Podcasts about Book one

Nick and Charlotte live at Tattersalls again for the final day of Book One. Guests today include Charlie Appleby, with a full run down of his squad for Newmarket this weekend, plus an early look at his Breeders' Cup squad. Also on today's show, Nick spends some time with Luca and Sara Cumani after their stellar Wednesday for the Fittocks Stud team, while Chad Brown discusses the importance of Tatts yearlings in bolstering his team and gives the lowdown on Sierra Leone'e preparation in defence of his Breeders' Cup Classic crown. Saracen's Polly Bonnor tells us how she has fed Book One's Top two lots, while Joseph O'Brien has the latest on his Fillies' Mile contender, and Anthony Stroud, Simon Marsh and ROA board hopeful Mark Johnston also join the show.

Nick and Charlotte live at Tattersalls again for the final day of Book One. Guests today include Charlie Appleby, with a full run down of his squad for Newmarket this weekend, plus an early look at his Breeders' Cup squad. Also on today's show, Nick spends some time with Luca and Sara Cumani after their stellar Wednesday for the Fittocks Stud team, while Chad Brown discusses the importance of Tatts yearlings in bolstering his team and gives the lowdown on Sierra Leone'e preparation in defence of his Breeders' Cup Classic crown. Saracen's Polly Bonnor tells us how she has fed Book One's Top two lots, while Joseph O'Brien has the latest on his Fillies' Mile contender, and Anthony Stroud, Simon Marsh and ROA board hopeful Mark Johnston also join the show.

Nick is joined by Jane Mangan live from Tattersalls in Newmarket for the opening exchanges of Book One. As the trade gets off to a flying start, they catch up with a whole host of heroes of recent days, including Jessica Harrington, Henry Dwyer, Ben Sangster and Eve Johnson Houghton. Bloodstock agents Mark McStay and Ross Doyle join the conversation, while Kia Joorabchian gives us a sneak preview of his intentions before acing on them in some style. Jason Singh gives the sales house overview. Plus, from Australia, JA McGrath is trackside for the Ka King Rising barrier trial, and gets immediate reaction from David Hayes and Zac Purton, while - in conjunction with AusHorse - Newgate's Henry Field charts the extraordinary success story of stallion sensation Extreme Choice. Dan Barber wraps up the best of Arc weekend from the Timeform perspective.

Welcome to our new series on Ernest Hemingway's modern classic. For this first episode we chatted about Heidi's deep love of the book, the subtly of Hemingway's prose, the role of faith and confession in the story. whether it's melodramatic, and much, much more. Happy listening! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe

Nick is joined by Jane Mangan live from Tattersalls in Newmarket for the opening exchanges of Book One. As the trade gets off to a flying start, they catch up with a whole host of heroes of recent days, including Jessica Harrington, Henry Dwyer, Ben Sangster and Eve Johnson Houghton. Bloodstock agents Mark McStay and Ross Doyle join the conversation, while Kia Joorabchian gives us a sneak preview of his intentions before acing on them in some style. Jason Singh gives the sales house overview. Plus, from Australia, JA McGrath is trackside for the Ka King Rising barrier trial, and gets immediate reaction from David Hayes and Zac Purton, while - in conjunction with AusHorse - Newgate's Henry Field charts the extraordinary success story of stallion sensation Extreme Choice. Dan Barber wraps up the best of Arc weekend from the Timeform perspective.

The new show kicks off with PTF and Nick Tammaro going over a plethora of Breeders' Cup Win-and-You're-In races from last weekend, including Rebel's Romance's romp in the Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Invitational.Next up, Henry Beeby from Goff's is straight off the rostrum and onto the podcast to give us a recap of the record-setting Goff's Book One sale. He also gives us an update on Goff's graduate Minnie Hauk, due to run in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe on Sunday. To learn more about Goffs, go to their website. We will have full coverage of Arc weekend on the ITM Plus side of things with our European correspondent Michael Adolphson. To sign up for plus, go to inthemoneypodcast.com/plus.Last but not least, unofficial ITM Horseplayers Tour winner Matt Miller drops by to talk about his amazing season and to preview the playoffs. We will also have direct qualifiers to the BCBC on upcoming Fridays where the house cut will go to thoroughbred aftercare. Go to Horseplayers.com to sign up.

The new show kicks off with PTF and Nick Tammaro going over a plethora of Breeders' Cup Win-and-You're-In races from last weekend, including Rebel's Romance's romp in the Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Invitational.Next up, Henry Beeby from Goff's is straight off the rostrum and onto the podcast to give us a recap of the record-setting Goff's Book One sale. He also gives us an update on Goff's graduate Minnie Hauk, due to run in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe on Sunday. To learn more about Goffs, go to their website. We will have full coverage of Arc weekend on the ITM Plus side of things with our European correspondent Michael Adolphson. To sign up for plus, go to inthemoneypodcast.com/plus.Last but not least, unofficial ITM Horseplayers Tour winner Matt Miller drops by to talk about his amazing season and to preview the playoffs. We will also have direct qualifiers to the BCBC on upcoming Fridays where the house cut will go to thoroughbred aftercare. Go to Horseplayers.com to sign up.

In this week's episode, we take a look at six marketing lessons writers can learn from TikTok. I also answer questions about my new book BLADE OF FLAMES. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Shield of Storms, Book #1 in the Shield War series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: FALLSHIELD50 The coupon code is valid through October 6, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 270 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September 26th, 2025, and today we are looking at six trends from TikTok that help with marketing books (even if you're not on TikTok). We'll also answer some questions about my new book, Blade of Flames. Before we get to our main topics, we will do Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Shield of Storms, Book One in the Shield War series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store and that is FALLSHIELD50. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through October 6, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook to listen to this fall, we have got you covered. Now here is where I'm at with my current writing projects. As I mentioned last week, Blade of Flames is now out and you get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and My Payhip store. Now that it is out and published, my new main project is I'm finally returning to the Nadia series. I am 50,000 words into Cloak of Worlds, which I believe puts me on chapter 10 of 28, though I'll probably split up some of the longer chapters in editing to make them punchier. So hopefully that will be out in October, probably towards the end of October (if all goes well). My secondary project is now Blade of Shadows, which will be the sequel to Blade of Flames and the second book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. And as of this recording, I'm about 4,000 words into it and I'm hoping that'll be out towards the end of November, maybe right before or right after Thanksgiving, depending on how the next couple of weeks go. In audiobook news, Shield of Power is now finally out at all audiobook stores: Audible, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Kobo, Chirp, Spotify, and all the others. You can listen to that on a platform of your choosing. Recording is almost done on Ghost in the Siege and I should have some audiobook files to proof for that soon. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, audiobook, and publishing projects. Now, Blade of Flames is the first book in a new epic fantasy series with the first new protagonist I've had since I wrote Rivah in Half-Elven Thief back in 2023. So as you might expect, it has generated more than the usual amount of reader questions. So for convenience, I will answer them all right here on the show. Question #1: Is Blade of Flame set in the world of Andomhaim/Owyllain (from Frostborn Sevenfold Sword, Dragontiarna, Dragonskull, and The Shield War)? Yes, it is set in Owyllain, specifically in the Year of Our Lord 1588, so 88 years after the end of The Shield War. Question #2: Is Ridmark the main character? No, the main character is named Talembur. I've written 43 books with Ridmark as either the protagonist or one of the protagonists, and across those books, Ridmark has gone from an angry young man to a grandfather, so it was time to do something different. The poor man deserves a break after 43 books. Question #3: Is Talembur secretly Ridmark in disguise? No. Question #4: Is Talembur secretly…(various character theories)? No, Talembur's a new character. Question #5: Do you need to read any other books before starting Blade of Flames? No. That was one of my intentions in writing it. You can read Blade of Flames without having bred any of the other Andomhaim books, since all the major characters in Blade of Flames are new and we're in a part of Owyllain we've never visited before. Question #6: Are there any recurring characters in Blade of Flames? Exactly one and that character only has, like three lines. Well, two (technically, depending on how you look at it). Question #7: Will other recurring characters return in future Blades of Ruin books? Yes, but we shall have to read and find out after I write them. Question #8: The opening is very similar to Frostborn: The Gray Knight, isn't it? Yes, for reasons that will become clear. Without any spoilers, let's say that this similarity is a significant plot point. Question #9: Is there a dog in this book? Yes. People like dogs, so there is a dog in the book. Question #10: Does the dog die? He does not. Question #11: Seriously, truly, does the dog die? I promise the dog does not die. Question #12: How many Blades of Ruin books will there be? I'm planning for 12, though that might change if I have a good idea that requires an extra book or if I think I can consolidate it down. Question #13: Will there be Blades of Ruin audiobooks? That is the plan, if all goes well. Brad Wills has signed up to narrate the series. Question #14: Are you still going to write Rivah books? Yes. After I publish Cloak of Worlds, which as I mentioned will hopefully be sometime in October, I will start writing the next Rivah book, Elven-Assassin. Question #15: Are you still going to write Caina books? Eventually. I need some time to think about where they're going to go next. I have done this before. There is a two year gap between Ghost in the Sun (the end of the Ghost Night series) and Ghost and the Serpent because I wanted to think about what to do next. At this point in my life, I don't want to have any more than three unfinished series at any one time, so we'll see what I want to do next when either Blades of Ruin, Cloak Mage, or Half-Elven Thief are completed. Question #16: Seriously, Talembur is secretly Ridmark, isn't he? In 1884, retired Civil War General William T. Sherman was approached about running for president. He point blank refused, famously stating, “I will not accept if nominated. I will not serve if elected. Though this usually gets paraphrased to “If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.” He really meant it and refused to get involved in politics for the remaining years of his life. I'm not sure if writers of fiction have the equivalent of a Sherman statement, but if there is, this is it. Talembur is a new character and not secretly a character who has appeared before in the Andomhaim/Owyllain books and I cannot be blunter about it than that. So hopefully that will answer any questions you may have had about the Blades of Ruin series and Blade of Flames in particular. 00:05:50 Main Topic: 6 Things BookTok Trends Can Teach You About Marketing Books Now on to our main topic this week, which is six things BookTok trends can teach you about marketing books (even if you don't use TikTok). One thing is clear though, is that books are thriving on the TikTok social media video platform. Readers (very often in the romance, young adult, and fantasy genres) are excited to show off their trips to bookstore and their “hauls” of the latest books in videos. BookTok influencers are even paid to promote new releases in videos in the same way Beauty Gurus have been paid to promote mascara. Some traditional examples of bestselling BookTok books are the Fourth Wing series by Rebecca Yaros, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, and the works of Emily Henry. Anecdotes are not the same as data of course, but the last couple of times I've been to a Barnes & Noble, I've been surprised by how young most of the customers there are. Obviously that might be attributed to my own advancing age, where I'm very often the oldest person when I go someplace. But nonetheless, I do think this is a real thing where BookTok and TikTok in particular are drawing more young people into reading because they see it's a trendy thing on TikTok, so they get into it. The BookTok effect can make even an otherwise obscure book the latest bestseller, even one that isn't a new release. Many authors have found success marketing their books on the platform and have seen an increase in their sales from BookTok. Using TikTok as an author is hardly a requirement, though. In fact, I haven't used it in my marketing because I would rather focus on something like my newsletter that I have control over and that isn't vulnerable to bans. TikTok has been threatened with a US ban several times, but it hasn't ultimately been banned (at this time of this recording), and it doesn't look like that's going to happen since in the past few days, it looks like the US government has managed to finalize the sale of the company to an American investor. Now, as I just mentioned, using TikTok as an author is hardly requirement though, but nonetheless, there are lessons to be learned from the success of BookTok when marketing your books. We'll talk about six of those lessons today. #1: Have your highlight-worthy quotes and pitch ready. TikTok is full of action-packed book trailers or short, dramatic reenactments of scenes from books. The most popular of these book-based clips are very short, sometimes even just a single quote or sentence. Some writers write page-length book blurbs, wanting to fit in every detail about their books. In the words of many Internet posters, “too long; didn't read.” You need to be able to explain your book in less than three sentences, to clearly explain the main character and the stakes they face. Having a few snappy or interesting quotes from the book itself as a teaser can also be useful aid in marketing. BookTok is a place to learn that art, as many successful authors and BookTok creators have perfected the short summary and attention-getting clips. #2: Finding Your Readalikes Libraries and bookstores have long championed “readalikes” in their displays, which are books with similar settings, topics, or themes. For example, fans of suspense writer JD Robb might enjoy books by Patricia Briggs, Karin Slaughter, or Louise Penny. You can find authors that might be similar to you by using the “also read” section of your book's Amazon page. You can also think about themes that may connect your books to others such as “cozy mystery set in Wisconsin”, or “friends to lovers romance set in a theme park”. These themes can be broken down into something called tropes. #3: Acknowledging Tropes Acknowledging tropes (such as plot or character types that frequently appear) used to be a sign of creative weakness, which I honestly always thought was misguided because we're all obviously inspired by previous writers, and so there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that inspiration. Now in the BookTok era, it's how many readers search for books, especially in the romance genres, they try to find “enemies to lovers” or “fake dating” titles. If you can break down two or three tropes that match your series, that will give you an advantage in marketing. There are sites and books with lists of tropes if you're not familiar with the ones for your genres. #4 Finding Your Market Segment (You're not for everyone.) My podcast transcriptionist once encountered a new author who insisted they wanted to market their book to all readers and wanted to advertise in every single category Amazon offered since they believed everyone needed to read their gritty memoir about surviving abuse and alcoholism. Whether or not someone believes that everyone needs to read their book, that's a pretty quick way to overspend on advertising while receiving extremely poor results. The key to understanding online advertising is that the basic principle is the narrower you can target your audience, the more effective your ads are likely to be. Advertising that memoir so broadly that it's in the same category as say, children picture books or German language cookbooks is a quick way to disappoint (or even annoy) potential readers. It's okay that your book isn't a match for every category or type of reader. In fact, it's expected. There's a reason that the TikTok algorithm quickly pinpoints what viewers are most interested in and brings them similar content, because it's the quickest and easiest way to engage the user. People watching video game themed videos on endless loop probably aren't going to become suddenly interested in the videos about the benefits of living without electricity, for example. It's more profitable to keep showing variations of what they've already seen, with a little bit of new content mixed in. That's true in book advertising, too. The most effective way to find the readers who are most excited to read your book is to segment your advertising by your subgenres, authors whose books are most similar to yours, and keywords that match your tropes or important features in your book. With enough time and data, you will even be able to segment by a geographic location based on what countries your book sells in the most. The more that you can get specific when creating ads, the more likely you are to limit your spending and find the group of readers who wants to find you the most. And the more you work at marketing, the more you'll realize that the answer is definitely not “everyone.” #5: Don't give up on your backlist. One of the most surprising parts of TikTok is how often something that's decades old suddenly becomes popular for seemingly no reason at all. For example, 1962 Song “Pretty Little Baby” by Connie Francis was one of the top trending songs of this spring after became ubiquitous in TikTok videos. Books have seen the same phenomenon occur on TikTok. Classics by Jane Austen or Stephen King frequently end up in popular recommendation videos, while slightly older bestsellers by Sally Rooney or Susanna Clarke can get surprising second rounds of attention, too. The rules of retiring or even abandoning your backlist books may not apply in a social media-based attention cycle where people are constantly discovering books. You can try to rotate your ads to periodically give your older books attention, or if you see a sudden spike in sales on an older title, check through your sales data and social media to understand if there is a specific reason why that's happening and maybe give it some extra advertising funds during that window of opportunity. I've been an indie author for 14 years now, which means I've built up quite the backlist and I've noticed that very often the backlist will outsell new books. For example, this month (so far as of this recording), Blade of Flames is my new book for the month, and that has been 10% of my revenue for September 2025 so far, which is obviously a significant amount, but 90% of it comes from things I've previously written and I've noticed in previous years as well that for total yearly revenue, the revenue from new books tends to be around 22 to 25% (with the rest of it coming from my accumulated backlist). #6: (To Use Some Internet Vernacular) Don't Give Readers “the Ick” by Being “Cringe” Social media requires at least the appearance of ease and authenticity. People talk about something overly manufactured or awkward as being “cringe” or giving them “the ick.” How does that apply to marketing your books? Simply put, don't try to be what you're not. If you're absolutely terrible at being in front of the camera, don't force yourself to make videos. If you're skilled at explaining the historical or cultural influences behind your books, maybe a newsletter or a Substack would be a better use of your marketing time and effort. You shouldn't have to try every possible form of marketing and you probably shouldn't in order to succeed as an author. Just because someone else in your genre is making good money from TikTok or Instagram doesn't mean that it's what's right for you or that it would work if you tried it. Likewise, be aware of the spaces you're entering and the dynamics of a group when you're entering an online space. Writers who show up in a writing forum, hashtag, or subreddit meant for other writers in order to promote their book aren't in the right spot. In fact, that's why many of those places have a rule against self-promotion. Their time would be better spent in an online space related to their sub-genre where there are readers who are specifically looking for what they have to offer. Begging or using some sort of pity-based story in your social marketing is not a good plan. Approach your marketing from a place of confidence about your book because desperation is not attractive to potential readers who are surrounded with options. At best, it only leads to short-term results, whereas finding the readers interested in your book will be a better use of your time in the long run. Be confident. Very few people are able to finish a book (much less must publish one), and there's at least a few people out there who will enjoy your book without being guilted into doing so. I suppose the best rule of thumb overall for social media is don't beg, don't be needy, and perhaps most importantly of all, be as authentic as possible. By that I mean, I don't mean oversharing details about your personal life or personal opinions and beliefs and so forth, but just simply being authentic and not putting on airs or pretending to be something you're not. So much of what we see on the internet now is fake. Since I published Blade of Flames last week, I've gotten dozens of emails allegedly from “readers” who are interested in helping promote the book, but are actually generated by ChatGPT as a front for various scam services. So the best way to combat that kind of AI generated slop, I think, might just being as authentic as you can without resorting to lies or other fakery. In conclusion, BookTok has changed many of the old rules about book marketing and brought a new, more diverse, and younger group of readers into the market. Even if you don't plan on using the platform yourself for marketing (and I still don't), there's still many lessons you can learn from BookTok and how it has shifted how readers find books and share recommendations. So I hope that has given you some food for thought about how to approach future marketing efforts. So thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this episode, I chat with father-son team Matthew and Matteo Storm, who host the Lost Roman Heroes podcast, a bi-weekly dive deep into the overlooked lives and legacies of ancient Rome. They're history buffs with a passion for ancient Rome. Matthew is also the author of several works of historical fiction, based in the Roman empire, the most recent being THE EMPEROR: Heraclius Battles Persia for the Life of Rome.Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Highlights* How did the Lost Roman Heroes podcast begin?* Travel to Carnuntum and other historic locations.* Matthew's historical fiction set in the Roman empire* What are your favourite quotes from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius?* How can we be sure Marcus actually wrote the Meditations? * Was it intended for publication?* Why are Hadrian and Herodes Atticus notable by their absence from the list of people Marcus admires in Book One of the Meditations?* Was it really a bad idea for Marcus to appoint Commodus his successor? * Who was Avidius Cassius, the usurper?* Was Faustina the loyal wife Marcus makes her out to be or the scheming and unfaithful one depicted in the histories?Links* Lost Roman Heroes Website * Lost Roman Heroes Podcast* Matthew's Books Thanks for reading Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life at donaldrobertson.substack.com/subscribe

Dan Chaon, national book award finalist, talks his new book, One Of Us, a circus/western set in the 1900s, on this episode of Writing While Handicapped! Visit Dan online at www.danchaon.net and find all of his socials!

Dan Chaon, national book award finalist, talks his new book, One Of Us, a circus/western set in the 1900s, on this episode of Writing While Handicapped! Visit Dan online at www.danchaon.net and find all of his socials!

Welcome to The Cozy Mystery Book Club's Discussion of A Wicked Yarn by Emmie Caldwell

We are very excited that Cosmic Legions OxKrewe Book One Thraxxon is now shipping making it the perfect time to catch up with some Cosmic Legions Lore. We pick up the story at Outpost Zaxxius and take it up to the arrivial of a mysterious figure in the wastelands of Thraxxon. For more information on Cosmic Legions check out sourcehorsemen.com which is our primary source for this episode. https://www.patreon.com/TheEuroLegionsPodcasthttps://linktr.ee/theeurolegionspodcastmythic legions toy collecting fantasy cosmic legions

Listen to Book Two from The Night of The Hunter by Davis Grubb. This is our selection for the September edition of Like A Good Book Club. What a fantastic book we've chosen for this month's book club selection RSVP to join our book club meeting at www.songsoftoriamos.com/bookclub

Listen to Book One from The Night of The Hunter by Davis Grubb. This is our selection for the September edition of Like A Good Book Club. What a fantastic book we've chosen for this month's book club selection RSVP to join our book club meeting at www.songsoftoriamos.com/bookclub

Join the Sleuthing Fun! The Cozy Mystery Book Club discusses Take the Honey and Run (A Bee Keeping Mystery Book One) by Jennie Marts

In this week's episode, we take a look at permafree as a marketing strategy for indie authors, and examine if it still works. I also take a look at advertising results for August 2025. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in my Cloak Mage series at my Payhip store: FALLMAGE25 The coupon code is valid through September 22, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 268 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September 12th, 2025, and today I'm looking at whether or not Permafree is still an effective strategy for indie authors. As a related topic, we'll also take a look at how my ads performed in [August] 2025, and we'll also have a Question of the Week this week. But first, let's start with Coupon of the Week. So for Coupon of the Week to celebrate the fact that I'm working on Cloak Mage again, this coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Cloak Mage series at my Payhip store, and that is FALLMAGE25. And as always, the coupon code and links to my store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through September 22nd, 2025. So if you need a new ebook for this fall, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. I'm about 82% of the way through the first round of edits for Blade of Flames, the first book in my new epic fantasy series called Blades of Ruin. If all goes well, that will be out before the end of September, and if you want to see what the cover art will look like, it's on my website and my social pages right now. I'm also 12,000 words into Cloak of Worlds, the aforementioned return to the Cloak Mage series, and that will be my main project once Blade of Flames comes out. In audiobook news, recording is done for both Shield of Power (as narrated by Brad Wills) and Ghost in the Siege (as narrated by Hollis McCarthy). They're both going through processing right now. As of this recording, I believe you can get Shield of Power on Google Play, Kobo, and my Payhip Store. The other links and the other links for Ghost in the Siege should be coming up before too much longer, hopefully before the end of the month. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. 00:02:00 Question of the Week [Question of the Week was posted on September 10, 2025] Now It's time for Question of the Week, which is intended for enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, do you dislike guns showing up in fantasy novels? No wrong answers for opinions, obviously. The inspiration for this question was a blog post I saw where the writer was complaining about the increased number of guns in modern fantasy novels and how it shatters her suspension of disbelief, and she also found it an unpleasant topic because the ownership and regulation of firearms in the United States is a contentious topic and has been so for decades. And as you might expect, readers had a variety of opinions on this question. Adrian says: Nope. Fantasy is basically, in my humble opinion, the swords and sorcery type of genre. Yes to old fashioned weapons like bows and arrows, javelins, and trebuchets, et cetera, but definite no to guns (of any type), tanks, airplanes, et cetera. Jonathan D. says: In the right setting, firearms are fine in fantasy books. Men in Arms by Terry Pratchett and the Rigante Series by David Gemmell are great examples of firearms in fantasy done well. Wilson says: It depends on your definition of a gun because an energy rifle powered by a soulstone would be something that would fit into Andomhaim. Though I have to say that is not something I will ever write in an Andomhaim book. Mary says: Steampunk and suchlike genres are developing how to work with technology and fantasy, and I approve when it's done right. I particularly like what Moe Lane's doing in The Fermi Resolution. If you start with the first published book, Frozen Dreams, which is a post-apocalyptic North America high fantasy, hard boiled detective novel, it goes into how every wizard can make your own ammo blow up on you and the consequences. Ioana says: Mrs. World Burner should have lots of guns. #HailToTheHighQueen #SingularitySucks Jason says: Handheld firearms were first used in the West in the 1330s, so they actually predate full plate armor by about a hundred years. That said, the gun shape we're used to came about in the late 1400s. I'm perfectly fine with firearms and fantasy novels provided they're (more or less) what we expect in a medieval setting. Jesse says: Never bothers me as long as long as the stage of weapon development reasonably lines up with the field of the science in said fantasy world. Someone walking around with laser sights in a medieval hamlet would break it for me a bit. Michael says: I remember much of video games (and at least one famous Dungeons and Dragons scenario, possibly two) back in the ‘80s had the “players stumble across a crashed starship trope” where you could end up with power armor and ray guns in a fantasy settings, which would be perceived as magic. I like that kind of cross genre gun introduction more than gunpowder becoming commonplace, I think. The video games he's referring to are Heroes of Might and Magic 6 and 7, both of which I played back in the day and are quite good. Juana says: My suspension of disbelief gets knocked out more by dialogue than guns. Jenny says: Guns aren't as bad as cell phones, in my opinion, or the magical equivalent of a cell phone that is not even trying to be anything but a cell phone. What's interesting is if you read a book that is determinedly set in the 1980s, like the Kinsey Millhone Mysteries by Sue Grafton are all determinedly set in Los Angeles in the 1980s, which is way pre-cellphone and how much extra work the protagonist has to do in investigating since Google doesn't immediately bring everything to her fingertips. Jimmy says: Fantasy doesn't require medieval setting, nor does it require swords. If you study medieval warfare, then you'll notice two things. One, only the rich have swords. Two, it is a secondary or tertiary weapon. Swords are notoriously weak. They break often. The use of guns really depends more on the story's background than it does on the genre. Bonnie says: I agree, they're okay, depending on the time period/environment involved. There's no way that they would be okay with Caina or Ridmark! Cheryl says: Nadia needs guns. I guess it depends on the fantasy topic being written. John says, I'm kind of into Flintlock fantasy, e.g. Powdermage series, et cetera. Urban fantasy also requires firearms. My favorite historical European period is really the “Knights and Guns” era, which would be the early modern period. Todd says: A deeper question is how do guns fit into the culture? In the Cloak Games/Cloak Mage universe, there are ongoing wars, so gun use and safety is taught in schools and veterans are expected to maintain proficiency against the Shadowlands incursion. There's a balance there, and the punishment for criminal misuse includes slogging and loss of freedom, if not execution. So while I think the amount of firearms in Nadia's world is a bit over the top, I can see it making sense culturally and contextually. In a different culture, it may or may not make sense. In a classic medieval setting, it wouldn't make sense. Conversely, in early 1800s Western America, a limited amount of firearms were to be expected. Every little house on the prairie would be expected to have a few rifles and perhaps a pistol or two. Setting, culture, and context all determine what the reader will find appropriate. And finally, Randy says: Depends on how they get there. Guardians of the Flame series had college kids reinvent them, which made sense, and their opponents figured out their own version. When one side has them and the other is too dumb to steal/capture some and figure them out, then yes, it doesn't work. So as you can see, we had quite a range of opinions there. For myself, I really have no strong feelings about it one way or the other. I do think guns are best suited to urban fantasy environments. In Cloak Games and Cloak Mage, as several commentaries mentioned, Nadia goes through a lot of guns. Granted, my favorite type of fantasy is what it's called basic fantasy or generic fantasy where a barbarian, a dwarf, an elf, and a wizard go to a dungeon and kill orcs and monsters. Firearms would definitely be out of place in that sort of setting. That said, I think guns and fantasy is like any other story trope and just needs to be done well to be enjoyable. I suppose it's a matter of properly setting the table for reader expectations. Like if you have a medieval style of fantasy world like Half-Elven Thief, it'd be weird to have guns suddenly show up. But if you create a setting that's an analog for 1880s America, but with wizards, then guns wouldn't be out of place. So that is it for Question of the Week. Thanks to everyone who commented and left insightful and interesting comments. 00:07:40 Advertising Results for August 2025 [Prices mentioned are USD] Now let's go on to the first of our interrelated main topics, my advertising results for last month, which would be August 2025. I haven't done an ad results roundup for a couple months, partly because it's been a really busy summer and partly because I've been adjusting some things and waiting to see the results. I'll explain more later, but the short version is that I'm losing confidence in the effectiveness of Facebook ads for selling books. But first, let's see some advertising results for August 2025. Let's start with Facebook ads where I advertise the Ghosts, Cloak Games/Cloak Mage, and the Frostborn series. The Ghosts, I got back $8.40 for every dollar spent, with 6% of the profit coming from the audiobooks, which was really nice. This one was a bit of anomaly because Ghost in the Siege did a lot of heavy lifting for this. For Cloak Games/Cloak Mage, I got back $2.70 for every dollar spent, with 12% of the revenue coming from the audiobooks. And for Frostborn, I got back $2.83 for every dollar spent, with 30% of the revenue coming from the audiobooks. Now on to Amazon ads. Remember, for an Amazon ad to be profitable, it needs to generate at least one sale/complete KU readthrough every six to eight clicks. So for Demonsouled Omnibus One, I got $5 back for every $1 spent, with a sale for every 0.82 clicks, which was really good. For Half-Elven Thief, I got back $1.22 for every dollar spent, with a sale for every 2.47 clicks. And for Dragonskull Omnibus One, I got back $28.75 for every dollar spent, with 65% of the profit coming from the audiobook, with a sale for every 0.11 clicks. Now, obviously these numbers require some explanation. The profit margin on Half-Elven Thief was narrow, but the entire series made up for it, so that's okay and it will improve when I start writing more books in the series later this year. In fact, I think I'm going to start writing the fifth one in October, if all goes well. The numbers for Dragonskull Omnibus One were so high because the ebook is $0.99, but the audiobook brings in a lot more than the ebook, something like 10 times, no, 20 times more than the ebook. BookBub ads do quite well with Google Play and Barnes and Noble. The numbers are too long to quote here, but they did quite well. All that said, the reason I'm losing confidence in Facebook ads is a combination of the loss of granular targeting and over-reliance on AI targeting. One of the paradoxes of online advertising is that the smaller and more granular your audience, the more likely your ad is to convert to sales. Narrow, targeted advertising is so much better than broad targeting. Unfortunately, Facebook has been slowly removing the more granular targeting options in favor of broader categories that don't work as well. Like you used to be able to target dozens of fantasy authors as interests for Facebook users. Now, you can only target epic fantasy and maybe J.R.R. Tolkien. In fact, I confirmed this just this morning, but you can't even target Brandon Sanderson as an interest, and he's probably the most popular epic fantasy author publishing today. To take the place of more granular targeting, Facebook has introduced AI assisted targeting, which they call Advantage Plus. Now, there's no beating around the bush. Advantage Plus isn't very good. It can garner a reasonable number of clicks on an ad, but those clicks don't convert to sales. Even with ads that don't use Advantage, Facebook still sneaks it in. So the effectiveness of Facebook ads has been in decline. Like I turned off the Facebook ads for the Demonsouled series entirely in August, and my results actually improved a good bit. So I'm going to test another series with no Facebook ads for September, and we'll see how much the results vary. Specifically, I think I'll turn off Facebook ads for Cloak Games/Cloak Mage, leave them on for Frostborn, and see if it makes any difference, and if it does make a difference, it will be time to reevaluate some advertising strategies. On the plus side, I didn't lose any money at any of my ads this month and they all turned a profit, and as always, thank you to everyone who was reading and listening to ebooks and audiobooks. 00:11:41 Does Permafree Still Work For Indie Authors? Now on to the other half of our main topic: Does Permafree still work for indie authors? One of the perennial debates in Indie Author Land is whether or not making the first book in your series free still works as a marketing tactic or not. Now, at this point, I've been doing this for over 14 years, and I have a lot of different series and quite a few different ones with free first books in the series. I thought it might be interesting to dig into the sales data and see what percentage of people who downloaded the first book went onto the second book and then the final book in the series. A few caveats and conditions: first, this is only for 2024 and the first half of 2025, since I wanted a set time sample for the data. Additionally, this is also useful for showing the conversion rate on a finished series that hasn't had a new book in years, since the final book in the Frostborn series came out in 2017, which was eight years ago at this point. Second, it will only apply to a series whose first books were free for that entire time period. Third, when I talk about conversion rates, I mean what percentage of free downloads translated into sales. For example, if Book One had a hundred free downloads and then 12 sales of Book Two and nine sales of the final book, that means 12% of people went onto the second book and then 9% on to the final book. So we had a conversion rate of 12% from the first free book to the paid second book, and then a conversion rate of 9% from the free first book to the final book in the series. So with all that in mind, let's take a look at permafree conversion rates for some of my series in 2024 and 2025. For The Ghosts, 13.47% went to the second book, and 12.72% went on to the final book. For Frostborn, 13% went to the second book and 12.93% to the final book. For Sevenfold Sword, 22.93% went to the second book and 22.81% on to the final book. For Cloak Games, 11.85% went on to the second book, and 11.67% to the final book. Silent Order, 14.64% went on to the second book, and 14.54% went to the final book. For The Tower of Endless Worlds, 17.46% went to the second book, and 17.46% went onto the final book. So I think there are a couple of conclusions we can draw from this. First, making the first book in a series permafree remains a viable marketing strategy. It doesn't usually result in dramatic spikes of sales, but instead it is good at generating more of a steady trickle. Second, anything you can do to increase the number of downloads of your free books will likely increase the sales of the paid books later in the series. That said, there are caveats. You want methods to increase the free downloads to people that might conceivably be interested in buying the books. Targeted advertising can be an effective way to do this. What's not effective is using bot farms or help from a bunch of scammers to generate a big download in free books. At best, you'll generate a bunch of downloads that won't convert, and at worst ebook platforms will detect suspicious activity and either delist your free ebook or suspend your account. Third, this strategy works even with books you don't promote very often. For example, I don't bash on the Tower of Endless Worlds because for some people it's their favorite book of mine. But in all candor, I do think it's one of my weaker books. I was trying to do something with urban fantasy I don't think I had the skills to do until Cloak Games, which was like 12 years later. So I don't really promote it, save that I made the first book in the series free a long time ago and kept it that way. It's still 17% of the people who downloaded the first book continued onto the final one. Fourth, this strategy does require some patience. It can take a while for people to read through a series. It can also take a while for a free book to get traction. Fifth, I at times hesitate to recommend this because saying write five books and make the first one free is easy to say, but it's a lot of work to do. For many new writers, getting the first book done and out into the world is a monumental challenge, then telling them to do it three or four more times and then to make the first book free does seem like a big ask, but it does work (sometimes slowly), but it does work. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe, stay healthy, and see you all next week.

Sometimes the harshest reviews are the most entertaining. In this episode, we read dramatic, hilarious, and downright baffling one-star book reviews—and try to guess which book they're roasting. Play along with us as we discover just how differently readers can experience the same story.Follow us @webookedit

Hunted: The Zodiac Murders - Mark HewittThe Zodiac serial killer claimed the lives of at least five young victims between 1966 and 1974, and mocked the police with telephone calls, taunting letters, and encrypted messages. Thousands of men have been accused; nearly 2,500 have been investigated. Yet the Zodiac has never been identified.This painstakingly researched and meticulously detailed compendium to the Zodiac serial killer case by True Crime author Mark Hewitt presents the crimes and their effect on a community, including the various sides of the many disputed issues within the case.HUNTED: The Zodiac Murders is the true story of America's greatest criminal mystery. This indispensable companion book is accessible to anyone interested in joining the pursuit, exploring a mystery, or witnessing the police response to an appalling crime spree.Book One, HUNTED: The Zodiac Murders tells the amazing true story of a serial killer on the loose. Book Two, PROFILED, The Zodiac Examined (September 27, 2017) examines the evidence and offers a careful, detailed profile of the killer based on the case facts. Book Three, EXPOSED: The Zodiac Revealed (September 27, 2018) narrows down the lengthy list of suspects, and offers startling conclusions.https://amzn.to/3V5z5F7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

