| Hey, all. It’s time to show you the refreshed covers for the POTG Series! Here’s a look at The Breakers in a big format. It’s very metal. And eye catching. I likey! |
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| PLUS: Here are the covers for Repenter, Hidden Chapters, Brigands, The Favor, New Players, and Origins. They really pop. And even snap and crackle if you listen closely. I also likey! |
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| The new covers are currently available through Amazon on Kindle and Paperback, and E-Books on Kobo, BN, Apple, and the rest. The refresh is pending for the paperbacks on BN and Bookshop.org at the time of this writing on July 1, but they will be available soon. I’ll likely have that updated by next month’s missive. NEAT! |
| Players of the Game Works in Progress |
| My time got a little monopolized with artwork updates with the covers and other stuff, plus a bunch of back-end marketing prep for Jagged Pieces, which is still on track for a February 2027 release. And how did that impact the WIP productivity on the Secret Fronts? I made it to page 519 with 35 pages for the month. That’s about flat with last month’s 36 pages. I’m honestly shocked it’s not worse. I’ve been doing website updates with all the new covers and working with Claude on marketing ideas. Writing creative fiction with LLMs is not for me, but holy eff is it incredibly helpful with the stuff I hate doing, like marketing strategy. It helped me update my keywords and categories with a bunch of ideas that I plugged into Publisher Rocket. The audiobook saga seems somewhat stabilized with the Spoken digital narrated full-voice cast version. I’m up to Part 6 in Repenter. And my producer will continue with his run-through. I’ll plan on sharing it with folks who want to partake in the new medium in exchange for joining my ARC team and leaving a Goodreads review. And the human-narrated version is still a possibility as well for ACX (Audible). I’ll say it again: NEAT! Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month: Corsis: “I can see a case for either approach. But I never know how that moody lad will react these days.” |
| Recommendation Corner |
| I’m doing a speed run this time around. Why? Because the last two months have had a gaggle of movies I’ve watched in May and June, so you’re getting a tier list: Excellent Tier- Flicks I Highly Recommend Obsession: This is possibly the best movie I’ve seen so far this summer. It’s basically Monkey’s Paw meets Love Potion Number Nine. The female lead is fantastic. It starts off like a romantic dramedy, but turns on a dime when the male lead makes a throwaway wish on a One Wish Willow novelty item to have her “love him more than anything.” Things go unhinged from there. Depending on how you interpret it, her personality fragments into something jagged and twisted, or she gets possessed. The male lead’s cowardice and weakness slowly devolve his behavior into feckless, inactive evil. Andy Richter even has a small role in it. I totally didn’t clock it until the credits. I absolutely loved the movie. And I don’t usually like horror movies. Though this was almost a thriller. It didn’t have a lot of jump scares. And it’s a fantastic commentary on toxic, co-dependent relationships. So freaking good. Toy Story 5: Fantastic. Especially the multiple high-tech Buzz Lightyears subplot. “Star… Command.” And Conan O’Brien’s Mr. Smarty Pants stole the show. Jessie did a great job as the lead of this one. It’s the weakest of the Toy Stories. But it’s in rarefied company. We are in the summer of Late Night alum, it seems. And I’m quite sure absolutely no one has made that observation. No one at all. Anywho. Bring on Toy Story 6 to finish the Bonnie trilogy. Fun stuff. Sheep Detectives: I missed it in theaters, but it’s on Prime now. An incredibly sweet movie that’s a cozy mystery about a bunch of sheep helping a somewhat inept policeman solve their shepherd’s murder. A shepherd who read them mystery novels, so they had some grounding with it. It also gets into some deeper subject matter with themes of confronting and remembering trauma rather than trying to forget it. Plus lots of goofy sheep shenanigans. My wife ADORED this movie. And that makes me like it even more. Good Tier- Recommend Despite or Because of Flaws and/or Glorious Stupidity Mortal Kombat 2: Gloriously stupid and goofy. But it didn’t overload the ironic/self-aware jokes. It had a few with Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage’s commentary, which was the right amount. Definitely dialed up Kitana as the main character, which was cool. Plus, it had Scorpion saying “Get Over Here!” and the techno song at the end. I’m a simple man with simple needs. I liked it. Backrooms: Another indie horror movie, this time based on creepy pasta (creepy posts) liminal horror stuff that younger folks dig. There’s a weird underlying dimension that looks like an abandoned, off-kilter office. An endless maze of it. And things lurk within it. It was definitely more vibes based and pretty vague. My wife loved the found-footage segments. I didn’t really find the environment that creepy, but she did. The weird things lurking at the periphery were definitely scary, though. Good, but I liked Obsession much more. But my wife liked Backrooms more. Disclosure Day: I liked this one. I liked the pacing and the humor. Very frantic and full of Spielberg wonderment. Emily Blunt was the standout performance in it. There’s a scene where she has a panic attack following a harrowing escape. She does a fantastic job conveying the sense of not being able to contain her anxiety. There were some elements of hand-waving with the plot and the evil government contractor company’s level of competence in some scenes and incompetence in other scenes. Some folks didn’t like the ending. I did. Twas a fun time. Masters of the Universe: This has strong vibes with the 80s Flash Gordon movie, with its aesthetic and especially the score. It even had the “Princes of the Universe” Queen song. However, it had the same problem as Thor: Love and Thunder. It made way too many self-aware jokes, which deflated any sense of drama. The movie really needed to dial back the jokes and lean into the goofiness and earnestness of the source material. It also sadly hasn’t done well. With the only demographic that wants to watch it being men who were kids in the 80s. That said. I liked it. It had frickin’ Mekaneck. As I said before, I’m a simple man with simple needs. The Okay Bordering on Neh Tier- Disappointments That Are Skippable Mandolorian and Grogu: It was okay. I definitely enjoyed the beginning sequence with the warlord fight. Rutta (or however you spell it) was okay. As were the twins. I liked the blue guy who was apparently from the Rebels cartoon or something. I guess he was based on the original Chewbacca design. I didn’t like the pacing. It literally felt like two episodes mashed into a movie, even though I know they scrapped their season 4 plans to make the film. The part where Mando flew back home literally could have been a cliffhanger for a streaming episode when the hat guy showed up. A friend of mine said he walked out of the movie at that point, as he agreed with Mando’s need for a break. I liked it more than he did. And that sequence with Grogu trying to nurse Mando back to health, while significant, was incredibly slow. Mando is basically a Mulligan / do-over character. He’s the cool man of few words who wasn’t quite a bad guy that every Gen Xer and Millennial’s inner ten-year-old imprinted on Boba Fett. Before Jango Fett and the clones jacked up everyone’s head canon. But. Mando has the Master Chief problem. In making him so blank and (mostly) faceless, he becomes less compelling without character quirks or overt emotions. Still a decent movie. But it did not feel like an event. No character progression. Nothing changed. It did not feel different from the streaming series. I can see why the indie horror movies have eaten its lunch. Supergirl: It was okay, bordering on neh. But thematically all over the place. I didn’t find the villain compelling. And Lobo either needed to be more integral to the plot or just not appear in it. The ending, while better than the Woman of Tomorrow comic series on which it’s based, seemed thematically off. At odds with her conversation with a certain cousin at the very end of the movie. It’s about as good as Mando and Grogu for me. Just kinda there. Not awful. But not good either. Not in the same league (pun intended) as last year’s Superman. Sadly, the more I think about it, the less I like it. Big disappointment. |
| That’s all for this time. Stay smart. Stay safe. Jim |
