trump Killing Our Libraries, Our Museums, Our Knowledge

This is not an April Fools. trump's fascist regime is doing everything they can to shut down our nation's libraries and museums (via Andrew Limbong at NPR):

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has placed its entire staff on administrative leave.

The IMLS is a relatively small federal agency, with around 70 employees, that awards grant funding to museums and libraries across the United States.

This month, President Trump named Keith E. Sonderling — the deputy secretary of labor — the new acting director of IMLS. This followed Trump's previous executive order shrinking seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

According to a statement from AFGE Local 3403, which represents IMLS workers, the agency's staff was notified by email about being placed on paid administrative leave for up to 90 days, after a "brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership." Employees had to turn in government property, and email accounts were disabled.

How, you might ask, does something at the federal level affect public libraries that are funded at the city/county/state levels?

The IMLS is an independent federal agency that provides grants to libraries and museums across the country. According to the American Library Association, the IMLS provides "the majority of federal library funds." The IMLS says it awarded $266 million in grants and research funding to cultural institutions last year. This money goes to help staff, fund maintenance and create new programs. In comparison, the projected 2025 budget for the National Endowment for the Arts was $210 million.

For instance, in 2023 the IMLS funded projects such as a workforce training program, including internships, at the Museum of Discovery and Science in Florida, a pilot program in Iowa to help library staff address patrons' psychological needs and basic library functions (books, computers, internet) for various Native American tribes. You can find programs that the IMLS has funded to libraries and museums in your state through its dashboard.

That amount of $266 million is a blip in the overall federal budget. It's not wasteful or distracting from other funding needs, and yet these bastards went for that - along with all the other millions in social aid that were going to our communities - because it offends them.

Think of all those field trips you did in science or history classes back in elementary, middle, and/or high school. Think of all those writing assignments that required you to research the public library for topics on countries, or science projects for the school fairs. All gone, or about to go away, because billionaires dare not let public services go to the actual public.

While most of us are paying taxes at the state and county levels to pay for public services like libraries and museums, it's often not enough - especially in Republican-controlled states that try to keep their tax rates on property or income as low as possible to appease the Club For Greed types - to cover large-scale services for summer reading programs in low-income counties or to maintain local museums that promote ecology, history, or other sciences.

Cutting back on IMLS funding - shutting it all down like this - is going to force states and counties to either increase their own tax rates - which some of them can't do without overcoming local partisan anger - or cut services which is the path of least resistance for most local governments.

We are getting punished by ignorant, angry partisan leadership that wants the majority of us in poorer counties and states to sink deeper into ignorance and anger of our own.

Goddamn trump. Goddamn the greedheads like Elon Musk and the anti-government assholes who've been railing against our nation's long-standing efforts to provide public services to our communities.

As a librarian, this hurts me not just in the pocketbook - I dread how this is going to gut some of our state funding that supplements our county money - but in my soul. Providing library services - reading, literacy, entertainment, computer tutorials and one-on-one help - defines who I am as a person in my town, in my county, in my world.

And it's only going to get worse from here.

What the hell, America. For the LOVE OF GOD and for the LOVE OF YOUR COMMUNITIES and your families, defend your local libraries! Defend your right to read, to learn, to enlighten yourselves!

Witty's Year End Book Review 2022

I know I am late at the end of this year to compile the best of what I've read this 2022, please don't yell, it'll wake the cats... 

As a reminder, this list is not the best books that came out this year, but the best of what I've read this year. This means the book could be published five-ten years ago and I've just gotten around to it. The book should well be available in your local library (or you can always purchase online).

Here's my 2022 recommendations:

Best Fiction

Free Fire, CJ Box

I've been trying to diversify my reading interests as part of my librarian's duty of advisory (recommending stuff to patrons asking for new authors to follow), so instead of the science-fiction / fantasy stuff I tend to peruse, I've been reading various thriller series to see if I can find something other than Jack Reacher to promote.

Box has an ongoing series revolving around character Joe Pickett, a game warden from the vast ranges of Wyoming, who comes across dangerous killers and sociopathic bureaucrats in near-equal forces. Pickett's fortunes rise and fall depending on how desperate various politicians are to resolve public disasters, which is how this novel opens with the state's governor granting Pickett the authority to investigate a murder spree where the killer's already turned himself in and confessed.

