The other thing is to give them a reason to keep coming back. It can’t just be promotion. The internet is full of authors promoting things. And yes, that’s a necessary part of what we do — but it can’t be all that we do. Nobody wants to sign up just to be spammed.

I wouldn’t be a member of SFWA if you paid me to be (an organization who’s history is even more checkered than HWA) but I do have friends in the science-fiction and fantasy fields, and they tell me of new writers who’ve never read Tolkien, but simply watched the Peter Jackson films,

…it’s not the flu. It’s just an asshole of a cold.

…at which point my back began yelling at me, and my chest tightened, and my body said, “Enough. If you don’t sit down, we’ll sit you down.”

The resulting flood took out two entire shelves of books — basically Steve Gerlach, Greg Gifune, Christopher Golden, and J.F. Gonzalez.

And if the number of typos I had to fix in that first paragraph are any indication, or the number of edits I had to make are any indication… I definitely need the warm up this morning. No newsletter today, I think. This can serve instead.

2025 was the Year of Extremes. Everything was done at 100 miles per hour, and I have never minded going that fast. Indeed, I have lived my entire life at that speed. But, with each passing year,

with still operations in both Kentucky and West Virginia. (At the time, the town of Lewisburg was segregated.

Billie Thomas, the child actor who played Buckwheat on Our Gang and Little Rascals, got a job editing and cutting film as an adult, and processed the negatives for both Jaws and Logan’s Run.

The best, most effective horror is always an examination of the human condition — the creation of empathy within the reader. After all, if your audience doesn’t care about the characters, then they won’t care when the Horror besieges those characters.

But this is fine.

Will he announce his retirement today? I don’t know. He has certainly earned it. And with the staff and crew no longer entirely in studio together, and the show whittled down to three episodes a week, it’s no longer at the heights it once was. But there are times it still makes me laugh so hard that I can’t breathe, and as an interviewer, he’s at the height of his powers.

I am a long way from that kid at the Bicentennial.

I have, however, gotten some writing-related work accomplished the past few days…

Today is supposed to be exercise bike day (since it is far too cold to go hiking through the woods) but Bubbles has already called dibs on the bike and refuses to move

Worse, even if you don’t use it, the stupid little Copilot pop-ups hamper and slow down what you’re doing, particularly in email, and on Microsoft Forms, which is what inspired this rant…

and the only reason I woke up then is because Josie, Spike, Stripe, and Bubbles formed a phalanx at my feet, and then sent Dallas to climb atop me and start meowing very loudly in my ear.

Indeed, in between the last two paragraphs, Gemma Amor messaged me on WhatsApp to inquire about something, and then followed that up with “Why are you awake so early?”

But it won’t be my problem, now will it?

Interesting new research article dropped yesterday regarding the social media usage of Americans in 2025.