JJ Litke

the neural pathways less traveled

Irregular Reviews: Everything Sad is Untrue

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I recently met Arthur A. Levine—founder of the independent publisher Levine Querido—at ArmadilloCon. Levine is probably best known as the editor that brought the Harry Potter series to the US. Levine also published Darcie Little Badger’s debut Elatsoe (tip: when saying this out loud, pronounce the ‘e’ at the end like an ‘a’ sound; I managed to impress Levine by knowing this). The point of all this backstory is this is how I came across Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri, during a panel where Levine discussed a variety of books from his imprint. It’s a little outside of my usual genres, but it was so intriging I couldn’t resist.

I want to strongly, wholeheartedly endorse this book. It’s beautiful. The writing is fluid, at times lyrical. The characters well developed. It’s so real. And therein lies the problem. It’s like a slice of real life—more like a lot of slices, a cake cut into pieces and served in random ways with odd utensils. The cake is still delicious but it’s definitely not how you’re used to eating cake.

The book is essentially a monologue by Daniel, as he stands up in front of his class talking about his life. This premise isn’t introduced as a scene, it’s just hinted at throughout. I read that description in advance and thought, well it can’t really be this long and only be that. Turns out it can be. Daniel draws an analogy to Scheherazade multiple times. It’s an apt comparison, right down to the way the stories he weaves together don’t feel complete as you wade along through.

I have to admit—I skimmed a big chunk of it. Something about this compelled me to want to read it, immediately. But I wasn’t in the right headspace for it. The reviews for the audiobook version are really high, and I’m a bit sorry I didn’t get that instead of print (well, e-book, my current preferred format). But I own it now, and I fully expect to revisit it. In fact, I think it might be a prime candidate for nonlinear reading. An occasional slice of cake, served on a saucepan lid, eaten with a shrimp fork. Delicious.

Easy Halloween Fence

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My neighborhood is into Halloween, and we get a lot of trick-or-treaters. That makes Halloween a perfect time for fun craftsy projects.

I wanted a fence to guide trick-or-treaters up to the house (and, you know, just to add decoration). But the ones you can buy are insanely expensive for just a short segment of fence. Plus they tend to be really short, and they’re flimsy, making me think they aren’t likely to last long. So this year, I decided to make one myself. This is the result:

A simple black chain fence with little skulls on the posts

Sorry I didn’t take pics all the way through, but the steps are pretty simple. I started with some cheap wooden stakes from Lowes. I got 36 inch, I probably could have used the 24 inch ones just fine (though this does have a nice bit of height). Fair warning, these stakes are meant for construction zones, they’re super rough, and you will get a thousand splinters if you aren’t careful with them.

The other materials were a 25ft black plastic chain, and a set of tiny skulls. Since there were eight skulls in the pack, I only used eight stakes, which turned out to work great for the length of chain I had.

I spray-painted the stakes black with some leftover paint I already had. We seem to accumulate a lot of leftover paint. After painting the stakes, I debated about how to fasten the chain to the stakes. I finally got the idea to just drill holes through them with a 5/8″ bit. Then it’d be an easy matter to thread the chain through the holes—and added bonus, I can take the chain out after Halloween and the stakes will all store nice and flat. So I drilled holes in them. Okay, MrJJ drilled the holes, but I held the boards for him, so I helped! They’re secured on the end stakes with black twist-ties (MrJJ’s idea, he’s a pretty smart guy).

Finally, the skull cap pieces were added. I had thought I’d glue them, but there was a nicely convenient hole in the base of each skull. So I tapped a nail into the top of each stake—MrJJ was into this project by now, and he found some leftover 3″ nails and flattened the heads down so the skulls could fit over them. I could glue the skulls down, but they don’t seem to need it. Plus, again, storage will be so easy if I can just put all the stakes flat together.

Closeup of a little skull on a black post, with a black chain running through a hole in the post

Drilling a second set of holes and running another chain through would make the whole thing look a lot more like a serious fence. Or, the shorter stakes would work great if you wanted a short fence.

I’m thinking about getting something like some Spanish moss to add a little more character. Or I’ve got some orange string lights. Anyway, this is a good base to start with.

Happy trails!

A little skeleton riding a skeleton flamingo

7 Tips For Sharing COVID—And The Holidays—With Your Family

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So you’ve been social distancing and wearing a mask. Great! And now you want to cash in your good karma points on visiting extended family, stuffing yourself insensible, then zoning out by the TV. And surely coronavirus will honor those karma points, right? It pays attention and thinks in its tiny little ‘rona brain, “Hey, that guy’s been good, I’ll give him a pass and not spray out of his mouth into his Grammy’s face when he hugs her. Nah, that’s not how I roll.”

You owe it to your Grammy to go. The best thing you can give her is the gift of you, even if it comes with a side of antibiotic cocktails, lung fluid, and blood clots. You don’t have to risk her life, you could just call her more often and listen to stories about her walking fart problems. But you’re so bored with staying home, and she’s had a good run. A gem of a guy like you deserves some fun!

So here we go, tips for the COVID holiday season.

  1. Wear a mask. Masks reduce the viral load you’re exposed to, which affects how ill you become. Of course, you won’t wear the mask while you’re eating. Even though your brother Jerry talks with his mouth full, so he’ll be spitting flecks of turkey gravy and mashed potatoes at everyone. And you won’t wear a mask while hugging Grammy. Her memory and eyesight are failing like Kanye’s presidential run, and she won’t recognize you with a mask. You know what, forget the mask. It’s not going to make much difference for the five to six minutes you’d actually have it properly covering that face penis you call a nose anyway. 
  2. Wash your hands. This one is important. Grammy is always after you to wash your hands, right? Even though she just wipes her hands on a kitchen towel after handling raw meat, but you know, do as she says, not as she does. Handwashing will make a difference in how many germs are spread around during that maskless, gravy-and-potato-spittled dinner. Especially after Uncle Chester has a few drinks and keeps grabbing your arm to make you sit and listen to stories about his basic training days and pranks involving toothbrushes and rectums. Or when Grandpa starts up with the latest conspiracy theory about 5G-induced STDs, and cousin June helps out by escalating it into a screaming match. Family gatherings are fun, huh?
  3. Use hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer should be at least 60% alcohol. If you run out, try sneaking some vodka from Uncle Chester’s glass that he’s pretending is water. Bonus game, refill it with water and see if he notices (spoiler: he won’t, he’s drunk on hand sanitizer).
  4. Social distancing. Yeah, you already broke that one just by showing up. Next.
  5. Cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash. Have the kids do this as well. Make them stop wiping boogers on each other, or on Uncle Chester after he passes out on the couch. In fact, make sure you keep the kids away from Uncle Chester. His yell-sneezes that sound like an exorcism in progress can set off every car alarm in the driveway. Bound to be a few germs in there, too.
  6. Clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces. Give the kids some Clorox wipes and make up a new game: how many surfaces can you wipe down every hour? The winner gets a peppermint that Grammy dug out of her purse with just a little bit of lint stuck to it. Be sure to warn the kids not to get bleach in their eyes or up their noses. Or on the food. Or each other. Actually, this might be a bad idea. Just get some of Chester’s vodka and spritz it around every hour or so. Be sure to get Grandpa’s nether regions. He’s having a little trouble holding things in, if you know what I mean.
  7. Take vitamin D. And zinc. And some C for good measure. If you weren’t sick before, odds are good you just got the new version of the gift that keeps on giving. So hunker down and brace yourself, you’re in for a rough few weeks. Call your Grammy one last time. Happy holidays!

UFO8 anthology, now with more JJ!

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Up for some fun? The classic humor SFF anthology Unidentified Funny Objects is about to release UFO8, including my story “The Unwelcome Mat,” featuring Mathilde Coburn, Appliance Exorcist.

Pretty sweet, huh!

October 13 is the official release date. Makes a great gift! No seriously, the world is on fucking fire right now, and everyone could use a break from that, even for just a few minutes (ha ha ha, ow). Check out the names on the cover, too. It still bowls me over to be part of this. I really love UFO, and getting the chance to work with Alex Shvartsman was a pretty sweet deal, too.