The twist is the killer committed his murders in a particular corner of Yellowstone National Park where a Constitutionally-enforced legal loophole means nobody can ever be brought to trial for any crimes they commit there. This is the freaky thing: This Zone of Death is real, and Box uses this novel to examine the ramifications of how a devious individual (working for a conspiracy involving Yellowstone's unique habitat) could exploit it.

I bring up this novel, and the Pickett series, as a counter to the popular Jack Reacher series that I've tried reading and just left it feeling underwhelmed. While both series are similar in format, the characters and settings in Box's novels are more relatable and convincing. Also, Pickett and the other characters talk more.

Best Non-Fiction

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, Carol D. Leonnig

Out of all the post-trump works out there worth reading, I found this book by Leonnig to provide an interesting side note to all of the ongoing breakdowns of accountability across our government (of which trump's rise was merely part of the problem).

Leonnig examines the role of the Presidential bodyguard agency responsible for the safety and protection of the President, Vice President, and other vital members of the Executive branch. An organization with some effectiveness but haunted by tragic failures, the Secret Service has found its mission objectives at odds with ethical and professional norms especially when the War of Terror changed the agency into a purely praetorian role. Various scandals - including a prostitution-hiring embarrassment in Colombia - kept pointing to an agency staffed by poorly trained and undisciplined members who were hired for reasons other than being at the top of their game. The situation got worse when trump arrived, staffing the top offices with personal cronies who would be called upon to cover up some of trump's worst excesses (including the January 6th Insurrection that almost saw Secret Service agents kidnap Vice President Pence (!) to disrupt the electoral count).

I would have considered several other anti-trump books, but Leonnig's work uncovers a systemic breakdown that exists even without trump's corrupting influence.  

Best Graphic Novel (or Ongoing Series)

Jurassic League (DC), Daniel Warren Johnson, Juan Gedeon, and Mike Spicer

There are many epic stories in the comics 'Verses, there are often Earth-shattering conflicts with dark consequences, there are annual Crises that tests the valor and virtue of our legendary heroes.

This series is not one of those.

What's known in the DC Universe as an Elseworlds storyline, Jurassic League is basically a variation of the established superhero 'verse of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and all the other heavy hitters of their major superhero team... but with DINOSAURS. It's as goofy as it sounds, and that's what makes it fun. With all the other somber, dark, even gory storylines the DCU is working on - the Vampires series that got so bleak you just couldn't keep reading it, or the Dark Crisis series as yet another attempt to fix all the continuity errors that came from the first big Crisis - it's sometimes refreshing to read a comic book series that's in it for the goofiness. Even Darkseid shows up as a dino. It's awesome.

Best Work By Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With On a Regular Basis

The Kang Dynasty Omnibus, Kurt Busiek and Alan Davis w/ other artists

As part of getting up to speed on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is going into Phase V this 2023, I needed to read up on the next Big Bad of the story arc... which is going to be Kang the Conqueror. Considered one of Marvel's biggest villains - Thanos being the universal threat, and Kang (and oft-times rival Dr. Doom) being the Earth-based threat(s) - Kang is still unfamiliar to me (due to my devotion to the DCU). All I know is, he's a future-based villain with time control powers - among several others - making him a multidimensional threat. Past that, I got nothing. So I went hunting for any collected volumes, and this was one I got into.

This makes the "Someone I Email/Tweet" list with Busiek being a regular Twitter poster to whom I've replied and retweeted. Often with Busiek slapping me down for my silliness and Reply Guy tendencies. My bad. Still, Busiek is one of the more popular authors in the graphic novels/comics industry that I follow, giving a good review of his JLA/Avengers crossover years ago. His Kang Dynasty is a must-read if you want to be able to follow the next set of Marvel movies without whispering to the geek sitting next to you "Wait, what superpower did he just use again?"

Best Work Including Stuff I Wrote

Strangely Funny IX, edited by Sarah Glenn

Containing my submission "The Brides of Wi-Fi," a modern take on the three vampire women associated with whatever Lord of the Vampires - no, NOT the D guy - you may confront at a spooky gothic mansion in the hills of Georgia. It's different from my previous vampire stories, going by different rules, but that's par for the course in vampire mythos where the powers and weaknesses of the strigoi change from region to region (and sometimes even in the same narrative 'Verse, damn you Hammer Horror for your inconsistency). Please do buy a copy of Strangely Funny and please do leave a good review, danke.

Defend Your Libraries in 2022

Well, this is unsettling (Via Nikoel Hytrek at the Iowa Starting Line).

