Hey hey!

A few years back I wrote about returning to a couple of social activities following all the lockdown terribleness.  An Ultimate Frisbee pickup group and a bar trivia team.

Things have ended and evolved, respectively.

The Frisbee group is still playing with a bunch of younger and/or more industrious acquaintances, but I decided it wasn't worth the risk of injury and greater frequency of aches and pains.  All of my good friends have also stopped playing.  Bottom line: We got old.  

I even updated my author bio earlier this year and redacted the mention of playing Ultimate Frisbee.  The season of disc-tossing seasons has passed for me.  

And that's fine.  

I still exercise with various weights and body-weight repetitions along with a high-intensity workout video on YouTube that I'm reasonably sure I've watched/followed greater than 1500 times.  My wife and I also go for walks, though that's tougher when it gets cold and dark as we get further into fall and winter.

The bar trivia isn't necessarily tougher, but it also recently changed.  Our taproom venue went out of business due to some decisions involving debt that didn't work out for them.  It also didn't help that their beer was so-so at best, which is why I'm respectfully not naming the defunct company.  I seldom partook of their products, though I was in the minority there.

Our trivia league still has a lot of other locations in the city, but it's not quite the same without our usual table, our friendly bartender who often gave me free lemonade, and our misanthropic, prickly, troll-jokey, but also begrudgingly endearing host.

We might end up at another taproom with the same host, but that remains a hazy prospect.  So for now, Team Beerpaw is slumming it at other bar and grill locations.  It's all fine, but not the same atmosphere.  And the new venues remain good spots to hang out with friends and chat about all manner of inane and fun topics between the questions.

We shall adapt.  And we shall prevail.

Luckily, none of this has affected my author endeavors.  And I'll talk about a few such fun items right now.

Here are some pics of me at the Council Bluffs Library Book Fair from October 19th, 2025. 

One photo of me at my table. And two more of me on a panel with my author friend, Chris Poore, and another author named Tim (I missed his last name, but a real fascinating guy). 

The pictures were courtesy of my wife and our other author friend, Emersyn Park. 

I sold a bunch of books with my in-person 7-books-for-$20 bargain bundle that I sell for marketing purposes.  Including five sets to a couple who wanted to use them with a start-up indie bookstore.  I haven't heard back from them about it yet, but either way, the books are out there.  

And hello to all the new subscribers who signed up for my author group newsletters at the book fair!  I hope you enjoy.

Getting out and seeing readers is quite fun.  I'll be doing it again in December.

Read on!

Chris Poore and I will also be selling our books at Bookfest Omaha 2025.  It's free to the public.  Come out and visit us!

WHEN: Saturday, December 13, 2025, 9:00 am-3:00 pm​

WHERE: IBEW Hall, 13306 Stevens St #101, Omaha, NE 68137 (near Millard Avenue and 133rd)

Tap on the image above to find out more details on their website.

Lancelot deplores herself for many reasons.  But she'll never tell them to anyone.  And that suits Corsis just fine.

He crafted her as a being of spite after all.  His pretty, relentless killer.

Her hatred of Ashe Stelfire and Vick Burnhelt is hardwired into her mind.  Though her motivations for that loathing are different for each man.  Rivalry for the man called Repenter.  Love and lust twisted by contempt for the Prime Mechmancer.

She has ample tools to enact that hatred.  A jagged sword of unbreakable ice through which she channels frigid hydromancy hexes.  Her white mask grants her vast strength and speed. Her many baubles allow her to shift her body into intangible spectral matter or grant her invisibility.

The kliost-cloned assassin has much knowledge in the ways of killing, but little experience.  Which is why Balpors assigns a partner to her.

Frulgrath.

She dislikes the dispassionate, three-armed Demon immediately.   But there's nothing to be done for it.  She's stuck with the Hatchet Man.

Find out more about their partnership and their mission in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.

The ends and beginnings theme for this month's missive continues for my writing as well.

All of it good.

I finished going through the edits of The Game War and then ran it through ProWritingAid.  So Players of the Game Book 5 is in the hopper along with Book 4.5.  I'll release the bonus novel sometime in 2026.  And the main novel in 2027.  As long as I can keep far enough ahead on the writing, I hope to release a main novel or bonus novel each year.

A few other items of note this month.

I tried out ElevenLabs.  And I largely liked it, though it has a little ways to go before I'll devote time to loading my series on audio books.  The version 3 alpha doesn't yet allow for inserted pauses.  Which you wouldn't think is a big deal, but totally is.  Paragraphs run together if you can't craft them with pauses.  

However, version 3 is what I want because it allows you to give more direction to the digital narrators.  I picked out a male and female digital narrator that I'll plan to use for male and female POV scenes respectively.  I'll share more on all of that as things develop.

And I've just started the second draft of The Game War: Unseen Scars bonus novel.  I use "YY" notes for myself as I'm writing the first draft to track down all the spots that need attention.  And they're everywhere.  Which is typical.  As I've said before, a first draft is always a drooling, sloppy mess.

Now it's cleanup time.

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

Hekati then clasped his wrist with her mad gaze fixed on Corsis. “All the Burnhelts. Celsis Kri. Tamona of Muné. Everyone they love. I want their heads on jagged lances."

Peacemaker Season 2

John Cena continues to provide evidence that he's a national treasure.  I'm not really a wrestling guy, but I've liked everything I've seen him in.  He can pull off comedy and dramatic pathos with equal poise.

Peacemaker's latest misadventures lean into a bunch of background tech from last season that now takes the forefront.  Chris Smith and the rest of the 11th Street Kids engage in dimension hopping where things turned out differently for Peacemaker's family and the world.

And Chris isn't so sure his world is the one he wants to live in.  Especially after he accidentally kills his alternate self.

Fun fact I didn't know until recently.  Comedian from Watchmen is an homage to Peacemaker.  Chris Smith was originally a Charlton character from the 60s before DC bought the company in the late 70s.  Alan Moore switched to analogues early in the crafting of the Watchmen story.  Blue Beetle with Nite Owl and Question with Rorschach had always been the higher profile characters to me.  No longer.  I think it's safe to say that Peacemaker with Comedian has now surpassed them.  

Interesting factoid.  To me at least.

Tim Meadows's character was also most amusing with his "bird blindness" disability.  His reference to Eagley as a parrot was comic gold.

Violent and over the top.  But also earnest and genuine.  I enjoyed it.

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This sci-fi yarn focuses on two women of a far-future, space-faring civilization's "special projects team."  Both are highly motivated to not be put back on ice in cryogenic storage and prove their continued worth.

This all goes horribly wrong when an accident forces them to crash-land a rover pod on Shroud, an Earth-sized moon of a gas giant.  Its incredibly thick atmosphere possesses the pressure of Venus and the global temperature of Antarctica.

They have to figure out a way off the moon and endure lethal misunderstandings of the shell-covered, slow-moving alien life that has no visual senses.  But all have an acute sense of sound and radio waves.

These aliens are kind of similar to Rocky from Project Hail Mary, except they're more ant-like with a collective intelligence that fades the farther they get from their communities.

I'm about halfway through and I'll be interested to discover if and how the humans and the aliens ever figure out a way to communicate.

Captivating stuff. 

Want to know the score fast? Select Quick Recap, and Corsis will detail all his jerky skullduggery in just a few minutes.

Want to know the nitty gritty? Select Detailed Recaps to jump in with both feet and learn all the big events and character moments of the Players of the Game saga.

That's all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim