The Backlog Is Even Bigger

It’s one of those times when my book backlog keeps growing and growing and growing.

As I’ve said many times already, I don’t necessarily view this as a bad thing. The few times I haven’t had a big backlog are times when I scramble around for new books. If I find a new book in a time without a backlog and it turns out to not be very good, then I have to scramble anew.

Yet if I read a backlog book and that turns out subpar, then, well, I can just grab the next book out of that. And frequently that turns out a lot better than the previous one. I try to balance my book purchases, even within the “cheap thriller” types so that I don’t get too overloaded by any one genre. It may be counterintuitive to have a big pile of unread books, but it works for me.

 

Black Cats, The Symbol of -Tanks?

It’s apparently National Black Cat Day. Black cats are associated with many things, and one of them is tanks, as this World War I poster shows.

 

Going Back To The Car Plant

I actually haven’t read any cheap thrillers I can remember that took place in car plants, or even had a scene that was inside a car plant. They’re big, there’s a lot of people there, and there’s a lot of automated heavy equipment that can spice up the more ridiculous set pieces.

What’s not to like? Even better, they can be everything from shiny, new, mechanized car plants to old, rusty, smoky and grimy ones. There’s a lot of possibilities for making the scenes work. I may have to include a significant scene inside a car plant for my next thriller project.

 

The Guns of Cheap Thrillers, On Fuldapocalypse

On Fuldapocalypse I have a piece on the the three main types of firearms used by cheap thriller writers. These are “generic”, “specific”, and “exotic”.

Unintentionally Good FICINT

I was somewhat critical of the “FICINT” concept in my last post on it, so I feel it’s fair to provide an example that is both positive and humorous. The prediction of drones, especially drones dropping/carrying weapons, was unintentionally foreshadowed by two missions in the infamous Grand Theft Auto video games. The “Demolition Man” and “Supply Lines” missions are among the most (rightfully) reviled in the series. And yet they were the most accidentally prescient concerning drone proliferation and use. Imagine that.

Diluted Sports Leagues

One of the craziest things I want to do is take the historical expansion of sports leagues and take it to extremes with…

• Huge, diluted leagues. This can generally mean keeping franchises that historically moved or folded in business, or just coming up with new ones in cities technically big enough.
• Longer regular seasons and shorter, less inclusive playoffs. This generally means only the best teams can compete, and they can pad their records beating up hapless tomato cans.

It would be er, “interesting”.

100 Fuldapocalypse Posts

Fuldapocalypse Fiction has reached a hundred posts, and I’ve decided to commemorate it with a special post.

It’s been amazing to have this review blog. Really, really amazing.

The Backlog Has Returned

The book backlog of mine has returned with a vengeance. It’s going to be something to A: clear it, and B: not add to it even more until it settles down.

Expect a lot of Fuldapocalypse reviews to come from it.

My favorite part of book blogging

I’ve done a lot of book blogging and reviewing even before Fuldapocalypse started, and far and away my most favorite part is finding a hidden, obscure delight of a book and thus being able to share it with the internet. Oh, I like reviewing big-name books from time to time, and they can be good.

But they’re not the most fun to review. The most fun to review are when I look for the book with the most zombie sorceress induced “Arkansas vs. the blimps” premise, find it, and then discover that it’s actually a good tale beyond it. There was Team Yankee and Tin Soldiers, the classic tank novels. There were many more good authors I found. The crowning glory of this was the Survivalist, where I took the plunge and read over two dozen books of ramping-up-crazy.

In fact, one of the biggest “problems” I have with my blog is as follows. Do I continue reading existing authors, which are harder to review for even if good (because you’ve already said what exists about it) or take a chance on unknown ones (which can be very good or very bad)? It’s ‘tough’, but it’s a good ‘problem’ to have.

Outgrowing a game

I think I’ve outgrown Payday 2. I don’t regret the time and money spent on it-it was very fun and worked very well. But now with the story (such as it is) concluded, all I’m left with is, when I try to go back to it, I just find a mindless wave fighter in a clunky, badly optimized engine that I was losing some interest in before (for the last few updates I would return to the game for a bit, play them, and then go back).

I had fun with it, but I think I’ve played out my time in Payday 2. I’ll remember doing the classics like Hoxton Breakout and Big Bank, maybe being the only person who unironically liked Henry’s Rock, and just running the easy early heists again and again for relaxation. But now it’s done.