The effort to ban books has expanded beyond the classroom now to public libraries, with a new GOP-backed bill adding librarians to their target for prosecution and civil fines of those they believe give access to materials that are “obscene or harmful to minors.”

A collection of 14 Iowa Republican representatives introduced a bill Tuesday that makes it illegal for a person affiliated with a public school or public library to knowingly spread “material the person knows or reasonably should know, is obscene or harmful to minors.” Colleges and universities are exempted.

The penalty would be an aggravated misdemeanor, upgraded to a class D felony if the person was previously guilty of this.

Aggravated misdemeanors can be punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine between $625 and $6,250. Class D felonies are punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine between $750 and $7,500.

In short, Iowa Republicans want to turn librarianship into a criminal profession. Putting us up there with robbers, drug dealers, and people who talk at the theater.

You want to know how this game will get played if Iowa makes this a law?

Say a mature-looking young adult comes in, claiming they're a college student, asking for a book on sexual identity from the 306 Dewey Decimal (DDC) shelves. As a librarian, I would direct them to the shelf area, show them the titles we've got there. And then WHAMMO the "college student" turns out to be a 17-year-old high schooler on "dual enrollment" with the local community college and they call in the cops to arrest you for "knowingly spreading obscene material" to a minor.

You think that if this law passes, the courts will only rely on the fines to punish librarians, I mean who wants to send a sad little librarian to jail over an obscene book? Thing is you WILL get judges who will punish sad little librarians "to send a message," because those judges may agree with the Far Right religious conservatives who want to ban "obscene" books from the face of the Earth. Even then, those fines aren't cheap: A full-time librarian usually makes between $35,000 to $45,000 a year. Even a $625 fine is cutting into rent or mortgage, not to mention the costs of fighting these charges in court. Want to take care of $1000 fines every month? There goes most of a monthly paycheck for librarians. This would bankrupt most of us.

Oho, you say. If this law passes, perhaps it would be safer to pull all the obscene books off the shelves, right?

You want to know what these Far Right religious extremists think is obscene? Anything about gay and lesbian and trans culture, even when those books aren't graphic in detail. Young Adult books about sexual identity that don't even get as far as kissing scenes will still get targeted.

Anything about sexuality in general, even straight-up medical textbooks detailing human anatomy, and sociology/psychology textbooks. Because even those research-type books will offend those wingnuts.

Anything about "Critical Race Theory" because God forbid we upset Far Right people who believe that pointing out systemic racism is obscene to them.

Anything artistic from the Fine Arts (700s DDC) shelf range that just happens to show human nudity (Note: Most public libraries already self-sensor themselves from anything sexually graphic. But the religious nuts will go after anything that even hints at sexuality).

And it won't be the cheap and tawdry books these wingnuts will go after. Prize-winning authors like Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway - about a hundred writers and about a thousand literary works that make up a public library's core collection - will get labeled "obscene" and make it impossible for us to keep our doors open to everybody else who wants to use the library for their reading (and entertainment) needs.

And this is just the books: Many libraries have DVD movies available - yes, not everybody's gone to streaming yet - and half of those movies will be "obscene" in the wingnuts' eyes.

A good library - school, public, college - is one with a broad range of books from fiction to nonfiction, able to provide research and literary information to the communities we serve. This means we have to cover - even with a handful of titles - a lot of topics and reading interests for a diverse population, some of whom DO WANT to read books that others might find grotesque.

Again, most libraries DO evaluate and self-censor when necessary: For example, most libraries will not stock The Illustrated Joy of Sex because we know community standards won't abide it (Also, it will disappear off the shelf). We also won't stock The Turner Diaries, not only because it's openly racist and Anti-Semitic but it also contains bomb-making instructions violating laws banning such information (also also, that book is poorly plotted with one-dimensional characters, bland sex, and suffers many grammatic errors).

But what this Iowa law will do is make librarians vulnerable to ANY accusation about ANY other book that most would find benign but what the extremists will view as dangerous. Librarians could weed out every "offensive" book we could think of, and the wingnuts will STILL find something on the shelf to offend them and punish us.

And this just won't stop in Iowa. If this law passes, and it survives every court challenge - even the Supreme Court where a 6-3 conservative lineup could well side with the religious extremists - every other Republican-controlled state is going to pass their own version. Half the nation could well see our public libraries shut down due to the threat of prison and bankruptcy facing their staffers.

