Reminder to Self: Fun Things Are Meant to be Fun

Not gonna lie, I've been in a bit of a funk lately. And by "lately" I mean "since, like, May?" For various reasons... okay, mostly because I overcommitted myself AGAIN... I've plateaued on all my passion activities. Plateaued? More like flatlined.

First, I burned out HARD on writing. My original plan for 2023 was to whip out Flynn Nightsider and the Ire of Inferno in the spring, between editing Brave New Girls stories, and have it out in time for Gen Con in August. Hey, I'd done just that the year before with the second book in the series, Flynn Nightsider and the Shards of Shadow. All I had to do was follow the same timeline as 2022! Easy peasy!

All right, so I also committed to composing a few short stories for various anthologies, but those were little projects. I could just slot them in and still knock out my novel.

Except my brain had other ideas. After constructing an outline I was happy with, I dove head-first into the manuscript and... made it to about Chapter Three before my mind went splat. I'd just stare at the open document and tumbleweeds would blow through my skull. I still managed to hit my short story deadlines—hey, I made a commitment! — but other than that, I just couldn't bring myself to be productive. I ended up rewatching Star Treks Voyager AND Deep Space Nine, then binging a bunch of trash I can't even remember.

Well, this kind of thing has happened before, and I found refuge in my other activities. Activities that I took up to get away from writing. Activities that I was okay with being mediocre at because they were just meant to be an escape.

But a funny thing happens after you've been doing things for a while... you lose perspective. 

Choir was out for the summer, but I was hitting the circus studios whenever I could. And I. Was. Flatlining. Trapeze tricks I'd been working on for a million years weren't getting any better, and in fact some were getting worse (I spent so long trying to clean up my layout that I lost my go-to trick, the split, which I first nailed in 2019). Over on aerial silks, it hit me that moves I was struggling with two years ago (hello, inverted climbs) were still a hot mess that felt nearly impossible. Meanwhile, I watched classmates that had started around the same time as me become more and more advanced.

A big reason for this was that said classmates dedicate a lot more time to what is, for them, a passion. Meanwhile, my training schedule became super sparse thanks to summer travel (turns out you can't reeeeeeally gain strength by climbing a thing once every other week). 

Suffice it to say, I was felt like a loser by the end of summer. And I was determined to get myself back on track after Labor Day.

AND THEN THE PLAGUE HIT. No, not that plague, though I almost wish it had been because it'd be easier to gain sympathy. But it turns out a run-of-the-mill not-pandemic-y virus can still knock you flat (it's hard to do anything when you cough every other breath). That meant goodbye, most of September (also, that's why I missed my last post).

So here I am, up and about again but even further behind, and really feeling like a loser. I finally managed to buckle down and work on some short stories, at least, but Ire of Inferno remains barely written. Current plan: To use NaNoWriMo to kick it into action. But first, must finish short story...

Meanwhile, my physical stamina is at zero, which is a problem when you've signed up for an aerial performance workshop. It means I get winded really easily, and I can't actually manage to string together the moves I want for my piece. Then I get to watch my classmates be awesome while pouting over what I hot mess I am.

Whine, whine, whine, poor me.

Well, wallowing won't do me any good. So instead, I keep reminding myself how all these things I've been feeling like a loser over are meant to be FUN. I started writing stories because it was FUN. I started climbing fabric and swinging from the sky because it was FUN. And it wasn't supposed to matter how "good" I was at any of it.

Sometimes, I wish 2011 Mary were here to remind me that she only wanted to finish a manuscript, never mind if anyone read it.

2019 Mary isn't that far behind, yet apparently I've still forgotten how she was thrilled that she was even allowed onto a flying trapeze, or could climb two feet off the ground unassisted. 

I think it's a natural inclination, especially if you grew up in one of those over-achiever-y households, to think that you must be constantly improving on all things, or else you're falling behind. But that doesn't have to be true... some things are meant to be fun for their own sakes. And hey, what's wrong with a plateau? They can be rather nice!

I'm gonna keep telling myself that while I continue struggling at all the things. At least choir's back in session, and I'm still a decent sight reader.

When it gets to be a slog...

Hey, did you catch that new show? You know, the one all your friends are talking about. The one that they can't stop chatting about in the group text?

Oh yeah. I meant to watch that one, but I was trying to finish the last series they were raving about and then they dropped a whole second season and I got further behind...

Or what about that new book? Your favorite author just released the latest book in your favorite fantasy series!

Um, yeah...I pre-ordered that one... It's on my kindle... I'll get to it...

Hey, did you catch all those movies that just dropped on that streaming service you pay $10 a month for but never watch?

