Some blogging odds and ends

Some stuff that might be interesting to you, but at minimum is important to me.

I’m not going to Howard Days this year. I was never planning to do so, but enough people have asked me that I figure I’d make it official here. I LOVED my first Howard Days experience and would gladly go again, but time and budget won’t permit me to go every year. I’ll just have to enjoy it vicariously and remember my experience of a year ago, which Deuce Richardson recently recapped on the blog of DMR Books in fine fashion here and here.

No book review requests, please. A public message that I’m not accepting any further books for review at this time. Recently I’ve received several requests to review new S&S and S&S adjacent titles, from authors and publishers, even a work in progress. I just don’t have time, due to personal and professional obligations. For more reasons why I made this decision please read this prior post. This is not to say I won’t be reviewing books here on the Silver Key, but they will be books I voluntarily seek out.

A terrific Mad Max conversation. I listen to a fair number of podcasts on topics that range from political to self-improvement to all things fantastic. Weird Studies with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel has remained in my rotation when others have fallen out because the hosts are so damned good—even though I probably skip 50% or more of the episodes. I’m just not interested in the occult or tarot or TV shows I haven’t watched (i.e., most of them), but when these guys turn to a topic I love—i.e., the Mad Max film franchise—I’m in. This episode does not disappoint, even though it’s (as always) lit-crit heavy and intellectual AF.

A one-star review and 5-star feedback. I got my first one-star review of Flame and Crimson on Goodreads, from an individual whose review reads, “Meh, DNF.” This bothered me to some degree; I would never one-star a book I didn’t finish. But whatever, the book is definitely not for everyone and evidently was not for this dude. On the other hand, this recent email from a reader warmed my cold heart all the way through:

Hi Brian, I just wanted to tell you I'm on my second read through of "Flame  

and Crimson" and I'm enjoying it equally as much. I first read CONAN in the  

late 1960's as a teenager and found a world and a hero to identify with on  

an internal level. Here were stories that led me to realms of the fantastic  

and a cast of characters to cheer or boo, they even convinced me buy some  

weightlifting gear. (I never achieved the frame of the fabled warrior.) So  

many thanks for the research, the writing and the publishing of this  

wonderful book. It makes a 70 year old feel young and vital again.

That makes it all worth it, including the one-star reviews.

Blind Guardian powers into Worcester MA on Saturday. My personal heavy metal tour makes its next stop at The Palladium in Worcester this weekend, where I’ll be taking in legendary German power metal band Blind Guardian. With my old friend Dana, who introduced me to these guys a couple decades ago to my delight. Thanks Dana. Any band who writes concept albums based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion gets my attention, and these guys are always amazing.

I’ve got a college graduate. My oldest daughter Hannah, 22, just graduated from Colby-Sawyer college with a degree in professional and creative writing, and already has a job offer which she’s accepted teaching at a local boarding school. I couldn’t be prouder. She’s both like her Dad and very much her own person and I’m looking forward to watching her continue to grow into young adulthood. I’m a lucky man.