And who would win then? Without public libraries, children and adult literacy withers. Public access to computers goes away, hurting poor people searching online for jobs or families trying to file for food stamps. No more children's programs. No more community centers.

Libraries matter to people. Libraries define a city, support their counties. We're a public service that people enjoy having, because they often get good results from what we help them with. You can hear people whine about the post office or waiting forever at the DMV, but you don't see those kind of complaints about libraries.

Except from the ones who hate libraries for doing the one thing the religious extremists despise. We give our communities the diversity of experience that shames those who would rather keep us ignorant, uninformed, and fearful.

Well, to hell with those haters.    

You're gonna have to pry my library catalog from my cold dead hands, you bloody wingnuts.

Now is the time for all honest Americans who want to keep copies of Harry Potter stories and books on Tarot and Wicca to join your library's Friends group. Now is the time to defend your library and your community!

To The Shelves! To the Shelves! Defend the books!

Witty's Year End Book Review 2020

You might think with a year-long pandemic - things at the library quieted down right quick by late January - I would find more time to read. Also, that my early year surgery that forced me to stay home for most of a month would leave me with that kind of time as well. Sad to note: the level of anxiety and stress in the midst of all that kind of reduced my reading habits this year. It wasn't I did not have the time - no longer wasting weekends at the movies, for one - it was that I lost a lot of focus to read. I'm sorry.

I did read *some* this year, and so in that regards I will list what I read as suggested reads to pass along to the seven people who follow this blog, thank ye. It's just... honestly? This wasn't a competitive year...

Best Fiction

My rules on what I like each year isn't that the work HAS to be from this year - I do try - sometimes it's an older published work I re-visit that regains my interest. That said:

Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett

Another of the Discworld books I've become fond of, this is one of the later works where Pratchett's world-building - especially the fantastic politics of the various nation-states engaged in border clashes - expands to make it a more realized realm. On Discworld, the Narrative matters and the Gods are real. The problem with the small nation of (looks it up) Borogravia is that their god Nuggan has gone mad, been mad for ages, and His insane proclamations have weakened the faith of the population, which still has to abide against his Abominations. It's led to a state of constant war with neighboring kingdoms, which has also led to the literal depletion of Borogravia's manpower... to the point where the young women are signing up for the latest war in order to get into (or out of) conflict to rescue their loved ones. Or so it seems.

Playing on the trope of Sweet Polly Oliver - with an actual Polly (this is how Discworld rolls, son) as the protagonist - the main characters find themselves the last standing military unit against Zlobenia. Relying on the military tropes as both parody and metaphor, the lads (or ladettes, however the case may be) must rely on their innate skills - vampire, troll, Igor, Joan of Archetype, what have you... just not their feminine ones, which becomes a plot point later - to break the cycle of madness (and free a soul they don't realize has been trapped by faith) and end the war. 

Where the book excels is Pratchett's subtle yet elaborate wordplay, and his willingness to tweak tropes for all they're worth. For example the vampire Maladict (whom Polly thinks is the only real man in her regiment) had traded out the addiction for blood to an addiction for coffee (the mainstay of any marching army, what what). When one of the bad guys (yes, he's a guy) steals the regiment's supply, it forces Maladict into withdrawal mode, mimicking the shell-shocked Vietnam trooper with increasingly powerful hallucinations that Maladict can broadcast. It's in this confused state that Polly herself can imagine "Copters in the LZ" even though she has no idea what a 'Copter or an LZ is. It also allows her to hallucinate walking with Death (yes, he's a Reaper Man) because after all every soldier walks with Death (plus he's contractually obligated to appear in every Discworld story). It's just that Polly's the only one on Discworld who told Death to keep quiet while they walked.

It's not one of Pratchett's best Discworld novels (Small Gods, Guards Guards, and Hogfather are far superior works) but it's an enjoyable read that's easy to get into even if you're not a hardcore reader of the series.

Dishonorable Mention: The Jack Reacher series by Lee Child

I'm sorry, but... I tried, I really tried to read a number of these books about an ex-military MP who walks the Earth getting into violent adventures. But it's just... almost all the same damn thing. He shows up, gets into fights with the locals, uncovers a conspiracy, occasionally has sex with a woman tangibly involved in the matter, wipes out the big bad's merc army in a gunfight, sometimes heads off in an epilogue to take out a corrupt government official who violated the oath of service to America, and goes wandering off to the next book. Half the dialog isn't dialog it's just the narrator writing "(This character) said nothing." I guess it's like Mac and Cheese for a large number of readers, but it's just overheated Revenge Porn. The Punisher does it better, dammit.