In this week's episode, I take a look back at the movies and streaming shows I watched in Summer 2025. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Serpent, Book #1 in the Ghost Armor series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: FALLSERPENT50 The coupon code is valid through September 15, 2025 (please note the shorter expiration date). So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 267 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September 5, 2025 and today I'm doing a review roundup of the movies and streaming shows I saw in Summer 2025. Before we do that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing and audiobook projects. First up, this week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Serpent, Book One in the Ghost Armor series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store. That is FALLSERPENT50. This coupon code will be valid through September 15th, 2025 (exactly one week). So if you need a new audiobook to listen to as we head into fall, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. I am pleased to report that the rough draft of Blade of Flames, which will be the first book in my new Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series is finished. The rough draft came at about 90,000 words long, which was what I was aiming for. Next up, I will be writing a short story set as sort of a bonus in that plot line called Thunder Hammer and that will be the backstory of one of the characters in Blade of Flames. And when Blade of Flames comes out (which will hopefully be later this September), newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Thunder Hammer. So this is an excellent time to subscribe to my newsletter. I am also 8,000 words into Cloak of Worlds. At long last, I am coming back to the Cloak Mage series after nearly a year's absence. Longtime listeners will know the reason was that I had five unfinished series and I wanted to spend the summer of 2025 finishing the unfinished ones and focusing up so I will only have three ongoing series at any given time. I'm hoping Blade of Flames will come out before the end of September and Cloak of Worlds before the end of October, and after that I will be able to return to the Rivah series at long last. In audiobook news, recording is finished on Shield of Power. That will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills and hopefully once it gets through processing and quality assurance and everything, it should be showing up on the various audiobook stores before too much longer. Hollis McCarthy is about halfway through the recording of Ghost in the Siege, which was, as you know, the last book in the Ghost Armor series that just came out. And if all goes well, the audiobook should be coming out probably in October once everything is done with recording and quality assurance and all that. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:02:34 Main Topic: Summer 2025 Movie/TV Roundup So without further ado, let's head into our main topic. The end of summer is nigh, which means this time for my summer movie review roundup. As is usual for the summer, I saw a lot of movies, so this will be one of the longer episodes. For some reason I ended up watching a bunch of westerns. As always, the movies are ranked from least favorite to most favorite. The grades of course are totally subjective and based on nothing more than my own opinions, impressions, and interpretations. Now on to the movies. First up is the Austin Powers trilogy, the three movies of which came out in 1997, 1999, and 2002. The Austin Powers movies came out just as the Internet really got going in terms of mass adoption, which is likewise why so many Austin Powers and Dr. Evil memes are embedded in online culture. Despite that, I had never really seen any of them all the way through. They've been on in the background on TBS or whatever quite a bit when I visited people, but I've never seen them all. But I happened upon a DVD of the trilogy for $0.25 (USD), so I decided for 25 cents I would give it a go. I would say the movies were funny, albeit not particularly good. Obviously the Austin Powers movies are a parody of the James Bond movies. The movies kind of watch like an extended series of Saturday Night Live skits, only loosely connected, like the skit is what if Dr. Evil had a son named Scott who wasn't impressed with him or another skit was what if a British agent from the ‘60s arrives in the ‘90s and experiences culture clash? What if Dr. Evil didn't understand the concept of inflation and demanded only a million dollars from the United Nations? What if Dr. Evil was actually Austin's brother and they went to school together at Spy Academy? Michael Caine was pretty great as Austin's father. Overall, funny but fairly incoherent. Overall grade: C- Next up is Horrible Bosses, a very dark and very raunchy comedy from about 14 years ago. It came out in 2011. Interestingly, this movie reflects what I think is one of the major crises of the contemporary era, frequent failures of leadership at all levels of society. In the movie Nick, Dale, and Kurt are lifelong friends living in LA and all three of them have truly horrible bosses in their place of employment, ranging from a sociopathic finance director, the company founder's cokehead son, and a boorish dentist with a tendency to sexual harassment. At the bar, they fantasize about killing their horrible bosses and then mutually decide to do something about it. Obviously, they'd all be prime suspects in the murder of their own bosses, but if they killed each other's bosses, that would allow them to establish airtight alibis. However, since Nick, Dale and Kurt are not as bright as they think they are, it all goes hilariously wrong very quickly. Bob Hope has a hilarious cameo. If the best “crude comedies” I've seen are Anchorman, Zoolander, Tropic Thunder, and Dodgeball, and the worst one was MacGruber, I'd say Horrible Bosses lands about in the middle. Overall grade: C Next up is Cowboys and Aliens, which came out in 2011. Now I almost saw this in 2011 when it came out, but I was too busy to go to the theater in July of 2011, so I finally saw it here in 2025 and I would say this was almost a great movie, like the performances were great, the concept was great, the scenery was great, the special effects were great, and the story was packed full of really interesting ideas, but somehow they just didn't coalesce. I'm not entirely sure why. I think upon reflection, it was that the movie is just too overcrowded with too many characters and too many subplots. Anyway, Daniel Craig portrays a man who wakes up with no memory in the Old West, with a mysterious bracelet locked around his wrist. He makes his way to the town of Atonement, and promptly gets arrested because he is apparently a notorious outlaw (which he doesn't remember). While he is locked in jail, space aliens attack the town. The aliens, for unknown reasons, abduct many of the townspeople, and Daniel Craig's character, who is named Jake even if he doesn't remember it, must lead the town's effort to recover their abducted citizens. Harrison's Ford has an excellent performance as this awful cattle baron who nonetheless has virtues of courage and fortitude that you can't help but admire. An excellent performance. That said, the movie was just too packed, and I thought it would work better as a novel. After I watched the movie, it turned out that it was indeed based off a graphic novel. Novels and graphic novels allow for a far more complex story than a movie, and I don't think this movie quite managed to handle the transition from a graphic novel to a film. Overall grade: C Next up is Heads of State, which came out in 2025. This was kind of a stupid movie. However, the fundamental question of any movie, shouted to the audience by Russell Crow in Gladiator is, “are you not entertained?!?” I was thoroughly entertained watching this, so entertained I actually watched it twice. Not everything has to be Shakespeare or a profound meditation on the unresolvable conflicts inherent within human nature. Anyway, John Cena plays Will Derringer, newly elected President of the United States. Idris Elba plays Sam Clark, who has now been the UK Prime Minister for the last six years. Derringer was an action star who parleyed his celebrity into elected office (in the same way Arnold Schwarzenegger did), while Clarke is an army veteran who worked his way up through the UK's political system. Needless to say, the cheerful Derringer and the grim Clarke take an immediate dislike to each other. However, they'll have to team up when Air Force One is shot down, stranding them in eastern Europe. They'll have to make their way home while evading their enemies to unravel the conspiracy that threatens world peace. So half action thriller, half buddy road trip comedy. The premise really doesn't work if you think about it too much for more than thirty seconds, but the movie was funny and I enjoyed it. Jack Quaid really stole his scenes as a crazy but hyper-competent CIA officer. Overall grade: C+ Next up, Captain America: Brave New World, which came out in 2025 and I think this movie ended up on the good side of middling. You can definitely tell it went through a lot of reshoots and retooling, and I suspect the various film industry strikes hit it like a freight train. But we ended up with a reasonably solid superhero thriller. Sam Wilson is now Captain America. He's not superhuman the way Steve Rogers was and doesn't have magic powers or anything, so he kind of fights like the Mandalorian – a very capable fighter who relies on excellent armor. Meanwhile, in the grand American political tradition of failing upward, Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, who spent years persecuting The Hulk and whose meddling caused the Avengers to disband right before Thanos attacked, has now been elected President. To Wilson's surprise, Ross reaches out and wants him to restart the Avengers. But Ross (as we know) did a lot of shady black ops stuff for years, and one of his projects is coming back to haunt him. Wilson finds himself in the middle of a shadowy conspiracy, and it's up to him to figure out what's going on before it's too late. I was amused that lifelong government apparatchik Ross wanted to restart the Avengers, because when the Avengers had their biggest victory in Avengers: Endgame, they were essentially unsanctioned vigilantes bankrolled by a rogue tech billionaire. Overall grade: B- Next up is Ironheart, which came out in 2025. I'd say Ironheart was about 40% very weird and 60% quite good. It's sort of like the modern version of Dr. Faustus. The show got some flak on the Internet from the crossfire between the usual culture war people, but the key to understanding it is to realize that Riri Williams AKA Ironheart is in fact an antihero who's tottering on the edge of becoming a full-blown supervillain. Like Tony Stark, she's a once-in-a-generation scientific talent, but while she doesn't have Stark's alcohol problems, she's emotionally unstable, immature, ruthless, indifferent to collateral damage and consequences, and suffering from severe PTSD after her best friend and stepfather were killed in a drive-by shooting. This volatile mix gets her thrown out of MIT after her experiments cause too much destruction, and she has to go home to Chicago. To get the funds to keep working on her Iron Man armor, she turns to crime, and falls in with a gang of high-end thieves led by a mysterious figure named Hood. It turns out that Hood has actual magic powers, which both disturbs and fascinates Riri. However, Hood got his magic in a pact with a mysterious dark force. When a job goes bad, Riri gains the enmity of Hood and has to go on the run. It also turns out Hood's dark master has become very interested in Riri, which might be a lot more dangerous for everyone in the long run. Overall, I'd say this is about in the same vein as Agatha All Along, an interesting show constructed around a very morally questionable protagonist. Overall grade: B Next up is A Minecraft movie, which came out in 2024. I have to admit, I've never actually played Minecraft, so I know very little about the game and its ecosystem, only what I've generally absorbed by glancing at the news. That said, I think the movie held together quite well, and wasn't deserving of the general disdain it got in the press. (No doubt the $950 million box office compensated for any hurt feelings.) One of the many downsides of rapid technological change in the last fifty years is that the Boomers and Gen X and the Millennials and Gen Z and Gen Alpha have had such radically different formative experiences in childhood that it's harder to relate to each other. Growing up in the 1980s was a wildly different experience than growing up in the 2010s, and growing up in the 2010s was an even more wildly different experience than growing up in the 1960s. Smartphones and social media were dominant in 2020, barely starting in 2010, and implausible science fiction in 2000 and earlier, and so it was like the different generations grew up on different planets, because in some sense they actually did. (A five-year-old relative of mine just started school, and the descriptions of his school compared to what I remember of school really do sound like different planets entirely.) The Minecraft game and A Minecraft Movie might be one of those generation-locked experiences. Anyway, this has gotten very deep digression for what was essentially a portal-based LitRPG movie. A group of people experiencing various life difficulties in a rural Idaho town get sucked into the Minecraft world through a magic portal. There they must combine forces and learn to work together to master the Minecraft world to save it from an evil sorceress. As always, the fundamental question of any movie is the one that Russell Crowe's character shouted to the audience in Gladiator back in 2000. “Are you not entertained?” I admit I was entertained when watching A Minecraft Movie since it was funny and I recognized a lot of the video game mechanics, even though I've never actually played Minecraft. Like, Castlevania II had a night/day cycle the way Minecraft does, and Castlevania II was forty years ago. But that was another digression! I did enjoy A Minecraft Movie. It was kind of crazy, but it committed to the craziness and maintained a consistent creative vision, and I was entertained. Though I did think it was impressive how Jack Black's agent managed to insist that he sing several different times. Overall grade: B Next up is Back to School, which came out in 1986 and this is one of the better ‘80s comedies I've seen. Rodney Dangerfield plays Thornton Melon, who never went to college and is the wealthy owner of a chain of plus-sized clothing stores. His son Jason is attending Great Lakes University, and after Thornton's unfaithful gold-digging wife leaves him (Thornton is mostly relieved by this development), he decides to go visit his son. He quickly discovers that Jason is flailing at college, and decides to enroll to help out his son. Wacky adventures ensue! I quite enjoyed this. The fictional “Great Lakes University” was largely shot at UW-Madison in Wisconsin, which I found amusing because I spent a lot of time at UW-Madison several decades ago as a temporary IT employee. I liked seeing the characters walk past a place where I'd eat lunch outside when the day was nice, that kind of thing. Also, I'm very familiar with how the sausage gets made in higher ed. There's a scene where the dean is asking why Thornton is qualified to enter college, and then it cuts to the dean cheerfully overseeing the groundbreaking of the new Thornton Melon Hall which Thornton just donated, and I laughed so hard I almost hurt myself, because that is exactly how higher ed works. The movie had some pointless nudity, but it was only a few seconds and no doubt gets cut in network broadcasts. Overall grade: B Next up is Whiskey Galore, which came out in 1949 and this is a comedy set in Scotland during World War II. The villagers living on an isolated island have no whiskey due to wartime rationing. However, when a government ship carrying 50,000 cases of whiskey runs aground near the island, wacky hijinks ensue. I have to admit the first half of the movie was very slow and deliberate, gradually setting up all the pieces for later. Then, once the shipwreck happens, things pick up and the movie gets much funnier. Definitely worth watching both as a good comedy movie and an artifact of its time. A modicum of historical knowledge is required – if you don't know what the Home Guard is, you might have to do some Googling to understand the context of some of the scenes. Regrettably, the version I watched did not have captioning, so I had to pay really close attention to understand what the characters were saying, because some of the accents were very strong. Overall grade: B Next up is Happy Gilmore 2, which came out in 2025. This was dumb and overstuffed with celebrity cameos but thoroughly hilarious and I say this even though it uses one of my least favorite story tropes, namely “hero of previous movie is now a middle age loser.” However, the movie leads into it for comedy. When Happy Gilmore accidentally kills his wife with a line drive, he spirals into alcoholism and despair. But his five children still love him, and when his talented daughter needs tuition for school, Happy attempts to shake off his despair and go back to golf to win the money. But Happy soon stumbles onto a sinister conspiracy led by an evil CEO to transform the game of golf into his own personal profit center. Happy must team up with his old nemesis Shooter McGavin to save golf itself from the evil CEO. Amusingly, as I've said before, the best Adam Sandler movies are almost medieval. In medieval fables, it was common for a clever peasant to outwit pompous lords, corrupt priests, and greedy merchants. The best Adam Sandler protagonist remains an everyman who outwits the modern equivalent of pompous lords and corrupt priests, in this case an evil CEO. Overall grade: B+ Next up is Superman, which came out in 2025 and I thought this was pretty good and very funny at times. I think it caught the essential nature of Superman. Like, Superman should be a Lawful Good character. If he was a Dungeons and Dragons character, he would be a paladin. People on the Internet tend to take the characterization of superheroes seriously to perhaps an unhealthy degree, but it seems the best characterization of Superman is as an earnest, slightly dorky Boy Scout who goes around doing good deeds. The contrast of that good-hearted earnestness with his godlike abilities that would allow him to easily conquer and rule the world is what makes for an interesting character. I also appreciated how the movie dispensed with the overused trope of the Origin Story and just got down to business. In this movie, Lex Luthor is obsessed with destroying Superman and is willing to use both super-advanced technology and engineered geopolitical conflict to do it. Superman, because he's essentially a decent person, doesn't comprehend just how depraved Luthor is, and how far Luthor is willing to go out of petty spite. (Ironically, a billionaire willing to destroy the world out of petty spite is alas, quite realistic). Guy Gardener (“Jerkish Green Lantern”) and the extremely competent and the extremely exasperated Mr. Terrific definitely stole all their scenes. The director of the movie, James Gunn, was quite famously fired from Disney in 2018 for offensive jokes he had made on Twitter back when he was an edgy young filmmaker with an alcohol problem. I suppose Mr. Gunn can rest content knowing that Superman made more money than any Marvel movie released this year. Overall grade: A-   Next up is Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which came out in 1988. This was a very strange movie, but nonetheless, one with an ambitious premise, strong performances, and a strong artistic vision. It's set in post WWII Los Angeles, and “toons” (basically cartoon characters) live and work alongside humans. Private eye Eddie Valiant hates toons since one of them killed his brother five years ago. However, he's hired by the head of a studio who's having trouble with one of his toon actors, Roger Rabbit. Roger's worried his wife Jessica is having an affair, and Valiant obtains pictures of Jessica playing patty cake (not a euphemism, they actually were playing patty cake) with another man. Roger has an emotional breakdown, and soon the other man winds up dead, and Roger insists he's innocent. Valiant and Roger find themselves sucked into a dangerous conspiracy overseen by a ruthless mastermind. This movie was such an interesting cultural artifact. It perfectly follows the structure of a ‘40s film noir movie, but with cartoons, and the dissonance between film noir and the cheerfulness of the toons was embraced and used as a frequently source of comedy. In fact, when the grim and dour Valiant uses the toons' comedy techniques as a tactical improvisation in a moment of mortal peril, it's both hilarious and awesome. Christopher Lloyd's performance as the villainous Judge Doom was amazing. (I don't think it's a spoiler to say that he's villainous, because his character is named Judge Doom and he's literally wearing a black hat.) Like, his performance perfectly captures something monstrous that is trying very hard to pretend to be human and not quite getting it right. And the amount of work it must have taken to make this movie staggers the mind. Nowadays, having live actors interact with cartoon characters is expensive, but not unduly so. It's a frequent technique. You see it all the time in commercials when a housewife is smiling at an animated roll of paper towels or something, and Marvel's essentially been doing it for years. But this was 1988! Computer animation was still a ways off. They had to shoot the movie on analog film, and then hand-draw all the animation and successfully match it to the live film. It wouldn't have worked without the performance of Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant, who plays everything perfectly straight in the same way Michael Caine did in A Muppet Christmas Carol. So kind of a strange movie, but definitely worth watching. And it has both Disney and Warner Brothers animated characters in the same movie, which is something we will never, ever see again. Overall grade: A Next up is K-Pop Demon Hunters, which came out in 2025. Like Who framed Roger Rabbit?, this is a very strange movie, but nonetheless with a clear and focused artistic vision. It is a cultural artifact that provides a fascinating look into a world of which I have no knowledge or interest, namely K-pop bands and their dueling fandoms. Anyway, the plot is that for millennia, female Korean musicians have used the magic of their voices to keep the demons locked away in a demon world. The current incarnation is a three-woman K-Pop group called Huntrix, and they are on the verge of sealing away the demons forever. Naturally, the Demon King doesn't like this, so one of his cleverer minions comes up with a plan. They'll start a Demon K-Pop Boy Band! Disguised as humans, the demon K-Pop group will win away Huntrix's fans, allowing them to breach the barrier and devour the world. However, one of the Huntrix musicians is half-demon, and she starts falling for the lead demon in the boy band, who is handsome and of course has a dark and troubled past. Essentially a musical K-drama follows. I have to admit I know practically nothing about K-Pop groups and their dueling fandoms, other than the fact that they exist. However, this was an interesting movie to watch. The animation was excellent, it did have a focused vision, and there were some funny bits. Overall grade: A Next up is Clarkson's Farm Season Four, which came out in 2025. A long time ago in the ‘90s, I watched the episode of Frasier where Frasier and Niles attempt to open a restaurant and it all goes horribly (yet hilariously) wrong. At the time, I had no money, but I promised myself that I would never invest in a restaurant. Nothing I have seen or learned in the subsequent thirty years has ever changed that decision. Season 4 of Clarkson's Farm is basically Jeremy Clarkson, like Frasier and Niles, attempting to open a restaurant, specifically a British pub. On paper it's a good idea, since Clarkson can provide the pub with food produced from his own farm and other local farmers. However, it's an enormous logistical nightmare, and Clarkson must deal with miles of red tape, contractors, and a ballooning budget, all while trying to keep his farm from going under. An excellent and entertaining documentary into the difficulties of both the farming life and food service. I still don't want to own a restaurant! Overall grade: A Next up is Tombstone, which came out in 1993. The Western genre of fiction is interesting because it's limited to such a very specific period of time and geographical region. Like the “Wild West” period that characterizes the Western genre really only lasted as a historical period from about 1865 to roughly 1890. The Western genre was at its most popular in movies from the 1940s and the 1960s, and I wonder if it declined because cultural and demographic changes made it unpopular to romanticize the Old West the way someone like Walt Disney did at Disneyland with “Frontierland.” Of course, the genre lives on in different forms in grittier Western movies, neo-Westerns like Yellowstone and Longmire, and a lot of the genre's conventions apply really well to science fiction. Everyone talks about Firefly being the first Space Western, but The Mandalorian was much more successful and was basically a Western in space (albeit with occasional visits from Space Wizards). Anyway! After that long-winded introduction, let's talk about Tombstone. When Val Kilmer died earlier this year, the news articles mentioned Tombstone as among his best work, so I decided to give it a watch. The plot centers around Wyatt Earp, played by Kurt Russell, who has decided to give up his career in law enforcement and move to Tombstone, Arizona, a silver mining boomtown, in hopes of making his fortune. However, Tombstone is mostly controlled by the Cowboys outlaw gang, and Earp is inevitably drawn into conflict with them. With the help of his brothers and Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer's character), Earp sets out to bring some law and order to Tombstone, whether the Cowboys like it or not. Holliday is in the process of dying from tuberculosis, which makes him a formidable fighter since he knows getting shot will be a less painful and protracted death than the one his illness will bring him. Kilmer plays him as a dissolute, scheming warrior-poet who nonetheless is a very loyal friend. Definitely a classic of the Western genre, and so worth watching. Overall grade: A Next up is Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, the eighth Mission Impossible movie. Of the eight movies, I think the sixth one was the best one, but this one comes in at a close second. It continues on from Dead Reckoning. Ethan Hunt now possesses the key that will unlock the source code of the Entity, the malicious AI (think ChatGPT, but even more obviously evil) that is actively maneuvering the world's nuclear powers into destroying each other so the Entity can rule the remnants of humanity. Unfortunately, the Entity's source code is sitting in a wrecked Russian nuclear sub at the bottom of the Bering Sea. Even more unfortunately, the Entity knows that Hunt has the key and is trying to stop him, even as the Entity's former minion and Hunt's bitter enemy Gabriel seeks to seize control of the Entity for himself. A sense of apocalyptic doom hangs over the movie, which works well to build tension. Once again, the world is doomed, unless Ethan Hunt and his allies can save the day. The tension works extremely well during the movie's underwater sequence, and the final airborne duel between Hunt and Gabriel. I don't know if they're going to make any more Mission Impossible movies after this (they are insanely expensive), but if this is the end, it is a satisfying conclusion for the character of Ethan Hunt and the Impossible Mission Force. Overall grade: A Next up is Deep Cover, which came out in 2025. This is described as a comedy thriller, and I didn't know what to expect when I watched it, but I really enjoyed it. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Kat, a struggling comedy improv teacher living in London. Her best students are Marlon (played by Orlando Bloom), a dedicated character actor who wants to portray gritty realism but keeps getting cast in tacky commercials, and Hugh (played by Nick Mohammed), an awkward IT worker with no social skills whatsoever. One day, the three of them are recruited by Detective Sergeant Billings (played by Sean Bean) of the Metropolitan Police. The Met wants to use improv comedians to do undercover work for minor busts with drug dealers. Since it plays 200 pounds a pop, the trio agrees. Of course, things rapidly spiral out of control, because Kat, Marlon, and Hugh are actually a lot better at improv than they think, and soon they find themselves negotiating with the chief criminals of the London underworld. What follows is a movie that is both very tense and very funny. Kat, Marlon, and Hugh are in way over their heads, and will have to do the best improv of their lives to escape a very grisly fate. Whether Sean Bean dies or not (as is tradition), you will just have to watch the movie and find out. Overall grade: A Next up is Puss in Boots: The Final Wish, which came out in 2022. I don't personally know much about the history of Disney as a corporation, and I don't much care, but I do have several relatives who are very interested in the history of the Disney corporation, and therefore I have picked up some by osmosis. Apparently Disney CEO Michael Eisner forcing out Jeffrey Katzenberg in the 1990s was a very serious mistake, because Katzenberg went on to co-found DreamWorks, which has been Disney's consistent rival for animation for the last thirty years. That's like “CIA Regime Change Blowback” levels of creating your own enemy. Anyway, historical ironies aside, Puss in Boots: The Final Wish was a funny and surprisingly thoughtful animated movie. Puss in Boots is a legendary outlaw and folk hero, but he has used up eight of his nine lives. An ominous bounty hunter who looks like a humanoid wolf begins pursuing him, and the Wolf is able to shrug off the best of Puss In Boots' attacks. Panicked, Puss hides in a retirement home for elderly cats, but then hears rumors of the magical Last Wish. Hoping to use it to get his lives back, Puss In Boots sets off on the quest. It was amusing how Little Jack Horner and Goldilocks and the Three Bears were rival criminal gangs seeking the Last Wish. Overall grade: A Next up is Chicken People, which came out in 2016. A good documentary film gives you a glimpse into an alien world that you would otherwise never visit. In this example, I have absolutely no interest in competitive chicken breeding and will only raise chickens in my backyard if society ever collapses to the level that it becomes necessary for survival. That said, this was a very interesting look into the work of competitive chicken breeding. Apparently, there is an official “American Standard of Perfection” for individual chicken breeds, and the winner of the yearly chicken competition gets the title “Super Grand Champion.” Not Grand Champion, Super Grand Champion! That looks impressive on a resume. It is interesting how chicken breeding is in some sense an elaborate Skinner Box – like you can deliberately set out to breed chickens with the desirable traits on the American Standard of Perfection, but until the chickens are hatched and grow up, you don't know how they're going to turn out, so you need to try again and again and again… Overall grade: A Next up is The Mask of Zoro, which came out in 1998. I saw this in the theatre when it came out 27 years ago, but that was 27 years ago, and I don't have much of a memory of it, save that I liked it. So when I had the chance to watch it again, I did! Anthony Hopkins plays Diego de la Vega, who has the secret identity of Zorro in the final days before Mexico breaks away from the Spanish Empire. With Mexico on the verge of getting its independence, Diego decides to hang up his sword and mask and focus on his beloved wife and daughter. Unfortunately, the military governor Don Montero realizes Diego is Zorro, so has him arrested, kills his wife, and steals his baby daughter to raise as his own. Twenty years later, a bandit named Alejandro loses his brother and best friends to a brutal cavalry commander. It turns out that Montero is returning to California from Spain, and plans to seize control of California as an independent republic (which, of course, will be ruled by him). In the chaos, Diego escapes from prison and encounters a drunken Alejandro, and stops him from a futile attack upon the cavalry commander. He then proposes a pact – Diego will train Alejandro as the next Zorro, and together they can take vengeance upon the men who wronged them. This was a good movie. It was good to see that my taste in movies 27 years ago wasn't terrible. It manages to cram an entire epic plot into only 2 hours and 20 minutes. In some ways it was like a throwback to a ‘40s movie but with modern (for the ‘90s) production values, and some very good swordfights. Overall grade: A Next up is Wick is Pain, which came out in 2025. I've seen all four John Wick movies and enjoyed them thoroughly, though I've never gotten around to any of the spinoffs. Wick is Pain is a documentary about how John Wick went from a doomed indie movie with a $6.5 million hole in its budget to one of the most popular action series of the last few decades. Apparently Keanu Reeves made an offhand joke about how “Wick is pain” and that became the mantra of the cast and crew, because making an action movie that intense really was a painful experience. Definitely worth watching if you enjoyed the John Wick movies or moviemaking in general. Overall grade: A The last movie I saw this summer was Game Night, which came out in 2016. It was a hilarious, if occasionally dark comedy action thriller. Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams play Max and Annie Davis, a married couple who are very competitive and enjoy playing games of all kinds. Jason has an unresolved conflict with his brother Brooks, and one night Brooks invites them over for game night, which Max resents. Halfway through the evening, Brooks is kidnapped, with Max and Annie assume is part of the game. However, Brooks really is involved in something shady. Hilarity ensues, and it's up to Max and Annie to rescue Brooks and stay alive in the process. This was really funny, though a bit dark in places. That said, Max and Annie have a loving and supportive marriage, so it was nice to see something like that portrayed on the screen. Though this also leads to some hilarity, like when Annie accidentally shoots Max in the arm. No spoilers, but the punchline to that particular sequence was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Overall grade: A So no A+ movie this time around, but I still saw a bunch of solid movies I enjoyed. One final note, I have to admit, I've really come to respect Adam Sandler as an entertainer, even if his movies and comedy are not always to my taste. He makes what he wants, makes a lot of money, ensures that his friends get paid, and then occasionally takes on a serious role in someone else's movie when he wants to flex some acting muscles. I am not surprised that nearly everyone who's in the original Happy Gilmore who was still alive wanted to come back for Happy Gilmore 2. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show enjoyable and perhaps a guide to some good movies to watch. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show.In this episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show, I sit down with award-winning indie author Eveline Rose, creator of the Sheppard & Sons Investigations series. If you love page-turning romantic suspense set against the backdrop of a cozy small town, you'll want to listen in.Eveline shares how her love of storytelling began back in high school, and how it grew into a nine-book series featuring strong heroines, protective heroes, and the found families that keep us coming back for more. Book Six releases this month, and she's already planning a Christmas special and even a cookbook with recipes from her novels.Writing across romance and suspense means balancing swoony moments with high-stakes danger. Eveline admits that sometimes she gets caught up in the suspense and has to remind herself to bring in those cozy small-town touches—family gatherings, coffee shop meetups, and community connections that make her books so beloved.We also talked about why Eveline chose the indie publishing route. For her, finding the right mentor made the difference. While indie authors wear many hats—writer, editor, marketer, planner—Eveline has leaned into the freedom and speed of publishing her own stories. She shares candidly about the challenges of marketing and why connecting with readers in person lights her up.Eveline researched the best covers in her genre, then worked with design company GetCovers to create branding that perfectly fits her series, right down to the custom Sheppard & Sons logo. She's also a pantser who often dictates while driving, using every spare moment to keep her stories moving forward.Looking ahead, she has a historical romantic suspense series outlined for the Tudor and Plantagenet period—told through the eyes of the servants who witnessed history unfold. Doesn't that sound incredible?This was such a fun conversation. If you haven't yet started the Sheppard & Sons Investigations series, begin with Book One, Taken—and prepare to binge your way through these page-turners.

