I read Annie Dillard’s “The Writing Life” yesterday. It’s great. Many times I was nodding, smiling, agreeing. It captures a lot of the craziness of sitting in a room alone for months working on a thing. In her case writing, mine too, but “writing” could mean code or non-fiction or fiction. It’s the same thing though. It’s exhilarating! “Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself. In the democracies, you may even write and publish anything you please about any governments or institutions, even if what you write is demonstrably false.” ...

I have been thinking about scenes of something entirely monstrous. There are many, e.g. Lovecraft. But I come back to the Southern Reach series, perhaps because I have re-read it so many times. There are two scenes from the series that fit the bill. The first is the video from the first expedition in Authority and the second when the transformed biologist attacks our crew in the lighthouse on the island in Acceptance. ...

We have to move our body every day. This typically means the gym. Going to a room where we simulate the hard things we had to do just to survive: Lift heavy things Run a long way This is normalized. If we don’t do this, or something like this, our bodies don’t work right. What about our minds? What do we need to do or simulate doing to ensure our minds “work right”? ...

I have been thinking about what I could have done better with my novella “All Our Eyes”. So what worked? The story had a 3-levels of narrative. I wrote them from the inside out and this worked well. The second level of the narrative had a lot of cross-referencing and writing that in was a lot of fun. The outer layer was meta, and that too was easy/fun. When I had to change something major, like delete chapters (I deleted at least two) and reorder chapters (e.g. act 2), it caused a ton of pain with cross-referencing. A more solid plan would have allowed these major structural changes to have occurred earlier, perhaps. ...

I think my novella is done. I may tweak it a little more while I wait for the paperback proof to come, but it’s “done”. The title is: All Our Eyes: The Lost Investigation Of The Jindee Rock Shelter Demolition The cool quote on the front cover, lifted from the story, says: “They Watch, They Wait, They Take” I’m publishing under a pen name: “J. D. Brownlee”, to distance it from my tech books. ...

I love the Netflix TV show Archive 81. The podcast was fine. It went off the rails in season 2. But the TV show really grabbed me. I’ve probably re-watched it 5 or 6 times by now. Here’s the plot according to grok3: Archive 81 is a supernatural horror series that follows Dan Turner, an archivist hired to restore a collection of damaged videotapes recorded by documentary filmmaker Melody Pendras in 1994. As Dan delves into the tapes, he uncovers Melody’s investigation into a mysterious cult tied to the Visser apartment building, where strange occurrences and disappearances abound. The narrative alternates between Dan’s present-day efforts and Melody’s past, revealing a sinister connection between them as Dan becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth, only to discover that the cult’s rituals and a malevolent entity might still be at play, threatening his own reality. The show blends found-footage elements with psychological horror, culminating in a twist that questions time, identity, and the nature of the tapes themselves. ...

I’m hunting for errors in my novella right now. And finding a ton. Mostly inconsistencies and tiny grammar things. This is something LLMs are great at. But there are some tricks. I get better results if I give it 1/3 of the content at a time, rather than a single 30,000 word text file. I also get better results if I use a reasoning model rather than a non-reasoning model. Specifically, gpto1, grok3+thinking, and R1+thinking. ...

I just finished a re-read of “The Shadow of the Torturer”. It was better this time around. I guess I was more ready for it. I gave it 3 stars, but perhaps by the time I finish the series, I will up that. Perhaps it will join my annual re-read rotation? We’ll see… The first time I read it, I did not finish. Too slow, too boring. Don’t care. Also, it felt like a fantasy. It’s not, it’s clever scifi dressed as fantasy. Yay! ...

I was thinking more about The Fountain and why I like it so much. I suspect it is the multiple time periods. Specifically, the 1500s, the present, and the far future. It’s just cool. It’s why I like Cloud Atlas (book and movie), and Highlander. The former is very clever, the latter is just plain fun. Both are underrated. I guess I will forgive bad in other areas for some time-hopping in the story telling. ...

I love Darren Aronofsky’s film The Fountain. I remember anticipating it for years before it was finally released, and then it was impossible to find and watch. I found it. Watched it. Then rewatched it all the time for years. The plot, via grok3: “The Fountain” (2006), directed by Darren Aronofsky, is a visually stunning and emotionally complex film that weaves together three interconnected narratives spanning different time periods. The central story follows Tomas (Hugh Jackman), a modern-day neuroscientist desperately searching for a cure to save his dying wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz), who is battling a terminal illness. Izzi, a writer, is working on a book called “The Fountain,” which forms the second narrative: a 16th-century Spanish conquistador named Tomás, sent by Queen Isabella to find the Tree of Life in the New World to secure immortality and protect her kingdom. The third storyline takes place in a surreal, futuristic setting where Tom, a space traveler, journeys through the cosmos with a dying tree inside a biosphere, seeking to reach a distant nebula tied to Izzi’s story and Mayan mythology. ...