YouTube is TV without gatekeepers. Speaking as someone who had had conversations with TV producers about trying to get a book turned into a TV show, it’s apparently harder to get a book made into a show than trying to get the book published in the first place. Most creative industries are filled with gatekeepers. Gatekeepers have no scientific measurement on which they can base what will or won’t succeed. They go with their gut, or they chase a trend, or they just beat a dead horse (Marvel, Star Wars) and force it to produce content for the masses. Sometimes they’re right. Often, they’re wrong. Sometimes their content finds a niche audience. Sometimes it Big Bang Theories into popularity. It’s all just a numbers and luck game at heart. YouTube eliminated gatekeepers. You can make anything you want to make, put it up on YouTube, and hey—you’ve got a TV show of your own. Some people have used this unlimited power for good. Some for evil. For every successful YouTube-based show with a lot of followers or views, you’ve got some tinfoil hat nutjob in his basement raging about politics, the weather, and how cucumbers are actually out to destroy masculinity. But much like publishing or music, POPULAR does not necessarily equate GOOD. Often in publishing, TV, film, music, etc…things get popular because of gimmicks, or they are trendy at the right time. It has a lot to do with luck, placement, and having the right people believe in it. Most of the time, creative industries push out what they feel will appeal to the most possible people at once, often to the detriment of better pieces. I always reference Fox’s mishandling of FIREFLY, which turned out to have a rabid fanbase, in favor of pushing reality TV on people because it was cheaper to make and had a massive novelty factor at the time. Firefly cost $2 million an episode, which was a ton for a show back then. It was a lot more effective to push out a reality turd for $200K and spend the remaining $1.8 million on convincing the American public to watch it because avalanche marketing is really where the heart of what’s successful on TV lies. So, here comes YouTube. It has no gatekeepers. Record a show on your phone. Edit it on your cheap laptop. Upload it on your lousy internet connection. As long as you have the basic parts, you can create a career with them. It’s the same with publishing and music. As long as you can put stuff out there, you can compete with the big boys. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it doesn’t. But no one is telling you that you can’t. You absolutely can. You might find an audience, you might not, but at least you can try. This is the way it should be. One of my favorite YouTube channels is Mythical Kitchen, a spin-off of Good Mythical Morning, an insanely popular channel that was founded around the dawn of YouTube when two friends from North Carolina started making funny videos. Now, Rhett and Link are a powerhouse of internet content, and they oversee a many-headed beast. Good on them! They cracked the code and made it a success. Mythical Kitchen is basically like the Food Network on a mild hallucinogen. Centerpiece and slightly chaotic main host Josh Scherer and his “mythical kitcheneers” crank out two episodes of quality food programming per week (Tuesdays and Thursdays), and they have done so for years now. This is a ridiculous amount of programming for food production shows, and they do it without taking themselves too seriously. One of the new things Mythical Kitchen has been churning out the last year or so has been a program they call LAST MEALS. This is a great gimmick where, instead of cooking hot dog wellingtons made from 7/11 ingredients, or making Flamin’ Hot Cheetos chicken wings, a celebrity guest comes on, gives a menu of what they’d like to eat on their final day alive on Earth, and then Scherer sits down to interview them about life, the universe, and everything while they consume the guest’s meals and dissect the reasons why they chose what they did. It's clever, sometimes poignant, and entertaining in a way that a lot of chat shows aren’t. It’s often revealing and intriguing. It’s the kind of show everyone would like to be a guest on whether or not they admit it to themselves. Now, knowing that I lack the publicist or PR team to get me on Mythical Kitchen so I can shill my books and break down the intricacies of life and death with Josh, I’ll just do it here with you now because selling books requires content, and content is not always easy to do. So, should tomorrow be my final day on Earth, here’s my menu (wheat allergy be damned because I’m dying anyhow…): Breakfast: A bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Country-style benedict with hashbrowns An English muffin with crunchy peanut butter A big glass of Sunny D Lunch: A slice or two of sausage pizza (probably Godfather’s for the nostalgia, maybe Casey’s because I’m cheap) A Big Mac Three cheesy ground beef tacos from Gloria’s in Sun Prairie A large Coke Zero Dinner: Culver’s Bacon Double Deluxe with fries A slice of homemade lasagna A couple slices of turkey breast with gravy and cornbread stuffing Dessert: As many friggin’ Oreos as I can shove in my stupid facehole I think having the foresight to know you only had