Best Non-Fiction

Very Stable Genius, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig

If you follow me on my political blog, you might notice I am not a fan of donald trump (I refuse to capitalize his name as English grammar requires. The SOB obsesses over his name's presentation and the smaller I can make it the better).

So a lot of non-fiction I've been reading the past four years have been "What The Hell Happened" history/political science books focusing on the disaster that has been the trump Administration. Very Stable Genius is coming towards the end of trump's one-term tenure, and it looks back at all of the chaos and damage that occurred. Most telling is the ninth chapter where Rucker and Leonnig detail how - in an attempt by the Defense and State Departments to explain to trump just what is actually happening in the world - trump hijacked the meeting to spew his unfounded diatribes about our foreign allies, which all ended with trump - a draft-dodging self-obsessed whiner - insulting military officials to their faces:

Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn't taking many breaths... "I wouldn't go to war with you people," Trump told the assembled brass. Addressing the room, the commander-in-chief barked, "You're a bunch of dopes and babies." For a President known for verbiage he euphemistically called "locker room talk," this was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred place. The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room..." (p. 136)

You might notice the book's title - trump's own words describing himself (like 74 percent of anything he says, it's a lie) - is a sharp rebuke: Everything in the pages details how trump is an unstable, self-absorbed fool. And it's someone who was put in charge of the United States for four painful years.

There's going to be a lot of books written about this era. Rucker and Leonnig's book should be one of the first ones to reach for.

Runner-up: The Public And Its Problems, by John Dewey

As part of my efforts to keep up with Pragmatism as a philosophy, especially with an eye towards promoting it as a political philosophy to counter the darker (cough Randian Objectivist cough) ideologies consuming our nation. I'm still re-reading it to see what I can translate into modern world-view explanation.

Best Graphic Novel (or Ongoing Series)

Wonder Woman: Dead Earth (Black Label), by Daniel Johnson

Part of DC Comics' efforts to re-imagine their main characters with edgier, more mature stories, the Black Label brand includes this retelling of Wonder Woman in a post-apocalyptic future where she emerges to find her attempts to save the World of Men had failed. Worse, the nuclear war that consumed the planet had turned her paradise into a monstrous realm that has abandoned any hope of peace at all.

In the same narrative take as Sejic's dark vision on Harleen, Johnson as writer/artist employs a stark and harsh art style similar in my mind to Frank Miller's work. It's the first time I've seen his artwork and I am impressed by it. I am going to keep an eye out for future works. 

Runner-up: Solutions and Other Problems, by Allie Brosh

It took about 7 years, but Brosh returned with a follow-up to her Hyperbole And a Half with another essay-styled series of comics about the everyday dramas of coping with the world. Where the earlier book's artwork was crudely pixelated work (the strength of the stories is Brosh's writing and observations), the new work is cleaner, sharper in tone as the writing itself gets sharper with experience.

Best Work by Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With on a Regular Basis 

The Last Emperox, by John Scalzi

Keeping up with Scalzi's Interdependency trilogy, which I started reading back in 2017 with The Collapsing Empire, the third and final volume focuses on the eventual collapse of a naturally-occurring hyperspace system (The Flow) and how it affects a galactic-wide human empire suddenly forced to find other ways to survive.

Intermixed with the efforts to discover the new portals to a shifting Flow network, Scalzi's main characters have to contend with the political backstabbing of an empire still driven by intrigue and ambition, where the bad guys from the first two novels have succeeded in seizing control of the one planet (End, literally at the end of the Flow) that has a sustainable human environment and are gathering the other Houses to overthrow Empress (well, Emperox to avoid the gender bias) Grayland and condemn billions of humans who need to reach End.

Some of the characters - including the villains - remain rather predictable playing out their roles in a Space Opera environs (did one of the baddies twirl a mustache at one point?). Scalzi still crafts a believable 'Verse with relatable characters and satisfying plot twists. There's no new ground really broken here - the themes of humanity, futurism, our relationship to the environment, these are all regular tropes of most science fiction - but it's a story well-told. 

Expect the SyFy miniseries in the next two-three years.

Best Work Including Stuff I Wrote

I did not get published this year, alas. Self-publishing even one of my short works seemed... wrong. I am struggling to keep my head in the writing game... I may have something published by next year, we will see.

