James McGowan Reader Group- Twas The Season

Yope!

There’s something you should know about me. Not a dark secret. More of a twinkly affectation. One that’s contained, but gloriously garish.

I love Christmas decorations.

Especially the tree ornaments. But even more especially the colored lights.

Each year, my wife and I hang the hooks and string the cords throughout the tree’s fake branches.  But that’s not enough for me. I string even more Christmas lights about the interior of the house. MORE, I say!  It makes for fantastic TV watching and video game playing with all the other overhead illumination turned off. Simply glorious.

I anticipate that you have two, and only two, questions regarding my post-yuletide admission.

Question the first: What about outside the house?

I’m not an exterior decoration guy. Heights ain’t for me.  Not my Santa bag, baby.

And question the glaring: Jim, we just slogged through the 4038 days pretending to be 31 days of January. Why are you talking about Christmas stuff?

Because I’m one of those people.

The people who keep the decorations up, because those 4038 days need something cheerful amid the cold nights and grey mornings.

Take a look for yourself and BASK in it:

As you can see, my wife and I have a multitude of interests with superheroes, NES controllers, ketchup bottles, Doritos bags, gnomes, ice-skating cows, marshmallow snowmen, and pool balls. And that’s just a slice of its unabashed goodness.

Why just a portion of the tree?

It would overload your mind with its wonder. And totally not because my work area near the tree is a cluttered array of comic book piles and a snake farm of power cords for my army of devices.

But I learned a lesson years ago when I kept the decorations up until May.  They lose their luster for the next season if you keep them up too long.

So down they must come.

I reckon I’m not the only person who keeps holiday paraphernalia up for 1/6th of the year. Or do you have other things that you hold on to past a different kind of season?

I still have a few pairs of jean shorts that I haven’t worn in years in the era of calling people who wear them as “jorks”. Someday, they’ll be back in style.

Right?

Let me know what things you just can’t put away, be it Christmasy or anything else. Freak flags gotta fly.

Players of the Game Works in Progress

The second draft of the combined bonus novels is coming along well. I finished Unseen Scars and moved into Secret Fronts.

I’m on page 288 with 79 pages for the month. So that’s less than the 115 pages of last month. But I’ve reached a spot where I’ve had to rewrite or just plain write new scenes in Secret Fronts. So that’s a bit slower going. Progress is progress.

Plus, I’ve had some other initiatives going on.

I’m doing a cover refresh with an outfit called 100 Covers. I really like my existing covers, but they aren’t really selling a whole lot of books. So, I’ll see if this moves the needle or not. I’ll share the new stuff down the road once I’m farther along in that process. I’m liking what they’re producing for me so far.

A process that will include hardcover editions using Ingram Spark.

I still plan to release Book 4.5, Jagged Pieces, in late summer or early fall of 2026.

I’ll also keep you posted as more develops on all those fronts.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

“I want those days, Gath. Every last moment.” Nadia squeezed his knee a little tighter. “Even if it’s reliving disaster, loss, and violation. As long as it’s with a friend, I’ll guzzle every last drop.”

Recommendation Corner

Pluribus

Or is it Plur1bus? Either way, it’s the latest show from Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame.

It has a similar premise to an old Rick and Morty episode where they encounter an old flame of Rick’s on an alien world that’s supplanted the local civilization. A hive mind named Unity. And it turns out that jerky individuals can be worse than involuntary conformity.

Pluribus diverges from that episode with a lot more loneliness. The logline for the show is “The most miserable person in the world must save humanity from happiness.”

That’s sort of it. But it’s more than that. An alien signal results in bio engineering of a virus that breaks free and soon gets spread throughout the world through atmospheric contrails. This converts everyone into parts of a very polite and non-violent hive mind.

Except about 10 ish people. Including Carol, played by Rhea Seehorn. And the hive mind of humanity will do ANYTHING to make her happy. And also stop at nothing to figure out why she and the others did not convert over so they can “fix” her.

It’s a strangely small cast, with one of them having several billion faces. The John Cena cameo in particular was hilarious with their PR campaign following Carol’s discovery of something just unpleasant.

It’s a thought-provoking show with a thoroughly flawed protagonist. Highly recommended.

Also.  I gotta wonder. If humanity became such doormats as a result of this, with the inversion of loving the “other” rather than fearing the “other”, what happens if that’s by design, rather than an unintended side effect of having singular minds outside the connected consciousness?

What happens if whatever sent the signal to Earth shows up? And then says, “Hello. Please give us all your resources. Please and thank you.”

Not sure if that’s where the series is going, but food for thought.

Puppet’s Shadow by Emersyn Park

Full disclosure: I’m friends with Emersyn. We’ve attended a few book events with our other friends, and we virtually meet as part of a monthly authors’ group.

With my bias duly noted, I still really liked her teenage, mean girl thriller with one of the most evil of evil twins I’ve ever encountered.

Piper’s a pleasant rule follower. Maddy is a dark-hearted, popular girl. And they will switch identities for fun and higher stakes. Maddy calls Piper her Puppet as part of this switching.

The inciting incident at the beginning of the book leaves you wondering who survived a fatal house fire.  And the extended flashback paints a dark picture. In particular, an event Maddy orchestrates that is shocking in the best way.

Something reprehensible. Something she doesn’t even consider as crossing a line she can’t step back over.

It’s not usually the kind of book I read, but it’s definitely a page-turner. Give it a read if you want a story like Gone Girl, where you’re not sure which girl is gone.