We could all use a little more good news, so feel free to add a comment about anything that’s going well for you right now, I’d love to hear it.

New Year’s Resolutions: Minimal Progress is Okay

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This time of year, a slew of articles are out there about resolutions. How lots of people do them, why they’re bad, why they’re important, how to not screw them up. Personally, I’ve never liked resolutions. I don’t need any help putting undue pressure on myself to achieve more and then feeling shitty when I struggle with it, thank you very much. Still, I get the appeal. You want to do better and be better, right? The thing that’s worse than the resolutions is the attitude that there’s some kind of absolute truth about them, as demonstrated by those aforementioned articles.

Resolutions made at the start of a new year have a long and storied history. (Yeah, I just linked to Wikipedia, go look and see if you aren’t fascinated by the idea of Babylonians doing this shit, too.) This isn’t a Hallmark holiday, or manufactured as an advertising campaign—though I wouldn’t be surprised if they make a card for it and I’m not doing that search right now. The point is that the desire to be and do better is ingrained, a part of human nature. And there’s not a damn thing wrong with that. It’s great, right?

At least it’s great until it isn’t. If you pressure yourself too much (or better yet, pressure other people). If you don’t reach your objective and you beat yourself up about it. Or if you don’t meet your goals quickly and just give up. This is why the Peloton you got for Christmas ends up on eBay by April. Ha, just kidding! It ends up on eBay because you need the cash after the market crash and the next recession begins. (You thought I was going to make a divorce joke, instead I went all in with societal downfall, whee!)

But I digress. The point, once again, is the desire for improvement. If you move the needle a little, that’s progress. If you move it, then backslide, it’s okay to keep going and try again. You don’t have to go to the extent of dissolving into gelatinous goo like a caterpillar metamorphing into a butterfly, which is good news because being a goo-based life form holds zero appeal for me.

Whatever you end up doing with resolutions, be kind to yourself. A little progress is still progress. It’s okay if you have to start over. It’s okay to make adjustments to your goals, especially if you set your sights too high at the beginning. Remember, you’re just as good as any Babylonian. You got this.

Short story roundup, July 2018

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I’m focused on short stories for next year’s Hugos. So I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could start sharing the stories I’m reading in a highly organized way? Well sure, that would be lovely, but let’s just start with the sharing. Then we’ll move on to organized, and later on see if we can eventually attach a highly in there as well. So here are some stories I read this past month that were not necessarily freshly published this month.

Untimely Frost, Unlikely Bloom, by Hayley Stone, in Flash Fiction Online, July 2018
Lovely, creepy, and sad, this is sort of a dark fairy tale of a poisonous person who kills any creature she comes in contact. It did bring up quite a few logistical questions as I read it—how did she survive to adulthood, and how is she managing to survive now—but you really just need to accept that it’s a fairy tale.

A Most Elegant Solution, by M. Darusha Wehm, in Terraform, April 27, 2018
People are always proud of their own creations, aren’t they? Even when those creations wind up devouring everyone. It was nice of them to kill everyone else first and leave mom for last, at least. That’s the scenario as the story begins, then goes into flashback to show how we got to that point. I think the story would be a bit stronger with the last couple of paragraphs (don’t think we needed the extra explanation), but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

A Song of Home, the Organ Grinds, by James Beamon, in Lightspeed, July 2018
Holy shit, this piece. Monkeys as weapons of war, controlled by an organ grinder… you know what, describing it isn’t going to do it justice, just go read it.

Waterbirds, by G.V. Anderson, in Lightspeed, July 2018
Celia is an A.I. Companion whose employer is missing. Celia’s memory about what exactly happened seems a bit hazy on a few details, and the more pieces are filled in, the more tense it gets. What’s going to become of poor Celia now that her benefactor is gone? G.V. Anderson won the World Fantasy Award Best Short Fiction for Das Steingeschöpf in 2017, and this story is a likely candidate to be brought up in award conversations next year.