The May 2025 Cozy Mystery Book Club title was Mimi Lee Gets a Clue (A Sassy Cat Mystery Book One) by Jennifer J. Chow

Cette semaine, Laurent nous parle de sa recherche pour un saut de popcorn en forme de tête de Galactus, d'une adaptation de Tom King pour l'univers d'Archie, d'une pièce de théâtre inspirée de François Pérusse et d'un manga qui jumèle Superman et nourriture. Benoit pour sa part revient sur les annonces concernant un numéro spécial de Marvel Comics qui vous fera saliver, des couvertures alternatives des Muppets qui s'empareront de Marvel en octobre, du nouveau film « I Know What You Did Last Summer » et d'un ensemble LEGO basé sur Gizmo de du populaire long métrage « Gremlins ». En dernière partie d'émission, nous discutons de « Bug Wars: Book One » de Jason Aaron et Mahmud Asrar publié chez Image Comics. Laissez-nous un message vocal: https://www.speakpipe.com/mysterieuxe Devenez membre de la communauté Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MysterieuxE Diffusion originale : 1er septembre 2025 Site web : MysterieuxEtonnants.com © Les Mystérieux Étonnants. Tous droits réservés

Everyone has moments when their strength fails—physically, emotionally, or spiritually. In this study of Psalm 41, the final psalm of Book One, Dr. John explores how God sustains those who care for the weak and needy. Even as David faces illness and betrayal by close friends, he discovers that blessing comes not from avoiding trouble but from God's faithfulness through it. This psalm points forward to Jesus, who experienced the ultimate betrayal yet triumphed over every enemy, showing us that God's sustaining power never fails His people.Reasons for Worship: In a world of political turmoil, personal struggles, and the apparent prosperity of evil, where should believers place their trust? Dr. John's series on Psalms 33–41 called “Reasons for Worship” explores God's faithfulness amid life's challenges. From David's escapes to his reflections on the wicked, these psalms offer practical wisdom for trusting God, finding hope in desperate circumstances, and keeping faith when evil seems to prevail. This series brings both comfort and challenge, pointing to the God who is completely trustworthy in every season.

The cast assembles to look back at the end AND the whole of Book One. Ends and wholes, that's what it's all about, baby! Join us on our Patreon for more like this! Coming soon to the Patreon: Music Chat, where we look back at the music and, gulp, music theory of Book One's incredible score! A whole episode about the "what ifs" of Book One (one of the best bits of bonus audio we've ever recorded, imho)! And so, so much more. See you there! 

"Hey Casual Anime Fanatics! Send us a text and let us know what you would like us to talk about next!In this episode of THAT ANIME PODCAST,  The Casual Anime Fanatics discuss Season 1 / Book One (Episodes 1 - 20) of Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book One: Water). Welcome to the official podcast for Casual Anime Fanatics! We deliver fresh, entertaining episodes every week, exploring everything from classic favorites to hidden gems in the anime universe. Whether you're a long-time fan or just starting your anime adventure, THAT ANIME PODCAST is your go-to source for casual and insightful anime discussions.Enjoying the show? We'd love your support! If you like what you hear, consider leaving us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify. Your reviews help us reach even more anime enthusiasts just like you!Stay connected with us:Instagram: @thatanimepodcastDiscord: Join our communityTune in, laugh with us, and let's celebrate all things anime together!

The Cozy Mystery Book Club discussed By Book or by Crook (Lighthouse Library Mystery Book One) by Eva Gates

We gotta go.Thus ends Book One of The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One. Here's to many more. In the meantime, we have wonders piled high to share with you, dear listener. Come, join us, and see. There are other worlds than these.We are:Brennan Lee MulliganErika IshiiAabria IyengarLou Wilsonand is produced, designed, and scored by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse with exquisite design and editing help from Jared OlsonSPECIAL THANKS TO: Shannon and Amanda Freberg, and now Mel! Welcome, Mel! Transcript of this episode coming soon! You can find transcripts of all our episodes here, for free, on our Patreon. Just navigate to the post for the episode and the transcript will be attached. If it's not there, it's on the way ;)Our album art is by the great Corey BrickleySome additional environmental sound design comes from Michael Ghelfi Studios. You can get their sounds and music for your home games and VTT as well, which we enthusiastically recommend. 

PTF and Nick Tammaro kick off the show with a recap of racing around North America, with a focus on the Arlington Million Day card.Next up, Jimmy George of Tattersalls is here with an early look at the October Yearling Sale. You can check out the Book One catalogue here.

PTF and Nick Tammaro kick off the show with a recap of racing around North America, with a focus on the Arlington Million Day card.Next up, Jimmy George of Tattersalls is here with an early look at the October Yearling Sale. You can check out the Book One catalogue here.

It's episode 216 and time for us to talk about the genre of Rural Noir / Grit Lit! We discuss what counts as “rural,” whether “coastal noir” is a thing, how intense these stories can be, and more! Plus: Should fiction about Gritty (the mascot) be classified as about a "real person"? You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast delivery system. In this episode Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray

This is the closing psalm of Book One of The Psalms. In it David speaks about those who consider the poor or needy, and is reminded of a time when he was on his sick bed or death bed. Whilst his enemies were spreading gossip and slander about him and hoping that he would die, David was asking the LORD for grace, and healing, and acknowledging his sin, and trusting that the LORD would raise him up. To watch the video from today, just click on this link! The post Psalm 41 – “O LORD, be gracious to me!” appeared first on Living Rock Church.

Today's Lake and Shed framed conversation is once again about the fifth Cormoran Strike novel, Troubled Blood. Nick discusses Rowling's history with the Clerkenwell neighborhood. John talks about Troubled Blood as a double re-telling of The Faerie Queene, Book One, with Strike and Margot as the Redcrosse Knight and Oonaugh and Robin as Una.New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here's what we're doing:On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth' in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR's Kanreki, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling's twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author's writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed' metaphor. The ‘Lake' is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed' is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: Happy Birthday, JKR! A Lake and Shed Celebration of her Life and Work.Tomorrow? Our first look at Christmas Pig with both Nick and John talking about the Blue Bunny. Stay tuned!Links to posts mentioned in today's Lake and Shed conversation for further reading:* The Clerkenwell/Islington Gate of St John (Twitter Header)Faerie Queene!John Granger:* How Spenser Uses Cupid in Faerie Queen and Its Relevance for Understanding Troubled Blood* Reading Troubled Blood as a Medieval Morality PlayElizabeth Baird-Hardy* Day One, Part One: The Spenserian Epigraphs of the Pre-Released Troubled Blood Chapters* Day Two, Part Two: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Eight to Fourteen* Day Three, Part Three: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Fifteen to Thirty* Day Four, Part Four: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Thirty One to Forty Eight* Day Five, Part Five: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Forty Nine to Fifty Nine* Part Six: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Sixty to Seventy One* Spenser and Strike Part Seven: Changes for the BetterBeatrice Groves* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 1): Spenserian Clues in Troubled Blood Epigraphs* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 2): Shipping Robin and Strike in the Epigraphs of Troubled Blood* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 3): Searching for Duessa in Troubled BloodThis is a tentative listing by category of the posts at HogwartsProfessor about Troubled Blood. There's much more work to do on this wonderful work!1. Chiastic StructureRowling's fixation on planning in general and with structural patterns specifically in all of her work continues in Troubled Blood. From the first reading, it became apparent that in Strike5 Rowling-Galbraith had taken her game to a new level of sophistication. She continued, as she had in her four previous Strike mysteries, to write a story in parallel with the Harry Potter septology; there are many echoes of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth and equivalent number in the Hogwarts Saga, in Troubled Blood. Just as Phoenix was in important ways a re-telling of Philosopher's Stone, so Troubled Blood also echoes Cuckoo's Calling — with a few Stone notes thrown in as well. The new heights of Rowling's structural artistry, though, extend beyond her patented intratextuality; they are in each of Strike5's first six parts being ring compositions themselves, the astrological chart embedded in the story chapters, and the six part and two chapters correspondence in structure between Troubled Blood and Spenser's Faerie Queen.* Structure Part One* Structure Part Two, Notes Two to Six* Structure Part Three, Notes One to Three* Structure Part Four, Notes One to Three, Eight, and Ten* Structure Part Five, Notes One to Four, Nine* Structure Part Six, Notes One to Four* Structure Part Seven, Ring Latch, Story Axis* Astrological Clock Structure of Troubled Blood* Career of Evil Echoes* Order of the Phoenix Echoes* Cuckoo's Calling Echoes* Philosopher's Stone Echoes2. Literary AlchemyPer Nabokov, literary artistry and accomplishment are known and experienced through a work's “structure and style.” Rowling's signature structures are evident in Troubled Blood (see above) and her characteristic hermetic artistry, literary alchemy, is as well. Strike5 is the series nigredo and Strike and Robin experience great losses and their reduction to their respective and shared prima materia in the dissolving rain and flood waters of the story.* Strike's Transformation* Robin Ellacott and the Reverse Alchemy of the First Three Strike Novels* Lethal White as the Alchemical Pivot of the Strike Series* The Wet Nigredo: Troubled Blood's Black Names, Holiday Three Step, and Losses3. Psychology/MythologyRowling told Val McDermid that if she had not succeeded as a writer than she would have studied to become a psychologist:V: If it hadn't worked out the way it has. If you'd sat there and written the book in the café and nobody ever published it, what would you have done with your life, what would you have liked to have been?JK: There are two answers. If I could have done anything, I would have been really interested in doing, I would have been a psychologist. Because that's the only thing that's ever really pulled me in any way from all this. But at the time I was teaching, and I was very broke, and I had a daughter and I think I would have kept teaching until we were stable enough that we were stable enough that I could change.Because of her lifelong study and pre-occupation with mythology, it is fitting that in Strike5 readers are confronted with a host of references to psychologist Carl Jung and to a specific Greek myth which Jungian psychologists consider essential in understanding feminine psychology. All of which leads in the end to the Strike series' equivalent of the Hogwarts Saga's soul triptych exteriorization in Harry, Hermione and Ron as Body, Mind, and Spirit, with Robin and Strike as Handless Maiden and Fisher King, the mythological images of anima and animus neglected and working towards integration.* Carl Jung and Troubled Blood* A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus* The Anima and Animus: The Psychological Heart and Exteriorization of the Cormoran Strike Novels4. Valentine's DayThe story turn of Troubled Blood takes place on Valentine's Day and the actions, events, and repercussions of this holiday of Cupid and Heart-shaped candies, not to mention chocolates, shape the Robin and Strike relationship drama irrevocably. Chocolates play an outsized portion of that work symbolically, believe it or not; the word ‘chocolate' occurs 34 times in the first four Strike novels combined but 82 times in Troubled Blood. I explore the importance of this confection in two posts before beginning to explain the importance and appropriateness of Valentine's Day being the heart of the story, one that is in large part a re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth.* Troubled Blood: Interpreting the Poetry of Cormoran's Five Gifts To Robin* Troubled Blood: Poisoned Chocolates* Troubled Blood: The Secret of Rowntree* A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus5. Edmund Spenser's Faerie QueenTroubled Blood features several embedded texts, the most important of which is never mentioned in the book: Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen. Serious Strikers enjoyed the luxury of not one but two scholars of Edmund Spenser who checked in on the relevance and meaning of Rowling's choice of the greatest English epic poem for her epigraphs, not to mention the host of correspondences between Strike 5 and Queen. Elizabeth Baird-Hardy did a part by part exegesis of the Troubled Blood-Faerie Queen conjunctions and Beatrice Groves shared her first thoughts on the connections as well. Just as Lethal White's meaning and artistry is relatively unappreciated without a close reading of Ibsen's Rosmersholm, so with Strike 5 and Faerie Queen.* Spenser's Faerie Queen (Above)6. The GhostsRowling's core belief is in the immortality of the soul and her favorite writer of the 20th Century is Vladimir Nabokov, whose work is subtly permeated by the otherworldly. No surprise, then, that Troubled Blood is haunted by a host of ghosts, most importantly the shade of Margot Bamborough but to include the women murdered by Dennis Creed and Nicolo Ricci. Their influence is so obvious and so important that it has spurred discussion of the spectres that haunt the first four Strike novels whose presence had not been discussed prior to the revelations of Strike 5.* Troubled Blood: The Dead Among Us* The Ghosts Haunting Troubled Blood* The Ghosts Haunting Cuckoo's Calling, Silkworm, Career of Evil, and Lethal White7. The NamesThe Cryptonyms or Cratylic Names of Troubled Blood are as rich and meaningful, even funny, as those found in Lethal White. From Paul Satchwell's “little package” to Roy Phipps as the Spanish King Phillip, from the nigredo black elements of Bill Talbot and Saul Morris to the Spenserian echoes of Oonaugh Kennedy and Janice Beattie, and the Rokeby-Oakden coincidences, Strike5 is full of name play. Did I mention that the detectives solve the mystery largely through their exploration of names? Douthwaite and Oakden only pop-up after Strike has revelations consequent to serious reflection on their names and pseudonyms. Rowling-Galbraith really wants her real-world readers to be reflecting on the Dickensian names of all her characters.* The Cratylic Names of Troubled Blood: A Top Twenty Round Up8. The Flints and GaffesRowling commented in one of her interview tableaus for Troubled Blood that she had worked extra hard to get the dates right in this most complicated of novels and that her proof reader and continuity editor found a big mistake. Serious Strikers, though, were left crying “Alas!” and laughing aloud at the number of bone-headed gaffes in The Presence's longest work to date. It remains her best as well as her longest book to date, but, really, get the woman the help she needs to comb the book for errors pre-publication. Can you say, “Isla”?* Troubled Blood: Flints, Errors, and Head Scratchers* Troubled Blood Gaffes: A Second Look at Ages and Dates9. The AstrologyThe principal embedded text in Troubled Blood, the one Robin and Cormoran read repeatedly, create keys for, and discuss throughout the book, is Bill Talbot's ‘True Book.' It features an astrological chart for the exact time and place of Margot Bamborough's disappearance in 1974, which map Talbot used to try and solve the case. Strike is profoundly disgusted by this approach but spends, as does Robin, much of his time trying to figure out the chart or at least what Talbot made of it. Troubled Blood, consequently, turns into something of an exploration of astrology and its relevance to understanding ourselves and the world. Unpacking what Rowling means by it, not to mention what the natal charts of Robin and Cormoran tell us about these charactes, their relationship, and Rowling-Galbraith's intentionally hermetic artistry, is a large part of the exegetical work to be done on Troubled Blood.* Nick Jeffery: Troubled Blood — The Acknowledgements* Part Three, Note Five* Troubled Blood: Strike's Natal Chart* Astrological Clock Structure of Troubled Blood* Astrological Allegorical: The Sun Signs of Characters in Troubled Blood* A Second Look at Talbot's Chart: What Does it Reveal to the Unbiased Eye?10. The Tarot Card SpreadsWe know that Rowling has significant skills when it comes to astrology. What is less well appreciated is that almost from childhood she has played with tarot card reading which knowledge has informed her work. This is comic in Trelawney, say, but comes to the fore in Troubled Blood‘s card spreads: the Celtic Cross in Talbot's ‘True Book,' his embedded three card spreads in the illustrations of that tome, and Robin's two readings, one in Laemington Spa and the other in her flat at story's end.* Part Three, Note Six* Part Four, Note Five* Part Five, Note Five* Part Six, Notes Five, Six, Eight* Bill Talbot's Tarot: The Embedded Occult Heart of Troubled Blood* Robin Ellacott's Tarot: The Missed Meanings of Her Twin Three Card Spreads in Troubled Blood11. Who Killed Leda Strike?To Rowling-Galbraith's credit, credible arguments in dedicated posts have been made that every person in the list below was the one who murdered Leda Strike. Who do you think did it?* Jonny Rokeby and the Harringay Crime Syndicate (Heroin Dark Lord 2.0),* Ted Nancarrow (Uncle Ted Did It),* Dave Polworth,* Leda Strike (!),* Lucy Fantoni (Lucy and Joan Did It and here),* Sir Randolph Whittaker,* Nick Herbert,* Peter Gillespie, and* Charlotte Campbell-Ross12. Embedded TextsAll of Rowling's novels feature books and texts, written work as well as metanarratives, with which her characters struggle to figure out in reflective parallel to what her readers are trying to do with the novel in hand. Troubled Blood is exceptionally laden with these embedded texts. Beyond Talbot's True Book and Spenser's Faerie Queen noted above, we are treated to selections from The Demon of Paradise Park, Whatever Happened to Margot Bamborough?, Astrology 14, and The Magus.13. The Murderers: Creed and BeattieA demon-possessed psychopath and the brain-damaged lonely woman… Each is described as “a genius of misdirection” and being without remorse or empathy. The actual murderers in Troubled Blood are distinct, certainly, but paired as well, as one of the many mirrored pairs in this story.14. FeminismTroubled Blood, Rowling has said, is a commentary of sorts on changes in the history of feminism. It is an unvarnished, even brutal exploration of the heroic age of the feminist movement, its front and back, largely through the personalities, circumstances, choices, and experiences of two pairs of women, Margot Bamborough and her plucky Irish side-kick Oonaugh Kennedy and the paired through time couple of Irene Bull-Hickson and Janice Beattie.15. Rokeby 3.0Jonny Rokeby makes his first appearance, albeit only by phone call, in Troubled Blood and yet it has reset thinking about Strike and his biological father considerably. Kurt Schreyer thinks the head Deadbeat is more Snape than Voldemort — and, if this is the case, we need to re-read the series to see how much Strike's emotional injuries from childhood neglect have misshaped his understanding of his dad so he lives in upside-down land.* Guest Post: Rokeby Redux – Is Strike's Father More Snape than Lord Voldemort? Get full access to Hogwarts Professor at hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

