14 April 2026

Rosy day

My safety went surfing and found a dream beer, a beer that juices the mouth and suns the gut, that kicks history into a wide blue sky and combs the skin. I brought news of this to my love room where I could hold it in private. Man I warped it and praised it and gave it long names and then plucked its dead minutes and ground them into a clean face, which I wrapped in wax paper and left on the stoop jutting out from the house where my best friend used to live

Larry Ivkovich 99 pages IFWG Publishing (2024) 

Read this if you like: steampunk-style alternate histories, unique aliens

tl;dr summary: Humans fight back against interdimensional reptilian invaders in souped-up version of the 1860s.

See the book on Bookshop

This novella has one of the best first lines I've seen in a minute: “The horizon exploded in a world of fire.”

The rest of the first chapter keeps the reader fully planted in the middle of the action, watching as Mirrie flees her farm ahead of a wall of fire and the reptilian aliens who emerge in its aftermath. Her son and husband were in the field that is now aflame, and she realizes they're likely dead as she escapes just ahead of the destruction. 

The rest of the novella keeps up this pace, and the action sequences are on-point, with a nice balance of phyiscal details that keep the reader anchored and flashes of insight into the characters that keeps their voice centered in the story. In the big-picture sense, the plot movement all felt natural and logical, with some nicely woven moments of convergence that made full use of the multiple narrative threads and made the conclusion feel very satisfying. 

Where I found myself a bit torn on this novella was with regards to the world. And don't get me wrong—I very much enjoy the world. The main aliens, the eelees, are unique and complex, reptilian creatures that ride spider-like mounts and come to Earth through an interdimensional rift. They also aren't just bent on conquest. Over the course of the book, the reader learns they don't all want to wage war on humans, but that there are multiple factions with differing views. The thing is, the reader only finds out about this fairly late in the book, and the idea isn't explored in much depth, with only one brief scene that happens at an eelee camp. 

I think this issue plays into a broader one that I had after reading Hope's Song: It feels a bit rushed. This world is a layered one. Not only are the eelee a novel element the reader wants to know about, but the Earth of Hope's Song is a steampunk slant on reality. This means the technology is different, first of all, but it also impacts other aspects of the world. It has different governments, countries, and culture than real-world Earth—a secondary world, for all intents and purposes, and one the reader only sees in glimpses. I definitely could have spent much longer exploring this world, because it had a lot of really cool stuff going on that I felt like I was only able to glimpse in passing.

I felt similarly on a character level. I found myself wanting to know more about all of the viewpoint characters and their relationship with their world and the other people in it. I especially wanted to know more about Sky Wolf and Torre, both in terms of their relationship to each other and exactly what position they hold in regards to society. Some of the secondary characters also ended up feeling a bit flat because there simply wasn't space to develop them more. The titular Hope, for instance, I felt was a bit under-developed and under-utilized, and Stamatis was another character that I thought could have been fleshed out more. 

Of course, there definitely isn't space to go into any of these things I mentioned in a 99-page novella. Already this book is cramming a lot of characters, POVs, and plot points into a very compact space. I think maybe the heart of my critique on this is that I wanted the novel version of it, where all of these details did have space to breathe. I still enjoyed the story, without that, but there felt like there were some missing opportunities, and some of the plot movement did end up feeling a bit too convenient or coincidental because the reader only learned about certain world details right at the moment they became relevant. 

All of that being said, when it comes to pure storytelling, Hope's Song is a very entertaining read. It has a satisfying arc, characters you want to root for, and a nuanced antagonist that pushes it beyond a simple “good guys vs. bad guys” narrative. I'd definitely recommend it for anyone who enjoys steampunk or alternate history sci-fi, especially if you're looking for a book that you can happily devour in a day or two. 

 

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#BookReviews #SciFi

Hello! I have been, with a mounting sense of frustration, come just a few hundred points short of S rating on Umamusume: Pretty Derby.

Again.

My friend he asked me: how’s the writing going? The context I am writing what I believe to be a modern classic, and sometimes he helps me with the grammar, because he’s even better than I am with grammar.

The thing is that I have been busy playing Umamusume: Pretty Derby, trying to get a full roster of S+ horse girls.

But now I’m questioning whether that truly is a productive use of my time, or should I in reality finish my book instead?

This is the question on my mind this Sunday: how to spend the precious seconds of a finite life span…

Oh well, folks. We are back with the “nothing happened today.” Yes. No blood. No noise. No mistakes. I know, I know. Boring, right?

I woke up. I existed. I didn’t ruin anything, and that’s what people call a “good day”, don’t they? I watched people do their usual routines: talking, laughing, pretending their little schedules mean something. Meetings, messages,” Plans.” It’s cute.

