Smoking Lizard Media

© 2019 G.N. Jacobs

Depending on where I last left things, I love the in-between on many projects. The perpetual toe dance between getting forty new ideas a year onto to my list for later thought, writing/typing preliminary chapters to make sure I actually understand my idea and work intended to just “flop the fish on the deck, or go home” is just Tuesday for me. I must love it a little, I do this so often.

When I get an idea, I mull it over in my head for hours. Sometimes I land on a title, but usually I’m thinking about the characters, setting and maybe the antagonist. Sometimes I have a title and somehow have to live up the promise of the title…truth in advertising. And don’t get me started on a certain movie title that over sold what was on screen, but I digress…

One example of having what should be enough to create a draft in three or four months, but for all the other puppies clawing and whining for attention somewhere in my dinosaur pea brain…The Gunfighter Oratorio. A simple thought process really…at some point you’re just going to have to write a rip-off/homage to the Hobbit and call it a day. Specifically, start with a party and all these focaccia dwarves just invited themselves to the shindig leading to a quest to rid the world of dangerous tools.

As of this moment, I’ve already thought up the character and where he lives. And I’ve also thought up the “things I do differently,” a.k.a. The Six Points of Dissimilarity (a legal standard that means the difference between sued and – “HA-HA, MF! SUCK IT HARD!”). Fairly early in the process, I’m thinking: Thorin is a woman, no hobbits nor dwarves, the band of fourteen is, in strict point of fact, a band bringing along their instruments, the quest McGuffin is related to music (stole it from a horror novel idea, no reason it can’t appear in both) and the minute I decided upon a fantasy world with six shooters, the piece was always going to have its title.

I’ve done a couple test chapters establishing a comfortable house in the wellbit land of Haven (people don’t usually reinvent the wheel when they name things). The landed gentry-man splitting the difference between Bilbo and Frodo lives in this house playing his viola contemplating that his impending run for Mayor may require an adventure.

His guests arrive in ones and twos creating a party where there had been none; finally, the object of the party shows up last, their sister and cousin escorted to meet her betrothed in a faraway land. Sparks fly and when the guests mention that they need both a viola and a fourteenth for the journey, the host leaves home.

And that’s about as far as I’ve gotten. Other stories, maintaining this blog, doing a few more pages of my great comic book and the occasional side trip into TV Land all mean I have to pick a small number of these ideas just to scratch something off the list. My uncle once said, “I’m continuously impressed how you keep working and eventually publish things.”

Currently, the in-betweens that really matter involved an repurposed assassin clone falling in love with a widower as they delve into the secrets of her existence and save the world from hidden enemies. Or there’s been a decent amount of work recently on the two sisters from Trademark Safe Tatooine who band together despite loving the same man to save their planet from excessively greedy and destructive commercial exploitation. Until the next idea makes another left turn…

And there is still another book, a complete rewrite of my (hopefully only) tragically destroyed Crimes Against Elves. Five years grieving for the old version despite pretending it didn’t matter is enough. People asked “can’t you just take the parts that offended her out?” No, I either rewrite the whole thing from jump so that what needs to change doesn’t stick out where everyone sees it and gives me shit for leaving such glaring plot holes. A process that takes five years.

Nothing about how I handle my many in-betweens necessarily should inform how you handle your in-betweens. Yes, I try to keep my distraction to just a few projects keeping them hot and doing my words on a daily basis; that’s as much writing tip as I know how to give in this case. Fight to keep your gnat attention span focused on just a couple things; the other gadflies will still be there.

In addition to the simple incapability to maintain linear thought on just one project for more than six weeks, here’s what I’m thinking is also going on. The places I go when I write are just too damned entertaining in the sense of both places and the people living there that the imagining is sometimes enough to keep me entertained. Screw the words!

Of course, I can’t screw the words forever. The writing does two things. Help me understand what the purely visual part of the imagination didn’t actually tell me about, say, the Obsidian City. And I have to write it if I’m going to share the adventure. So here we are stuck in many in-betweens where I’m having all the fun (sorry), but I do write at least four times a week. I’ll get there…eventually.

© 2019 G.N. Jacobs

I have a complicated relationship with any sort of writing manual, but most especially the ones meant for screenwriters. You’ll hear me decry the cookie cutter feel of newer or lazy writers that use these books to the exclusion of all other considerations. Then I’ll launch into a discussion about a plot using the lingo – “In Star Wars what is the All is Lost Moment?” – “Obi-Wan raising his saber to give the others time to get away with the Death Star plans.” I don’t hate them completely, just misuse thereof.

