Because I realize that in this day and age, you can no longer just exist and have books sell. There has to be a presence, a personality behind the books. I mean, it's a little discouraging that trashy pulp novels are selling thousands and thousands of copies because the people who wrote them are just really good on TikTok, but that's the world we live in nowadays, isn't it? We have to market and publicize things; we have to be more than a writer. I would not be good on TikTok. Believe me, I have a face that looks like a spoiled ham. It doesn't show up well on camera, and the less you see of me, the better. I should exist like Thomas Pynchon and just never photograph. But I have to do something that causes engagement, right? So in that respect, I realize that my blog is about the only way I feel confident enough to routinely communicate with people. To that end, I would like to introduce you to something new. On Fridays, I'm going to attempt to write a new, short blog post that just touches on three things I've done in the previous week. Might be book-related. Might be music-related. Might be television, films, or restaurants. Who knows? It's no-holds-barred in the name of content and engagement! So without further ado, I present three things for February 2, 2024: 1) Karmic Juggernaut: I discovered the band by accident while surfing YouTube a while back. I bought one of their albums and was blown away by their musicianship. They're a psychedelic progressive rock band, and they sound like King Crimson, if KC were fronted by Jon Anderson of Yes. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I can't get enough of them this week. Check out their video for their song Sun Puzzle to get a drift of the sort of kinetic magic they're making out there in New Jersey. 2) Drew Strickland's Sheriff Elven Hallie Mysteries: I had a credit on Amazon Kindle to burn, and I happened to stumble over the first of Drew Strickland's Elven Hallie mysteries, Buried in the Backwater. With reviews giving him pleasing comparisons to Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series, I decided to take a chance and see what it was about. So far, I'm about eleven chapters into it, and I'm enjoying it greatly. I could definitely see reading more of Strickland's work down the road. 3) John Sandford's Certain Prey television movie: I have long been a fan of Sandford's Lucas Davenport stuff. It's one of those book series that's very popular, but it's also under the radar. You don't see people talking about him on social media much. You don't see a lot of press on him. He just sort of does his thing, and he's generated a 30-plus-year writing career churning out books on the regular. Basically, I'd like to have Sandford's career, but with Abe & Duff. I had never seen any sort of adaptation of Sandford's works until last night. I happened to be popping around on the Tubi app (which is great, by the way), and I saw a made-for-TV adaptation of Sandford's book, Certain Prey. Y'all, it was not good. Mark Harmon stars as Lucas Davenport, and a young Tatiana Maslany has a role as a hitwoman in this production that was prior to her breakout role in Orphan Black. However, I didn't recognize a single person in the rest of the cast, and the acting, editing, direction, and production were subpar. The whole thing looked like it was shot on a nice Minneapolis afternoon with an over-the-counter video camera for a Lifetime channel movie. Sandford deserves better. Mark Harmon deserves better. Anyhow, that's three things for this week. We'll see you next week. Let's see if I can keep this up. |
About the AuthorSean Patrick Little is a writer, speaker, editor, educator, and general literary dude from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Click the pictures below to purchase books!
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