Something I’ve been trying to do, or get better at, is cooking. It’s a challenge to create a menu and make things for just one person. Many times it’s for two, but even then, it’s very different than the past. Thankfully, my daughter picked up the improvisational cooking skill from my wife. My daughter is a wonderful cook, and does exactly the same things my wife used to do – creating things on the fly that just seem to work.
It’s not that I can’t cook. I can. I have a relatively limited skill set, but I *can* in fact cook. I have just started trying to expand things a little. I don’t want to get stuck in some kind of dietary dead space or rut where I lose those skills. Eating out is the easy solution, but definitely not the cheap one.
I had visions of creating some kind of lengthy recipe / cooking thing here. I realized however that what I did was… figure out how to make something from scratch that many people already know.
I had a couple of bananas that were getting a little over ripe. I knew they needed to be used up, I just didn’t have the ability (or confidence) to go for a banana bread. I can cook – baking is a whole different skill set.
I went digging around the internet trying to track down something to do that wasn’t one of the 900,000 variations on bread out there. I found a site that used eggs and oats and mashed banana and was quite excited. Mix them up, follow the directions, fry them up in a pan…
When I got done I realize what had happened was I “discovered” making banana pancakes.
To be fair, they were made with oats and were completely from scratch, so it’s not like it was a total loss as far as developing my cooking skills, but in the end… pancakes. I’ll keep working on my cooking skills, and maybe even share again if I stumble into recreating a spaghetti dinner or something like that. Until then, there’s the start and finish of my pancake journey.
Space werewolf with a robot arm. That checks a lot of boxes as a friend of mine once said.
This is an interesting look at monster movie stories in space. The author clearly has a lot of all the classics. It would be very easy to see this being converted into a movie. The vision here is quite cinematic.
That being said, there were parts of the story that seemed to lean on the ‘movie magic’ thing. It was hard to tell how big certain things were in the story as described. Either they were multiple sized or changed size or were somehow just right for wherever they were needed.
In all this took time to get into but was really enjoyable! Would recommend.
Three stars doesn’t seem enough for this, so let’s call it 3.5.
I suspect my issue here wasn’t the work itself, but my expectations going into the story. I really wanted more info or backstory on Ana. I was looking for more about the two main characters than I got. That’s on me I think.
This was a solid story with a couple of neat things that did pop up during the story. More expansion of the world building. More murders and mysteries, but in the end I was not as excited as I was for the first two. This is a really solid, good book. I am just not sure I’m anticipating another, or if I would buy it. It’s a mood thing I suppose, but my mood says this was good, but enough.
Really enjoyed this one! A great head bending story.
I was shocked to discover the main character was specifically designed to not have gender identifying aspects. I read the story as if the main character was male, but other members of my book group did not. Turns out that was done with purpose and I think that’s fantastic.
There were a number of places in the story that reminded me of the old movie Time Cop. The person comes back to the “now” and nobody else remembers the “was”. I would enjoy seeing this as a movie or limited series!
Since this was a selection for Watch The Skies, this is the fanzine cover I created, along with two alternate versions.
There was also one part in the book where a van screeches up to the curb and the door slides open in front of the main character, and all I could think was, “You can’t fool me… I get the candy *first*…”
Recently (relatively) I changed companies for the day job. I’ve ‘downsized’ to a much smaller firm, with a different portfolio of project types. A number of people have asked me how much I like this new company. My only answer so far has been, “Meh. It’s a job very similar to all those I’ve had for years…” but certain things have made me view this in a new light. Allow me to explain.
I have used Facebook for decades now. Yes, a scary concept, but it has been more than 20 years. There are baby pictures of my daughter who is now an adult. There are literally hundreds of interactions and notes and memories attached to this online entity… and I own none of them. I tend to call Facebook “failbook” for the many shortcomings it has developed.
I saw in the news that ‘failbook’ wanted to have their staff participate in what they call a hackathon. Hackathon essentially is everybody in the company working on something that is not a daily work-related project trying to innovate something new or creative or special that would allow the company to add features to what they offer. One of the innovations from the past was the ‘like’ button. Innovative at the time, standard across many media platforms now. It’s a good idea, trying to spark creativity this way.
Recently, Failbook laid off a significant number of people.Reports say they’ve laid off 8,000, and stopped the hiring process for 6,000 more. They’ve also moved about 7,000 of their staff (close to 10%) to AI related jobs. You know, training their replacement. Morale in those who remain is ‘low’. They are eliminating their humans. Humans are expensive. Humans tend not to like it when you chuck them out and they can’t get paid anymore. If you’re going to eliminate the humans, then the remaining humans working outside of work hours or being the volunteer to help the company is going to be a very hard sell. Many of the people still working there were disinclined to acquiesce to this request.
I was also recently reminded of an interesting statement made by a friend of mine. “Human resources… nothing good has come from somebody who considers a person nothing more than a resource…”
So, how does this tie to me? My new job is decidedly among people. They are imperfect, don’t communicate well and are just trying to muddle along. Just like me. That has been the shift for me. My previous place of employment was a rather large company and they continually showed me that the people and culture just didn’t matter there. Are there things that I don’t like? Sure, but you’re going to get that with any job, no matter where you are. The only “perfect” job is where you’re the owner and the only employee, so if you don’t communicate with yourself that’s on you and nobody else.