So new rule: read all writing manuals, especially the ones primarily dealing with classic structure, after writing the first draft of your first work.

Now for the why. These books all harken back to the works of Joseph Campbell who in turn drew on Carl Jung, the pioneer psychoanalyst that taught us about narrative archetypes as a way to understand why we do things. Jung’s presumed thinking: people go crazy in ways that become eminently predictable once they start telling their stories that reveal personal needs.

Thus, when the doctor repeatedly hears the same general stories, humanity has a universality that shows up in our narrative. Identify the needs in the story, cure the patient. And the theory says that while the physical cause of being Napoleon versus the guy in the next bed being Alexander is the same, the reason for the divergent delusions will show up in the narrative heard in therapy concurrently with administering the drugs. At least, Jung moved the field past the nonstop sexual dysfunction of Freud, but I digress.

Joseph Campbell attacked the problem from the other end as a folklorist. He went out and tried to gather stories from as many sources as possible. Apparently, across many cultures he found a commonality of that leads to many of the aphorisms that still guides writers – “Two basic stories, a prince/outcast/farm boy leaves town or the stranger comes to town” – “Stories involve the metaphor of the dangerous quest creating the circumstances for the protagonist to grow into his true self” – “Characters fall into highly recognizable categories: farm boy, princess, orphan, rogue, absent father, monarch etc. etc., that Jung would call archetypes” – “We tell the same seven (fifty?) stories” – “You have zero conflict to drive your story.”

There are modern folklorists trying to shoot bullets at Campbell’s work. Because I’m just the guy writing the stories and not a professional folklorist, I have zero tools at the moment to decide whether it’s just popular to shoot bullets at work that might be too connected to the bad old ways. Or if Campbell missed key examples of stories that were dramatic, but didn’t follow the exact pattern of the Hero’s Journey identified in his work. Much actual scholarship to follow.

What I do know is this, I wrote a book with a vampire sitting pretty in a metaphorical castle trying to exert his will upon a young lady forced to make a choice between the un-life offered by the vampire and a full life in our world with lovers, husbands, jobs and the next adventure. As Mina Harker nearly cracks, but comes roaring back to stick Vlad between the ribs, so to did Anna Victor trick her vampire lover into a tandem embrace only to fuck his ass up with a Dixon-Ticonderoga Number Two pencil. It was only, like, three weeks ago that I even admitted – “Oh, wow! I just rewrote Dracula only changing little things like the journalism setting and made Anna the woman that drives like she should go pro! My bad!”

We really do tell the same stories over and over.

The best explanation for this presumed universality is this. People once shared the same campfires telling the same stories. When the truthful story about Hork and his rumble with a lion gets boring with repetition, then guided by the joker heckling the story from the far wall, the story evolves to take on the characteristics of Herakles killing the Nemean Lion, a true monster.

It is possible that the exact structure outlined in the books that I deride as Do X on Page Five, is even more completely ingrained than I want to admit. The good parts of the story which the bastardized theory says creates a biochemical response in the form of epinephrine, endorphins and other psychoactive hormones that are basically addictive. And because we all once shared the same caves, really good stories play well across the whole world because of the ancient memories of jonesing for the same stories.

Back to my suggestion for a new writer to read these books after completing the first draft of their first work. If it holds up that structure is an ancient species memory encoded in our genes by these chemicals, then the writer wouldn’t need the book to tell them Do X on Page Five. They will get there themselves simply by writing the words allowing the apparent semi-conscious thought process do the work for them.

If you add in that I wrote a book where it has taken me eleven years to admit that I mugged Bram Stoker for his literary lunch money, we can assume that the books you read up to the point you start writing will influence your work guiding your structure. Let your subconscious mind that includes your memory of the books you like do the work for you.

Part of my love-hate with writing manuals of this kind is that I’ve come to believe that it’s a cart-horse problem. Do things in the best order for you watch your story soar. Front load your story with worry about the book telling you to Do X on Page Five watch your misery sometimes block you from writing anything at all. For me it comes down to write the stupid book now and worry about the according to Hoyle structure later.