twenty-four hours left, you’d try to taste your favorites one more time. It’s your last go-round, and you’d want to remember the things you enjoyed most. I love Cinnamon Toast Crunch so much that they’re banned from my house because a box is a single serving to me. I worked at McDonald’s for longer than I’d care to admit, so a Big Mac is pure nostalgia to me. I’m not eating it because it’s good, I’m eating it for the memories. Gotta have one last hit of Culver’s, too. I’m not going to face the Great Beyond without the lasting taste of bacon on my palate. While it’s never fun to remember that we’re here for a limited time, and eventually all of our numbers will get pulled out of the Great Bingo Ball Tank in the Sky, and whatever we’re doing here will come to a sudden stop, it’s nice to remember the things you loved while you were here and remember what made you love them. It’s nice to remember the good times you had, and often our good times are food-related. What’s your last menu going to be, if given that chance? What makes you choose that item(s)? What’s the good times you have associated with it? Let’s hear ‘em in the comments. And, if you get a chance, feel free to check out Mythical Kitchen. They’re amusing, if nothing else. And sometimes amusing is all you really need. Hey, look—it’s the second week in which I’m doing the thing I said I was going to start doing last week. That makes this a streak. I’m two for two! I’ve got three new things to share with you this week. Ignore or partake as you see fit for your life. 1. The Union Hockey League. I’ve already posted about the UHL and my local team, the Sun Prairie Killer Bees, but this is just a lot of fun for not a lot of money. We have a problem in America where people tend to support things at the highest level but ignore the stuff on lower levels. They’ll go see a one single NHL game and drop $500 on tickets, parking, food, merch, and everything that goes with it, but for far less than that $500, you could have season tickets, multiple merch items, better seats, and do the noble thing about supporting your local community. Going to an NHL game is an experience, no doubt, but so is going to low-level games. And it’s the same game. You’re just closer to it, and it means something when it’s your local team. I’m looking forward to the 48-team expansion of the UHL next season, and there’s still plenty of hockey to be played yet this year. 2. Old Gods of Appalachia podcast: I started listening to this podcast a while back, but it’s become one of those things that I look forward to, and when it shows up in the podcast feed on Thursdays, I know it’s going to be a good day. Steve Schell writes and narrates an ongoing serialized story about the goings-on in rural Appalachia, and the local citizens who have to battle the forces of darkness. Each season encompasses a new story with new characters, and it’s just great fun if you like horror stories. Steve’s got a great narrating voice and his command of the language is worth a listen. 3. Oreo Space Dunk cookies: Oreos are the best cookie in the prepacked, poison-that’s-killing-you aisle, and I always enjoy when they bust out new flavors. The newest one is the Oreo Space Dunk. It’s the standard Oreo chocolate wafers with some ungodly pink-and-blue filling. It’s no better or worse than a standard Oreo, but for some reason, the pink-and-blue filling just makes me feel like a kid, when you’d happily stuff your face with anything as long as it was labeled “candy” and had neon colors. (Hi-C Ecto Cooler, anyone?) There is nothing noteworthy about them, other than they brought me about 1.5 seconds of joy this month, and I will take any moments of joy I can get. Okay, that's three random things for this week. If you didn't catch the very nice review I received from Kirkus for the fourth Abe & Duff book, Bought the Farm, please check that out. Basically, if you're going to get a review, I recommend Kirkus because it seems to carry the most weight with libraries and bookstores. I received a really lovely review from Kirkus today about Bought the Farm. On a frustrating note, I also got another agent rejection this morning in the email over the very same book. This is part of the reason I just keep my head down and continue to publish myself. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sean-little/bought-the-farm/ I didn’t wake up and plan to write about hockey today, but then the Union Hockey League dropped a bombshell announcement on the ol’ social media feed, and now I feel sort of compelled to at least make note of it. The UHL announced plans to expand from 12 teams to 48 next year. They will have four divisions of twelve teams (north, south, east, and west). This is not just a hard slapshot of a play, but a mighty clapper from beyond the blue line. This is a major move for a league that has just begun, and honestly, it’s kind of messing with my head a little bit. Already, I’ve seen the naysayers and negative Nellies online talking about how this is too big, too fast. They might have a point. It’s a lot of activity in a brand-new league. It might drain the talent pool. It might result in too much, too soon. But on the other hand, it’s a bold move, and for something like the Union Hockey League, it might just be the correct move for this time. Let’s look at some possible specifics for why. Senior AAA hockey is a draw across Canada, but it’s relatively under the radar in America. A bold forward push like this will make people take notice, and in the end, that’s the name of the game. You need people to notice this thing exists, know that it’s making a big push, and see that it’s getting a head of steam while moving forward. Marketing is a difficult thing to do in this day and age. We are inundated with content on every platform. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. Marketing is about getting as many people as possible to know about the product to spread the word as far as it can go. It’s a numbers game. The more people who know about something, the more likely you will be to find an audience for the product. It’s brutal, but a sudden influx of a 48-team league will at least establish a wide enough base that it should create enough media throughout social media and local networks to make people sit up and take notice. That’s a win. Not to mention, broader exposure could lead to things like more merchandise sales and the potential for a larger sponsor base. National sponsors will be more likely to jump on board when they realize this league will dot the county instead of being localized to the Rust Belt. Let’s face it, nobody wants to work for free, so everything comes down to money, and a bold move like this expansion has the potential to start a real sponsor funnel to help the teams grow to their potential. A massive expansion like this will help teams with simple geography. Already, having a travel league like this where teams have to drive ten or more hours to some games can be brutal at this level. No one is chartering G6’s for these road trips. It’s done by turning tires on the interstate. And hockey is played at a volatile time of year, weather-wise. It can make some of those road trips a little iffy. By having four divisions with twelve teams each, you can localize the travel better, and the teams won’t burn themselves out on the road. Large conferences will also lead to a more meaningful and exciting postseason. Everyone wants to play for hardware, and if you rise to the top of a 48-team pile, it means a little more. That’s a long way for a cream to rise, and it provides the potential for a lot more upward and downward movement in the standings throughout the season. This keeps the stat-watchers engaged, and it will only ramp up excitement down the stretch toward the postseason. I’m not an expert in any of this—just a fan hacking at a keyboard. But I would like to shrug off any potential negativity toward this move and focus on the potential positives. I see this expansion as being a big, broad, bold boom of a decision, and I think it could work out if people get behind this league. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Hockey is the best sport to watch live. Especially in smaller venues where UHL teams will be playing. For not a lot of money, you can go to the barn in Sun Prairie, where there are no bad seats and everything is literally rinkside, or for a much bigger headache in terms of travel and parking, and for twice the money, you can go get nosebleed seats at the Kohl Center, where you need a pair of binoculars to distinguish the live game from bubble hockey. I know me—I’d rather hang out with some of the locals and support the hometown team. This expansion could be just the thing to help the Union Hockey League announce its arrival with authority. I think it’s good for the league, good for the Killer Bees, and good for Sun Prairie. Let’s go, Bees. It’s not often you get a chance to get in on the ground floor of something. Back in November, I saw an announcement on my local paper’s Facebook page linking to an article about how my little town of Sun Prairie was going to be the location of a brand new semi-pro hockey team in a brand-new Senior A league. The Sun Prairie Killer Bees were going to be part of the new Union Hockey League. The Union Hockey League is a blue-collar, middle-class league that claims it’s focused on a love for the game and community. The teams would be made of local players, guys from around the area. Wisconsin is a good hockey state. I had no doubt they could find dudes who could skate in the vicinity. As a longtime hockey fan, I was in. I was never much of a skater growing up. My little town didn’t have any sort of youth hockey program. I liked to skate, but I never had the wheels or ability to play the game. My big hockey memories were of listening to Paul Brown call games on the radio with my dad and going to the occasional UW hockey game. Sometimes, my dad would let me stay up until 10:30 p.m., when the UW game from earlier that evening would be broadcast on our local PBS affiliate. Still, it was enough to make me enjoy the game. Hockey is one of those games that’s better in person than on TV. It might be the only game that’s better in person than on TV, too. When I saw the announcement about getting a local team, I realized this might be the chance to do something I’ve always wanted to do and become a season-ticket holder for a professional sports franchise. Last night was the home opener for the Sun Prairie Killer Bees hockey