Witty's Year End Book Review 2019

This whole year had been busy in a lot of ways: Work at the library involved my taking on double-duty as an interim director; I was active with the Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards as a judge (I did not judge in the fields I submitted, relax); I increased the amount of stories submitted to the markets to see if any publisher would like (just one: A sad truth is that writers face a ton of rejection and few victories. We live for the victories).

In all of this, I still found some time to sit and read, both for relaxation and for education/self-information. Here's what I had in front of me for 2019 and what I think deserves a huzzah or three for being effective reads:


Best Fiction

Black Spire (Star Wars Galaxy's Edge #2), by Delilah S. Dawson

I didn't read much fiction - I blame my heated political slant, see below - so what I did sometimes didn't keep my interest. This one did. Granted, I am a huge Star Wars geek and so I can get into books in that 'Verse quite easily, so this one already had a few bonus points to keep the grade up.

Tying in to both the aftermath of The Last Jedi movie as well as promoting a new Disney theme park called Galaxy's Edge, Dawson (who also wrote the well-received Phasma novel) sends her heroine/Resistance spy Vi to the Outer Rim in search of safe havens and new recruits. Instead Vi runs into a wretched hive of tourism and sunscreen (in other words Orlando Metro FL ow stop hitting me) where run-ins with First Order troops and vendors selling 800 credit t-shirts (ow stop hitting me again) keep her busy.

Dawson does write a lot of Young Adult, so a good amount of dialogue and description reads to a middle-school level than adult, but for me it's not a problem. What I enjoyed were 1) re-immersion into a 'Verse I love, 2) good storytelling, 3) likable characters and 4) the subtle Floridian snarkery of poking fun at our tourist industry while accepting its place in our lives.


Best Non-Fiction

The Man Who Sold America, by Joy-Ann Reid.

There are a TON of trump political books I can recommend, given my outrage and discontent about our nation's current predicament under his corrupt rule (yes, as an apostate moderate ex-Republican, I have a bias against that Shitgibbon). Reid's is one of the better ones worth your time, which focuses as much on trump's still-shadowy background and rise in business as well as his current acts of corruption and failure.

Honorable Mention: The Mueller Report (Washington Post edition)

In terms of our current events, keeping up with the political catastrophe that has been the trump Administration requires constant reading and constant reminding. Robert Mueller's years-long investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 elections, and the possibility of donald trump's involvement aiding them, may have come out in April and it may not have ended with proper closure... but a lot of the revelations even when redacted exposes a criminal enterprise behind everything trump has done and is doing right now (hi, impeachment over Ukraine military aid extortion!).


Best Graphic Novel (or Ongoing Series)

Harleen (Black Label), by Stjepan Sejic (DC Comics)

As part of a publication effort to print darker and edgier versions of their mainstream characters, this one focuses on THE breakout Batman rogue of the 1990s - Harley Quinn - to provide a more nightmarish origin story to Dr. Harleen Quinzel's run-in with (and corruption by) the Joker.

As always, the art is the biggest draw: Sejic works like a painter much of the time with the kind of detail to character designs (although I gotta admit a lot of people's chins start to look the same) that make you squint and zoom in to catch it. Also, he can draw nightmarish images that haunt more than terrify, fulfilling the darker/edgier requirement of the Black Label series. The plot itself covers familiar ground - foreshadowing of the demons Harleen herself carries with her, the meetings with Joker than begin her descent as a force for chaos - but Sejic refreshes them in an attempt to make the (anti) heroine a more intelligent and tragic figure that can later find the shred of redemption.

Dishonorable Mention: Doomsday Clock, Geoff Johns (DC Comics)

Not gonna provide a link here, because as a miniseries supposedly trying to tie in Alan Moore's Watchmen universe into the overall DCU this one has been a meandering mess. Considering how writer Geoff Johns had overseen the last decade or more of Crisis-level changes to the comic 'Verse narrative, this miniseries looks to be his latest - maybe last - attempt to clean up all loose ends caused by those shifts. I'm not sure it works: Characters introduced and then ignored for entire issues, plot points that weren't even present early on suddenly become the reason the whole story is being told... I just couldn't keep up with it. There was one bright moment in the entire series - where Manhattan becomes aware of the multiverse and how it's affected by the real-world metaverse - where you can see what Johns was aiming for... and if he made that more prominent from the first issue the miniseries might have been a more coherent work. But he cluttered it up too early and too often, and I walked away discouraged.