I’m not saying you should never read these books. We all live in the common narrative with access to the same tools and it helps to understand them. I believe our subconscious minds will get us close on the first draft, but we still need help when moving to the second draft. Read the books you think you need to when it’s time to edit your work into all subsequent drafts. This is similar to the practice among screenwriters of placing their scenes on cards and playing with the order to see what really works.

Of course, none of what I suggest applies to someone on their second project. Once you’ve read these books, they can’t be unread and to one degree or another they’ll guide your subconscious, semi-conscious and conscious thinking in the future. This is a good thing when you have experience to deal with different stories, but first time out it sucks to have to listen to you worry about silly things when I just want to tell you – “You used to be five and you made up shit goofing around with your friends and it was probably brilliant!”

Anyway, this is a suggestion like many others. At least someone will pipe up – “I beg to differ, they need to deal with these concepts upfront.” And if reading the manuals first helps and you don’t freak out about the punctilio of Do X on Page Five, then do it your way. Just write the book and enjoy the process.

© 2019 G.N. Jacobs

Assuming you care for the why of the silence about the superhero opera bloviated about some months back; I don’t have anything remotely like a libretto. At the moment, it’s a character problem and so Scribbler’s Saga. I have too many heroes…

My characters now collectively referred to as The Angel Association have mentally evolved over the years. Starting out as adjuncts of a SF/Horror franchise where the main characters of the two primary series of interrelated books interacted with the supers, changes became necessary. The stories largely remain.

Mostly twenty-somethings in perpetual search of the good job, promotion at the job they already have, the next musician to sign and a worthy partner, the association stands ready to protect Los Angeles against all comers. All of that survived largely intact. But, for most of the time thinking about it, there were only two villains…for a hero association now expanded to well over fourteen heroes. If there are only two villains, they’d pretty much have to be Galactus and Thanos at the three falls tag team match.

My best villainy so far: a trademark safe Joker and an ill-defined dude in Roman armor (must’ve been watching Looney Toons that week). Suddenly, I’m sitting on two psychos turning Los Angeles into Gotham West without anyone making for a challenge, even at the level of Brainiac or Sinestro. And there aren’t any Galactuses, Thanoses or Darkseids (the advanced class ready for the third opera) yet to appear in this story. I need more and better variety.

I may have had an easier time making heroes, but in a way what happened here is what happened with with the villains only sooner. Which leads us to the several related meanings of team building.

In the first sense, team building is all about putting the team together. Nick Fury just shows up in your house, helps himself to your coffee and leans on you hard about joining the Avengers Initiative. He has your file being the dumbass that admitted – “yeah, I’m Iron Man” – on TV. He has Captain America’s file. Hulk’s file. Thor’s file. You get the progression.

Pretty much S.H.I.E.L.D. has set loose strategists, chess players, comic book fans and a snotty AI to achieve what real world comic book fans yell about every Wednesday, who wins the fight and why? That when upscaled to the marquee team mimics my current problem…do these characters belong in the same fight, let alone the same spandex clubhouse/lair?

I probably need to read more about how Stan Lee devised his characters with the art staff, including but not limited to Jack Kirby. Did they sit around goofing on concepts for characters completely at the expense of how they would be used? Or once they had the team did they start playing games like “we’re doing a volcano villain do you think we should borrow Ice Man from the X-Men?” Judging from the comics, either they did that intentionally from the start of each book or they naturally got to the same place afterward taking the temperature of the readership likely to send in letters to Stan’s column. Go left, go right, the road is usually the same.

Or we could discuss a friend (a primary source for me), who famously can’t stand that Aquaman is an A-list founding member of the Justice League. Visit his store on Sunday and ask him about Aquaman – “What does he bring to the team? He’s the water super. He talks to and controls fish. He swims real well and helps his friends win underwater. He’s also pretty strong. Okay, cool, until you understand who else is on the team. You have Superman, a largely invulnerable alien who survives in vacuum who is also the apex of strength plus all of his other godlike powers. You have Green Lantern, a crazy brave man given a ring limited only by his imagination. You have a Wonder Woman who pretty much has all of that strength plus the Lasso of Truth. I could go on, but we can stop here now that we have the Top Three of the League who all have powers that can be used to replace Aquaman on the team. In fact, just about the only thing he does that helps might be to summon up a tuna sandwich for lunch!”