You can almost. Almost believe it matters if you don’t think too hard. Someone asked me how my day was, and I said, “Good.” That seemed to make them happy. Amazing how low the standards are. No one really wants an answer anyway; they just want noise that sounds right. So here:

bla bla bla bla bla text text text tex text text text click click click bla bla bla bla bla There that should keep you entertained, Are you having fun watching this? watching me rot on this page like it’s something meaningful?

There was a moment today where everything went quiet again, didn’t talk. didn’t move. just still Of course, that doesn’t count as “productive.” You can’t measure it, post it, or brag about it. So I guess it didn’t happen.

Successful day, did everything I was supposed to. Try not to be too proud of me

Sincerery, Ahmed

La música que estáis oyendo en las sesiones de juego está buscada para tener licencias abiertas que permitan su uso. Esto hace que muchas de ellas sea la primera vez que las escuchéis. Por si alguna os ha llamado la atención, las iremos subiendo a esta entrada del blog para que podáis escucharlas.

Intro del anfitrión:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iEWbHJDlo4

Intro de la mesa de juego:

https://opengameart.org/content/somethings-change

Ambiente general:

https://archive.org/details/BeethovenPianoSonataNo.14moonlightrubinstein/04Beethoven_PianoSonata14InCSharpMinorOp.27_2_moonlight_-1.AdagioSostenuto.mp3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuN03iyFq9o

Acción:

https://opengameart.org/content/running-from-something

https://opengameart.org/content/battle-theme-a

Misterio:

https://opengameart.org/content/dream-ambience

https://opengameart.org/content/ruined-city-theme

Anne de Breuil:

https://archive.org/details/BSOG0076/04-Fairytale_192kb.mp3

Fabian Duberry:

https://archive.org/details/jamendo-148057/01-1234989-Fortadelis-Heatblur+Funk.mp3

Adi el ucraniano:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0AsarRxbKA

Maggie Rush:

https://tenpointrule.bandcamp.com/track/say-my-name

For a while now, we have been editing many of our posts on glamglare using ChatGPT. It is truly a dance. The purpose of a “Song Pick of the Day” post is to entice readers to listen to a new song. The writer’s personality matters only insofar as it reflects their taste in music. The writing itself is not poetry. It has a clear purpose, and using ChatGPT as an editor serves that purpose. It does not mean we churn out more content. It is still one song per day. It also does not mean it is less work. If anything, it is more effort because posts that used to slip through on busy days are now validated by ChatGPT and often require more rework. Elke and I have different workflows, and we are trying different approaches. On my end, I always write the post first, then give it to ChatGPT with the press copy and the lyrics (if I have them). My instructions tell it to be critical and point out what doesn’t work, and it does. It always creates a revised copy. Sometimes it is perfect: exactly what I wanted to say, with a slight correction. But more often, the revised copy contains too many elements inferred from the press release. This is, of course, the dark side lurking. Synthesizing a post directly from the press release and other information is a slippery slope toward AI slop. Even though it is sometimes tempting to let it slip, I make a conscious effort to push back and emphasize my own angle. With ChatGPT in the loop, I can be more audacious in my writing. Unlike a human editor I may need to impress, AI is infinitely patient and does not judge. It is difficult to describe music and interpret lyrics, so feedback helps a lot here.

I listen now to Summoning, they have what I believe to be the best song track title I have ever seen: ”The Rotting Horse on the Deadly Ground”

Take a ride on, ride on,  on your rotting horse  on that deadly ground  Take a ride, ride on,  on your rotting horse  with a pounding sound.

Ok

It’s not hope inspiring I think, but still very good. There’s a lesson in that: to hold on to hope, may set one up for disappointment or even a deluded state of mind.

But still riding on because what else is there to do?

[19.iv.26.b : dimanche] Je viens d’écrire la page de manne (nourriture miraculeuse) d’aujourd’hui dans le cadre de … pour mettre en œuvre un élément (aspect) de ma processus que j’ai essayé pour quelques années, depuis ?? … avant 2020 au moins … l’idée était écrire quelque pensées dans mon carnet ,, chaque matin, je lis de deux ou trois livres (e.g. The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, Tao-tö king par Lao-tseu, The Orphic Voice par Elizabeth Sewell, The Complete Angler par Isaac Walton, etc. et cetera &c.) et je dois écrire au moins une ligne dans mes propre mots parle de quoi j’ai lu. Pendant des année j’ai accumulé beaucoup de notes du jour. Il y a des temps j’ai décidé arranger ces notes pour faire un livre cyclique avec 366 chapitres intitulé pour chaque jour de l’année, comme pour aujourd’hui “19 avril”, et après quelques années chaque chapitre aurait notes pour écrit sur l’années successive. C’est un experiment (d’une sorte) … je suis curieux à voir les resonances que serait possible et aussi engager dans un pratique de la superposition de texte, un processus un peu géologique comme l’accrétion. J’ai voulu aussi à créer un texte gravitationnel, comme un étoile noire d’où rayonnerait tout les autre textes que j’écris.