Best Work by Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With on a Regular Basis

Eye Spy (Valdemar Universe Family Spies series), Mercedes Lackey

Adding to the list of authors I've been in communication is Ms. Lackey, and for a roundabout reason. Ya see, I'm a fan of an MMO called City of Heroes that sadly got shut down a few years back... only for a dedicated fanbase to secretly start up a private server version of the game to continue to hard work of saving Paragon City. Well, earlier this year someone blabbed about the secret server, which launched a huge outcry of millions of fans who wanted to get back on it (oh, and the usual suspects of people complaining the secret server had access to people's credit card numbers). So the secret server managers released the game code and... well, as long as NCSoft doesn't bring the lawyer hammers down on anybody, the game is there to upload and play.

City of Heroes was huge in the day (and its revival one of the bigger gaming news of 2019), and it drew in a lot of well-known fans including Mercedes Lackey. She was such a fan of the game she wrote an entire superhero novel series called The Secret World Chronicles (unrelated to City of Heroes itself due to copyright) that she's kept up with to this day.

So here's the thing: In-game, they hold Costume Contests (CoH is legendary for its varied costume options for your game avatars) and one night they announced a secret prize. So I showed up with my most outrageous avatar (Lady Esoteric) and ended up winning! The prize turned out to be a gift copy of the second book in Lackey's Family Spies series set in her Valdemar universe, which she sent to me via email and basically qualifies her for this award. Congratulations! (ow stop hitting my Blaster)

You may need to get into the entire Valdemar 'Verse first, but I'll try to make it simple. There's a kingdom ruled by a benevolent monarchy beset by dark forces - at one point a rival border power, currently tribal raiders - that require the aid of magical creatures (known as Companions) and also magical people (known as Heralds) to protect the realm. The Family Spies series focuses on one Herald family where at least in the first two books the children develop their magical Gifts to serve both family and kingdom. Eye Spy focuses on Abidela (Abi for short) who discovers her Gift as a form of Scrying (the reading of inanimate objects) that can sense their physical weak points.

From there Abi is swept off to Wizard School the Collegium to hone her skills and train as her parents had to serve as a Spy. From there she hits the field working on a mystery involving a drowned village and political schemes that threaten Valdemar's reputation with their border allies.

Lackey's skills are in the details of her world-building, and crafting characters who are believable as social, living beings. I do encourage you to read the earlier Valdemar novels though to help get a better understanding of how that whole world works.


Best Work Including Stuff I Wrote

This has always been a narrow category, considering few publications accept the stories I submit. I made serious efforts this year with short story submissions but... well... Sigh. I need better adjective placement in the stuff I write, I think...

Anywho:

Strangely Funny VI, edited by Sarah Glenn (Mystery & Horror LLC)

Keeping up with the near-annual Strangely Funny series, I submitted another chapter of the ongoing Dhampyr storyline with Minette on vacation in "How a Vampire Gets a Tan". Set in the more current day of... well, after the events of a novel I've half-finished called Subway Night, it's a pretty straight forward story of why vampires don't tan outdoors (it's less to do with getting charbroiled and more to do with the excessive pheromone production when they sweat). Saying any further would spoil the rest of the story, but anyway it's a good volume and it's an overall great series so PLEASE take the time to purchase/download (available in Kindle) and read.

Happy New Year, everybody, here's hoping 2020 has a lot of fun reading ahead.

The Value of Librarianship in 2017

Normally, I'd be posting this over in my political blog. This is getting posted here because it involves my library profession.

There's been a lot of worried emails in my Inbox from fellow librarians about this.

The recently released annual budget from trump's White House is one of drastic cuts to nearly every aspect of the federal budget (except for the Defense). In particular, he's calling for outright elimination of funds for 19 agencies.

One of which is the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

Its ongoing mission is to explore new worlds and seek out new civilizations to "inspire libraries and museums to advance innovation, lifelong learning, and cultural and civic engagement. We provide leadership through research, policy development, and grant making."

It's not as high profile as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting AKA PBS, the home of Mister Rogers, Big Bird, Masterpiece Theater and Antiques Roadshow. And it's not an immediate threat to most libraries: your public libraries get most of our funding from city, county, and state taxes/revenues. But this potential shutdown hits us hard: A lot of grants towards library projects are at stake.