Today's Lake and Shed framed conversation is about the fifth Cormoran Strike novel, Troubled Blood. Nick discusses Rowling's history with the divinatory art of astrology and the occult resources and reference works she brought into play in writing a novel whose primary embedded text is a murder scene's astrological chart. John talks about the astrological clock structure of twelve houses in which Galbraith tells this remarkable story.New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here's what we're doing:On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth' in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR's Kanreki, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling's twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author's writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed' metaphor. The ‘Lake' is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed' is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: Happy Birthday, JKR! A Lake and Shed Celebration of her Life and Work.Tomorrow? Another look at Troubled Blood, this time with an introduction to Rowling's ties to Clerkenwell from Nick and with John making a case for reading Troubled Blood as a re-telling of Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book One, with Strike and Margot as the Redcrosse Knight and Robin and Oonaugh as Una. Stay tuned!Links to posts mentioned in today's Lake and Shed conversation for further reading:* Nick Jeffery: Troubled Blood — The Astrologers in the Acknowledgements* J. K. Rowling, Author-Astrologer, Pt 1: How Did We Not Know About This?* Troubled Blood: Strike's Natal Chart* Astrological Clock Structure of Troubled BloodThis is a tentative listing by category of the posts at HogwartsProfessor about Troubled Blood. There's much more work to do on this wonderful work!1. Chiastic StructureRowling's fixation on planning in general and with structural patterns specifically in all of her work continues in Troubled Blood. From the first reading, it became apparent that in Strike5 Rowling-Galbraith had taken her game to a new level of sophistication. She continued, as she had in her four previous Strike mysteries, to write a story in parallel with the Harry Potter septology; there are many echoes of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth and equivalent number in the Hogwarts Saga, in Troubled Blood. Just as Phoenix was in important ways a re-telling of Philosopher's Stone, so Troubled Blood also echoes Cuckoo's Calling — with a few Stone notes thrown in as well. The new heights of Rowling's structural artistry, though, extend beyond her patented intratextuality; they are in each of Strike5's first six parts being ring compositions themselves, the astrological chart embedded in the story chapters, and the six part and two chapters correspondence in structure between Troubled Blood and Spenser's Faerie Queen.* Structure Part One* Structure Part Two, Notes Two to Six* Structure Part Three, Notes One to Three* Structure Part Four, Notes One to Three, Eight, and Ten* Structure Part Five, Notes One to Four, Nine* Structure Part Six, Notes One to Four* Structure Part Seven, Ring Latch, Story Axis* Astrological Clock Structure of Troubled Blood* Career of Evil Echoes* Order of the Phoenix Echoes* Cuckoo's Calling Echoes* Philosopher's Stone Echoes2. Literary AlchemyPer Nabokov, literary artistry and accomplishment are known and experienced through a work's “structure and style.” Rowling's signature structures are evident in Troubled Blood (see above) and her characteristic hermetic artistry, literary alchemy, is as well. Strike5 is the series nigredo and Strike and Robin experience great losses and their reduction to their respective and shared prima materia in the dissolving rain and flood waters of the story.* Strike's Transformation* Robin Ellacott and the Reverse Alchemy of the First Three Strike Novels* Lethal White as the Alchemical Pivot of the Strike Series* The Wet Nigredo: Troubled Blood's Black Names, Holiday Three Step, and Losses3. Psychology/MythologyRowling told Val McDermid that if she had not succeeded as a writer than she would have studied to become a psychologist:V: If it hadn't worked out the way it has. If you'd sat there and written the book in the café and nobody ever published it, what would you have done with your life, what would you have liked to have been?JK: There are two answers. If I could have done anything, I would have been really interested in doing, I would have been a psychologist. Because that's the only thing that's ever really pulled me in any way from all this. But at the time I was teaching, and I was very broke, and I had a daughter and I think I would have kept teaching until we were stable enough that we were stable enough that I could change.Because of her lifelong study and pre-occupation with mythology, it is fitting that in Strike5 readers are confronted with a host of references to psychologist Carl Jung and to a specific Greek myth which Jungian psychologists consider essential in understanding feminine psychology. All of which leads in the end to the Strike series' equivalent of the Hogwarts Saga's soul triptych exteriorization in Harry, Hermione and Ron as Body, Mind, and Spirit, with Robin and Strike as Handless Maiden and Fisher King, the mythological images of anima and animus neglected and working towards integration.* Carl Jung and Troubled Blood* A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus* The Anima and Animus: The Psychological Heart and Exteriorization of the Cormoran Strike Novels4. Valentine's DayThe story turn of Troubled Blood takes place on Valentine's Day and the actions, events, and repercussions of this holiday of Cupid and Heart-shaped candies, not to mention chocolates, shape the Robin and Strike relationship drama irrevocably. Chocolates play an outsized portion of that work symbolically, believe it or not; the word ‘chocolate' occurs 34 times in the first four Strike novels combined but 82 times in Troubled Blood. I explore the importance of this confection in two posts before beginning to explain the importance and appropriateness of Valentine's Day being the heart of the story, one that is in large part a re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth.* Troubled Blood: Interpreting the Poetry of Cormoran's Five Gifts To Robin* Troubled Blood: Poisoned Chocolates* Troubled Blood: The Secret of Rowntree* A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus5. Edmund Spenser's Faerie QueenTroubled Blood features several embedded texts, the most important of which is never mentioned in the book: Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen. Serious Strikers enjoyed the luxury of not one but two scholars of Edmund Spenser who checked in on the relevance and meaning of Rowling's choice of the greatest English epic poem for her epigraphs, not to mention the host of correspondences between Strike 5 and Queen. Elizabeth Baird-Hardy did a part by part exegesis of the Troubled Blood-Faerie Queen conjunctions and Beatrice Groves shared her first thoughts on the connections as well. Just as Lethal White's meaning and artistry is relatively unappreciated without a close reading of Ibsen's Rosmersholm, so with Strike 5 and Faerie Queen.Elizabeth Baird-Hardy* Day One, Part One: The Spenserian Epigraphs of the Pre-Released Troubled Blood Chapters* Day Two, Part Two: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Eight to Fourteen* Day Three, Part Three: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Fifteen to Thirty* Day Four, Part Four: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Thirty One to Forty Eight* Day Five, Part Five: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Forty Nine to Fifty Nine* Part Six: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Sixty to Seventy One* Spenser and Strike Part Seven: Changes for the BetterBeatrice Groves* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 1): Spenserian Clues in Troubled Blood Epigraphs* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 2): Shipping Robin and Strike in the Epigraphs of Troubled Blood* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 3): Searching for Duessa in Troubled BloodJohn Granger:* How Spenser Uses Cupid in Faerie Queen and Its Relevance for Understanding Troubled Blood* Reading Troubled Blood as a Medieval Morality Play6. The GhostsRowling's core belief is in the immortality of the soul and her favorite writer of the 20th Century is Vladimir Nabokov, whose work is subtly permeated by the otherworldly. No surprise, then, that Troubled Blood is haunted by a host of ghosts, most importantly the shade of Margot Bamborough but to include the women murdered by Dennis Creed and Nicolo Ricci. Their influence is so obvious and so important that it has spurred discussion of the spectres that haunt the first four Strike novels whose presence had not been discussed prior to the revelations of Strike 5.* Troubled Blood: The Dead Among Us* The Ghosts Haunting Troubled Blood* The Ghosts Haunting Cuckoo's Calling, Silkworm, Career of Evil, and Lethal White7. The NamesThe Cryptonyms or Cratylic Names of Troubled Blood are as rich and meaningful, even funny, as those found in Lethal White. From Paul Satchwell's “little package” to Roy Phipps as the Spanish King Phillip, from the nigredo black elements of Bill Talbot and Saul Morris to the Spenserian echoes of Oonaugh Kennedy and Janice Beattie, and the Rokeby-Oakden coincidences, Strike5 is full of name play. Did I mention that the detectives solve the mystery largely through their exploration of names? Douthwaite and Oakden only pop-up after Strike has revelations consequent to serious reflection on their names and pseudonyms. Rowling-Galbraith really wants her real-world readers to be reflecting on the Dickensian names of all her characters.* The Cratylic Names of Troubled Blood: A Top Twenty Round Up8. The Flints and GaffesRowling commented in one of her interview tableaus for Troubled Blood that she had worked extra hard to get the dates right in this most complicated of novels and that her proof reader and continuity editor found a big mistake. Serious Strikers, though, were left crying “Alas!” and laughing aloud at the number of bone-headed gaffes in The Presence's longest work to date. It remains her best as well as her longest book to date, but, really, get the woman the help she needs to comb the book for errors pre-publication. Can you say, “Isla”?* Troubled Blood: Flints, Errors, and Head Scratchers* Troubled Blood Gaffes: A Second Look at Ages and Dates9. The AstrologyThe principal embedded text in Troubled Blood, the one Robin and Cormoran read repeatedly, create keys for, and discuss throughout the book, is Bill Talbot's ‘True Book.' It features an astrological chart for the exact time and place of Margot Bamborough's disappearance in 1974, which map Talbot used to try and solve the case. Strike is profoundly disgusted by this approach but spends, as does Robin, much of his time trying to figure out the chart or at least what Talbot made of it. Troubled Blood, consequently, turns into something of an exploration of astrology and its relevance to understanding ourselves and the world. Unpacking what Rowling means by it, not to mention what the natal charts of Robin and Cormoran tell us about these charactes, their relationship, and Rowling-Galbraith's intentionally hermetic artistry, is a large part of the exegetical work to be done on Troubled Blood.* Nick Jeffery: Troubled Blood — The Acknowledgements* Part Three, Note Five* Troubled Blood: Strike's Natal Chart* Astrological Clock Structure of Troubled Blood* Astrological Allegorical: The Sun Signs of Characters in Troubled Blood* A Second Look at Talbot's Chart: What Does it Reveal to the Unbiased Eye?10. The Tarot Card SpreadsWe know that Rowling has significant skills when it comes to astrology. What is less well appreciated is that almost from childhood she has played with tarot card reading which knowledge has informed her work. This is comic in Trelawney, say, but comes to the fore in Troubled Blood‘s card spreads: the Celtic Cross in Talbot's ‘True Book,' his embedded three card spreads in the illustrations of that tome, and Robin's two readings, one in Laemington Spa and the other in her flat at story's end.* Part Three, Note Six* Part Four, Note Five* Part Five, Note Five* Part Six, Notes Five, Six, Eight* Bill Talbot's Tarot: The Embedded Occult Heart of Troubled Blood* Robin Ellacott's Tarot: The Missed Meanings of Her Twin Three Card Spreads in Troubled Blood11. Who Killed Leda Strike?To Rowling-Galbraith's credit, credible arguments in dedicated posts have been made that every person in the list below was the one who murdered Leda Strike. Who do you think did it?* Jonny Rokeby and the Harringay Crime Syndicate (Heroin Dark Lord 2.0),* Ted Nancarrow (Uncle Ted Did It),* Dave Polworth,* Leda Strike (!),* Lucy Fantoni (Lucy and Joan Did It and here),* Sir Randolph Whittaker,* Nick Herbert,* Peter Gillespie, and* Charlotte Campbell-Ross12. Embedded TextsAll of Rowling's novels feature books and texts, written work as well as metanarratives, with which her characters struggle to figure out in reflective parallel to what her readers are trying to do with the novel in hand. Troubled Blood is exceptionally laden with these embedded texts. Beyond Talbot's True Book and Spenser's Faerie Queen noted above, we are treated to selections from The Demon of Paradise Park, Whatever Happened to Margot Bamborough?, Astrology 14, and The Magus.13. The Murderers: Creed and BeattieA demon-possessed psychopath and the brain-damaged lonely woman… Each is described as “a genius of misdirection” and being without remorse or empathy. The actual murderers in Troubled Blood are distinct, certainly, but paired as well, as one of the many mirrored pairs in this story.14. FeminismTroubled Blood, Rowling has said, is a commentary of sorts on changes in the history of feminism. It is an unvarnished, even brutal exploration of the heroic age of the feminist movement, its front and back, largely through the personalities, circumstances, choices, and experiences of two pairs of women, Margot Bamborough and her plucky Irish side-kick Oonaugh Kennedy and the paired through time couple of Irene Bull-Hickson and Janice Beattie.15. Rokeby 3.0Jonny Rokeby makes his first appearance, albeit only by phone call, in Troubled Blood and yet it has reset thinking about Strike and his biological father considerably. Kurt Schreyer thinks the head Deadbeat is more Snape than Voldemort — and, if this is the case, we need to re-read the series to see how much Strike's emotional injuries from childhood neglect have misshaped his understanding of his dad so he lives in upside-down land.* Guest Post: Rokeby Redux – Is Strike's Father More Snape than Lord Voldemort? Get full access to Hogwarts Professor at hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

