I finished T. Kingfisher’s What Stalks the Deep, the third in her Sworn Soldier series.

I’ll be honest: while I did like this one and recommend the whole series, it has probably been my least favorite of the three books so far. That said, it was still fun. If you like creepy things, give them a go.

I’m currently focusing on Theodora Goss’s Letters from an Imaginary Country, another collection of short stories.

I haven’t made much progress yet, but I’ve been a fan of her work for years and am never disappointed.

Only a few episodes left in the first season of Frieren. As a reminder, this is a manga and anime series exploring themes of loss and grief from the point of view of an elf who outlives her companions after they save the world.

I’m really tempted to pick up the manga series as well, but there are several volumes out, so it might be a while.

Phill and I watched the first episode of Altered Carbon, which is a sci-fi series with an interesting premise. It’s based on a series of books. Phill read the first one and mostly enjoyed it, I think.

Here’s the description:

In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold.

Phill told me that he’d never watched The Princess Bride all the way through, so we did that over a couple of evenings.

It’s one I’ve seen many times, but it was fun to visit it again.

I post once a week on Patreon about all sorts of things: writing, books I’m reading, things going on in life. Once a month I also share sneak peeks of whatever book I’m working on. It would mean the world to me if you considered joining.

I am also on Ko-fi, which is sort of like Patreon, but with one key difference: you’re not locked into a subscription. Ko-fi allows patrons to donate however often they’d like to creators they follow. No subscriptions if you don’t want them, no commitments, and you have control over when and how you donate. At this point my Ko-fi page exists solely to allow one-off donations.

I decided to try Substack, since I’ve seen so many people join it recently. I’m curious to see if I like it, if it’s any better than some of the other platforms out there, or if maybe it will be worthwhile long-term. Time will tell.