team. They hosted the Pittsburgh River Monsters. It was my first chance to see this team which I had already committed to for the entire season. I’d already bought merch. I’d been spreading the word, but still—it was an unknown quantity. Would people show up for this? Would it be good hockey? It was all unknown. The Bees had already played their season opener on the road against the Motor City Generals in Royal Oak, Mich. (which the Bees won handily 11-3!), but this would be my first chance to see this team in uniform on home ice. I didn’t know what to expect. Luckily, the Killer Bees lived up to the hype, and we were treated to a great hockey game in Sun Prairie’s hockey palace, a nearly capacity crowd, and a high-scoring slugfest that saw the home team come out on top. Bees win! The hockey was a good brand of hockey. It was fast-paced, with some solid stickhandling and shots from all over the ice. There were some good breakaways, some hard checks, and even a few moments of chippy scrapping that resulted in penalty minutes. It was everything you want from hockey. I get to go back to the barn today for a second bash between the River Monsters and the Killer Bees. And later this month, more hockey! The Soo Nordiques of Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. will be town next weekend to take on the Bees, and we’ll see some more teams from the UHL throughout March and April. It is a great thing to have a team like this in Sun Prairie. Too often, sports franchises like this might focus on Madison as the centerpiece of the area, and it’s understandable why, but Sun Prairie is 40,000 people and rapidly growing. There’s no reason this town shouldn’t be able to make something like the Killer Bees franchise a viable team in the Union Hockey League. It’s an easier drive than getting to downtown Madison. The rink is a quality piece of ice. And if the people who showed up last night are any indication, the fan base is already there, and it can only go up. Looking forward to the future of this team and this league. Let’s go, Bees! 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. I'm bad with blogging. I don't have a ton of interesting or insightful things to say, so I don't think to blog for the sake of blogging all too often, but when you're in this silly publishing game, you have to have a social media presence, they say it helps to have a website, and you gotta blog. I'm not sure if any of this makes a difference, but I do know that people are more willing to read your books if they like you as a person, and given that most of us avoid the traditional meatspaces nowadays in favor of the online havens, this is how people get to know you. I've been flogging away at two works-in-progress. I've finished two drafts on one of them, and am nearing the completion of the first draft on the other. Both should be out later this year. One of them was promised at the end of Bought the Farm, my last book. I've also been flogging away at the job search, but I've found that ageism is real, and there are a ton of qualified, educated, and experienced people in the Madison area desperate for work, so the competition is insane. It's to the point where I'm actually considering going back into restaurant work. I just want to find something I really enjoy doing. I'm tired of hating going to work. I haven't really enjoyed a job I've held since Madison Media Institute closed down. It doesn't help that I've been diagnosed with severe arthritis in the lower back and can no longer do heavier physical jobs like I've done in the past. My work window is getting narrower, and that is making it all the more difficult. I've revamped my presentation on self-publishing and writing in case I get another call to lecture about it at a book group or community ed presentation. I'd like to do more of that, but it's not easy to find people who will let you speak. Anyone who has known me for any amount of time knows of my devotion to the band Marillion. They are my all-time favorite musical act. I love everything they've ever done. Lately, I haven't been able to listen to their song This Strange Engine enough. It's a true masterpiece lyrically, musically, and emotionally. So, if you've got some time to kill, tuck into this beast of a song. Stephen Rothery's guitar is on point for this one. This article lends to an interesting debate.
Don't get me wrong: I am no Bezos fan. I'm not an Amazon fan because I think they have full control of a large market, and that discourages competition. Amazon has a MASSIVE monopoly on a lot of things, but especially books. It used to be a little more fair for nobodies like me on the Amazon marketplace, but a while back the Big 5 publishing companies complained about people like me being put on the same platform as people like King, Rowling, Connelly, et al. and demanded changes to the algorithms to favor the heavyweights who put the bulk of coin into the coffers. But what's the alternative? When you look at sales as a nobody like me, people are far more willing to drop $5 on an eBook than $20 on a hard copy. Even more so, Kindle Unlimited has given me readers around the world that I never would have gotten otherwise. The trade-off is that I make less money per book, but get a chance to gain more