Underneath the Comic Book Guy trash talk, listen carefully…my friend has spent a lot of time doing the tactical analysis puzzle. Superman and Green Lantern really don’t notice being underwater and the rest of the top tier can simply figure it out. An opinion I don’t completely share; I like to think I’m writer enough to figure it out knowing that Aquaman is part of the team. And fans seem to love him.

Back to my characters, the heroes pretty much rolled off my smoking word processor. I’ve already done much of the imaginings for the heroes and how they fight together. Trademark Safe Batman plots and plans. Trademark Safe Wonder Woman makes cookies and provides the emotional leadership that belies that she gets most of her power from being a retired Fury. Trademark Safe Flash adds speed and the take no prisoners attitude of a feminist school teacher.

When I feel ready to speak more directly about the archetypes I folded, spindled and mutilated for my own purposes, you’ll get to see who else I’ve looted to keep LA safe. But, fourteen heroes and two villains still is a slaughter for the good guys. The heroes don’t do well with slaughters, narrow victories will do nicely.

The easy temporary solution is to act in another sense of team builder, that of a general manager looking at a looming trade deadline. Needing at least eight villains of great enough heft to make things interesting for the reader, I simply took two heroes and sold them to the Yankees for a metaphorical $80,000, players to be named later and at least three draft picks. I hope my nonexistent mistress appreciates the starring role on Broadway.

One former hero eats data. She touches computers and flash drives and destroys the data contained within saving a copy to her regular long term memory. But, she also eats the onboard biological programming and memories built into a living brain, a mind flayer in skirt suit for those of us that play RPGs. Brains simply taste better.

And I thought she was the tortured hero sorry for killing somebody in the past trying to make do like Lestat saying, “well, you can eat rats, but they taste like shit.” Her power very easily drives her crazy, especially now that the ink just dried on the trade agreement. I did leave it open for her to be the subject of a redemption plot. You get one.

The second former hero in this trade is my Trademark Safe Green Lantern that I killed off in the backstory. My villain team slaughtered off the original heroes in the spandex version of Order 66. My Green Lantern analog went with the rest. And now he’s back from the dead as a wildcard villain with no love for the Legion of Chaos. Trades are such wonderful things.

I still need up to three more villains. I have other old notebooks to peruse from earlier passes at these characters where I tried to figure out where they fit. There might be some good villains, we’ll see. Or something will just come to me.

Throughout the whole lengthy development process, the mix and match game of what makes a good team has played out constantly with each pass of the pen and keyboard. Hopefully, you’ll do the same with your characters. With that…Go Home!

© 2019 G.N. Jacobs

Well, the grand scheme to post weekly installments of Batman and Spidey went slightly blooey. The stories are coming out fine, just not on the weekly schedule I promised. But, the dirty dastardly plan in this story, I need something to keep you coming back on a regular schedule so that you’d come for Batman and stay for everything else. So Plan B…

Actually, what comes next is the original Plan A conceived when I thought my versions of Batsie and Spidey would sit still long enough to whisper in my ear on schedule instead of, “hey, dude, can I double up next week, the Joker’s being such a douchebag.” I will post prompts from my story dice (see post) along with 1,000-1,500 words of my efforts to service the prompt of the week.

Okay, the boring rules, to the extent that they’re mostly suggestions.

Just because I’ll post about 1,500 words doesn’t mean you have to write that many or few words. When we get to the part about how I intend to read and interact with your work based on these prompts, you’ll find nothing stopping you from writing more words. Nothing stops you from writing fewer words either.

The dice company says you should roll nine of their dice (see post), but then deeper in the booklet they also throw up their hands and tell you to do whatever you need to do for your own writing and fun. Possibly inspired by a mean Amish joke from a silly bowling movie, I roll twelve reserving the right to drop out the lamest or most inconvenient three dice. So that is what my prompts look like.

We’re allowed to strategically misinterpret the images on the dice. Turning some of the faces upside down radically changes the common interpretation of the image (possibly stolen from the Tarot deck?). And I encourage the man of you who need reading glasses (I’m your huckleberry) to squint, twice if you have to, and still come up with some crazy thing marching to your nutzo drummer beating 5/4.

In the block of writing you choose to share back with this site, you don’t have to use all of the dice. Nothing reads more horribly than a writer forcing all nine or twelve suggested concepts into a 500 word flash fiction. Please write naturally. Besides, I’m a novelist in blogger’s clothing, if I myself use four dice in the text I choose to share I’m ahead of the game.