Mais le titre “Manne” me gêne un peu (pour tel un projet) parce que manne est censée être éphémère… tu ne dois pas garder la manne pour le prochaine jour, la manne est pour aujourd’hui seulement. J’aime l’idée de la manne est éphémère … Roland Barthes a dit que quelque chose dois donner à la éphémère … pour des années j’écrivais un blog et tout que j’ai écrit a évaporé dans l’éther. Pour une vraie page de manne, il faut qu’être une page seulement et chaque jour, le texte sur cette page changerait, et le text de hier jetterait. Bien. Mais telle un acte ne me donne un corps d’œuvre après de temps et ma vision de mon mode est que il produira un corps immense de texte.

Je me sens que je suis presque à faire un percée dans mon mode … à la cœur de mes activités d’écriture depuis octobre dernier [2025] (quand j’ai commencé écrire Japanese Interlude, un texte bilingue ,, anglais + français ,, est un peu trilingue avec l’addition des quelque mots japonaise pour la saveur,,, je suis un chef qui prépare un gumbo a fait de roux français, des viandes anglais, et l’épices japonaise). C’est vrai que mon mode ne sera jamais terminé ou fixe : ça changera toujours. Mais il y a des élément ou components que dois être là : un texte linear (comme un roman en série : the unfolding text), un hypertexte (comme un rhizome ou labyrinthe), et un texte circulaire (comme un volant dans une moteur, toujours en roulant) … le texte circulaire se nourrit en manne … les mots dans chaque 366 (au moins) chapitres ne sont pas la manne mais les lecteurs et les reflexions que faire possible l’écriture … oui! maintenant, c’est bon : j’aurai ma manne et mangerai aussi.

Rationally I know that life is inherently governed by chance to a significant degree. Yet it seems there are some people, groups of people, families, etc. that are disproportionately affected by negative experiences and outcomes than others. Many turn to religion as a way to try and explain the unexplainable, yet I have never been someone to do that. At least not to the degree where I think there is a god that is directly controlling the outcomes of every event for every individual on earth or elsewhere. That doesn’t mean I still don’t wonder why some people seem to have a significant number of negative life experiences than others.

This morning I was reminded of this type of situation when I learned a person I grew up with had passed away unexpectedly. This is not the first time someone in this family that I grew up near has passed away unexpectedly. The previous situation was even more tragic and heartbreaking. Then add to these more recent situations that the parents of these people had gone through a nasty divorce due to infidelity, that they had things like fires happen in their home during the time I lived near them, etc. and it seems like the odds were always stacked against them.

That begs the question, how did they end up on these paths versus others that did not? There is an argument to be made that they were the logical result of the sum of many prior less significant, but not always positive, decisions made in the past. As the saying goes, their prior decisions and choices just caught up to them. These outcomes still seem to be particularly harsh even factoring in prior minor poor decisions. So my mind still comes back to the question – why them and not others? I have no good answer, I don’t think there is a good answer. As a logical being it is hard to accept that there isn’t a good answer to the question “why?” though. I can’t blame any one person, event, or situation that is obviously the cause of why these things have happened to these people.

I will accept this and move on as I have done in the past. The next time anything like this happens though, I will be right back where I am now wondering why I don’t have any good explanation for what just happened. At least not a satisfactory one.

La aventura que estamos jugando para Castillo de Falkenstein se está grabando en el canal de Mandibulario y podéis seguir las sesiones en este enlace:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slq8fTCsre4&list=PLC_2Q5w5MnZSRB85kdo96aoArGD4f32xh

¡Que las disfrutéis!

The first of today's two games I'm hoping to follow is an MLB Game pitting my Texas Rangers against the Seattle Mariners. With a mid-afternoon scheduled start time of 3:10 PM CDT, this game will certainly run into the evening hours if it plays through the full nine innings.

The second game on my agenda today comes from the NBA. A Round 1, Game 1, game of the 2026 NBA Championship Series has the Portland Trailblazers coming to San Antonio to play my Spurs. With a very late start time (late for me, anyway) of 8:00 PM CDT, I'm going to be challenged to listen to the full four Quarters before sleep forces me to bed.

And the adventure continues.