Please leave me alone...

***

Remember, this is supposed to be fun. 

This is supposed to be an age of plenty, where we can decadently select whatever we like to amuse ourselves with for an evening like an emperor idly choosing which servant girl will dance for him. Only now the decadent emperor has thousands of dancing girls to choose from and by the time he picks one he's too tired to relax and enjoy the show. 

Have you had that feeling? A new show comes on, one that seems tailor-made for your preferences, almost like the algorithm pulled it from your subconscious desires, and your first reaction is Ten episodes? I don't have ten free hours...

(The algorithm worked really hard to give you that show about astronaut spies that are also dinosaurs! You made the algorithm cry! YOU WATCH THAT SHOW!)

And of course, it is a running joke among me and my writer friends how long our TBR (To Be Read) lists are. Since I bought a kindle and was introduced to the joy of  Bookbub sales, I have accumulated hundreds of books. (It didn't help that I was a wiz at a sadly defunct online trivia game that paid out prizes in Amazon gift cards.) If I read a book a week, it will take years to get through them all, and that's assuming I don't get any more. Which we all know is not going to happen. My sister in law gave me an Amazon card for my birthday and I promptly bought about 5 more books. On to the pile with you!

And that can all be overwhelming. And stressful! It makes me feel like I'm back in school and have to read some 500 page doorstop for English class and then write a report. (Oh and don't get me started on the whole Review Discourse on Twitter. Look, sometimes I don't feel like writing a damn book report. Just be happy I left a star rating.)

It is depressingly easy for me to forget that reading for pleasure should be pleasurable. 

I have to remind myself constantly, that if I don't finish the library book before it's due? I can renew it. I don't have to try and cram it in. 

If I don't get to that book I bought on sale last year? It's not going anywhere. And the writer will still be happy to get a review whenever I do read it. 

If I don't get to a show? That's ok. There are a lot of shows. I still haven't seen all of Bridgerton Season 2. Or Mad Men (I got the gist, ok? Martinis, ad men, sexism, Christina Hendricks in tight sweaters. Get off my back.) 

I'm trying to cut back. I've dropped a couple streaming services I wasn't watching. Some of those choices were easy. I stopped HBO because their idiot of a CEO wanted to charge me $17 a month to watch him destroy what was once a great service. I really think about clicking "purchase" on those cheap books. I try and check the library first. But mainly, I'm just giving myself permission to relax. 

I'm not worrying about my Goodreads Reading Challenge. I'm just going to read books I like by authors I like and try out a different genre every now and then. (I was reading a romance novel at Barnes & Noble last week, and I liked it! It was sweet! And no one got murdered! So far!)

Honestly, let's all just get off our backs. No one has to write a paper on modernism in short fiction of the 1950s or anything, so just enjoy your book. 

And take me off the group text. I want to stay spoiler free for when I finally watch that show in three years.

I'll get to you yet, Season 2 of Stranger Things... 

The Neighborhood is Perfectly Fine

Another quality post brought to you by Steve! 

Hey, everybody!

In case you've been wondering (you haven't) why I've been drunker and surlier than usual lately, it's because I've been pounding away at THE PERFECTLY FINE NEIGHBORHOOD, the first anthology I've ever edited, alongside my regular collaborator Wile E. Young and our very own Kayleigh Dobbs.  If it seems like I've been working on this anthology for the past year...well, it's because I've actually been working on it for three.  Fucking icebergs, you know.

THE PERFECTLY FINE HOUSE, the reverse haunted house story that I wrote with Wile E., came out on March 16, 2020.  Which, if you'll recall, was also the day that a global pandemic was declared so, um, yeah, people had other shit on their minds than our little ghost story for a while.  

We were a bit disappointed by sales and later that year, when we were tossing around ideas to get more exposure for our book, we naturally discussed the idea of a sequel.  But how to write a sequel to a book with such a...let's say...definitive ending?  Well, why not open the world up to other contributors with different perspectives?  Get a feel for what else was going on in our universe during, before, and even after our novel?

What was going on in Australia?  The UK?

What was going on with the young people?  Or the ghosts who had been around for ages?

Lawyers?  Sadists?  Hit men?

Wile E. and I went off to begin writing our own shorts immediately, we were so excited.  Then we spent the next two years trying to secure funding from various publishers.  (Trust me, publishing an anthology, and paying your authors fairly, is an extremely expensive proposition.)  I ended up looking at my half-finished story after nearly three years, and completely forgot how I had intended to end it.  Sometimes that happens with stuff you set aside for too long, no matter how excited you were about it.