You don’t have to use any dice in the prompt. If you based on the words on your page can believably assert that you did some kind of Bizzaro-world exact opposite piece, I want to read that. However, if your work reads like random unrelated writing I just won’t link to it.

The prompt itself is public domain. Anyone can buy the dice or app and theoretically roll the same results. Fighting the indefensible is beyond stupid.

The words I create to support the prompt are not public domain. I don’t know when I goof around rolling dice and consulting other sources for ideas if it will expand into something more, though generally it won’t. I nominally assert my copyrights in this case more to prevent wholesale copy and paste plagiarism than to be a douchebag when your work falls into that broad “well, we all sort of write the same stories” category.

My intent is that you create your own works based on the same prompt. If you copy and paste my words as a jumping off point I’ll certainly give you nasty social media side eye, but probably won’t do anything more serious than that. Especially, since it is based on what is supposed to be a throwaway prompt. But, if you go over the line that we all sort of know where it is, your lawyers will meet mine at ten paces briefs at the ready.

In the same vein of intending that you write your own works, I absolutely do not want to find huge blocks of text in the comment windows on Facebook or WordPress to read your work. Using the comments to post your work clogs the reader experience. Post your work to YOUR pages whether Facebook, Medium, Tumbler or your regular blog and then send me links. Use the comments for actual comments or asides, related additional things to say and if you don’t know the difference your mother needs to take away your router.

The other reason for posting what you write on pages you control is that sadly we live in a world where the editor (me in this case) must exercise total control of his/her tastes. I like to think I’ll read and enjoy almost anything, but there are real world limits judged more or less according to Justice Blackman’s adage about pornography – “I know it when I see it.”

Not knowing who my end readership will be in this case, I’m not going to link to work likely to go so far overboard that I piss off too many people to no purpose. I’m okay with R-rated stories linked to behind a Hide the Kids warning. I’m okay with most things, but for the words that read more like you just want to pick a fight I’m not. I’m also not going to fight Facebook or WordPress’ standards and practices largely intended to get to the same place. I have the delete button to assert this right.

It seems to me that posting your work elsewhere and exchanging links instead of text does the necessary Solomon’s Baby balancing act between your Free Expression and this site wanting to help writers everywhere and has to reach out broadly. I have to plan for somebody somewhere getting pissed off and I have to suss out whether I’m dealing with people who just need to manufacture enemies and outrage to garner their own page views or if we did something breaking what seem like minimal editorial standards…now.

Please understand this is in no way a contest. You surfed the net to find a writing prompt that tickled your fancy and you wrote something. Good on you. The prize is the sense of completing a good bit of writing. If you really get loud about thinking this is a contest, I will, purely in the Land of Metaphor, dish out many boots to the head conducted by way of a spell puppet that I couldn’t return because there aren’t any lemon or other consumer protection laws covering imaginary magical items.

So with that when you see this sort of post in future it will just be a prompt…

© 2019 G.N. Jacobs

I love books, even if my current relationship is all about aging and getting around to reading…eventually. IKEA smells me coming – “we’ve got the perfect bookshelf for you, Son.” Kindle smells me coming – “save space buy our tablet and the files to go with it.” Given that I only live in approximately 1,000 square feet of the California Dream, eventually Kindle has to win. And considering the mild verbal bitch slapping I recently took over my latest shelf I have a lot of books at the upper edge of the equilibrium zone between Need More Books and Don’t Have the Square Footage.

The person conducting said bitch slapping took one look at my place during the most recent remodel that finally put shelf space in the hall closet and made the kitchen something to look at and freaked. She later walked it back making me promise to employ “one thing in, two things out.” I said yes, and bought the last shelf anyway knowing what the special cases are for why I needed the bookshelf.

Writers need to read stuff. We steal from the classics and borrow from our contemporaries. And some of us not willing to trust the Make Money as a Writer come-ons littered all throughout our social media feeds supplement our income reviewing other writers’ works. So there will always be a few more than one in offset by two out as requested.

I suppose it’s a generational thing that unlike my other adoptions of cool technology (Apple Pen + Note app, for instance), I’ve had the hardest time fully weaning myself from books. An object that doesn’t care if you’re in bright sunlight (but don’t get it wet). And unless you get rooked buying something with the old-timey acidic paper, it will keep a long time until the weevils get hungry. Or Firefighter Montag gets frisky with the gasoline.