I guess what I’m saying is, I’m still working in my field just at a different pace. That’s not a bad thing. There’s very little chance that AI will be brought in to take my position away here. I consider that a good thing – even if it means I have to still deal with people.
Once again, if you’re 5 books into a series, I don’t think you will be influenced by my reviews.
This was better than the trains level, but there is just SO much going on! There are times when I fear that I’m getting plot thread fatigue. From a story telling perspective it’s really well done – keeping that many story lines active and popping up is no easy feat.
I suspect I will take a break and devour a couple of other books before jumping back to book 6, but I will be back.
Once, in the distant past, I left the country for a year. I was in the army and had been stationed in the Republic of Korea. I boarded a plane and headed to the other side of the world. I had already been in various trainings for months. I was engaged to be married, and my fiance would be waiting for me to come home. One year. We could do this. We would write to each other. We would call. This was in the early 1990s, so there was no internet. There were no cellphones, at least not in the way we understand them today. It was long distance calls and old fashioned paper notes, sealed with a stamp and sent off via the APO. We had each other and that was enough. We could do a year standing on our heads if needed.
Fast forward. We were happily married. We’d purchased and moved into our first house. We were happy. Rebecca gave birth to our daughter… and within two weeks was hospitalized for heart failure. That lead to a year of recovery. Another one year increment that went by in a blur. It was a long struggle and gone in an instant.
Fast forward. Our daughter was growing so fast. She became this wonderful, beautiful, intelligent person. She spoke another language and was heading off to another country to study abroad for a year. One year. Waiting to see her again. Dealing with more health crisis and trying to keep her informed but not worried. This year seemed to take longer than the others… we missed her but knew she’d be back.
Fast forward. Rebecca’s health issues continued. Getting around was a struggle, but it had been one year since anything serious happened. This year was a short one. It evaporated in a swirl of mist on a hot day. She fell. She struggled, but fell again and again. We had plans, but shelved them all until we were able to get in to see a specialist and try to figure out what was making her balance such an issue. We were one week short of that appointment.
A year is both longer and shorter than one thinks. It’s always relative to what’s going on. A year apart when we knew we would be getting back together was the blink of an eye. A year of recovery from a heart issue was tackled together, and one year was easy. A year apart from our daughter was the ache of knowing we were doing the best thing for her that we could. That year was rough, but we were together.
This past year has disappeared. July 29, 2025 was yesterday. It was also an eon ago. Nothing is right and nothing may ever be right again. I have lost more time during this year to staring into the void than the rest of my life combined. I have no answers. My forever person is gone. She has been gone for a year as of today. I still don’t know if what I am doing is at all right. I keep moving forward, but most of it feels empty. I am adrift without her. I can’t overstate how much she meant to me. My life was her life and her life was my life for more than thirty of those one year steps. More than half of my life. I would give an awful lot to get just one more. Thirty was not enough. Sixty wouldn’t have been enough, even if she claimed that wasn’t something she ever wanted. I wanted it.
In the same moment, I’m glad that she’s no longer in pain. Her life had slowly become more and more limited by her health. She hated being so dependent on others when what she wanted was to get up, get out and help others. She struggled to get up and down. She struggled with her facilities and couldn’t remember things. It hurt her more than she let on, but I could tell. I’m happy that she is beyond those struggles now, even though she has gone ahead without me.
There are so many things… I needed more time. I want her back so very much. I have been weeping non-stop trying to write this. I didn’t do enough. I didn’t tell her how much I loved her enough. I struggle every day, wishing I could have said more to her. She, of course, was far ahead of me on so many levels. Her last words, the very last coherent thing she said was, “I love you”. I think about that every single day. Every time I part from my daughter, weather she’s going out with friends, going to work or just going to bed for the night I make certain I that is the very last thing I say to her. I say it as much as I can now, weather that is from fear or hope or guilt, I don’t know – but it matters.
Find your people. Hug them. Hold them close and tell them you love them. It matters and you don’t know when that chance will be gone.
One year. The pain doesn’t go away. You don’t get over it, you get used to it. There are times when things are almost normal, whatever that means. There are times when everything feels like it’s falling apart again, filling the day with tears. Time passes. Things continue on.
I’m very slowly working my way back toward creating and getting my work out there.
Today I got my copy of More Hearts For Hounds. This charity anthology contains a reprint of my story Data Dogs – So I’m (ever so briefly) back in print!
I also submitted a story for consideration today. I have very little hope that it will get published, but I sent it. I did the work, I checked the boxes and clicked the security stuff (wow, AI has made sending actual, human made works a major pain in the butt) and the story is out there again.
It’s not about getting that one published. It’s about the act of making the submission and doing the work. It’s not a lot, but there it is. I’ll be sure to post if I hear anything good. YOU be sure to get out there and support your local authors (and their charities)!
Three stars probably isn’t enough. Three and a half? That probably works. If you’re this far into the series, I don’t need to sell you on it.
I don’t know that I’m as enamored with this series as everyone else is, but I am still chugging along with it. I have started to see the puzzles / traps of each level as just background noise and mostly focus in on the relationships and other characters zooming in and out of Carl’s sphere of influence. I’ll keep going.
Spoilery-ish bit.
I predicted the person who showed up at the very end of this book to show up again at some point. I wasn’t sure how it would work, but off screen, obscure character death means they’re not actually dead. I’ll be interested to see how it plays out.
