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NEWS AND VIEWS - JUNE 2023
WRITING NEWS The ninth Signalverse novel, Galatea and the Dupe, is ready to go -- it just needs a cover. I don't know yet whether my usual cover artist, Tom, will be available for this one; if he can't do it, I'll have to find another artist, and I don't know how long that might take. The book will definitely be out by the end of the year, though, in one form or another. Still kind of half-heartedly working on the outline for the new Sam Fortune novel. I've been having a hard time getting started on this one -- between work, insomnia, back pain (I spent way too many years installing water heaters), a rambunctious puppy, and the usual distractions (Octopath Traveler II), I just can't seem to find the time for it. Doesn't help that Sam Fortune is a more challenging kind of book for me to write (this series is set in 1920's, which means I sometimes have to do a little research to get the history right). I'm actually thinking about setting it aside and working on a different project, maybe going back to that visual novel idea or writing another set of Playground Noir stories. But I haven't made up my mind yet. * * * * * * * * WHAT I'M PLAYING After finishing The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV about a month ago, I started playing Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, an action RPG from 505 Games. I think this game was meant to be a kind of appetizer to tide people over before the highly-anticipated Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is released, but it's a good game in its own right -- a solid action RPG with satisfying combat and a great look. But where the heck is Hundred Heroes? The game still doesn't have a release date. I also started playing a couple of retro games this month: the classic point-and-click adventure game Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars and a fan translation of Galaxy Fraulein Yuna, a Snatcher-like adventure game for the PC Engine CD. I'm liking both of them. Broken Sword has an excellent presentation -- the animation and voice acting are very good -- and the puzzles are decently challenging. And Galaxy Fraulein Yuna is fun. It's very linear, and the primitive, RPG-like battle sequences can get kind of frustrating, but it has a lot of personality and the fan translation is of professional-quality. 
And I bought Street Fighter VI this month as well. I played the crap out of Street Fighter IV back in the day, but I never got into Street Fighter V -- I didn't like the radical new character designs, or the missing arcade mode, or the fact that half the characters were DLC-only. I'd heard this game was a return to form, though, so I picked it up on Steam. It's okay. It feels a little less precise to me than Street Fighter IV, and there's this "drive impact" thing which is absolutely godawful (if you throw a punch and it gets countered, your opponent can open up with a ginormous combo and there's nothing you can do about it), but it plays pretty well overall. My only real issue with it is the fact that Sakura isn't in the game (Sakura's my main). I've been playing as Ken instead...and I don't know if it's just the opponents I've been getting or what, but I've been kicking ass online. Sometimes I run into someone who is just obviously better than me, but for the most part I've been doing really well, and I haven't even bothered to learn any combos or anything like that -- I'm just using my old Street Fighter muscle memory, which goes all the way back to Street Fighter II for the SNES. In fact I've actually been feeling kind of bad about beating these kids. Nobody likes getting their butt kicked in Street Fighter. * * * * * * * * CONFESSIONS OF A BURGLAR I've spent the last fifteen years working for the local power company -- updating load management equipment (submeters and switches), fixing and installing water heaters, listening to people complain about their bills, and so on. I've probably been inside at least a thousand private residences across western Minnesota, often when the homeowners aren't home. Entering a stranger's house when they're not home is a pretty weird experience. The first time I did it I felt like a burglar. I mean, obviously I had permission to be there (I was there to install a water heater), but it still felt very strange, just strolling into somebody's house in the middle of the afternoon and prowling around the place trying to find the utility room. There aren't a lot of jobs that require you to do that. And now, fifteen years later, I've seen it all -- nice places, junky places, smelly places, trailer houses, McMansions, nightmare places straight out of Hoarders, filthy basements, places full of dogs, places full of cats, bizarre collections, unusual antiques, and so on. Most places, though, are fairly ordinary. They have the "Live, Laugh, Love" decor, the Ring doorbells (I hate these things), the giant 55-inch TV's hanging from the walls. If they have younger kids, they've usually got a living room or a finished basement with toys all over the floor, and those annoying child safety gates blocking the steps. One thing I don't see very often are books. Of the hundreds of places I've been in, I can only recall a handful that had bookshelves or any substantial collections of books. It's kind of depressing. Fine art, and even pop art, is also exceedingly rare. Family photos, wildlife prints, Grace, and that execrable "Been farming long?" poster are common sights, but I almost never see movie posters or paintings of any kind. I certainly never see anything like what I've got hanging up in my bedroom: a Twins poster signed by Gillian Chung and Charlene Choi, an illustration of a scene from the Divine Comedy by Gustave Doré, a signed Axe Cop print by Ethan Nicolle, several framed comic books, and a Joe Frazier action figure still in the original box. But then again, I'm kind of a weirdo. Some places are nice and neat, some places are disasters, and some places are kind of in-between. Sometimes a homeowner will say "Sorry our place is such a mess," as they escort me down to the basement. The only people who say this are those who live in clean, orderly houses; the people who live in trashy nightmare-houses, meanwhile, never apologize for the state of their residences, even as they watch me crawl over a pile of rancid garbage to get to the electrical panel. I'm not really sure where I was going with this, but it's a little insight into what I do for a living, anyway. And here's some more scenery: 
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