I’ve owned a Kindle going back to the first model. I had a few eBook files, but somehow when I tried to read I would always somehow find myself in the more relevant of local Barnes & Noble, library blow out store, a Mecca for books in Los Angeles like the Last Bookstore or Book Monster and even getting paper from Amazon. I couldn’t fully explain these oddities if I tried.

Perhaps a small part of my current aversion to Kindle comes from the size, about like a mass market paperback book. Certainly, the files I do have read better on my iPad Pro using the Kindle app, another justification for my purchase. Only iPad screens notoriously disappear in sunlight. Trade offs.

Another current issue is that my second smaller Kindle doesn’t really like my WiFi in my house or it’s just a slow kludgy paperweight. It pulls power off my outlet and very much mimics Star Trek plumbing, GNDN – “Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing.” I found it actually easier to download an eBook file from my iPad by clicking through from the iPad going around the mobile app than it is to click through from the Kindle.

Additionally, a small few things I read are not and likely never will be on the Kindle database. I’m slowly fighting my way through all of the cheesy tie-in novels for Babylon 5. It’s an old show with few reboot prospects where all the diehard fans (except me) already read the books a long time ago. Zero Kindle. And books that I would replace with eBooks, just weren’t on Kindle despite later books by the same author do have a presence. Go figure.

All of the above serves to have books that frankly overrun my shelves (see pictures). Some books have been laid across the top of the other books from the same author so I can sort of find them all later. That isn’t so bad, but then my books migrated to table tops and…the floor. Maybe, I had the bitch slap coming.

What are my solutions? Getting over myself despite the minor issues above and just learning to love my Kindle where previously it had been a cool object and latest toy is one. There are others.

Library. Just borrow your paper reading, damnit. Only, I check out the book to let it sit laughing at me until a few days before the last renewal and then I just buy the damn thing either in paper of Kindle. Library as a book advertising…Hmm! I’ll get back to you if this changes.

Omnibus editions. Getting the big books that group together all of the similar works can help some of the time. Getting a cleanly printed version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare allows you to blast all of the mass market paperbacks for individual plays printed in larger Roman type to the library donation bin. Same for Lovecraft, one omnibus goes in, three trade paperbacks go out.

I do have to make exceptions to the new-ish regime of fewer books and shelves.

Roleplaying games. No one who plays brings PDF or eBook files to the table. They could, they don’t. I haven’t looked at Steve Jackson Games’ sales figures for GURPS to know one way or the other whether their bet to move about 85-percent of their source books to downloadable PDF files has paid off. It’s a lot of information you have to have even though most people only need to bring the Player’s Handbook or system equivalent to accomplish their rules lawyering (a hilarious feature of the game from jump).

Books written by friends. I have a lot of people that sell stuff that I buy knowing I will one day push a copy of Crimes Against Elves into their hands. No one has figured out how to autograph an eBook. Luckily, this trade in independently produced books represents such a small part of my problem.

Comic books, graphic novels and manga. While I might like reading eBooks from my iPad because of the larger reading space, I have yet to accept digital downloads of comic books and such, whether through Comixology and/or Kindle. Most Kindles come black & white only and sequential art can come in color. And I’m not sold, yet, on how Comixology moves around panels to make the online version fit. Luckily, I live near a comic book store that buys and trades for old books, so when the problem grows I do have an out.

Books I’m likely to lend after reading. As part of my shtick, I’ve collected a bunch of reference and how to write books. I might not like reading all of them (I’m looking at you Save the Cat), but someone coming after me does need to read them, even only to refute most of those words. I’d prefer just going, “here, borrow my copy,” than making them buy their copy…when I like the writer in question.

DVD and Blu-ray. Disks play better than some streaming options and the movies I want remain at my fingertips. And I’ve already paid the content owners once. But, I need shelf space. Judgment required here.

So here we are trying to maximize 1,000 square feet while not missing out on the constant need for new data. As a immediate solution, I did need a new shelf shoehorned against the one bit of wall where my house allows. Doing so did get the books off my floor and I’m able to see part of my dinner table again. We’ll see how much of the table I’ll get to see when I tackle the parallel situation with the handful of graphic novels laying about.

Hopefully, me taking this moment to bloviate about the clutter in my house caused because I want to read and watch everything wasn’t too boring. Anyway, there is daylight and the room looks larger… sort of. We do have solutions. Now this post is over. Go home!