reviews, and more reviews might hypothetically bring more readers. (Or, if I'm playing for my wildest dreams: a decent agent or traditional publishing contract...but at this point in my career/life, I'm not holding my breath for either. I'm too weird for traditional publishing...) For books like the Survivor Journals, the Kindle Unlimited gamble has paid off immeasurably. For my Abe & Duff books, which are in a grossly oversaturated genre, it's a little less so. But it's better than the alternative, which is trying to rely solely on hard copy sales as a nobody who has to work a day job to survive. Robert Pirsig, who wrote Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, used to have to go to flea markets to peddle copies out of his trunk back in the Before Time, in the Long Long Ago before the Internet. He wrote one of the most popular books of the 1970s, but he still struggled for a long time to sell hard copies. For me, I sell almost no hard copies. I wish I sold more. I just don't. I know some writers like Kathleen Ernst do very well with hard copies. She has entire shelves in bookstores dedicated to her stuff, whereas most of my books gather too much dust. However, in the digital world, I'm doing okay. Most months, I sell at least one copy of one of my books every single day. It's only like $.35 per eBook, but it adds up over weeks and months. And most days, I do better than one copy. I know a lot of nobodies from nowhere who would kill to have my level of "success." If I were relying only on hard copy sales, I would be in the hundreds of copies sold. Instead, with the grace of the digital market and some wonderful luck, I've crossed the hundred-thousand mark, which is pretty impressive for a nobody, but less impressive when you realize that number is spread across more than a dozen books and a dozen years. Still, I'm not complaining. I wouldn't have those sales if not for Amazon's ease of use and monopoly, though. Particularly their Kindle Unlimited offering. I would LOVE for people to be buying physical copies and asking for in-store appearances, but they're not. Amazon's model is the best I can do. I've looked into other markets and Amazon alternatives. I've tried them. In all other non-Amazon markets for ebooks, I've literally only sold THREE copies since I started trying to compete in this game. Amazon has a stranglehold on the market that I don't see being defeated short of Congressional antitrust hearings. I see a lot of writers delivering a lot of hate toward Amazon. I fully understand that hate. I hate what Amazon has done to bookstores, which is why I always try to direct people to buy books through their local indie stores like Mystery to Me, A Room of One's Own, or Arcadia Books (or any of the other dozens of indie bookstores in Wisconsin). Not only does it help the bookstore, but it helps me by letting the bookstore know I exist. Maybe they'll ask me to show up and shill books or something. Who knows? Should Amazon be broken up because of its market cornering? Probably. Would it damage my sales? Definitely. No one else can hold a candle to what Amazon has done for nobodies like me, but I would still be interested in seeing someone try to compete. One of the things that has long been bothering me about the Abe & Duff books was a lack of uniformity about their aesthetics. They're good books, but they have four very different cover styles because A) I was never sure these were going to be an ongoing series, and B) I used three different design programs to make the four covers. Call it a learning process. Since I had some time this weekend, I gave myself three very long days to redesign all four covers. They are uniform in text and much more uniform in design. They're finally looking like the books I wanted all along. It only took me five years to get there. It'll still be a couple of months before they go live online and for purchase, but rest assured, they are on their way. The first Abe & Duff book, The Single Twin came out in March of 2019. This book is almost five years old, and I can't believe it. Thanks for reading them. e've come to the end of another year. Everyone alright? All fingers and toes accounted for? What have we lost? What have we gained? Have we learned anything new? Have we forgotten anything important?
And most importantly, here's to hoping that 2024 is a much better year for everyone. I don't have any major wisdom or witty gleanings to share. I just have a brief wrap-up of some entertainment offerings I enjoyed this year and would like to pass them along to you in case you might like them as well. BOOKS In the first category, let's take a look at some books I read this year that I greatly enjoyed. (They may not have been released this year, but I enjoyed them this year nonetheless.) Geddy Lee's autobiography, My Effin' Life/Mark Kelly, The Diary of Mad Jack Ged is a personal hero and has been since I was in high school. Rush is one of my two favorite bands. I enjoyed the hell out of his autobiography, and it was a great glimpse at a band that usually kept their personal lives out of the spotlight. On the other side of the musical autobiography coin, the keyboardist for my other favorite band, Marillion, wrote a memoir last year that I finally got around