Eliminating this grant provider could force many small county and city museums to close their doors. Places of historic, artistic and scientific value no longer available to the public. Special collections at libraries - also historic, artistic and scientific - no longer available as well. Things that require preservation can fade away, lost forever.

These cuts would be a disaster: not JUST for museums and libraries but for the nation.

The American Library Association President Judie Todaro issued strong words against this:

“The President’s proposal to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services in his FY2018 budget just released, and with it effectively all federal funding for libraries of all kinds, is counterproductive and short-sighted. The American Library Association will mobilize its members, congressional library champions, and the millions upon millions of people we serve in every zip code to keep those ill-advised proposed cuts from becoming a congressional reality. Libraries leverage the tiny amount of federal funds they receive through their states into an incredible range of services for virtually all Americans everywhere to produce what could well be the highest economic and social ‘ROI’ in the entire federal budget.

“America’s more than 120,000 public, school, college and university, and many other libraries aren’t piles of archived books. They’re trusted centers for technology, job counseling, retraining, veterans services, entrepreneurship, education, teaching and learning, and free inquiry at the core of communities in every state in the country—and in every congressional district. And they’re staffed by the original search engines: skilled and engaged librarians.”

I know personally how well-liked and well-used libraries are: Nearly every time I've seen - especially first-hand in Broward County back in the 1990s - a funding matter come up for library support, a vast majority of residents vote in FAVOR OF better funding, improving services, building MORE branches to serve the public.

This proposed budget goes against everything I've seen out of my fellow Americans when it comes to libraries (and museums). WE know the value of this shared community resource. WE need to fight back and call Congress to tell them to save the IMLS, and to save our communities by protecting EVERY public service - my God, they're slashing MEALS ON WHEELS? - trump threatens today.

Prepping for NaNoWriMo 2016

Okay, so National Novel Writing Month is officially every November, which is now NEXT MONTH.

That means a few things:

1) the NaNoWriMo website resets itself.

2) I need to submit a proposed book idea and proposed cover (optional, but fun to have).

3) The Lakeland FL Region will reset, which means I got to start managing the threads and the notes and the Calendar again!

4) I really need to come up with a good book idea this time.

Sigh.

For all the times I've NaNo'ed, I've yet to complete a "finished" work past the 50,000 word count. The remainders that follow in my wake are - upon re-evaluation - a bit messy even before the need for actual revisions to where I'm almost embarrassed by them.

I need to - NEED TO - come up with an idea I know I can follow up to its conclusion. I'd REALLY like to get one of these things honest-to-God done.

So, a quick poll to anybody willing to leave a comment. Should I write:

1) A fiction novel, focusing on the Talents superhero 'verse I've been working on?

2) A non-fiction novel of political ranting - which I kinda do anyway - during what will be the most anxiety-riddled election month in recent memory?

Please let me know what you think.

And get ready to NANO people! Word Sprints start in 27 days!

NEW Book Published - Surviving the Age of Obstruction

I may have mentioned from time to time that I had purchased a publication deal with Xlibris a few years ago. Well, ten eleven years ago, actually.

Long story short, I decided to just get the contract done with, take a sampling of essays/articles I write on my political blog You Might Notice a Trend, and put it into book form. It's doable: many a newspaper or media columnist collect their works in such a way - Molly Ivins for example - to have available as a collection. Sort of like a Greatest Hits album.

So, I went and put my political rants into something I can show to my friends and enemies. Surviving the Age of Obstruction: Notes on the Obama years.

It's a look back at eight years of political madness, a pro-Obama, anti-Republican work that delves into my apostasy and my observations on how Obama - and the nation - endured it all.

I submitted the final proofing two weeks ago. The book has been available on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble's websites since last week. I just got a copy from the publisher this weekend.

There is something incredibly satisfying about holding a physical copy of your book. A tangible sensation of completion, of getting past a finish line. It's different than publishing an ebook, as there's a lack of a trophy of sorts - the printed book - to make that completion feel real.

Just to note, the process from submitting the rough draft to completed physical copy has sped up the last time I did this. Last of the Grapefruit Wars - my short story collection - took a few weeks to go through the editing and proofing process, and then took another two months for print availability (the point of Print-on-Demand is that the book is saved on file and physically printed on an order-by-order basis).

I know some of the people reading this blog may not know about my political ranting blog, but you can check that out, I have the link available above and over on the right menu lists.

Now all I need to do is ask about oh 500,000 people to buy my book. That shouldn't be too hard...