Finally, thanks to over thirty Kickstarter backers and handshake promises from several prominent authors as incentives, we secured funding, and the stories started rolling in for our open call.

After six month of submissions, we managed to find fifteen diamonds among the...not diamonds, and it was off to the races.  And by "races," I mean, learn all of the moving pieces involved with arranging a table of contents, formatting an anthology, paying fifteen people, sending rewards to thirty people...and on and on it went.

And now, bafflingly, it's over.  This morning I shipped out the last of the backer rewards.  I mean, the real task, marketing, is about to start, but it's very strange to not have this albatross around my neck for the first time in almost a year.  

So, here it is and here's to you.  I hope you'll all grab a copy of this Taj Mahal, this massive opus and undertaking, and tell all of your friends.  Maybe it'll make a huge splash.  Maybe it'll be the greatest anthology of time.  A guy can dream, can't he?

Always Pressed for Time

It is 3 weeks away from the next Comic-Con in NYC and I've overbooked yet again on appointments. The plan is to focus exclusively on comics this time given the writer's strike (comics don't have a union). Though there are ongoing talks at this very moment that the strike might actually end today.

I'm not sure what the plan will be anymore. I haven't since January of this year. 

I am trying to organize how to go about doing everything between my comics work, some book work, and some conventions. However lately, I'm feeling overwhelmed. Nothing seems to be working out as planned. Everything feels like it's not really doing okay despite on the surface level seeming peachy keen. 

We've got layoffs and higher prices on goods of everything, gas prices on the rise, a housing market that's high in interest rates, and an even higher cost of ownership. Debt up the wazoo. Government shutdowns. Multiple recessions across countries such as China, Canada, Germany, and just about all of Europe. Plus food shortages in the UK. These are supposed to be better times... It certainly doesn't feel like it.

I'm genuinely worried about the near future and that anxiety never went away this year. It got me thinking about the nature of time recently. In college, I was a large supporter of humanistic psychology. My mentor at the time was a proponent of Martin Heidegger's 'Being in Time', though I won't focus on that as much given Heidegger's association with the Nazi party. 

What was important was this idea Heidegger had called 'Dasein'. 

Being and Time. The experience being reflective there within capable of experience at this moment. How we are always in a perpetual flux of being in relationship to our objective reality and how that dynamic within this moment influences who we are right now. Thus it reflects who we become later and see ourselves then. Time is reflective. Time is... short. Time seems to be the one thing no amount of money can ever recapture. And our memories, the one thing we have that makes someone themselves - are mostly nothing but frozen moments of time. 

I worry because I think I am almost out of time. 

Before you know it... there it goes. A lifetime,

Passes you right by.

Every Adam Nevill Book Ranked

Hi everyone! I hope you're all well and have been enjoying good movies/games/shows/books! Speaking of books, I recently finished reading every novel by my absolute favourite writer, Adam Nevill, and I ranked them. If you're interested, you can click on the video below!

I realise that a video link is cheating a little, as it isn't an article per se, but I have been absolutely swamped so I hope this will suffice! I happen to know that the main man himself enjoyed this video, and was even kind enough to mention it in his most recent newsletter (mind blown!).

I'll be back next month with more musings!

<3

It's a Shore Thing

To be extremely reductive, there are two kinds of people. Beach people and non-beach people. 

Do you love the sun? Is there nothing better than stretching out on hot sand and reading a trashy novel while sipping a cold beverage? Do you enjoy the waves rolling in on your feet as you walk along the beach at sunset, holding hands with your love?

Or are you Anakin Skywalker?

I come from a mixed family. My mom spent her summers at the Jersey Shore, going to Wildwood with her big family every summer. To this day, she and her siblings rent a house on the shore for a week after Labor Day. 

My dad thought Anakin liked the sand too much. He hated the beach, hated getting hot, hated sand getting in everything. The only thing he liked less was standing in line in the sun, which is also why we never went to Disneyworld as kids. 

Still, I'd head to the beach when I could. Since we were in Halifax, NS, and swimming in ocean water, it was really only warm enough to go once or twice each summer. We'd go with friends or Dad would drop us off and then drive away, tires squealing.

Fortunately, I married a beach person. My wife grew up on the Connecticut shore, living only blocks from the beach. We now go on many beach trips together. 

We recently took a brief end of summer trip to Ocean City, MD. It is a classic Shore Town. Which got me to thinking, what makes a Shore Town? There are plenty of beaches, but just having a beach is not enough. 

Well, I am here to provide you with a list. Every Shore Town has to meet this criteria. Sorry, that's just how it is. 

1) Beach

I mean, that's obvious. Not every beach is a Shore Town, but every Shore Town has a beach. You need a warm, sandy beach. You need umbrellas and pop up canopies. You need fish-belly white tourists (like me) overdoing it and turning lobster red. (I keep telling my wife that I need to get my base burn for the summer, but she is not having it.) 

You laugh, but once the burn fades, I am golden brown. 

You need frat boys playing football. You need kids trying to boogie board. You need those crappy foot showers to attempt to rinse off the sand. If you don't, don't even bother. 

2) A Boardwalk

This is key. You need a boardwalk to stroll along. The boardwalk has to be packed full of just the best, most terrible food options - hot dogs, pizza, funnel cake, fried dough, french fries, lemonade, etc. You know how to tell if the food is good? Check out the seagulls. If you have some big ass gulls that look like they could carry off a toddler, then you've got some good food. They've spent the summer feasting on leftover fries and are now ready to fight you for your hot dog. 

Fries? Where?

You also have to have a plethora of shops selling just the most offensive t-shirts possible. If you don't have a boardwalk stall selling "I Heart Sluts" shirt, are you even trying? 

The shops in Ocean City had the Trump mug shot shirts out, and were selling both GUILTY and NOT GUILTY versions. I told my brother he was getting a NOT GUILTY one for Christmas. He was not amused. 

3) A Crappy Amusement Park

It can be better than crappy, but honestly? Crappy is kind of better. You really aren't getting the full experience if you aren't doing a haunted house ride, where the scariest thing about it is the smell of mold and the surly teen shoving you in. Or a big slide where your mat is so damp it sticks to the slide and will not move. Or a thrill ride where the thrill comes from the question of whether or not the bolts stay bolted. Bonus points if the park is on a pier, and the pier is supported by what looks like rotting telephone poles. 

4) Horrible Puns

Everything in your Shore Town should be named as if a committee of Dads got together and voted on the worst puns possible. You need a restaurant called Crabby Pete's or Crabby Dick's. You need a place with Rusty in the name, like The Rusty Scupper. You need a hotel or a cottage called the Sea Plus. No pun is too bad. 

5) Pastels

Your Shore Town should look like the design team of Miami Vice decided on the color scheme. Bright, light colors everywhere! Remember, you want to look sun kissed, not like you've been hiding under a rock. Bonus points if the pastels are the result of your bright primary colors being sun baked and not retouched. 

6) Mini Golf

You have to have mini golf and it has to be an acceptable theme. Acceptable themes include:

    - Dinosaurs

    - Pirates 

    - Sea Creatures

I will also accept vikings as a subset of pirates. Dragons qualify under Dinosaurs. At the very least, you need a windmill or a waterfall. 

It's important to meet all these criteria, because in the depths of winter you will find some sand in your car mats. Or a crumpled up scorecard from the X-Treme Mini Golf center showing how yo absolutely DOMINATED your family on the T-Rex hole. Or a wrapper from some salt water taffy in your jeans. And you will remember what it was like to be warm and strolling on the sand, fighting off seagulls. 

See you on the Shore!

Victor Catano lives in New York City with his wonderful wife, Kim, and his adorable pughuaua, Danerys. When not writing, he works in live theater as a stage manager, production manager, and chaos coordinator. His hobbies include coffee, Broadway musicals, and complaining about the NY Mets and Philadelphia Eagles. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @vgcatano and find his books on Amazon

Book Review: Wasps In The Ice Cream

 "Wasps In The Ice Cream" by Tim McGregor. 

"Wasps In The Ice Cream" by Tim McGregor

Summer, in the 1980s. Mark Pruitt and his two best friends, Eric and Kevin, are inseparable. That is, until the day Kevin chooses to play a cruel prank on the Farrow sisters. The aftermath of the prank leaves Mark feeling terrible and wanting to make amends. What ensues is a unique relationship with George (Georgia) Farrow that will take you on a journey of loss, grief, first love, and friendship. 

Last year, Chad Lutzke posted his top books for the year, and this story was on his list. The title and coming of age aspect of this story is what attracted me the most, but the character driven story and beautiful prose are what kept me reading. 

Mark and George had such an interesting dynamic. I loved their character interaction and how complex both sets of characters were. 

I also really appreciated the nods towards Shirley Jackson. The reference towards "The Lottery" was great. That's a story that has stuck with me, much like "Wasps In The Ice Cream" will now. 

Realistically, this story could be a few things; a ghost story, a love story, a coming of age horror novella. I personally didn't consider it horror, but it did emit all of the creepy vibes. No matter what you're looking for when you sit down to read, I guarantee you'll find it inside these pages.