to reading this year. Highly enjoyable for fans of the band. If you’ve never heard of the band, you might find reading Kelly’s autobiography as something closer to Russian microwave instructions. Still, I loved it. Maggie Ginsberg's Still True Full disclosure, Maggie was a year behind me in the hallowed halls of Mount Horeb High School. Anytime a MoHo alum comes out swinging, I'm in their corner. STILL TRUE is a wonderful piece of lit fiction that breaks down the lies we tell ourselves, the lies we tell others, and the rifts that even the closest of people can have between them. CJ Box's Endangered I've been working my way through Box's catalog for the last couple of years. He writes the sort of book I enjoy, but I'm not overly compelled to plow through his work in the same way I am other authors in the genre. It's no knock against Box's style or abilities. It's just that other people get put to the front of the list, while poor Joe Pickett lies on the backburner waiting for me to come back to him. ENDANGERED was a pleasant surprise. It’s the fifteenth book in the fan-favorite Pickett series, and it’s one of Box’s strongest offerings. He created a truly unique and interesting villain in this one, and had it come too close to Pickett’s family to be anything but riveting. Jeanette McCurdy’s memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died Get this one on audiobook. A great tale of a narcissistic parent pushing a child into a life that child hated along with some really freaky details of long-term abuse. (For instance, McCurdy’s mother wiped her butt for her until she was in her late teens and performed breast and vaginal exams in the shower on her almost daily.) A tragic tale, but it ends hopefully and kudos to McCurdy for having the strength to write it. Alex Bledsoe's Give the People What They Want A fun collection of short stories from another MoHo guy, Alex Bledsoe. With stories from his popular Tufa series and Eddie LaCrosse series, as well as a new zombie novella, this is a fun audiobook collection. It's worth checking out. TELEVISION I watch too much TV. I think I even put that fact in my author bio. I have always been a TV fan, and I always will be. I’ve always hated the elitists who act like they’re better than television. “Oh, I never watch television!” they’ll say with dripping disdain. To me, that’s exactly the same as saying, “Oh, I don’t care about keeping up with American culture.” Television is what links us as a people. It’s weekly visits from friends for stories and laughs. The best things I’ve watched this year: Season 2 of Quantum Leap No sophomore slump for Quantum Leap. They’ve done some original things beyond what the first series did, and really kept it from getting stale. Highly enjoying what they’re doing with the reboot, and I can only hope Scott Bakula eventually makes an appearance (even though Bakula has said it’s unlikely). Mr. Monk’s Last Case I wrote about this a couple weeks back. It was a great final appearance for the great Adrian Monk. I enjoyed it greatly. Reservation Dogs I didn’t start watching the first two seasons of Rez Dogs until just before the third season aired, so I watched all three seasons of this in the span of about a month. I was kicking myself for putting it off so long. It was unique and charming. It wasn’t the hard comedy the commercials made it out to be, and often it was far more dramatic than comedic. Shows like RESERVATION DOGS, BARRY, and THE BEAR almost need a new genre in awards shows because they get called comedies because they’re 30 minutes long, but they’re not comedy. They’re far more of drama with the occasional funny moment. Rez Dogs makes great use of its young cast, all of whom I hope to see far more of in the future. In the third season, they really go hard on the idea of the community as a whole as a legacy. It was there in the distant past, and it will persevere into the future. It was delightful as a series and had a wholesome, poignant final episode. I’ll miss this show. Dark Winds Zahn McClarnon is a great character actor, and I’m happy to see him take a leading role in the mantle of Tony Hillerman’s great character, Joe Leaphorn. Add in Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee and some great setting and costume work, and Dark Winds is one of my current favorite shows. It’s extremely well done, and I’m looking forward to Season Three. I also greatly enjoyed THE LAST OF US, THE IRRATIONAL, and WILL TRENT. SHRINKING and POKER FACE were also good fun. FILM A small selection of the best movies I watched this year. THE WHALE Brendan Fraser is the real deal. Even though this came out in 2022, I didn’t watch it until March, so it’s a 2023 film to me. I spent a long time thinking about this one after it was over. HONOR AMONG THIEVES: A DUNGEONS & DRAGONS MOVIE Finally, someone did a D&D movie justice. Great fun. Gimme a sequel! COCAINE BEAR One of those stupid, fun, pointless movies that I enjoyed the hell out of. Some serious laughs in this one, but it’s not going to be something you ever watch twice. THE IRON CLAW Saw this in the theater the other day. It’s a nice change from the high-budget CGI-fests that movies are becoming. Simple costumes. Simple sets. Low budget. It’s a good story based around