Your Humble Professor

Yes, I read dictionaries. Today's is: A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose (1785) 2021 Edition. Not a formal dectionary, Grose collects vintage Thieves Cant, slang from soldiers, sailors, and tradesmen. Prisoners, beggars, and other societal fringes. Useful and entertaining in its own right.

Today's book isn't even fiction…well, I guess there are people who will argue otherwise. Suetonius' 'Lives of the Caesars' translated by Tom Holland, who makes what could've been a tedious book-length listicle engaging. Hey, big surprise: Unchecked dynastic power & wealth are bad. Who knew?

Made all our travel arrangements this week. Annoyingly expensive–to the point where there are several shows we'd LIKE to do, but who can afford gallivanting around like that? Not us, even though we DO go for business.

Today's Hugo nominee is Nnedi Okorafor's "Death of the Author". Parts of this book were fascinating, and overall the writing was really good. However I started losing patience with the main character pretty quickly, and never regained it. Hard to come back from that. Your mileage may vary.

Rejoice! For Kaja will be streaming again tonight on Twitch® at 6 PM PST. She plays games & talks about what's going on in the mighty Studio Foglio industrial complex, atelier, and petting-zoo.

I was planning on doing some solid work in the garden…and I'm told it's going to rain all this week. Guess I'm running out of excuses to not work on those novels. Oh wait! I can clean out the garage!

scififantasybooks A guilty pleasure break from the Hugo nominated books: Matt Dinniman's latest: 'A Parade of Horribles'. I am envious of Matt's ability to plot out these complex situations, give us character interaction & development, keep everything moving in a humorous manner– while killing millions– and the total absurdity of it makes it work. Damn.

Our Kickstarter backers will be thrilled to know we finally approved all the proofs for the printer for the next 2 books. Now we get to find out when we can expect them to hit our driveway. Don't worry, a bunch will go to our shop as well!

Today's Hugo hopeful book is Emily Tesh's The Incandescent. This is a magical school story that focuses on the teachers & administrators, with an emphasis on just how grueling & miserable their jobs & lives are. Yep, that came through really clearly. I get it. Pay teachers more.

It is that time of year in the garden when you have all your plants in place, the weather is perfect, and the fastest growing thing is the weeds. Those fuckers are healthy and happy and refuse to die. Nice to know that at some level, I'm doing something right.

Still reading the Hugo books. Today is Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Hard SF with really intriguing aliens, set in a universe where hyper-capitalism has ruined everything forever to such a depressing degree that I just couldn't get into it. I'll try again eventually, but these days? I need escapism.

Embraced my effete intellectual aspect yesterday, and made a couple of quiches–and the family snaffled them up instantly. Gratifying, yes, but also a bit discouraging as they are a LOT of work (if you make them right) Obviously I need to make twice as many next time.

Planning ahead for our next show, which is a MTG show in tawdry, starved for tourists Las Vegas! They work us hard there, so we're always happy to meet fans!

Hey, lookit me, reading books like a quaint 20th century person! Still working my way through the Hugo nominees. Today it's The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson. This excellent book did the one thing I appreciate the most in a story: It continually surprised me in a logical & entertaining manner. That's really tough to do because I am a jaded and cynical reader. Not brag, just fact.

Ah, it is Spring, when it is beautiful outside, I can see my garden (which needs weeding) and the last thing I want to do is work on the next novel which is already taking far too long and I have just discovered that my chair is too short, dammit.

A lot of people are interested in the "How" I work (as opposed to the rest who ask "Why?") When I draw, I tend to draw for about 3 minutes at a time, and then read for 5. "How the hell can you work like that?" people cry. Very well, thank you. 60+ plus years behind the drawing board and no Carpel Tunnel Syndrome yet. Recently I've found myself reading crap off my phone instead of books because it was more "convenient". My bad. Determined to break this odious habit, I started by reading through the 2026 Hugo Award nominees. First up, A Drop of Corruption by Robert J. Bennett. This is a murder mystery set in an alternate world with a whole lot of bio-engineering. The characters are excellent, and I found the dynamic between the principals to be very well done. I liked it so much that I plan to order the rest of the books in the series, and you can't get better than that.