of my favorite books despite their problems.

So when I stumbled across a trove of these recently, my inner child cackled with glee and started picking out the ones whose titles had always fascinated him/me. I’m happy to have significantly expanded my collection, but happy that of the thirty or more I left behind, they’ll have homes before too long. Finding these out in the wild any more is a rarity.

Two of these are duplicates of books I already had, but they upgrades in quality. HEX is one I’ve never encountered in the wild before. Curious to read it.SOCIAL MEDIA TWO

Over on Threads, I had a couple of posts get some more attention than I’m used to. Likes, views, reposts, comments, it’s all a bit beyond me normally but it’s exciting see those numbers ramp up. Of course what also comes along with that are the folks with differing opinions who assert those opinions in interesting ways. I see it, like you do, all the time. They fail to read the original post closely and dump their thought without any care for the original post. 

I’m not describing anything that you all don’t already know but it’s a new experience to me. I’ve decided that the best way to deal with those who want to display their preferences as absolutes is to let them until they turn nasty. Look, you like what you like and I like what I like. Both things can be true and we don’t have to have an argument about it.

Really, we don’t.

BOOKS I ENJOYED THIS YEAR

Below is a quick list of the books that affected me the most this year. 

JAMES by Percival Everett was the best book I read in 2024. It’s a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the slave Jim. That perspective is remarkable enough that it’s a whole new story which echoes the present day in a sometimes terrifying way. You don’t have to be familiar with the original to appreciate what happens. I can’t recommend this book enough.

The Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II is one of those figures I’ve found credible and fascinating as long as I’ve been aware of him and his book WHITE POVERTY is a cogent explanation of where America is as a nation. I read this months after Everett’s book but they are worthy companions. The author’s insights into how people think are not necessarily revelatory, but framed in this context are inspirational, offering an approach to beginning to solve the problem of poverty for all.

I watched N.K. Jemisin’s Masterclass when I had that service and the second book in The Great Cities duology, THE WORLD WE MAKE, was fun, scary, engrossing, and touches on cosmic horror in juxtaposition to human connection. Everything she covered in her class is on full display in this novel, making it valuable not just as entertainment, but as the result of sharing process. Terrific fun.

There’s so much packed into R.F. Kuang’s Nebula and Locus Award-winning ‘arcane history’ BABEL that it’s best for me to say that this book’s world is so rich, so well defined that it’s difficult to believe it’s not real. Reading this then watching SAY NOTHING brings into sharp relief the ways of thinking that lead to violence that can change the world. I’m not advocating blowing stuff up, but understanding why someone can come to that conclusion is much clearer afterwards.

These four books weren’t the only ones I read this year, but the ones that definitely stuck with me after. Notably, I was pleased to read all three of Claudia Gray’s MR. DARCY & MISS TILNEY books and I’m looking forward to the 4th in 2025. I read Nnedi Okorafor and Michael Moorcock and a book on leadership that all affected me in different ways. I’m reading the new Haruki Murakami (savoring it, really) and I’m anxious to have Okorafor’s DEATH OF THE AUTHOR in hand next month.

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AT CAPACITY

It’s worth noting here that President Jimmy Carter’s passing was announced today. He was 100 years old. Regardless of your politics it’s unquestionable that he lived his faith in full view of us. He set an example of how to be good and do good that we, as a society, would do well to emulate as well as we possibly can. He helped people he didn’t know and expected nothing in return for doing so.

I’ll be thinking about that a lot as I head into the New Year. How can I make a tiny difference every day to just one person? And what might the ripples of that be? How many others could be affected because I held a door open for someone? Or because I took a shopping cart back to the corral? What happens when I buy books from my local bookstores instead of through the juggernaut on the Internet? 

I have a feeling these kinds of things will matter a great deal in the short term. But I’m also interested to see what happens if a bunch of us make a more concerted effort to be kind and engage in our local economies? 

Could be nothing. But it could be MASSIVE.

Wishing everyone in my orbit happy holidays, a bright future, and all the merriment you can stand. Let peace for all to be who they are, to love who they love, and to live their best lives be our objective in the coming year. 

See you when I see you.