the tragic true story of the Von Erich family. If you’re not familiar with early ‘80’s wrestling, the Von Erichs were like the first family of professional wrestling. Five of the sons of golden age wrestler Fritz Von Erich were poised for greatness. but over the span of a decade, four of the five sons died in horrible ways which some called a family “curse.” (There was a sixth son who died when he was six.) I was pleasantly surprised by a strong performance from Zac Efron in this one, and the nostalgia for that era of wrestling was nice to revisit. Strongly recommend. GODZILLA MINUS ONE From Toho, the company that originally made Godzilla movies, came a really strong post-WWII story about the rebuilding of Japan and the PTSD that went along with some of the kamikaze pilots who survived the war…with Godzilla added in for good measure. Not to be missed. A really strong flick. AIR A really neat movie that flew under the radar about Nike’s successful acquisition of Michael Jordan’s endorsement for the Air Jordan sneakers. Strong cast. Strong performances. Neat story. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. MUSIC I don’t get into music like I did in college and post-college. I don’t have the time anymore, but here’s a few things I really enjoyed: MARILLION - AN HOUR BEFORE IT’S DARK (Live in Port Zelande 2023) A live album that contains the entirety of Marillion’s brilliant 2022 record “An Hour Before Its Dark.” Marillion is my favorite band, hands down, and it’s a crime they’re not more popular. AHBID is one of their strongest albums in almost 40 years of music, and the live version is brilliant. Steve Hogarth, the lead singer, notoriously does NOTHING to keep his singing voice in good shape. He just comes out and it works every time. Knock on wood. If anything, his voice has gotten better over the years because it’s gotten just a tiny bit ragged and more expressive. LORDS OF THE TRIDENT – Live at the Annex in Madison, Wis. Going out to concerts with my buddies Scot and Matt used to be my favorite thing. We saw a lot of great bands in the ‘90s. Now, I hardly ever get out to a show, but when the Madisonian masters of metal mischief put on their Patreon-backer concert a few weeks ago, I managed to get out and see them. Lords of the Trident should be a lot more popular than they are. They’re talented. They’re funny. They don’t take themselves seriously. And they’re keeping the good kind of 1980’s metal alive. Check out their 2022 album, “The Offering.” Great record. They’ve got a new EP coming out with a song on it called “John Milwaukee.” They recorded the chorus of that song live at the Annex, so if you listen closely, you’ll be able to hear me. (Probably not, I was one of about 100-120 voices, but still—I’m on it.) NEWSKI – FRIEND ROCK Milwaukee dork rock troubadour Brett Newski released a new record called “Friend Rock” earlier this year. He recorded each track with another musician of some renown adding to the track. For instance, he wrote the song “Chemicals” and recorded it with Matthew Caws from Nada Surf. Really fun record, and it’s got two bonafide hit tracks (if only American radio wasn’t so corporate…). Highly recommend anything Newski does. He has a song called MIND AT LARGE on his “Land Sea Air Garage” album that I want as the theme song for any potential Abe & Duff series. If you listen to it, you’ll understand the vibe I hear in my head when I write Abe & Duff. KARMIC JUGGERNAUT Just discovered this progressive rock outfit recently. They sound like King Crimson with Yes’s Jon Anderson at the lead vocals. Wild stuff. I recommend checking them out on YouTube. Great musicianship and fun, psychedelic prog songs. PODCASTS My podcast list hasn’t undergone much change in the last year. Still listening to SPOOKED on Fridays, especially now that they’ve gone weekly. Still the best-produced paranormal story podcast in the game. Really enjoy Dan Cummins’s work on both TIMESUCK and SCARED TO DEATH every week. Derek Hayes is killing it with his MONSTERS AMONG US podcast. And every week I enjoy hearing CONAN O’BRIEN NEEDS A FRIEND. Heck, the radio in my car hardly ever deviates from Conan O’Brien radio on Sirius XM lately. Also enjoying LORE and CABINET OF CURIOUSITIES from Aaron Mahnke. I also started listening to OLD GODS OF APPALACHIA this year. Really enjoying everything that podcast has to offer, as well. That about wraps up the pop culture I’ve been imbibing. I didn’t really do anything fun this year. It was all work, mainly. Getting the teenager to graduate from high school and start her first year at UW-Platteville has been my biggest success. Putting Bought The Farm into the world was a close second (even though sales don’t reflect my joy for it). I’m hoping to release two books in 2024, but we’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned for details. I’m looking forward to attending BoucherCon this coming year. And I’m now a member of the Mystery Writers of America, so that’s exciting. But this year has been pretty lackluster overall. Here's to hoping for better things in 2024. Thank you so much for your support. It means the world to me. All the best, --S |
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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