In a world powered by steam and ruled by corporations, one young woman's discovery will ignite a revolution.Alice is a gifted but underappreciated tinkerer working the rail lines of Terra. During an unexpected train malfunction, she uncovers a long-lost ancient artifact buried in a forgotten cave—a fire cog capable of creating heat and light—seemingly from nothing.Could it be tied to one of the seven primordial Cogs of Legend?Worse, once the Steele Company learns of the cog's abilities, they stop at nothing to take it from Alice.Forced to flee, Alice teams up with her rough-edged mentor Rueger and quick-witted best friend Henry as they race to unravel the mystery of the fire cog. Along the way, Alice must master deadly new lore, survive on a mysterious island, and face truths about her long-lost family and the shadowy history of Terra itself.But with a host of steam-powered walkers closing in, time is running out. Can Alice unlock the cog's power before it falls into the wrong hands?Awakening Fire is Book One in the Cogs of Legend series: a steampunk science-fantasy epic packed with immersive settings, sharp characters, slow-burn romance, and high-stakes adventure.Perfect for fans of Gideon the Ninth, Mistborn, and Mortal Engines.The gears are turning. The spark has been lit. The legend begins.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the 129th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I'm delighted to welcome our guest, Neale Donald Walsch. Neale has written 40 books on contemporary spirituality and its practical application in everyday life, including his new book GodTalk: Experiences of Humanity's Connections with a Higher Power. Neale is the bestselling author of the Conversations with God series, of which seven of the nine books made the New York Times bestseller list. Book One remained on that list for 134 weeks. His titles have been translated into 37 languages and have been read by millions of people around the world.In this conversation, Neale discusses his journey in exploring humanity's relationship with God, emphasising that neither God nor love is transactional. He also shares the experiences that led to his first bestselling book and the life mission that emerged from those dialogues.This conversation invites us to engage with life in a way that contrasts with many cultural norms—by embracing love, deep understanding, and meaningful connection with others.For more of Neale's work, check out the following:Website: http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com/Books: http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com/Store/BooksContact me at mark@whatisagood.life if you'd like to explore your own lines of self-inquiry through 1-on-1 coaching, my 5-week group courses, or to discuss experiences I create to stimulate greater trust, communication, and connection, amongst your leadership teams.- For the What is a Good Life? podcast's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@whatisagoodlife/videos- My newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/- My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/- Exploring one-on-one coaching: https://www.whatisagood.life/p/one-on-one-coaching- What is a Good Life? Course: https://www.whatisagood.life/p/the-what-is-a-good-life-course00:00 How we are misunderstanding God04:20 A theologically revolutionary idea10:10 God's love demands nothing in return13:40 Questioning religion but not a belief in God22:15 Conversing with God29:00 Not a case of right & wrong but what works & doesn't33:22 The importance of our imagination41:10 God is speaking to us all the time44:45 The bias against a possibility48:30 Sharing conversations with God53:10 Reflecting on the success of the first book56:30 Discovering his life mission1:03:10 What is a good life for Neale?

Ka is a wheel and the Losers are once again walking through Stephen King's The Stand as part of their event series, The Summer of the Stand. The first of three Twinner book episodes dedicated to the apocalyptic epic finds the gang revisiting Book I: "Captain Trips". Join Losers Jenn Adams, Randall Colburn, Ana Marie Cox, and Dan Pfleegor as they offer new perspectives on an old favorite. Then stay tuned for the next two episodes to drop in July and August, respectively.

In this episode, my son Jack joins me to examine The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, a Roman scholar living just after the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 CE. A renaissance man before the Renaissance, Boethius translated Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato, served as a trusted aide to the Gothic king Theodoric in Ravenna, and was a mathematician, astronomer, and family man whose sons became consuls in their early 20s. Despite his Christian faith, tensions with the Arian Theodoric led to his imprisonment and brutal execution at 44. This tragedy tarnished Theodoric's rule, but Boethius' legacy shaped medieval thought, preserving Greek philosophy and influencing giants like Chaucer, Dante, Aquinas, and Shakespeare.Written in a cell awaiting death, The Consolation of Philosophy is a profound dialogue between Boethius and Lady Philosophy. Divided into five books, it blends prose (prosa) and poetry (metrea), offering wisdom through a narrative arc. Book One introduces Boethius' despair; Book Two explores Fortune's fickleness; Book Three seeks the highest Good; Book Four tackles the problem of evil; and Book Five reconciles divine foreknowledge with free will. The poems, rich with mythological and Biblical imagery, provide emotional breaks and reinforce the prose's insights. As C.S. Lewis noted, this work was beloved by educated Europeans for centuries.Boethius weaves Neoplatonism, Stoicism, and Aristotelian ideas into a Christian framework. Lady Philosophy echoes Plato's belief in innate knowledge, urging Boethius to “dream of your origin,” and champions philosopher-kings. Stoic themes emerge as she declares the mind free despite bodily exile, while Aristotle's Unmoved Mover aligns with Boethius' God. The concept of exile as a spiritual crisis resonates, connecting Boethius to figures like Odysseus and Dante.Jack and I discuss whether this is a satire, and how much both of us love Boethius as a character in his own novel.The Ignatius Press edition, translated by Scott Goins and Barbara Wyman, shines with clear prose, excellent footnotes, and quality paper—perfect for annotating. This book demands a reread and sparks a reading list including Chaucer, Milton, and C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image. Join us! I think this book is for everyone, but even if you think, "Maybe not for me," you'll know what it's about and why it matters.This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for Sun Tzu's The Art of War and The Tao Te Ching from Lao Tzu.LINKTed Gioia/The Honest Broker's 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)CONNECTTo read more of my writing, visit my Substack - https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ LISTENSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bdApple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 Captivate -

Drew and Lauren get in way deeper than they expected with Book One of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. The Final Draft features beers from Equilibrium and Urban Family. Visit our website at www.iolpodcast.com and join the conversation on Twitter @IOLPodcast Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/inkingoutloud Send us a tip on Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/inkingoutloud Inking Out Loud is Drew McCaffrey and Rob Santos. Sound engineering by Drew McCaffrey. Artwork by Danielle "FelCandy" Prosperie. Intro/outro music: "Moonlight" by Jivemind.

This week we all chose some hilarious one star reviews of some of the books we love/have recently read, and all try to guess what book it is! Reading reviews like this are fun but also make us question our own ratings. We also had a chat about one of the books we were excited to read this year so stick around for that.   Currently Reading: Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli  Silver Elite by Dani Francis Releasing 10 by Chloe Walsh Constantine by E.L. Stevens Come hang out with us on Instagram!

Send us a textWelcome to Hunger Games Summer, nerds!

We board the Infinity Train — not just a mysterious locomotive, but a powerful metaphor for emotional healing and spiritual growth.

A new series where we will dive head first into Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino's amazing graphic novel series Gideon Falls! We'll talk about the Twin Peaks/ David Lynch influences and the overall Horror of the first arc. We stay spoiler-free on this first episode of the Black Barn Chronicles, so if you haven't read Gideon Falls but think you want to, join us on our journey!Check out the visual episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wTHDDZfTznICheck out The Horror Vision on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehorrorvision/Join our exclusive Facebook Horror Fan Community: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/18LsUmWw5n/Check out our merch! https://the-horror-vision.creator-spring.com

This week's featured story comes from the How to Be Super: The Violet Crown (Book One)collection. It's called "Part One: The Welcome Wall." In which we are introduced to Dante and his single mother and learn that on the morning of his twelfth birthday, he experiences something incredible: he is struck by lightning. He is fine, but it begins a series of events that leads him to the neighborhood welcome wall where he receives a message that changes everything. If you enjoyed that story, there are hundreds and hundreds more where that came from. Try a Sparkle subscription now - for free. Go to www.sparklestories.com and click the button at the top that says “Start Free Trial,” then you can listen to our giant library as much as you like, anytime you like.  Each week on the Sparkle Stories Podcast, we share a free story from one of our original story series! For many many many more stories like this one, visit the Sparkle website: www.sparklestories.com Questions?  Ideas?  Requests? Email us!  info@sparklestories.com Enjoy!

Click Here to ask your book writing and publishing questions!What do a flooded house, a nine-month (and still going) renovation, and a debut novel have in common? Angelika Morini.In this episode, Angelika shares what it actually looked like to finish her first novel, Do You See Me Now?—while living in chaos (read: house stripped to the studs). We talk about why character development can feel a lot like falling in love with someone mysterious and how launching a book is less of a finish line and more like Mile One of a marathon you didn't know you signed up for.EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:The (not so) glamorous reality of writing and editing during a home renovation from hellWhy marketing Book One while dreaming up Book Two can feel like a  bit of a tightrope actThe decision to write in English (even though she's German) Weaving the complexities of post-reunification Germany into her novelThe way she allowed her characters to show up and surprise her (no outline, no problem!) Awesome Email Templates for AuthorsFrom communicating with your launch team to building relationships with readers, my customizable templates take all the guesswork out of writing emails that turn email subscribers into loyal readers.

Where did the Bible come from? We'll unpack the origin, formation, and trustworthiness of Scripture, giving you confidence in how God preserved His Word through history. In a world full of shifting opinions and uncertainty, the Bible remains unchanging, reliable, and authoritative. Don't miss this powerful message as we continue building a firm foundation for your faith! Here at CCC, we're committed to helping people move forward in faith, freedom, purpose, and impact.

Have you ever wished for a quick, no-pressure strategy session to get unstuck in your dietitian business? Well, now's your chance! In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, I'm sharing why I'm offering free 20-minute business strategy calls for dietitians - and why talking to people for free is actually the most valuable use of my time.I'll break down:What these calls are and why I'm doing themHow relationship-building is the currency of business (and how you can apply this in your own biz)How you can book a session today (spots are limited!)What kinds of challenges we can tackle in just 20 minutes - niching, pricing, offers, marketing, and more!Why these calls are different from sales or discovery calls (they're pitch-optional!)My personal goal of completing 25 sessions in March - so let's make it happen together!Links: Book your FREE Business Strategy Call today (open to starting, growing or scaling dietitian business owners)Plus, big news!

You've heard Tom talk about his childhood on at least a few occasions. Now get ready to read about it. Well, eventually. Maybe. You could be waiting a while. Until then, you can hear about Tom's grandchildren's childhoods as they happen. If you write it all down you could pre-empt their books well ahead of time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices