Podcast appearances and mentions of Jim Butcher

Send us a textHannah and Laura are covering chapters 15 through 28 of Jim Butcher's Dead Beat and having a... [plot twist]...great time? This is a romp of a book that may or may not take place during the summer. Hannah and Laura also chat about a hilariously cringey TV show, a shark movie marathon, and some incredibly creative fantasy books they've been reading.**This episode contains SPOILERS for Dead Beat by Jim Butcher. Spoiler/plot section begins at: 50 min 45 secs. ****CW for the episode: discussions of sex, murder, death, gore, mental illness, zombies, blood, crime, shark attacks**Media Mentions: Dead Beat by Jim ButcherThe Fury of the Gods by John Gwynne The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin The Righteous Gemstones---HBO Max The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson Iron Widow by Xiran Jay ZhaoTaskmaster---YouTube Jaws---Peacock Jaws 3D---PeacockJaws: The Revenge---PeacockDeep Blue Sea---AppleTV Support the showBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter (updates only): @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsBlueSky: @myyypod

Send us a textHannah and Laura are gluttons for punishment. They are back in "The Year of the Dresden," covering the seventh book in Jim Butcher's series, Dead Beat, which may or may not be a great book. To be determined. Laura also continues to gush about The Bloodsworn Saga, and Hannah shares about a teen show that she's bingeing and the current season of Taskmaster.*This episode contains SPOILERS for Dead Beat by Jim Butcher. Spoiler section begins at: 32 min 29 secs. ***CW for the episode: discussions of death, blood, gore, murder, weapons, racism, sexism, assaultBe sure to follow us online!On Wednesdays We Read Podcast – Welcome to OWWR PodBluesky: @owwrpodInstagram: @owwrpodMedia Mentions:Dead Beat by Jim Butcher The Fury of the Gods by John Gwynne Cascadia board game The Pitt---HBO Max E.R.---HuluFreshwater by Akwaeke EmeziSchool Spirits---Paramount+ That Thing You Do---HuluTaskmaster---YouTube Support the showBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter (updates only): @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsBlueSky: @myyypod

Quaranteam – Book 1: Part 17 Andy has his interview for primetime. Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.   It turned out that a dozen women all getting ready for television appearances was, in fact, a major operation. The master bathroom was large enough that four of the girls could use the mirror at the same time, but beyond that, they had to party up with "prep buddies," each making sure they were getting themselves ready as well as their prep buddy. Andy was, of course, ready long before anyone else was, even with Emily, Sarah, Ash and Niko sharing him in the shower. He left the four of them in there, although they emerged not long after, each running a hair dryer while they applied their make up and got into their outfits. He was glad to escape the bathroom as early as he did. The girls were in go mode now, and the last thing he wanted to do was get in anyone's way, so he took the time to prep the house. The house had a large empty room that seemed like it was meant to be used as a ballroom. They'd used it as their poker room on and off, but it was also just a nice place where lots of people could stand around and talk. It also had French windows opening into the garden, so the lighting of the room was excellent. Andy figured it would be the best place for the group interviews to take place. Katie and Nicolette helped him get enough chairs for everyone into the room, while Jenny was prepping a large lunch for all of them, a massive batch of jambalaya, so they would have a bit of leftovers in case the 60 Minutes crew arrived hungry. They were scheduled to arrive at one in the afternoon, and had asked them not to make plans into the evening, so clearly the interviews would take as long as they took. Nicolette had been doing cleaning a bit at a time for the last two weeks, so the only thing that really needed to get a major touch up was Andy's writing room, which the 60 Minutes people had asked to use for their one on one interviews, something he'd agreed to, although he was going to lock his laptop away before they arrived. He didn't imagine they'd want to steal his writing, but he was notoriously paranoid when it came to that sort of thing. The cats seemed extremely confused by all the hustle and bustle, but also seemed content to just rub up against the leg of whoever was closest, and follow people around when it seemed like they were going from one place to another. Andy also took time to check in with both Tala and Jade, making sure they doing okay and still on board with talking to 60 Minutes, something he was glad he did. Tala, as expected, was starting to feel the mental itch from having been primed the day before but not yet imprinted, though she was handling it far better than Sheridan had, even if she wasn't as far along with it. She said she'd never felt quite so sexually frustrated before, but that it was a great feeling to have, and that she enjoyed her body acting with wills and wants of its own. Jade had news for him as well. "I want you to imprint me as soon as you're done imprinting Tala, Andy," the bubbly blonde said to him. "And I want you to record it. Not for 60 Minutes, though, but for my father. He has tried to control me my entire life, and I'm just friggin' sick of it, so I want him to see that his dang control is broken, and that I'm giving that control to another man, a better man. So you can use my phone to make the video of it, and I don't care what it shows and what it doesn't, as long as he sees my face when I'm taking that orgasm, when I'm starting that imprinting process, so he knows that he can't push me around any more." She'd been talking with a sort of intensity that he'd never seen from her before, and he let her finish. When she stopped talking, it was almost as thought it dawned on her how forcefully she'd been lecturing him on what to do. "That's, that's okay, right?" "You're sure about this, Jade?" he said, taking her hand in his own. "I'm sure he's done some rough things over the years, but he's still your father, and you want to be careful not to do anything you'll come to regret." "The only thing I regret is being that asshole's daughter," she said, wrath in her voice. "I know it's a lot to ask, especially since I'll be sucking you off, which means that it'll be hard not to get your cock at least a little in the shot, but it's important to me, okay? I'm, I'm reclaiming a part of myself that bastard's taken from me. So you asked me earlier what I wanted, and that's what I want. And I want him to see it while I'm imprinting, so there's no way he can talk to me about it." He nodded. "Alright then. You can change your mind at any time between now and then, but if you don't, then that's what we'll do, just for your father, just at your request. Although, you probably also want to record a message for him to go along with it before hand, so he's not just randomly getting that video without any context." She bristled in mirth, nodding quickly. "Good point. I'll record that on my phone after lunch." "Or during the time they're doing one on one interviews with anyone else. I know they're planning on doing smaller interviews, one with Emily and Sarah and one with just me, but I don't know who else they're going to want to talk to." "If they want to talk to me, they can, and if the 49ers organization has a problem with it, well, the heck with them, I don't have to continue being a cheerleader for them anymore." "Give it some thought. You've still got time." By lunchtime, everyone was ready except for the staff, who'd gone to get themselves ready once lunch had been served. Nobody was sure if the 60 Minutes crew would want to talk to them, but Andy felt it best to make sure that anyone who was willing to have a conversation with Katie Couric was in a state where they could. Nicolette had said she didn't care one way or another, and while Katie wasn't thrilled about the idea of being interviewed, she agreed that if Katie Couric wanted to talk to the two of them, she and Jenny would make themselves available for it. Over the course of lunch, it was clear the girls were doing everything they could to keep Andy's mind off the interview, as the family got to know both Tala and Jade better, while Whitney was still in Nicolette's chambers, in the middle of the imprinting process, and Fiona and Moira were in the early stages of it in the master bedroom. Tala had decided that her first project, once she got her workshop set up in the poolhouse, was going to be to make Andy a puzzle desk of his very own, and once that idea had been voiced, all the girls had thoughts and ideas on things to incorporate, with Sarah filling in suggestions based on his books, and Aisling filling in suggestions based on his life. Niko thought it should also incorporate all the girls' names, so that he might have a better time remembering everyone, which made everybody laugh, simply because the family had indeed grown so large. They were just finishing cleaning up after lunch when the doorbell rang, and Andy's heart felt like it stopped just a little. Ash poked him with a smile. "It's just the media, babes," she teased. "You'll do fine. Go say hi." He headed up from the dining room and down to the front door, where Nicolette was standing in the doorway, greeting the visitors. Standing in the doorway was Katie Couric, one of the best known journalists in America, with a couple of crew members behind her. "Hey, Ms. Couric," he said to her as he approached. "Welcome to my home." He held out his hand and she seemed thankful for the normalcy of shaking hands. "Please, Mr. Rook, call me Katie," she said, "and thank you for inviting us for the interview. I know the President's office had something to do with it, but you could have said no if you didn't want to. Having a couple of famous faces like Miss Stevens and Miss Washington selling the new normal will help the general population of the nation make more sense out of this tragic new normal." "Well, I'll call you Katie if you'll call me Andy," he said. "How's your tour of New Eden been so far? Niko mentioned you did a short interview with her at the base, although you mostly just talked with Dr. Varma and my boy Phil." "You're friends with Mr. Marcos?" she said. "Is that how you got in here?" "Well, there's a story behind that. I can tell you now, but I suspect you'd rather get it down on camera. It's not all that long a story, nor is it really that interesting. I suspect Phil's story was a lot more engaging than mine will be." "Did you get your writing room all set up for our interview?" "I did," he said, "and we also set up our ballroom with chairs, so you can talk to all of us together first. I know Em and Sarah are willing to talk to you either in their little studio, or you can use my writing study instead. It's up to you." "I'll have my team take a look at both locations while we're getting set up in the ballroom. Is everyone in the house willing to take part in the interviews?" "Two of my partners have chosen not to take part, simply because they aren't sure how their employers would react to it, but everyone else in the house is willing to chat," he said, as he felt a hand sliding onto his shoulder. He turned around to see Lauren standing behind him. "Actually, Andy, Sheridan and I have decided we're going to do it anyway, and if the Niners or the people at Cirque have a problem with it, fuck'em, we'll sue their asses into the ground," the tall blonde Aussie told him. "If this is gonna be the new normal, pretendin' like it's not is just as bad as sayin' it ain't, so we'll be there." "You're sure, Lauren?" he asked her, smoothing his hand over her hip, knowing it usually soothed her nervous when she was wound up. She placed her hand over his and gave it a soft squeeze, smiling at him. "Yeh, 'sides I dunno how much of management's gone at this point already. You gambled with us, so let us have a turn at the plow fer a change." He leaned up and kissed her softly. "Well, I've known you long enough, hon, to know if your mind's made up, there's no point in trying to talk you out of it." Andy glanced back at Katie Couric, shrugging. "Guess you get your pick of the litter then." Behind her, the crew had started ferrying in lights, tripods and camera equipment. While Andy had thought he'd only seen two additional people at first, it turned out Katie Couric traveled with a crew of nine, and there had been a second and third S U V behind the van that he hadn't seen. It felt a little like his house was being invaded, but he did his best to not get in anyone's way, as Nicolette started to lead a producer away, to show her where both Andy's writing room and the actresses' little studio were located. "C'mon, I'll take you down to the ballroom, and we can get settled there," he said, starting to lead Katie and her two companions down the hallway. One of them, Geraldine Amato, was the unit's head producer, and the other, Poppy Delgato, was the lead camera woman. "Was your crew mostly women before the plague hit?" "Mostly," she said, "although I've got a couple of men in here as well, and thankfully, they've been given the treatment via their wives. My husband has been getting it through myself as well, for about a month now." "I'm a little surprised they let your whole crew into New Eden," he said, as they headed down the stairs to the lower level. "They've been fairly paranoid about letting people in, I've been told, so I imagine you had to quarantine for a little bit after you got here." "We did," she said, stopping to look at one of the promotional posters on the wall, this one in particular for "The Trouble With Werebears." She glanced over at him with that winning smile she loved flashing on the news regularly. "In fact, Geraldine here's now sharing my husband with me, because she didn't have anyone before hand, and needed someone she could count on to be around while doing her job." She reached up and tapped at the words 'New York Times Bestselling Author' on the poster. "It says here you're a bestselling author, but I have to admit that before preparing for this interview, I'd never heard of you." He shrugged with a little smile. "There's leagues of difference between a Bestselling Fiction author and a Bestselling Genre Fiction author, I'm afraid. When you're talking non genre, you're talking hundreds of thousands of copies, but for genre, well, drop a zero off there, so if you're not into urban fantasy, I won't take it as a slight. Jim Butcher, who's probably the most popular of us working in the field, only sold a couple hundred thousand copies for his most recent Dresden Files book, and that series has a huge following, far bigger than my little corner. Hell, I think the reason a publisher finally took a gamble on me was that I was playing in a similar wheelhouse and they were hoping to piggyback off his success." "E. F. Winston is a genre writer, but her books have sold in the hundreds of millions," Katie countered. "So clearly there are breakout stars." "Ah, but those are young adult books, and the teen fiction genre has a handful of crossover success that never seemed to roll over into other things in our genres," he sighed. "The Dagger Academy books were definitely science fiction, but you didn't see a spike in sales for people like John Scalzi or William Gibson when those books took off, did you? The same for those Harry Potter books. Sold by the truckload, and yet, did many of those kids go and read works from Roger Zelazny, Fred Saberhagen, Emma Bull, Terry Pratchett, Steven Brust, Simon R. Green or any of the other massively prolific fantasy masterminds we've had working for decades? No, we're not all that different than any other form of entertainment,  everyone's just hoping that they get one big bite from the apple at some point during their career." "But I heard they're making a movie based on your books?" "Well, when two high profile actresses are willing to sign onto a project, that goes a long way into pushing it out of Movie Hell," he laughed. "The option had been signed years before that, but once Sarah and Emily expressed interest in playing supporting roles, well, that got the whole thing into turnaround quite quickly. It's like the screenwriter William Goldman always said, 'Nobody in Hollywood knows anything.'" Andy shrugged a little bit as they entered the ballroom. "Besides, I figured you'd want to get all this out during the on camera interview." "Oh, we'll go over it again then, but it doesn't hurt to do a little pre camera screening, just so I know what kinds of things you're likely to say, so I can facilitate the conversation in moving in the right directions," she said. "You've been interviewed several times before. Hasn't anyone ever done that?" "Nope," he said, moving to sit in one of the chairs in the front row. "But then again, I've never been interviewed for television before." They'd originally set up the 17 chairs as one chair facing two rows of eight, but Geraldine started moving the two rows of eight into four staggered rows of four. "We'll bring in some risers, so we can get everyone into one big shot," Geraldine told Katie. Poppy nodded. "We'll need to set up four cameras in here," she said, as she started to help Geraldine block out the room. "One for the group shot, one for Katie, one for Andy and one to rove to whoever's answering questions in the group setting. We can use fixed cameras for the first three, and I'll manage the fourth. We'll have them all rolling all the time and you can just pick and choose what you want in the editing room." "How do you want to order them, Katie?" Geraldine asked her. "Well, Andy here in the front corner, then Niko, the woman we interviewed yesterday next to him. That'll be our link between the segments. Then Sarah and Emily next to her, because star power up front. Beyond that, we can figure it out." "I'd like to insist Aisling, my first partner, be up front with me," he said, just as Ash was walking into the room, along with Emily. "The balance might be a little weird," Poppy frowned. "No no," Geraldine, "we can make that work. We'll just do five in front and three in the top row, so we frame Andy in the center, with Niko and Aisling on one side, Emily and Sarah on the other." "Good," Katie said, "that reinforces the whole 'large family' front and forward as our first visual cue, so that the viewer has to confront it right away. Does that work for you?" she said, asking Andy his opinion for the first time. "That'll work," he replied. "You can even put the three staff at the back, since they're willing to be here for this, but aren't likely to volunteer much in the way of answers." "Jenny and Katie, er, Kate might not, Master," Nicolette said, entering the room with the rest of Katie Couric's crew in tow, "but I'm certainly planning on speaking my mind given a chance, because I don't want people to be given the wrong idea." "What's the wrong idea?" Katie asked, tilting her head just a little bit. "That we're here involuntarily, or that this isn't what we wanted, or, hell, even that Master Rook here wouldn't let us change if we wanted," the French maid teased. "You know if I had a nickel for every time he's sort of reminded me I don't have to call him Master, and I've had to remind him that I like calling him Master, well, I could enjoy a nice two week stay in the Bahamas, once it's opened up again. In fact, little secret, every time he reminds me of it lately, I've just gone out of my way to say it even more, so I can watch him blush." "I think you like watching him blush," Ash said, moving to close in around Andy. "Katie Couric," Andy said, "this is my first partner, Ash Blake, and I'm sure you've probably already met Emily Stevens." Katie made it a point to shake Ash's hand first. "A pleasure, Miss Blake." She then turned to Emily, taking the tiny blonde's hand and shaking it as well. "I've actually interviewed you before, Miss Stevens, although I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't remember. You seemed quite busy on that press junket, and I know they were just wheeling journalists in and out for you." "I keep a diary of anyone who's interviewing me, Ms. Couric," Em said, a wry grin on her face, "so I assure you, I remember the interview quite well. Any surprises we should be wary of?" "Oh, I've always got a few things planned to lighten up an interview," the journalist said, somewhat evasively. "It's not like I'm interviewing Vladimir Putin or anything. You're not going to have me murdered for a question you don't like." "Well," the Brit said, "I still wouldn't anger Sarah too much. She's, excitable, and prone to fits of exaggeration." "I'm fairly certain she's never poisoned anyone to win a role, Em," Andy said to her. Emily clicked her tongue in amusement. "Let's not be too hasty with that judgment, Andy. Anyway, shall I round everyone up and we can get started?" "Yes, I think my team will be ready to start in about twenty minutes, so if you can get everyone together, that would be excellent." By the time all the girls were in the ballroom, risers had been placed under the seats, the lights and sound were set up, a boom microphone used to cover the majority of the girls, although clip on mics were used for Katie and Andy. They also had a handheld microphone that the girls could pass around if anyone wanted to give a detailed answer. They were structured as had been discussed, with Niko and Aisling to Andy's left in the front row, and Emily and Sarah to his right. Behind them, Lauren, Taylor, Sheridan and Piper sat. The third row had Asha, Hannah, Tala and Jade. In the back row sat the staff, Kate (his Katie), Jenny and Nicolette. All of the fiancees were up front, and everyone else was sat in order of arrival, with the exception of the staff, who were at the back, at their own request. It felt right that Ash was on one side of him and Emily was on the other, as if the two of them wanted to be close in case he needed support. It wasn't until Andy saw it framed up in the monitor as they were showing Katie that it dawned on him just how big his household was growing, and even still, he knew there were already three more in the house not in this shot. He was always aware of how big his family was, but seeing everyone together in one single framing shot, it really drove the size of it home, and it felt huge. "Okay, Andy, let's start with how you telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got here." For the next few minutes, Andy gave the shortest possible version of his bio, how he'd moved to California a decade and a half ago, his writing for the Silicon Valley companies, as well as his novels, which transitioned nicely into him talking about how he got his vaunted level 5 status, regaling 60 Minutes with the story of how the guy who'd come to test them, Dave, had been a big fan and given he and his then roommate Eric level 5 status as a return gift for Andy having given him an advanced copy of his next novel. "I hope I'm not getting Dave in any trouble by telling that story," he finished. "No no, each member of the initial Bay Area team was given five level 5 statuses to give away as they saw fit," Katie Couric told him. "Most of them just gave them to friends or family, but Dr. David Straussman hadn't used any of his until he met you, and there were no rules on who he could or couldn't give them to, so that's fine." "Straussman," Andy repeated. "Huh. You know, I didn't even know his last name until right now. I hope he's doing okay." "He's doing quite well," Niko said. "I see him every so often wandering around the base." "So Andy," Katie said, bringing them back on task, "how did you fill out the form you were given with the testing process?" "Well," Andy said, "Dave stressed to us when he gave us the link that we should be honest, and to answer the questions knowing we wouldn't be judged for our responses. I don't actually remember a lot of it, because it was a very long questionnaire, like, ridiculously thorough. But I suppose what you're getting at is what key things do I remember answering." "Yes, that's what I'm asking." "There were definitely questions about my sexual preferences, like, a lot of those, but there were also basic demographic questions about what range of people I felt comfortable dating, was I into women, men or both, and how did I feel about polyamory." "Did that surprise you?" she asked him. "Sure, but not as much as I expect it probably shocked people back in the Midwest. It's not what I would call common place around here, but you see it mentioned often enough in people's online dating profiles that most people have at least some awareness of it here in the Bay." "And how did you answer the polyamory question?" "I actually put 'no preference,' but you have to remember, to some extent when this started, we thought this was all some temporary thing, and we certainly didn't know that the casualties to men in America were going to be as high as they were," Andy said, sighing a little bit, Ash taking his hand, squeezing it reassuringly. "Do you remember what ages you put that you would be comfortable with?" "The low end was set to 18, and I didn't adjust it, and I set the high end to 35. I suspected no one younger than their mid twenties would be interested in me, so the low end didn't really matter." "You can start to see how his mind works," Hannah teased, "and how he just misses things sometimes." That let the girls have a soft laugh, releasing a little bit of the tension. "Were there any things that you said were absolute deal breakers?" Katie asked. "Just two," Andy admitted. "Must not be allergic to cats, and must not smoke, although we ended up with someone who vapes." "And who is that?" "That'd be me," Sheridan said, "but I'm working on quitting, so, it's a stopgap on the way to that. And it's been much easier stepping down from that than it was stepping to that from smoking." "Who showed up first?" "Aisling showed up I think it was actually the very next day," Andy said. "I was a little surprised how quickly everything moved. Usually anything the government's managing is a total clusterfuck, but I think since we were basically right by the site where the treatment was developed, they were rushing it out in order to keep as many people safe as they could." "Aisling, let me ask you Aisling, was Andy the sort of man you dreamed about ending up with when you entered into the process?" "At first, my head was a little clouded, because the process when it started wasn't as refined as it is now, so when I met Andy, my mind was a little fogged up with lust, but he ticked all the boxes of what I wanted out of a man. He didn't look exactly like I expected him to, but yeah, within a couple of days, I knew I loved him pretty hard. Still do." "Would he have been the kind of person you would've gravitated to in a bar?" Katie asked her. "I would've thought he was cute, but I was horrible at dating, and only had a couple'a boyfriends before him, so I'm a bad judge of character for that sort of question." "How many of you would've approached Andy in a bar?" Katie asked the group of them. Andy chuckled, rolling his eyes. "Be honest." Sarah put her hand up immediately, and Tala raised her hand as well, as the rest of the group giggled a little bit. "As progressive as we all like to think we are, Katie," Niko said, "women still generally don't approach men in bars, so maybe that's more on us than saying anything about our tastes." "Sarah, I saw you put your hand up," Katie asked. "You're an Oscar nominated actress who's know worldwide. What about Andy would've made you approach him?" Over the next couple of minutes, Sarah and Emily related the story of how they'd attended one of Andy's Q&As at ComicCon in costume, so that nobody would recognize them, and talked about how she'd had a crush on him because of his writing for a long time, which Katie laughed about, and Andy was certain would make for good television. "So how many of you would say you're in love with Andy now?" she asked the group after Sarah finished her story. About half of women raised their hands, although several of the others looked like they were considering raising their hands. The front row all raised their hands, as expected, but Lauren and Piper also raised their hands, which surprised Andy a little. "So those of you who wouldn't say you're in love with him, how would you describe your relationship with him?" "Deep respect and affection, but not at the love stage, not yet anyway," Sheridan said. Most of the other girls seemed to nod and agree with that. "Why do you say 'not yet,' Sheridan?" "You have to keep in mind, Katie, a lot of us have only known Andy a few weeks right now," she said, leaning forward just a little bit. "We had to make probably the biggest choice of our lives, and we had to do it basically on a hunch. Our choices were to defer treatment and go on being afraid we were going to die, or take the treatment and get paired up with a man for the indefinite future. That's a hell of a gamble to ask of anyone." "Who's unhappy with the decision they made, raise your hand," Katie said, only to get no hands raised in response. "Everyone's happy being paired with Andy, maybe for the rest of your lives?" "Look, Ms. Couric," Hannah said. "You're going to find every one of us girls has a different story, a unique story, and each one of us came to where we are now on an entirely different path, m'kay? But we'll all tell you the same thing,  Andy's treated us with an immense amount of respect and affection, and he's made sure that nobody's doing anything they aren't comfortable with. Shit, he's even done stuff he's been a little uncomfortable with because it's made us feel more comfortable, and how many women can say that about their partner? So while a bunch of us aren't in love with him, yet, we all admire and respect how much he's gone out of his way to make sure we feel like we're part of a goddamn family, a good goddamn family." "Do you want to continue to grow the family, Andy?" "If you ask him," Em said, jumping in before he could respond, "he wanted to stop growing it a while ago." All the girls laughed at that. "But at this point, I think we're all doing what we can to stick together, and a lot of us girls wanted to protect our friends, to keep them safe, so we took turns presenting them all to Andy, trying to convince him to bring them into our home and into our family." "Everyone had someone they wanted to pitch?" Katie said, smiling at Andy. "That must have been overwhelming." "Not everyone wanted to pitch someone, but almost everyone," he said with a laugh. "And it was a lot of names and faces that were presented all at once. I said upfront, though, that I wasn't going to bring everyone on, and that there was only so much of me to go around. In the end, I think we mostly made it work to everyone's satisfaction." "So how many more people are coming?" "Well, we have three people who are in the imprinting process right now, and two more people arriving tomorrow, and if I have any say in the matter, that will absolutely, positively, definitively be the limit of women I can handle in my life," he chuckled. "And how much say do you actually have in that matter, Andy?" "Very little!" Emily joked, and all the girls laughed, as did Katie. "It would take a super compelling case for us to add, like, anyone else to the family past that," Sarah said, "but I think it's totally for the best that we never say never. Sometimes exceptions have to be made." "Like I told you yesterday, Katie," Niko said, "I think if Andy had total control of the matter, he would've probably put a hard limit in after myself, Ash and Lauren were in his life. He told me multiple times early on that he barely felt like he deserved one amazing woman, and at that point, he already had three, so it's been a growth process." "But this is the new normal now," Katie said. "Or at least it's going to be. Families with one man and several women, because so many men in the US have died. Raise your hand if you know a man who's lost their life to the plague here in the US." All the women raised their hands, and of course Andy had his raised as well. "How does that feel?" "I think we're all suffering from some degree of post traumatic stress disorder," Piper said. "The losses, they're too big for any of us to process, so we're sort of clinging to one another, holding on to the only family that we know for certain that we can protect." "Piper, you were actually supposed to have competed in the Olympics by now. How does that feel, knowing that when it starts up again next year, the US basically doesn't have almost any of their male athletes to compete?" "At this point, it's impossible for it to even make sense in my head any more, Katie," she sighed. "Most of the people I trained with have died over the last several months. A lot of my trainers died. I've lost colleagues, friends and family members. I don't even know where to start mourning, because there's so damn many people to mourn. I consider myself lucky that my sister's husband took everything seriously, and completely refused to leave the house this year since the word of the plague got out." "It's something we've talked about in here a bunch," Andy said. "And we sort of keep coming back to that famous Stalin quote. 'A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.' It's so many dead men that the mind can't even make sense of it. It's like 9/11, but if each of the Twin Towers was holding exclusively almost every man each of us knew and loved. My own brother died a few weeks back, and he was one of the kindest and most careful souls I know, but he ran out to help someone get their storm shutters up before a particular bad thunderstorm rolled through, and a few weeks later, he was just gone, almost overnight. It happened so fast, I didn't even hear about it until after he was already gone." "It's actually unproven that's a real Stalin quote," Tala said. "I read an article that said it was attributed to a French humorist." "Sure, but even if Stalin didn't say it," Andy said, "it's still pretty relevant here. It doesn't really matter who said it, it's the sentiment that's important. We're talking about a matter of scale, and the human mind's capacity to comprehend that scale. At the end of the day, that's a hell of a lot for anyone to handle. So we're all just doing our best." "Normally," Emily said, "when a friend or loved one dies, there is typically a funeral or a wake, a gathering of all that person's surviving circle coming together, to celebrate their passing and remember them, but we have been denied that, and it has made all their passings that much harder to process, somehow transformed them all into seeming less real, because our normal emotional milestones haven't happened along the way. We are adrift in our emotional morass." "That's true," Katie said. "We, as Americans, haven't had to confront all the deaths simply because we aren't allowed to go out and do so, and that somehow makes it feel less concrete." "It hits you every day," Jade said, "little by little. Lauren described it to me a few weeks ago as a slow motion car crash that we're all stuck in, and nobody can get out of." "So, Jade, I understand you're one of the newest arrivals here," Katie said. "Have you gone through the imprinting process yet?" "Not yet," she said. "Tala and I arrived yesterday, but we wanted to wait a little bit, to spend some time with Andy and his family, to makes sure that we would be happy getting melted into their pot. I'm happy to say we're both going to do it, but it's the kind of commitment you gotta be certain of, you know?" "Have you seen what the imprinting process is like?" "Um, yes?" she said, trying not to blush a little. "When we arrived yesterday, we had a third person with us, another woman who was joining the staff and faculty of the house, but not the family itself, a young woman named Whitney." "So, Andy, explain to me the difference between family and staff, and how you decide that." He immediately put his hands up, almost like he was at gunpoint. "First and foremost, I do not decide that," he laughed, and all the girls laughed with him. "When the military came and relocated us from our little condo and brought us here to New Eden, the house also came with three members of staff attached with it, all of whom I was told had been selected to mesh with me, and whose boxes I would tick as well." "That was the three of you in the back, Nicolette, Jenny and Kate, yes?" Katie asked. "We had all been told a bit about Andy before he arrived," Nicolette said, "and his answers to the questionnaire implied that he would eventually be willing to play into our tastes." "Eventually?" Katie asked. "Well, sure," Nicolette giggled. "I know the first few times I called him Master, it rattled his cage a little bit, but he eventually realized I liked saying it, and nobody was making me do it. One of the things that we girls all figured out early on was that just because Andy was okay with something didn't mean he had any real experience with it, so we would need to hand hold him a bit through it. So while Andy said he was okay with bondage and discipline stuff in his questionnaire, he didn't have any real practical experience in it. So we've found ways to teach him about that kind of thing without it ever feeling like we were lecturing to him. He sort of set that expectation up front when he told us communication was everything, and he couldn't have been more right." "And Kate? I hear that you and Jenny had a different experience," Katie asked. "Damn, uh? Andy?" Kate (his Katie) asked. "How real you want us to get here?" "We're not hiding anything," he chuckled, "so fire away." "So, uh, Katie," Kate coughed. "I'm actually a lesbian. Not a bisexual who mostly identifies as a lesbian, I mean straight up, hardcore, one hundred percent, unrepentant fully committed lesbian. And Jenny here is my wife, but she's bisexual." "Hi!" Jenny cheerily said with a wave. "When we signed up for this, we, ah, we were planning on hiding that from Andy, and I was simply going to fake it, and go along with the ruse, so that we could stay together, and we could still get the treatment, which, as you already know, takes both a female and a male component to work," she sighed. "So I, er, we lied, and claimed we were both bisexual. Since we were married, wherever we went, we were going to go together, and we figured we could just keep up that lie as long as we needed and make it work." "And what happened?" Katie asked. "Day two, I folded, before we'd even been imprinted," Jenny said with a shrug. "When we met him, Andy wasn't at all what any of us were expecting him to be, but I mean that in a really good way. It didn't feel right lying to him. We'd had a few days together before he showed up, the three of us, us two and Nicolette. We'd talked about it, and Nicolette volunteered to go first, so that if it didn't go well, my Katie and I could request to be moved elsewhere, since we were a little more particular than she was about how we got paired up." "What do you mean, you folded?" "I started talking to Andy, and, and it all just came tumbling out, how we were a little unsure, how my Katie wasn't really into men, and, I just felt like I had to tell him everything before we were committed to anything." "How did you react to that, Andy?" "I could tell they were afraid that I was going to be angry," Andy said, his tone as breezy and relaxed as he could keep it, "but I wasn't. Why would I be? I simply wanted to talk with them about how they wanted to handle it, because at that point, I knew a bit more about the physiological affects of the treatment than they did, so I wanted to prepare them for it, if they wanted to move forward." "Do you still consider yourself a lesbian, Kate?" Katie asked her. "Absolutely. I don't feel any sexual attraction to Andy what so ever," she said. "Now, with that said, I can also admit that I have received biochemically induced orgasms from him regularly as part of the treatment process, and I don't think that affects my sexual identity in any way. But Andy and I haven't ever had direct sex. He's offered, but he's also never pressured. I might take him up on it some day, to see if the chemical and neurological changes the treatment have made to me might compensate for my lack of sexual attraction to him, but then again, I may not. That's my decision, well, our decision, to make," she said, taking Jenny's hand in hers. "And nobody's going to tell me who and what I am. I get to decide that, and fuck anyone who says otherwise." "So if you haven't had direct sex with him, how are you getting what you need from him to keep your treatment managed? Go ahead and be as direct as you want, and we can bleep parts of it out if we need to, but I think they're just going to air it as we send it." "Well, to be frank about it, I don't ever actually fuck Andy, but that doesn't mean I don't swallow his semen. I do that around once a week, either directly from him, or second hand from my wife. I consider sucking his cock just to be another task around the house that needs doing now and again. No offense, Andy." He laughed, waving a hand in his air. "None taken, but you already know that." "And that's enough?" Katie asked. "Just swallowing semen, either directly or second hand?" Kate nodded. "It's fine. I haven't had any adverse side effects, and it's easy enough right before he's about to pop for him to point it elsewhere, or for Jenny and I to split it after he does pop. I'm never going to have an encounter with Andy without Jenny present, and she's always my focus, not him, because she's my wife, and he's just, my boss." "And everyone in the house is okay with that?" "This is the world we live in now," Lauren said. "Lotsa fellas used to get all hung up onna things that they did and didn't like, but who's got time for that anymore? Life's too short to hold onta old grudges, so if we can, we're all gonna take it on the chin and just keep movin' on together." "Now Lauren, I understand you're also a lesbian." "Nah Katie," the tall blonde Aussie corrected. "I'm definitely bisexual, but I just lean a lot more towards the ladies than I do the fellas. I very much enjoy my sexual encounters with Andy, but I'm not one of his primary partners, despite showing up so early. I'm in love with him, like he is with me, but he's not my Big Love, if you folla. I've got me own primary partner here, in Taylor. We'd split before New Eden, and when she came back, I was right pissed off, but we've worked it out, and now she and I are back to being a couple again." "Does that put you on the outs with Andy?" "Nah," she laughed, "it just means the master bed doesn't need triple reinforcement. I love Andy and all he's done for me, for alla us, but I ain't interested in being one of his wives. I wanna marry Taylor at some point, but that doesn't mean I don' wanna stay part of this family. That works for us, so, y'know, fair play." "How many people do sleep in bed with you on any given night, Andy?" "There's always at least five of us in the bed," he answered. "Myself, Ash, Niko, Emily and Sarah. But sometimes more people want to cram in, and we never say no." "What's the most the bed's ever held for a night?" "Oh, uh, everyone who isn't staff, I think, but last week, so before some people had arrived," he said, trying to remember, "so, what, 11?" "Yes, that was the maximum. On the day when we found out Andy's brother died," Emily said, "we all crawled into bed with him and just wrapped our arms around him, as we all shared a good cry, then fell asleep holding one another, but that's extremely uncommon." "Five or six would definitely be the average," Ash said. "So the four of you would say you're closer to Andy than the rest of the women in the house?" "Well, we're all his fiancees, so we'd better be, Katie!" Sarah laughed. "He asked Ash first, and then Niko asked him before he could even get the words out to her, so once he freakin' told us, me and Em, we both demanded he propose to us as well immediately, because we come as a package deal." "What do you mean by that, Sarah?" "Okay, well, here's the thing. Emily and I have been a couple for almost two years now, but we're both, well, we're both totally into dudes and chicks. So while we super love each other, we also knew we were going to need a regular cock in the equation. When we found out that the writer of my favorite freaking book series of all time was in play, we decided we had to freaking have him." Andy was a little amazed Sarah could do so much to self censor, but realized she'd probably been doing it for interviews forever. "So you put in a request for the two of you to be paired up with Andy, and the government made that happen?" There was a long pause, as everyone was trying to decide what to say and how to say it, but eventually Emily broke the silence. "Something like that, yes," she lied. "We'll put a pin in that and come back to it later," Katie said, and Andy's guard was immediately up. He'd been wondering what sort of problems this interview was going to throw up, and now he felt like he knew what one of them was. "Have you had to send anyone back, Andy? Had any partners show up that you didn't think would be compatible?" "Just one," he admitted. "My ex girlfriend was sent to me, because she hadn't disclosed that we'd been together about a decade ago. She was eager to rekindle the relationship, but I was not. It ended on terms that made me unwilling to revisit it again, so we helped her make other arrangements. We hadn't been compatible back then, and I didn't feel comfortable gambling that she'd grown enough that I would've been compatible with her now." "You didn't send her back to the government?" "New Eden isn't that large of a community, so sometimes we just see if we can make things work among ourselves first, and we found a solution that everyone seemed happy with, including my ex. In fact, the people that my partners here pitched to me that I didn't think would be good matches for our family, we worked to pair them up with other people here in New Eden instead, so they were still local and safe. It's a small town, so we have to look out for one another. Problems here are rare and generally manageable." "Not always, though, we've heard," Katie said. "I take it you've heard about the fatality that New Eden had last week?" Everyone nodded. "It was horrible, hearing about someone dying from something so easily preventable," Hannah said. "Like, they totes warned us about that ish before we left the base, so why the hell would someone chance it?" "They did warn you?" "Very thoroughly," Emily insisted, horror in her voice. "They told us multiple times, again and again and again, that if we took in semen from any man other than the one we were paired up with, it would be toxic, if not fatal. They even showed us a recording of a woman who'd already been imprinted getting semen from a man she wasn't paired up with on her skin, and the large, violent rash that immediately broke out. I am told they show that footage to everyone, to drive the point home. Seeing that sort of instantaneous reaction should've been enough to discourage anyone from testing those boundaries." "They're talking on base about showing some of the autopsy photos from the fatality to the people who are getting the treatment now," Niko said, "to make sure everyone understands how serious it is not to dally outside your family." "Have any of you ever been tempted?" "I think we all value our lives too much for that," Sarah joked. "And love Andy far too much for that," Ash said. "Definitely," Emily agreed. "Why would anyone task such a pointless risk?" "Did any of you know the woman who died, or the man she partook from that killed her?" Katie asked them. "I met her briefly," Andy said, "but I wouldn't say I knew her. And none of us ever even met the man accused of doing it to her." "Major Peters told us yesterday he's currently imprisoned at the base, pending local law enforcement being able to take custody of him. They're going to charge him with murder, they were telling us." "They should," Sarah said. "They told everyone when they brought them here to New Eden what would happen if people engaged in any form of sexual activity with anyone they're not paired with, and they fucking did it anyway!" "The problem," Andy sighed, "is that the man, whoever he is, already has multiple women paired up with him, which means that whatever they do to him is going to affect those women as well, even if it's just that they have to come to a prison for their weekly intake. Those women are already tied to him. I'm sure they're looking into some way to remove the binding and reimprint a woman onto a new person, but there's only so many problems they can solve at once." "Does it bother any of you that your health is tied to Andy's?" Katie asked the group. "Bother is the wrong word," Sheridan said, annoyance in her tone of voice. "Concern is the right word. We're very protective of Andy, because he knows our lives are all fully dependent on his for the time being, and that if he dies, we all probably die with him. So, sure, we're concerned, but I think all of us feel comfortable in knowing that Andy's got our best interests at heart, and is keeping that all in mind." "One of the two people arriving tomorrow is going to be his bodyguard," Jenny said. "A friend of mine from college, who's going to guard his life with her own." "Who's the other?" "A director friend of mine," Emily said, "whom I thought would be an excellent addition to the house. She was one of the AD's on some of the latter Dagger Academy movies." Katie Couric clapped her hands together. "Okay, why don't we take a break, then do some of the one on ones, and then we can circle back and do another group interview to close out the day. Our team can leave you one of our cameras here tonight, so you can get that video of someone being imprinted, and we'll come by and pick it up tomorrow before we leave town. We appreciate you trusting us with that, as I know it can't have been an easy decision to make, but I think that footage will go a long way to convincing people this treatment is in their best interest. As for today, we'll go ahead and finish getting set up in Andy's office, and when you're ready Andy, we can sit down and do our one on one and drill down on some things I've got further questions on." "Sure," he said, as all the girls were standing up and stretching. "Let me go grab a quick drink, and I'll meet you in my office in about ten minutes, okay?" "Sounds good." Katie and her crew were escorted by Nicolette down to Andy's office, while the girls stood up and started chatting among themselves, while Emily and Ash closed it around Andy. "That went about as well as can be expected," Emily said to them. "I feel like we've got some kind of curveball coming," Ash said, taking Andy's hand in her left and Emily's hand in her right. "After you're done, Andy, we'll talk a bit again. I'm sure you'll get surprises before any of us do." He took his time, grabbed a bottle of Vanilla Coke, drank it then headed down to his office, which today felt a little like going into a lion's den. With all the girls in the ballroom, the large group session had allowed the attention to bounce around a great deal, and he felt like he could catch his breath, but here, it was just going to be the two of them, and he didn't have anyone to run interference for him from time to time. Andy headed into his office and saw that even his cats weren't in there, likely having been moved by the production crew, as Andy moved to sit down in his writing chair, Katie Couric sitting across from him. "Are you ready?" she said to him. "Yep," he answered. "Let's do it." After the mics were checked, the cameras were tested and the lights were adjusting, Andy's one on one began with a softball question. "So how'd you fall into writing urban fantasy, Andy?" "The best advice I ever got was 'if the stories you want to read don't exist in the world, it's your job to put them there,' so I've stuck with that," he said. "I knew what kind of stories I wanted to read, and nobody was really writing those, a sort of fantasy western/samurai hybrid. I mean, you had Butcher's Dresden books, but those were more of fantasy noir hybrids, and I wanted to get into the sort of stories that people like Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone used to tell, where you could kill off characters, where actions had consequences and where you never really knew when the next gunfight was coming, because it felt like they could happen at any time. Joe Abercrombie does it in high fantasy, but I wanted something that was happening in our time, in our world.&am

We discuss the return of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files and Frank Herbert's posthumous SFWA Infinity Award, Audible's AI narration plans and Amazon's cancellation of The Wheel of Time—while nominating hamburg steak and vegan enchiladas and sharing listener stories from Matt Dinniman's event. We round out the show with in-depth discussions of The Lives of Tao and Mickey 7.

Grab your pocket fan and a glass of ice water as the boys are off to the Underworld this week as we venture to hell in 3 separate books and work to close shut the jaws of Oblivion.Best BooksBug Wars #3Absolute Wonder Woman #7Book BlurbsJustice League Unlimited #6, Green Lantern #22, The Mummy #2, Hornsby and Halo #6, Superman #25, New Champions #4, and X-Force #10B-SegmentThe Elder Scrolls IV: OblIVionUncle's One More ThingDeath Masks: Book 5 of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

The Blasters & Blades PodcastThe long-awaited episode where we dive into the iconic Codex Alera universe by Jim Butcher. We talked about the origin of this series and then why we love it. It was a blast, and I am now convinced that I need to read it for myself! This time we've got James JE Pittman, Jesse James Fain and Wayland Smith on to talk nerdy with us. This was a fun panel, so check out this episode. Lend us your eyes and ears, you won't be sorry!! Co-Hosts: JR Handley (Author) (Grunt)Nick Garber (Comic Book Artist) (Super Grunt)Madam Stabby Stab (Uber Fan) (Horror Nerd)We work for free, so if you wanna throw a few pennies our way there is a linked Buy Me A Coffee site where you can do so. Just mention the podcast in the comments when you donate, and I'll keep the sacred bean water boiling!Support the Show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AuthorJRHandley Our LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/blastersandbladespodcast Today's SponsorA Spring for Spears by Katie J Cross and Derek Siddoway: https://katiecrossbooks.com/products/spring-for-spears Coffee Brand Coffee Affiliate Support the Show: https://coffeebrandcoffee.com/?ref=y4GWASiVorJZDb Discount Code: PodcastGrunts Coupon Code Gets you 10% offRead the books that spawned this episode!Codex Alera by Jim Butcher: https://www.amazon.com/Codex-Alera-6-book-series/dp/B0841YPYWT Codex Alera Good Reads: https://www.goodreads.com/series/45545-codex-alera Codex Alera Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furies_of_Calderon Jim Butcher's Website: https://www.jim-butcher.com/books/alera Jim Butcher's Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Butcher Follow James JE Pitman on social mediaJames' LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/j.e.pittman James' Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/j.e.-pittman/author/B0BRRWBW9F James' Website: https://www.halfacrepond.com/ James' Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jepittmanwrites James' Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/j.e.pittman/Follow Jesse James Fain on social mediaJesse's Amazon: http://amazon.com/author/jessejamesfain Jesse's Website: https://outlawauthor.com/ Jesse's Twitter: https://x.com/JesseJamesBooks Jesse's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/JesseJamesFain Jesse's Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/OutlawAuthor/ Jesse's Substack: https://jessejamesfain.substack.com/ Follow Wayland Smith on social mediaWayland's Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Wayland-Smith/author/B008LQS9NK Wayland's Website: https://waylandsmithauthor.com/ Wayland's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008754049125 Wayland's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waylandsmithauthor/ Wayland's BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/waylandsmith.bsky.social Wayland's GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6571201.Wayland_Smith Comic Book Clog: https://comicbookclog.com/ #scifishenanigans #scifishenaniganspodcast #bbp #blastersandblades #blastersandbladespodcast #podcast #scifipodcast #fantasypodcast #scifi #fantasy #books #rpg #comics #fandom #literature #comedy #veteran #army #armyranger #ranger #scififan #redshirts #scifiworld #sciencefiction #scifidaily #scificoncept #podcastersofinstagram #scificons #podcastlife #podcastsofinstagram #scifibooks #awardwinningscifi #newepisode #podcastersofinstagram #podcastaddict #podcast #scifigeek #scifibook #sfv #scifivisionaries #firesidechat #chat #panel #fireside #religionquestion #coffee #tea #coffeeortea #JamesJEPittman #JEPittman #JamesPittman #JesseJamesFain #OutlawAuthor #OutlawAuthorJesseJames #WaylandSmith #starwars #jedi #georgelucas #lucasfilms #startrek #trekkie #firefly #serenity #browncoat #wheeloftime #wot #robertjordan #brandonsanderson #gameofthrones #got #grrm #georgerrmartin #ChroniclesofNarnia #CSLewis #Velociraptor #TyrannusRex #Trex #JimButcher #CodexAlera #ASpringForSpears #KatieCross #DerekAlanSiddoway #CinderSpires #RomanLegion #LostRomanLegion #LostRomanLegions #Knight #General #Magic #Arcane #LoricaSegmentata #LoricaLamminata

On this episode, Trevor Dykes, a fantasy reader who has written his own fantasy saga, and I discuss how he fits in reading as a father of two young kiddos, what piques his interest in a fantasy, and how much of a commitment some of the long series are. We also get into the difference between the second in a trilogy versus the second in a series - there's a difference!   Get Trevor's Book, Titan's Garden Crimson Wolf here!  Support my Open Books fundraiser   Books mentioned in this episode:    What Betsy's reading:  Anita De Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez  The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa   Books Highlighted by Trevor: Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson  Thrawn (Star Wars) by Timothy Zahn The Boyfriend by Frieda McFadden  The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson  The Passengers by John Marrs Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue by Neale Donald Walsch   All books available on my Bookshop.org episode page.   Other books mentioned in this episode: Red Rising by Pierce Brown  A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony SNicket  The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson  Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi  A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin  Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros  Jade City by Fonda Lee  Storm Front by Jim Butcher

We share a lot of success stories here on the ISO Show, along with hints, tips and updates to Standards, including insights from our consultants who work with Standards day in and day out.  In our latest mini-series, we're taking a step back to introduce members of our team, to explore how they fell into the world of ISO and discuss the common challenges they face while helping clients achieve ISO certification.   In this episode we introduce Darren Morrow, a Senior Consultant at Blackmores, to learn about his journey towards becoming an ISO Consultant and what drives him to help clients on their ISO journey.   You'll learn ·      What is Darren's role at Blackmores? ·      What does Darren enjoy outside of consultancy? ·      What path did Darren take to become an ISO Consultant? ·      What is the biggest challenge he's faced when implementing ISO Standards? ·      What is Darren's biggest achievement?   Resources ·      Isologyhub ·      Engagement Amplifier Gameplan   In this episode, we talk about: [00:30] Episode Summary – We introduce Darren Morrow, a Senior Consultant here at Blackmores, to discuss his journey towards becoming an ISO consultant who specialises in ISO 9001, ISO 45001, ISO 14001 and ISO 50001.   [03:45] What is Darren's role at Blackmores? Darren is a Senior Consultant with Blackmores, supporting companies with maintaining systems, undertaking internal audits, and supporting with implementing new systems to gain certification. A key part of his role is translating ISO Standards into plain English, and guides clients on how to apply them in practice. [04:55] What does Darren enjoy doing outside of consultancy?: Darren moved to Norfolk back in 2021 ans has since found the relaxed way of life there to be a great fit. It also offers a lot of good walking opportunities for his 2 Leonberger's (giant breed dogs), who mostly enjoy the local parks and beach walks. Darren is also an avid reader, clocking in a whopping 343 weeks' worth of reading on his kindle. His favourite genres include:- ·      Crime, thriller, adventure types - Clive Cussler, Michael Connelly, David Baldacci, CJ Box, Dan Brown, James Carol ·      Horror - James Herbert, Stephen King ·      Supernatural, urban fantasy, fantasy - Ben Aaronvitch, Jim Butcher, Raymond E Feist, C S Lewis & Tolkien ·      Historical - CJ Sansom, SJ Parris ·      And Terry Pratchett for a weird dose of reality. He's also a movie buff, with a collection of over 1,000 films ranging from the 1930's all the way to modern era. Recently he took on the challenge of watching all the Marvel films in chronological order, which took a few weeks! [10:35] What was Darren's path towards becoming an ISO Consultant?: Before Blackmores, Darren was the Quality Manager for a company that worked within the Highways Maintenance sector, working there for 8 years. For the first 18 months he was primarily the Quality Manager for a specific contract on the Olympic Park, as that contract came to an end, he moved into the main company Quality Manager role supporting multiple highway term maintenance contracts along with various smaller projects that the business won. Prior to that, he was a SHEQ Advisor within the Rail industry, working for a signaling company. Darren worked there for about 5 years, within head office support roles for quality and health and safety, moving to working on supporting the project teams and project delivery for signaling schemes. Overall, looking back, he's worked with standards within a quality, health & safety, environmental for around 25 years now.  [13:20] What is Darren's favourite aspect of being a Consultant? – Darren likes the variety. As an ISO Consultant, he gets to work with lots of different people, companies and industries, so he gets to learn a lot about how they work and how Standards apply to different industries. He also enjoys the fact that after working with clients for a number of years, he becomes just another member of the team.   [15:15] What Standards does Darren specilaise in and why? Starting with: ·      ISO 9001 Quality: This is the main standard that Darren starting working with back in 1999 ·      ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety: While working within rail, Darren was given the opportunity to do some training and proceeded to complete NEBOSH courses - general and construction, this proved invaluable in future roles. ·      ISO 14001 Environmental: Darren ended up working with this Standard as part of on-going development. His role as a Quality Manager expanded, and at the time, all external audits with our certification body were coordinated through him. So, for on-going development he completed the NEBOSH environmental managed certificate. ·      ISO 50001 Energy Management: This is one of Darren's favourites. He's taken on this standard since working with Blackmores and seemed like a natural progression with the work he was already doing. He likes how this standard helps companies think more about their impacts on the environment in terms of energy consumption. In terms of companies climate change impacts, Darren likes how ISO 50001 can support deep dives into data that is available or not clearly available in many cases to support improvement and reduction in energy consumption. This also can pave the way for those companies that take it more seriously, and progress to newer standards like ISO14064-1 for quantification and reporting of greenhouse gases, but also part 3 for the verification and validation of greenhouse gases. This is where our sister company, Carbonology Ltd, really excel. Darren does his bit with ISO 50001 clients to educate and prepare them for taking more proactive steps towards meaningful energy and carbon reporting. For example, if they grow sufficiently or fall within the parameters of mandatory schemes such as ESOS or SECR reporting, or they just want to do their bit and demonstrate their commitment to minimising their impact on the environment and overall energy consumption. [23:10] What is the biggest challenge Darren had faced during a project and how did he overcome it?: He doesn't have a single one that stands out, but common issues are usually either down to availability or commitment of the individuals within the company he's supporting. For example, the company may decide that they require certification to a standard or multiple standards. There will be commitment from some within the business, and there are those that may not see the importance or feel it's not important to them and what they do.  Darren's job is to support the company in achieving its main goal in gaining certification. His work with the company involved explaining what is to be done and why. He's found that most of any resistance is because individuals do not know the why and how it impacts them, etc. The other aspect is to make it clear that he is not there to tell them what to do, or that they're doing it wrong. He works with people to either document the process (where required), help them find improvement in the process and continue to search for improvement. [27:00] What is Darren's proudest achievement? Darren states that there's no one definitive achievement to highlight, rather he would say supporting clients who are new to the standards. Working with them and providing knowledge so that they know the 'why' and understand the standards and their processes, and finally seeing the end result with being recommended for certification. The ones that he's particularly happy with are those that go for multiple standards, that result in recommendation for certification with little or no significant findings from the certification body, it shows that the company has been fully engaged and embedded the overall process into how they work. If you'd like any assistance with implementing ISO standards, get in touch with us, we'd be happy to help! We'd love to hear your views and comments about the ISO Show, here's how: ●     Share the ISO Show on Twitter or Linkedin ●     Leave an honest review on iTunes or Soundcloud. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one. Subscribe to keep up-to-date with our latest episodes: Stitcher | Spotify | YouTube |iTunes | Soundcloud | Mailing List

In this week's episode, we continue our November Writing Challenge, and take a look at the most common roadblocks writers face. We also check in with our transcriptionist, and see how she is progressing in our November Writing Challenge. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 227 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November the 15th, 2024, and today we are discussing part three of our November Writing Challenge, which will deal with overcoming roadblocks in your writing progress. First we'll have an update on my current writing projects and then we will have Question of the Week, and then we'll get to our main topic of overcoming roadblocks. First up, writing projects. I am almost/very nearly done with Cloak of Illusion. In fact, I would have finished completely yesterday, but I had some unexpected home repairs come up and now that those are resolved, as soon as this podcast recording is completed, I'm hoping to finish up completely on Cloak of Illusion and publish it this weekend. So hopefully when this show comes out on Monday the 18th, the book should be showing up on the various ebook stores. Be sure to subscribe to my new release newsletter as well and you will get a free Nadia short story called Trick or Treat in ebook form. I am 24,000 words into Orc Hoard, which will be the next Rivah book, and I'm hoping to have that out in December as my final book of 2024. My secondary project while I'm working on that will also be Shield of Deception because I am hoping to have that out as my first book in 2025. Hard to believe we're about halfway through the 2020s already. In audiobook news, Shield of Conquest came out this week and you should be able to get it at all the usual audiobook stores, and that is excellently narrated by Brad Wills. Cloak of Spears, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy, should be out before too much longer as well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:01:36 Question of the Week Now on to Question of the Week, which had a lot of responses this week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: do you buy any hardback books? No wrong answers, obviously. I asked this question because I was reading an article about for many traditionally published authors, hardbacks used to be the primary source of royalties. Nowadays, for many authors, that has been superseded by audiobooks. Since I'm indie, my main source of revenue has always been ebooks. We had many different responses to this question. JL says: I only read ebooks now. I have not bought a physical book in over a decade. Surabhi says: Hardcovers, being very expensive, are a big no-no for me. I'd love to be able to afford hardcovers, it's always either paperbacks or ebooks. Justin says: If I'm getting paper, I will do my best to make it hardback. Paperback books have a limited lifespan and number of readings in them compared to hardback books. Most of my book purchasing is ebooks but reference works and great stories get the hardback treatment. Mary says: Only if there's no paperback. Dave says: Ebooks and audiobooks all the way. They're generally cheaper or easier to read, or with audiobooks I can do other things while I listen. Also as I get older, being able to increase the font size makes it easier to read. I definitely agree with Dave on that, let me tell ya. Jenny says: Can't afford it usually. My hardcover budget goes to RPG books. I myself do have quite a few RPG books, which is amusing because I don't actually play the game but I just like looking at the artwork. Juana says: Yes. I have 60+ signed editions of authors I like. Some paperbacks of the Frostborn series (Wonder who wrote those?). That is indeed a mystery. Catriona says: I used to collect hardbacks of favorite authors- buy each new release e.g. Terry Pratchett. But when I moved from Hong Kong to Thailand I got rid of most of my fiction books and bought the Kindle versions. Shipping after COVID was just extortionate! Morgan says: I don't really buy physical books anymore. My brain is too fried to read so I mostly do audiobooks while I work. I only have so much money, so it is hard to justify buying a physical copy of a book I already have the audio copy for when I know I probably won't physically read it. Gary says: I prefer hardbacks. When buying new though, I generally buy paperbacks unless it is for reference or one of my favorite authors. I always check though because now the hardbacks are often not much more. Jeanne says: Depends on the book. I would totally invest in hardcover copies of Lord of the Rings, for example. I am currently investing in leatherbound versions of the Word on Fire Bible, which is a step up from the hardcover. Authors I don't know or who I read for light fun, I'll get as ebooks. Marilyn says: No, but used to buy only hardback books. Ran out of room on my bookshelves and didn't like to get rid of my books. I ended up buying an ereader. I have 1,729 books. I do have a few hardbacks but not many. Not everything is in an electronic format. When I used to travel, my suitcase would be full of books. Now I have room for clothes. That is one nice advantage of the ebook revolution. Back in the day when I would pack for a trip, I would have to choose which books I would bring but now you can just bring your phone and you're set. MG says: If I can get a hardback I do, but I haven't bought any recently. Barbara says: I purchase very few print books these days and those I do purchase tend to be theology related. Whether I purchase hard or soft bound print books will depend on the availability and price. And since I'm no longer in seminary (I graduated in 2021), my theology books tend to be digital because that's what I read. If I purchase print books, I'd run out of room to store them. Especially since I'm already out of bookshelf space. Michael says: Not really, not anymore. They take up too much space. I might buy a very posh one if it looks amazing (stuff from the Folio Society perhaps) but that's it. Bonnie says: I mainly read ebooks now. I think the last hardcover I bought was Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon. Jeff says: Since I got a Kindle in 2010, I haven't bought a physical book. I am approaching 500 ebooks. I was a SF Book Club member for many, many years so I do have hundreds of hardcover books. A lot of them are stored in totes because of lack of room. Juan says: Used to. Space is a factor now. So now only for my son because I don't want him to have an electronic device in his face so much, but usually the first thing I do at a bookstore when I see a good book is look for it on Apple Books. Usually half the price or so. Always less expensive as well. Barbara says: Used to buy lots of books, got at least 3,00 but with arthritis in my hands, I'm now stuck with ebooks. Got at least 3,000 of them, too. I've got to get rid of some of my physical books, but I'll still keep the ones that aren't replaceable. John says: I only buy collectible editions at this point, or if there isn't an ebook for something I want to reread (but then it's usually paperback). Sometimes old hardbacks have been cheaper than the Kindle versions. When I reread Wheel of Time a few years ago in anticipation of the Amazon series that was the case. Ended up just donating the books just a couple of years later. Carol says: I do love the feel of a hardcover book, the smell, the sound of pages turning, but I'm fully converted to ebooks. So convenient, can read anywhere, carry everywhere, so sadly I haven't bought a physical book for years. Cheryl says: I only have hardbacks of the “classics” as collections to hand down to my grandchildren. Haven't bought any paper versions of books for a few years now and they were paperbacks. Most were on Kindle. Venus says: I will buy certain books in hardcover but only the ones I wish to have available after a collapse of society. David says: I have always preferred hardback, but space constraints have left only those of my favorite authors. I have over 2,000 books on my Kindle. Michael says: I do. For myself, I do buy hardbacks but still very, very selectively. If Timothy Zahn, Jim Butcher, and a few other select authors I've been reading for decades have a new hardcover, I'll buy it. Otherwise, it's ebooks or paperbacks. For nonfiction books, I'm a bit less choosy. If I read say, a historical ebook and liked it, I might get the hardback or possibly the paperback to keep as a reference book. It's interesting from the general consensus of the comments that it seems like ebooks are the dominant format for books now and that if you really want to know if you're someone's favorite author or not, see if they buy your hardbacks. Given the expense and space premium of hardbacks, that's how you know they really like your book.   00:07:43: Main Topic of the Week: November Writing Challenge Now on our main topic of the week, week three of our November Writing Challenge. The topic we are discussing this week is overcoming roadblocks. If you're not familiar with our podcast series for November, you can listen to the previous two episodes, and we have a short summary here. If you feel like you're missing out when others are working on bigger writing challenges this month and you want to start writing but not to feel overwhelmed, a smaller writing challenge for the absolute beginner, 300 words a day (or some other small number of your choosing). The key is that it should be small and something you can manage daily. As I mentioned on previous episodes with this topic, I wonder if National Novel of Writing Month is akin do a sort of crash diet for people where you can lose weight very quickly, let's say like five pounds in a month, but then once you do that, you go back to your old habits. In fact, you go back to your old habits with as much force as before and you end up gaining 10 pounds and you're worse off than you were before. I think a more gradual writing challenge might be akin to losing one pound a month, but you keep it off and that adds up over time. So follow along with our podcast transcriptionist who has never finished writing a book and feels overwhelmed at the ideas of starting one. We can follow her progress and see what advice I have for her as she faces writing challenges. So week three, overcoming roadblocks. If you've ever done any writing or you've ever had anything to write, as you know, there are many roadblocks that can come up to impede your writing progress. The first ones we'll address are logistical roadblocks and we'll recap some points from Episode 220: 8 Tips For Finishing Your Rough Draft. Perhaps one of the biggest roadblocks is time. It's trying to find the time to write. I found is a good idea to schedule your writing time and take advantage of smaller moments of opportunity to write. There is a difference between the perfect time to write and the available time to write. As I've said many times before, the perfect is the enemy of the possible or even the achievable. You might have in your head the image of the perfect time to write and the perfect environment. That may take a lot of work to achieve and be difficult to find. Additionally, I found that many people in their days have what tend to be wasted chunks of time that you kind of have to waste based on the circumstances, like you're in a waiting room, you're on hold, or you are sitting in a room with nothing to do. You have to watch for somebody to arrive or wait for the phone to ring, that kind of thing. There are a lot of ways to pass the time that way. If you're in, for example, the doctor's waiting room, you see everyone sitting on there on their phones reading the news or whatever, but that could be an excellent time to get some writing done. You could obtain a cheap laptop like a netbook type laptop or you could even teach yourself to write on your phone with your thumbs. Those kind of chunks of wasted time throughout the day are an excellent time to squeeze out a couple hundred words and if you can squeeze out a couple hundred words every day, that will add up very quickly. The biggest enemy of finding writing time I found are the many distractions we have in our day-to-day lives. And in fact, I was just talking about your phone. If you have your phone with you, that's a built-in distraction machine where you could maybe write 15 words and then reward yourself by checking your email or your Facebook or whatever. And then before you know it, you've been on your phone for 20 minutes and your writing time has disappeared. The same thing obviously can happen if you're writing on a laptop or a desktop computer or whatever. To manage these distractions, there's a couple of different tricks. You could just shut off the internet on your phone for a while and not turn it on again until you've reached your writing goal. If you find being distracted on your phone or your computer is a consistent problem, you could use apps or browser extensions to manage digital distractions that will prevent, say notifications from interrupting you, whether from email or turning off the internet and keeping from getting into it until a set period of time has passed. For environmental distractions (and what I mean by environmental distractions are noise, people interrupting you and so forth), it can be a good idea to find a place where you'll face fewer interruptions. At various times, I have written in a school or a university or a public library where people tend not to bother strangers too much and therefore, if you sit quietly and get on with your typing, no one's going to bother you. Some people enjoy writing in a coffee shop. I've never really found that to be an enjoyable experience. I have done that many times based on what the circumstances were at the time, but if it was up to me, my favorite writing place would be in my office with the door shut and headphones on and music playing and I'm just writing away. But life doesn't always give us that luxury, so I have written in other locations, but if you can figure out the best way to give yourself a distraction free writing environment, even if it's just noise canceling headphones, that might be the way to go.   Another thing to watch out for that can eat up your time is writing adjacent tasks, things that are connected to writing but not actually writing itself, such as researching, outlining, reading about writing, listening to podcasts about writing, et cetera. These are all keeping you from the goal of getting your words down, which is and the ultimate purpose of our November Writing Challenge, to get your words done every day. Some of these things may be necessary, but you can do them later and some of them are not necessary and not helpful to your productivity, like reading about writing or social media relating to writing or authors is only giving you the illusion of productivity rather than actual productivity. There may be value in these activities, but they are not helping you get the words down on the page.   So let's move on to what could be a more difficult type of roadblocks, the mental roadblocks, roadblocks where you just don't feel confident or you don't feel like you want to write or you don't even feel like you're good at writing and you're wasting your time by writing. So motivation is a thing to consider. It's like you might want to write down a few reasons why you started a writing challenge in November. Why do you want to write? Why is this important to you? Do you want to be able to finish a novel and say that you finished a novel? Do you want to create something cool that's similar to the vision of the creative things you see in your head when you think about it? And what's the best outcome of you writing each day and what's the best-case scenario of what will happen if you keep writing? It might be a good idea to consider all of these things. If you feel bad at writing or feel that you're not good enough, that seems to be a bigger problem for many people. There are a couple tips and tricks that you can use to work around that. The first thing is to don't revise as you go. Don't revise, don't look back. Just keep going. Get it all down on page as fast as you can and then keep going. And the secret is if you're writing a rough draft, you can ignore your inner critic because the point of the rough draft is to get all the words on the page and then you fix them later in editing. An amusing anecdote about that-one of my audiobook narrators wanted to get caught up on projects and he asked if I could send him the rough draft chapters and then as I was writing the book and then he could narrate the rough draft chapters and then he could make any changes I made in editing later. I had to turn him down because the truth is I do a lot of editing on my rough drafts, like Cloak of Illusion was originally 96,000 words, and I think when all the editing is done, it'll be like 94,000 words, maybe 93,500. So that's a lot of things eliminated. I moved around a lot of scenes. I changed a character's name six times, which is one of the reasons why I had to turn down that idea from the narrator because when I introduced a new character, sometimes I change the character's name four or five times during the course of writing until I'm finally satisfied that this is what the character's name should be. So imagine having to go back and rerecord that all the time, but that returns to my original point, where it's best to just ignore your inner critic while you are writing and just get all the words down on page and you can sort them through later. I found editing to be something of a less harrowing process than writing the rough draft. A metaphor I've used before is that a couple years ago, actually, well more than a couple years now, I moved into a third-floor apartment with no elevator, and so I had to carry all my books up those stairs to the new apartment, which since I had a lot of books at the time, was a lot of work (this was before ebooks). Once all the books were carried upstairs to the apartment, only then could I take them out of the boxes and put them on the shelves. That was a lot easier than carrying all those books up three flights of stairs, let me tell you. But I use that as a metaphor to compare the writing process, the first draft is carrying all the books up the stairs and then arranging them on the library shelves as the editing process. Another metaphor that people have found helpful is that the rough draft is like building a sand castle. You first have to drag all the sand to your sandbox and only then is it time to start building the sandcastle. You got to fill up that sandbox first. Now what to do if you hate what you're writing, you absolutely hate it. You don't like what you're doing and you're dragging yourself to the word processor every day. It might be time to ask yourself a couple of hard questions. And the hardest one is, is this really what you want to write? Are you writing something that you want to write or are you trying to write something that you think would sell well or market well to the audience? I talked a bit about this way back in Episode 191: The Worst Writing Advice, about writing to market. Writing to market, if you go too far with it, is a bad idea because by the time you finish and the book is ready to sell, the market may have already grown tired of the trend and moved on to dystopian mermaid stories or something else. Readers also have a sense of when a story is rushed or written in a way that the author hates, not always but very often sort of picked up that the writer hated what they were writing and didn't want to be doing it. It's much better to write something that you're excited to write. You can do a little bit of writing to market in that you look what's popular and say something like, hey, romantic suspense is popular and I enjoy romantic suspense and I want to write romantic suspense. So go ahead and do that. Something else to keep in mind is that tastes change. I saw an interesting article the other day arguing that sort of cynical anti-heroes and deconstruction of popular tropes is going to become less and less popular because that was very popular in the US in the 2000s and the early 2010s when the US in general was more stable and more prosperous. Although I don't think anyone would disagree to say that the United States in the 2020s, thanks to Covid and a variety of other factors, seems to be less stable and less prosperous than it was 20 years ago. And so times are more troubled, then people have less of an appetite and troubled times for cynical anti-heroes and are more drawn to straightforward tales of noble heroes prevailing over evil, whatever the genre might be, whether fantasy or mystery or thriller or whatever. That's the kind of thing to keep in mind with how taste change. So you're really better off writing what you want to write rather than chasing trends because the trends we were just talking about went over a 20 year period. But trends on a smaller level can change very quickly within the space of a few years or even a few months. So you should write in a genre that interests you and you should write characters that you respect and characters that are dealing with an action and conflict that you find interesting. That is one way to hold your interest as you're writing is because you like the characters, you like what you're writing, and you want to see what happens next.   Another problem that you might face if you hate what you're writing is that you might be writing something boring that doesn't need to be in the book. Mystery writer Elmore Leonard famously said in his rules for writing, try to leave out the parts that readers skip. In other words, leave out the boring stuff. So if you're writing a scene and you don't enjoy writing the scene, and you're not looking forward to writing the scene, and you find it boring, maybe it's time to ask yourself: does this scene really need to be in the book? We've all read books that had scenes where it was clear the writer was trying to fill space or thought necessary to go into more detail of, for example, a thousand mile river journey than was really necessary for the plot. If something's boring, just cut it out. There's a famous story that veteran actors who are really good at their craft will sometimes convince the director to cut out dialogue when they say that the actor can convey the meaning of the scene with just the look or expression rather than clunky dialogue. And that is often the case for these experienced actors and is very often the case for writers as well. So if you find yourself struggling with a particular scene, it might just be a good idea to cut it out or sum it up in a paragraph. Like if you have difficulty writing a journey, you could say, just sum it up in a paragraph that they got on a plane and went from New York to Los Angeles. There's no reason to devote two chapters to that. So those are our tips this week for overcoming roadblocks in your writing. Let's have an update from our transcriptionist on her progress with our November writing challenge. “An episode on roadblocks is good timing because I hit some roadblocks last week. There was a day where I wasn't able to get time to write because of what was happening in real life, but since I have been averaging over my goal a day, I still averaged 363 words per day this week, even with missing a day. It took me an average of 13 minutes each day. I wrote out a plan for the challenge that said I could miss a day under specific circumstances and my word count for previous days could apply to that day or if I didn't have extra words, I would make up the words on a Saturday, so I didn't beat up myself or feel like I failed the challenge for missing a day. I had a plan for if I missed a day.” So that seems like a good approach to planning the challenge. And she had a few questions for me actually. The main question for me was: how do you manage distractions? For myself, I use a couple of different techniques. I've mentioned before when I'm writing new stuff, my main method is the Pomodoro method. That's where you set up a timer for 25 minutes, turn off the internet, and just focus on your task for 25 minutes. And I found that if I adhere properly to the Pomodoro method, I can usually get about 1,000 to 1,100 words every Pomodoro for 25 minutes. To reset my brain between Pomodoros, I will usually play Classic Super Mario Brothers on the Switch for five minutes (because you're supposed to take breaks between Pomodoros) and then back to a 25 minute Pomodoro. I do try to hit a minimum word count during the day, ideally 5,000 to 6,000. If I get more, great. If something goes wrong, I tend to have a fallback position if of like 3,000 words. That's usually good on a busy day. I do revise my goals if something comes up because sometimes things come up that you have to pay attention to immediately and it can't wait. Home repair is a big one. For example, a couple times I have this very old wooden fence on my property that I really need to get replaced, and sometimes the wind will knock something loose and a couple times I've had the wind knock the beams of a segment loose from a fence post. If I spot that right away and fix it immediately, it's not a problem. But if I miss it and the entire fence segment falls over, then that's like a couple hours, maybe even a half a day repair job to fix that. So sometimes you come across things like that that need to be addressed immediately. And if that happens, I just roll with it. I try to fix the problem as quick as I can and then try to get as many words as I can in the time that's left, which is why I talked about having a fallback position of 3,000 words if something goes wrong. Sometimes you just lose the entire day to writing until something more important comes up and that's just the way it is. But if you have a no writing day, don't despair and remember the words of Scarlet O'Hara from Gone with the Wind: Tomorrow is another day. If you have a bad writing day, that doesn't mean tomorrow has to be a bad writing day and you get another swing at the ball, so to speak. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show and Week Three of our November Writing Challenge. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts. 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.

Chris Parkinson, AKA “Siege” joins us from Wisconsin this week in search of questions on Cop Shows and The West Wing. I'm sure you've heard him on other podcasts, but this was his first attempt at a Tangents game. I'm definitely looking forward to having him back! Episode Links: Best Movie Soundtrack: The Empire Strikes Back, Deadpool, Deadpool 2, Singles, Empire Records, Reality Bites, Clerks Favorite Non-Trivia Podcast: The West Wing Weekly Most Recent Wikipedia Search: The Scottish Fold Best thing to eat in West Bend, WI: The Riverside Brewery Current Pop Culture Thing: The 1% Club, American Ninja Warrior, Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series Favorite TV Theme Song: The West Wing See you next week for a Tandem Mode game between Chris Brewer and Jeff Clear!

Hannah and Laura wrap up The Year of the Dresden: 6A by discussing the characters and themes of Blood Rites by Jim Butcher. They miss Billy the werewolf, talk a LOT about vampires and discuss how there may just be a bit too much going on in this novel. Hannah and Laura also chat about some fun graphic novels, a book that gives Hannah vibes of 90's rom-coms, and awesome musicals/movie musical experiences.**This episode contains SPOILERS for Blood Rites by Jim Butcher. Spoiler section begins at: 28 min and 50 secs.****CW for the episode: discussions of violence, sexual assault, sex work, mental illness, death, gore, blood, toxic relationships, nudity, sexism**Media Mentions:Blood Rites by Jim ButcherDeath Masks by Jim ButcherSummer Knight by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherStar Wars: Darth Vader, Vol. 4 by Kieron Gillen, Salvador Larroca, and Juan GimenezStar Wars: Darth Vader- Dark Lord of the Sith, Vol. 1: Imperial Machine by Charles Soule, Jim Cheung, and Giuseppe CamuncoliA Side Character's Love Story, Vol. 19 by Akane TamuraStar Wars---Disney+Dracula by Bram StokerArrested Development---NetflixHacks---MaxAgatha All Along---Disney+Divine Rivals by Rebecca RossBeetlejuice the MusicalLabryinth---HuluLabryinth in Concert@britandherbooks on TikTokShogun---HuluThe Thornbirds---Prime VideoVampire Diaries---PeacockBuffy the Vampire Slayer---HuluThe Fires of Treason by Michele QuirkeThe Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. JemisinThe Murderbot Diaries by Martha WellsThe Forever Desert series by Moses Ose UtomiHills of Heather and Bone by K.E. AndrewsBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypod

Hannah and Laura finish covering the plot of Blood Rites by Jim Butcher and wonder when things went off the rails and why Karrin Murphy had to take her pants off. They also chat about an excellent independently published novella, a fun, fantasy series with lots of smut, and their new favorite spin-off TV show.**This episode contains SPOILERS for Blood Rites by Jim Butcher. Spoiler/plot section begins at: 32 mins.****CW for the episode: discussions of death, grief, mental illness, violence, sexual assault, sex work, sex, abuse, toxic relationships, car accidents, sexism, incest, suicide, ableism**Media Mentions:Blood Rites by Jim ButcherDeath Masks by Jim ButcherSummer Knight by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherEnglish Teacher---HuluA Necromancer Called Gam Gam by Adam HolcombeThe Wishing Stone by Adam HolcombeFanFiAddict.com Agatha All Along---Disney+WandaVision---Disney+Ms. Marvel---Disney+Parks & Rec---Disney+The White Lotus---MaxScott Pilgrim VS the World---NetflixThe Four Horseman series by Laura ThalassaGood Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil GaimanWater Moon by Samantha Sotto YambaoThe Night Circus by Erin MorgensternThe Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon SandersonA Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony SnicketThe Fires of Treason by Michele QuirkeBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypod

World building isn't just background noise—it's essential to storytelling. Let's see how two masters, Pierce Brown and Jim Butcher, weave it into every scene. Today, we break down how Red Rising and The Dresden Files build immersive, unforgettable universes.Seven Deadly Plot Points FREE TRAINING VIDEO!The Storyteller's Mission Podcast is now on YouTube. You can watch your favorite podcast as well as listen. Subscribe to our channel and never miss a new episode or announcement.Support the Show on Paypal@Missionranchfilms!Send us a textSupport the show

Hannah and Laura are in the midst of Blood Rites by Jim Butcher, and friends, there are lots of vampires in this book. So many, in fact, that it is confusing. They also chat about Disney movie sequels with great songs, a book series that Hannah couldn't wait to finish, and feminist icon, Moo Deng.**This episode contains SPOILERS for Blood Rites by Jim Butcher. Spoiler section begins at: 41 min 35 secs. ****CW for the episode: discussions of abuse, sex, racism, mental illness, nudity, violence, death, murder, disease, pandemics, sexual assault***Apologies for Laura's audio quality. She recently got a new computer and has not figured out the settings. *Media Mentions:Blood Rites by Jim ButcherDeath Masks by Jim ButcherSummer Knight by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherScream---Prime VideoConan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcastSignificant Others podcastStation Eleven by Emily St. John MandelStation Eleven---MaxThe Stand by Stephen KingPiranesi by Susanna ClarkeValentine's Day---AppleTVLove Actually---AppleTVNew Year's Eve---AppleTVMother's Day---AppleTVJoyful Recollections of Trauma by Paul ScheerHow Did This Get Made podcastSpare by Prince HarryMy Name is Barbra by Barbra StreisandThe Godfather by Mario PuzoInside Out---Disney+Inside Out 2---Disney+Wreck It Ralph---Disney+Ralph Breaks the Internet---Disney+Moana---Disney+Frozen---Disney+Star Wars---Disney+Lion King 2---Disney+The Battle Drum by Saara El-ArifiOnly Murders in the Building---HuluWhat We Do in the Shadows---HuluRenfield---PeacockThe Fires of Treason by Michele QuirkeBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypod

Hannah and Laura are covering the first third of Jim Butcher's book, Blood Rites, and seeing Harry Dresden as a detective in a [fairly] straightforward murder mystery. They also chat about a show that Hannah is making part of her personality, depictions of chronic illness in books, and Laura's preference for learning about the histories of Middle Earth rather than histories of actual Earth...***This episode contains SPOILERS for Blood Rites by Jim Butcher. Spoiler section begins at: 49 min 40 secs.******CW for the spoiler section: discussions of murder, violence, sex work, sex, racism, sexism, internalized misogyny***Media Mentions:Blood Rites by Jim ButcherDeath Masks by Jim ButcherSummer Knight by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherJRR Tolkien's worksThe Lord of the Rings trilogy---MaxThe Hobbit trilogy---MaxThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power---Prime VideoThe Uglies by Scott WesterfeldThe Uglies---NetflixPersuasion---NetflixPersuasion by Jane AustenStar Wars---Disney+The Wheel of Time---Prime VideoFirekeeper's Daughter by Angeline BoulleyStephen Graham Jones's worksMongrels by Stephen Graham JonesNight of the Living MannequinMegan Miranda's worksThe Rom-Commers by Katherine CenterThe Bodyguard by Katherine CenterFargo---HuluTen Things I Hate About You---HuluPretty Woman---AppleTVWild RobotHeartstopper---NetflixA Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky ChambersArrested Development---NetflixThe Fires of Treason by Michele QuirkeBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Continuing our annual theme of religions in our fandoms, Christian Ashley and TJ Blackwell discuss the book series by Jim Butcher, The Dresden Files. They discuss the various religions in the series, the knights of the Cross, and how Sanya can be agnostic after seeing God, Himself!.Is Jim Butcher still writing The Dresden Files? What is the correct order of The Dresden Files? How many books will there be in The Dresden Files? What point of view is Dresden Files? What is the plot of The Dresden Files? Does God exist in Dresden Files? What realms are in Dresden Files? What is the church in The Dresden Files? We discuss all this and more in this one! Join in the conversation with us on Discord now!.Support our show on Captivate or Patreon, or by purchasing a comfy T-Shirt in our store!.Check out our other episodes that are part of our Religions in our Fandoms annual theme:https://player.captivate.fm/collection/928f3957-942d-45c7-b8ed-cd9647468a45.Don't miss any of our book series episodes:https://player.captivate.fm/collection/cd11887b-5998-452c-aa1f-330423162b51.Listen to all of Christian's episodes:https://player.captivate.fm/collection/ebf4b064-0672-47dd-b5a3-0fff5f11b54c.Check out all of our TJ's episodes:https://player.captivate.fm/collection/f4c32709-d8ff-4cef-8dfd-5775275c3c5eMentioned in this episode:Support us on CaptivateYou can sponsor our show and get access to bonus content through CaptivateAnazao Ministries Podcasts NetworkCheck out all of the AMP network shows!You can help support the show on Patreon!Get exclusive access to live recordings, bonus questions, free merch, access to future D&D campaigns, the opportunity to help choose our topics, and much more!SG PatreonSystematic GeekologyOur show focuses around our favorite fandoms that we discuss from a Christian perspective. We do not try to put Jesus into all our favorite stories, but rather we try to ask the questions the IPs are asking, then addressing those questions from our perspective. We are not all ordained, but we are the Priests to the Geeks, in the sense that we try to serve as mediators between the cultures around our favorite fandoms and our faith communities.Anazao Ministries Podcasts - AMP NetworkCheck out other shows like this on our podcast network! https://anazao-ministries.captivate.fm/

Hannah and Laura try to figure out why Jim Butcher titled the fifth book in his series "Death Masks." They still aren't sure and will continue to do research. They also chat about a spicy romantasy book, recent book club reads with autumn vibes, and a couple of bizarre documentaries.***Spoilers for Shark Heart by Emily Habeck at 12 min 30 secs through 17 min 38 secs.******This episode contains SPOILERS for Death Masks by Jim Butcher. Spoiler section begins at 54 min and 15 secs. ******CW for episode: discussions of violence, animal cruelty, animal violence/mauling, lawsuits, violence, sex, sexual assault, death, murder, fraud, illness, guns, racism, sexism, vampires***Media Mentions: Death Masks by Jim ButcherSummer Knight by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherThat Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly LemmingDungeons & Dragons ttrpgLegends & Lattes by Travis BaldreeShark Heart by Emily HabeckWhalefall by Daniel KrausThe Godfather by Mario PuzoChimp Crazy---MaxTiger King---NetflixAgatha All Along---Disney+WandaVision---Disney+North Woods by Daniel MasonLone Women by Victor LaValleJoyful Recollections of Trauma by Paul ScheerThe Forest Brims Over by Maru AyaseLittle Miss Innocent---HuluMadame Web---NetflixBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

September 23 2024   The Witch Daily Show (https://www.witchdailyshow.com) is talking I Love Books   Our sponsor today Is It's Coming Documentary (https://watch.eventive.org/itscoming/play/66db9f8c027ae8004737b5ca) and   (   Want to buy me a cup of coffee? Venmo: TonyaWitch - Last 4: 9226   Our quote of the day Is: "Magic comes from what is inside you. It is part of you. You can't weave together a spell that you don't believe in." ― Jim Butcher, "The Dresden Files"   Headlines: Answering Questions about Documentary ()   Deck: The Halloween Forever Oracle (https://www.amazon.com/Halloween-Forever-Oracle-Jasmine-Becket-Griffith/dp/0738780251)   Other Sources: (https://sipaspell.com/collections/dark-half-of-the-year) Thank you so much for joining me this morning, if you have any witch tips, questions, witch fails, or you know of news I missed, visit https://www.witchdailyshow.com or email me at thewitchdailypodcast@gmail.com If you want to support The Witch Daily Show please visit our patreon page https://www.patreon.com/witchdailyshow   Mailing Address (must be addressed as shown below) Tonya Brown 3436 Magazine St #460 New Orleans, LA 70115

Hannah and Laura may not know what's happening, but nonetheless, they are covering Jim Butcher's Death Masks! They also chat about some Netflix docuseries, books that have great representation of complicated, strong women, and P. Djeli Clark's latest release.***This episode contains SPOILERS for Death Masks by Jim Butcher. MaskSpoiler section begins at 32 mins 5 secs.***CW for the spoiler section: discussions of violence, gore, blood, sex, death, racism, sexism, guns, gun violence, chronic illness, comas, illness Media Mentions:Death Masks by Jim ButcherSummer Knight by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherBefore We Go BlogUndine's Blessing by Tessa HastjarjantoThe Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que MaiKevin Can F**k Himself---NetflixEnglish Teacher---HuluThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power---Prime VideoThe Dead Cat Tail Assasins by P. Djeli ClarkThe Forever Desert series by Moses Ose UtomiThe Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham JonesWorst Roomate Ever---NetflixWorst Ex Ever---NetflixClue---Paramount+Buffy---HuluThe Secret of Nihm---TubiEcho---Disney+Be sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Inspired by his upcoming interview with the And That's Why We Drink podcast crew, Joe was joined by a few of his coworkers to share paranormal, crime and paranormal crime reads that you can dive into! Whether you like a cozy mystery, a crime novel, or a bit of horror, we have book recommendations for all! If you'd like to see Quinton's review of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle audiobook, check it out here. Titles mentioned in this episode: Claire's Titles:   Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak  Shutter by Ramona Emerson  Sneaky Recommendation: Home Before Dark by Riley Sager  The Paranormal Ranger by Stanley Milford, Jr. Kelli's Titles:   The Changeling by Victor LaValle  The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James (check out Joe's interview: https://www.professionalbooknerds.com/simone-st-james-author-of-the-book-of-cold-cases/) The Merciless by Danielle Vega  Sneaky recommendation: Full Immersion – Gemma Amor  Quinton's Titles:   Sneaky Recommendation: The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher; Hellblazer by John Constantine  White Trash Warlock by David R. Slayton  Ink and Sigil by Kevin Hearne  The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton  Joe's Titles:  Sneaky Recommendations: Jackal by Erin E. Adams, Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark  The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones  The Whisper Man by Alex North (but any of North's books really)  The Lingering by SJI Holliday  Readers can sample and borrow the titles mentioned in today's episode in Libby. Library friends can shop these titles in OverDrive Marketplace. Looking for more bookish content? Check out the Libby Life Blog! We hope you enjoy this episode of the Professional Book Nerds podcast. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! You can follow the Professional Book Nerds on Instagram and TikTok @ProBookNerds. Want to reach out? Send an email to professionalbooknerds@overdrive.com. Want some cool bookish swag? Check out our merch store at: https://plotthreadsshop.com/! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OLD MAGICMEET THE AUTHOR Podcast: LIVE - Episode 173Originally aired LIVE Wednesday September 11,20247 PM ET /6 PM CT /5 PM MT /4 PM PT (US)Featuring Author CHRIS CHRISTMANABOUT CHRIS: Chris Christman is a 65 year old adventurer. He has always been curious by nature, and lived his life as such. Being born in Panama on a military base, and raised in New Jersey, his interests in different cultures, types of people and their lifestyles, he explored by engulfing himself in photography and travel.Reading anything he could get his hands on also played a big part in shaping his unique view of the world. He soon found out that science fiction would prove to be his favorite place to explore by reading the stories of Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Andre Norton, Roger Zelazny and others.More recently, urban fantasy taking more of his reading attention, Jim Butcher, Orlando Sanchez, Steve McHugh soon became favorites. They all influenced him to finally write his own stories down and as a result we have the Mixed Magic Saga. Using an unique twist of magic and science to entertain the reader.He lives in Missouri with his wife who's a social worker, two dogs and four cats.Links to watch or listen to all episodes at:https://indiebooksource.com/podcast

It's the Year of the Dresden and Hannah and Laura are covering the middle section of Death Masks by Jim Butcher. It's getting wild, y'all.... They also chat about learning styles and scheduling, Laura's latest favorite YA book, and a creative TV show that Hannah has really been enjoying.***This episode contains SPOILERS for Death Masks by Jim Butcher. Spoiler/plot section begins at 1 hr 0 mins.****Apologies for some audio issues on Laura's end.*Media Mentions:Death Masks by Jim ButcherSummer Knight by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherFirekeeper's Daughter by Angeline BoulleyBraiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall KimmererThe Rings of Power---Prime VideoOzark---NetflixWingspan---Stonemaier GamesLand of Milk and Honey by C Pam ZhangTender is the Flesh by Agustina BazterricaThe Dark Tower series by Stephen KingMr. Mercedes by Stephen KingThe Outsider by Stephen KingThe Outsider---MaxThe Stand by Stephen KingKevin Can F**k Himself---NetflixKevin Can Wait---AppleTVKing of Queens---PeacockWhat We Do in the Shadows---HuluBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Hannah and Laura chat about board games, how social media is quick to create "experts," and they share a story about a weird live podcast viewing experience they had. Then they get into the first 11 chapters of Death Masks by Jim Butcher and keep their fingers crossed that the plot doesn't get too complicated.***This episode contains SPOILERS for Death Masks by Jim Butcher. The plot section begins at 55 minutes 21 seconds.***Media Mentions: Death Masks by Jim ButcherSummer Knight by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherQuaint Creatures by Andrew D. MeredithLegends & Lattes by Travis BaldreeBookshops & Bonedust by Travis BaldreeMiss Percy's Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons by Quenby OlsonThe Hobbit by J.R.R. TolkienMartha Wells's worksWingspan (Stonemaier Games)EverdellVillainousCascadiaFlamecraftGuild of Merchant ExplorersTicket to Ride-EuropeUnoMancalaSplendorSleeping GodsGalaxy TruckerHeatPandemicRed NovemberWyrmspanApiaryUndergroveDominionFungiTakedo DuoMexican DominoesThe Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda MontellCultish by Amanda MontellStar Wars---Disney+The Umbrella Academy---NetflixCrazy Ex-Girlfriend---NetflixBehind the Bastards podcastThe Bechdel Cast podcastYou're Wrong About podcastThe Goonies---Prime VideoThe Hannah Montana Movie---Disney+99% Invisible podcastHollow Knight gameStardew Valley gameThe Legend of Zelda gameBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Hannah and Laura finish up their discussion of Summer Knight by Jim Butcher, chatting about the plot, characters, and themes. Spoiler: they enjoyed this book a lot! In other news, Hannah watched a strange Beauty and the Beast retelling and Laura reflects on the plot of High School Musical.**This episode contains SPOILERS for Summer Knight by Jim Butcher. Spoiler section begins at: 45 min 50 secs.**Media MentionsSummer Knight by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim Butcher Fool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherA Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation, Vol. 1 by MisakiStar Wars: Darth Vader, Vol. 2 & 3 by Kieron Gillen, art by Adi Granov and Salvador LarrocaA Side Character's Love Story by Akane TamuraHigh School Musical---Disney+The Greatest Showman---Disney+A Cinderella Story---Prime VideoAnother Cinderella Story---Prime VideoHairspray---Prime VideoThe Bechdel Cast podcastThat's So Raven---Disney+Hannah Montana---Disney+Freaky Friday---Disney+Glee---Disney+Aladdin---Disney+Younger---HuluNever Have I Ever---NetflixLove in the Big City by Sang Young ParkThe Invitation by Lucy FoleyThe Hunting Party by Lucy FoleyThe Guest List by Lucy FoleyThe Paris Apartment by Lucy FoleyRuth Ware's worksThe Outsider by Stephen KingCoyote Ugly---HuluCrossroads---NetflixMiss Congeniality---HuluHope Floats---HuluSimon Birch---Prime VideoPractical Magic---Prime VideoThe Proposal---HuluDrop Dead Gorgeous---Prime VideoLittle Shop of Horrors---Prime VideoThe Beautician and the BeastMarvel Cinematic Universe---Disney+Meet the Fosters---HuluDexter---HuluFiction Fans podcastJust Ella by Margaret Peterson HaddixThe Last Shield by Cameron JohnstonThe Maleficent Seven by Cameron JohnstonBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Description Returning guest Nicole Freim joins Joe to discuss the first novel from the Dresden Files series. This long-running series by Jim Butcher are urban fantasy novels that use the tone of a boiled detective story. Harry Dresden is a … Continue reading →

In which our heroes discuss a series of six books. 

Listeners beware! Hannah and Laura talk to each other two days in a row, so this episode gets a little zany. They chat about one of Laura's new favorite manga series, a really strange Netflix documentary, and an alternative history book that Hannah recently read. They also finish covering Summer Knight by Jim Butcher admist all the chaos.***This episode contains SPOILERS for Summer Knight by Jim Butcher. Spoiler section begins at: 43 min 55 secs.*****CW for this episode: discussions of racism, sexism, misogyny, violence, cults, gore, stalking**Media Mentions:Summer Knight by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherThe Office---PeacockA Side Character's Love Story Volumes 1-18 by Akane TamuraWitch Hat Atelier by Kamome ShirahamaThe Lightning Thief by Rick RiordanThe Sea of Monsters by Rick RiordanThe Titan's Curse by Rick RiordanThe Battle of the LabyrinthThe Last Olympians by Rick RiordanPercy Jackson and the Olympians---Disney+The Newest Olympian podcastOur Missing Hearts by Celeste NgLittle Fires Everywhere by Celeste NgEverything I Never Told You by Celeste NgLittle Fires Everywhere---HuluEscaping Twin Flames---NetflixThe Olympic Games---PeacockThe Umbrella Academy---NetflixChinatown---Paramount+You---NetflixStar Wars---Disney+Marvel Cinematic Universe---Disney+The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon SandersonHollow Knight videogameCountry Strong---Prime VideoR.R. Virdi's worksThe Last Shield by Cameron JohnstonSFF Addicts podcastFallout---Prime VideoFiction Fans podcastBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Meg and Alex are joined by Jim Butcher to discuss Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, which TBH sounds like a romp.

Hannah and Laura discuss the second portion of Summer Knight by Jim Butcher and how this book is a breath of fresh, SUMMER air. They also chat about a fascist chimpanzee, new murder statistics that they recently discovered, Hannah's love for Glen Powell, and Laura gushes about Moses Ose Utomi's novella series....again.****This episode contains SPOILERS for Summer Knight by Jim Butcher (Chapters 12-22). The spoiler section begins at: 1 hr 2min 45 secs.******CW for the spoiler section: discussions of violence, misogyny, gore, sex, nudity, war****This episode also contains spoilers for Spy x Family, Vol. 11 (6 min 53 secs through 11 min 34 secs), Shetland (55 min 30 secs through 59 min 24 secs), and The Sixth Sense (1 hr through 1 hr 1 min 20 secs).**Media Mentions: Summer Knight by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherSpy x Family, Vol. 11 by Tatsuya EndoSpy x Family---HuluThe Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose UtomiThe Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose UtomiThe Good Place---NetflixThe Office---PeacockParks & Rec---PeacockBrooklyn 99---PeacockRutherford Falls---PeacockKingdom of the Planet of the Apes---HuluI Weigh podcastThe Olympic Games---PeacockMake It or Break It---HuluTwisters (2024)---AMC TheatersVelvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno GarciaThe Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno GarciaThe Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno GarciaMexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno GarciaJaws---PeacockSuperstore---HuluDeadpool & Wolverine---AMC TheatersThe Politician---NetflixMurdaugh Murders---NetflixMaking a Murderer---NetflixAmerican Nightmare---NetflixShetland---BritBoxThe Sixth Sense---MaxFight Club---HuluWar Games---MaxMidsommar---MaxThe Village---Prime VideoBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

One of Alex's closest friend's, His Name Was Dusk, has been begging him to read the first book in the Dresden Files series, Storm Front by Jim Butcher. Well after hearing these requests, Mrs. Pearlmania stepped forward on shouldered the burden by reading the entire wizard detective mystery novel and forcing alex to listen to the entire plot. This book has it all, sex magic, demon toads, multiple concussions, EVERYTHING. So strap in for an OVER TWO HOUR book lcub that will change nothing about your life, but will at least entertain you for a while. SEE ALEX LIVE!!! TICKETS FOR THE SOUP FOR MY FAMILY TOUR HERETo become a Team leader: Join our patreon (not a cult): https://pearlmania500.netPlease take our membership survey! We want to hear your ideas and input! https://bit.ly/3xZtyYkThe Pearlmans have a NEW Post Office Box: P.O. Box 72151, Thorndale, PA 19372.Follow us on Instagram: @Pearlmania500 & @mrs.pearlmania500You can watch this episode on our Youtube Channel!!!Our theme song and all of the music for our show comes from our friend's project called "His Name Was Dusk." Check out his website for more info at: hisnamewasdusk.com Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hannah and Laura have been celebrating Hannah's upcoming nuptials. Outside of the celebrations, Laura listened to another romance book, and Hannah is on a "true crime kick." They then dive into the first third of Jim Butcher's Summer Knight and give a shocking reveal.....**This episode contains SPOILERS for Summer Knight by Jim Butcher. Spoiler/plot section begins at: 38 min 05 sec.***CW for the plot section: discussions of sexual assault, racism, violence, nudity, gore, blood, misogyny.*Media Mentions:Summer Knight by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt---NetflixBook Lovers by Emily HenryBeach Read by Emily HenryPeople We Meet On Vacation by Emily HenryHappy Place by Emily HenryFunny Story by Emily HenryThank You For Listening by Julia WhelanThe Acolyte---Disney+Andor---Disney+The Good Place---NetflixAmerican Nightmare---NetflixEscaping Twin Flames---NetflixThe Girl On The Train by Paula HawkinsThe Girl On the Train---HuluParks & Rec---PeacockMarvel Cinematic Universe---Disney+The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi VoThe Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi VoSiren Queen by Nghi VoThe City in Glass by Nghi VoHollow Knight videogameJeff Speight's worksJonathan Nevair's worksBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Hannah and Laura talk about the themes, characters, and share overall thoughts of Grave Peril by Jim Butcher, and Laura actually can't believe that she wants the Loup-Garous back. They also chat about "loving all the Spidermen," Emily Henry's books, Task Master, and another S.T. Gibson book that Hannah enjoyed via audio.**This episode contains SPOILERS for Grave Peril by Jim Butcher. Spoiler section begins at: 56 min 15 secs.****CW for the episode: discussions of violence, sexual assault, infertility, pregnancy, illness, hospitalization, gore, misogyny, infant illness, blood**Media Mentions:Grave Peril by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherThe Acolyte---Disney+The Mandalorian---Disney+The Book of Boba Fett---Disney+Andor---Disney+Obi-Wan Kenobi---Disney+Thor: Love and Thunder---Disney+Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings---Disney+Marvel Cinematic Universe---Disney+Friends---MaxOverboard---AppleTVConan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcastPeople We Meet On Vacation by Emily HenryBeach Read by Emily HenryHappy Place by Emily HenryBook Lovers by Emily HenryFunny Story by Emily HenryThe Charm Offensive by Alison CochrunKiss Her Once for Me by Alison CochrunChristina Lauren's worksTalia Hibbert's worksTaskmaster---YouTubeAbbott Elementary---HuluHouse---PeacockE.R.---HuluThe Little Rascals---NetflixEvocation by S.T. GibsonA Dowry of Blood by S.T. GibsonBridgerton---NetflixSex and the City---MaxJonathan Nevair's worksBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Hannah and Laura try to talk about anything BUT Grave Peril, including desserts, vegetables, and houseplants. Then they do eventually talk about Jim Butcher's Grave Peril and it's roller coaster of an ending.*Spoilers for The Boys at 20 mins.***This episode contains SPOILERS for Grave Peril by Jim Butcher.***Spoiler section begins at: 54 min.**CW for this episode: discussions of sexual assault, violence, murder, blood, misogyny, drug abuse, death, hospitalization, pregnancy, infant illness, eating disorders.Apologies for some audio issues.Media Mentions:Grave Peril by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherThe Acolyte---Disney+The Boys---Prime Video@jstoobs ----TikTokPluto---NetflixFox 8 by George SaundersLincoln in the Bardo by George SaundersHungry Ghost by Victoria YingHeartstopper Vol. 3 by Alice OsemanHeartstopper---NetflixLesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim FuThe Wheel of Time---Prime VideoSquid Game---NetflixA Prayer for Owen Meany by John IrvingStation Eleven by Emily St. John MandelDimension 20---Drop OutGame Changer---Drop OutBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Laura and Hannah cover the middle third of Grave Peril by Jim Butcher, and friends, it is quite the experience. They also chat about media literacy, heroes and villains in [reality] television, whether or not to DNF a book, and a TV show with a "banger of an opening song." CW for the episode: discussions of sexual assault; physical harm; death; murder; gore; misogyny; pregnancy loss; infertility; drug abuse***This episode contains SPOILERS for Grave Peril by Jim Butcher. Spoiler/plot section begins at: 56 min 30 secs.***Media Mentions:Grave Peril by Jim ButcherThe Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose UtomiThe Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose UtomiBecky Chambers's worksThe Boys---Prime VideoPerfect Match---Prime VideoBreaking Bad---NetflixThe Acolyte---Disney+House---PeacockMystic Reborn by Jeff SpeightWalkable City: How Downtown Could Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff SpeckDon't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham JonesThe Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham JonesStation Eleven by Emily St. John MandelThe Stand by Stephen KingPiranesi by Susanna ClarkeStation Eleven---MaxThe Drowing Woman by Robyn HardingA Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne FowlerThe Southern Book Club's Guide to Hunting Vampires by Grady Hendrix E.R.---HuluFriends---MaxDimension 20---YouTubeTask Master---YouTubeCut---YouTubeCrazy Ex-Girlfriend---NetflixBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

hello and welcome fans of all ages to another tale straight from the brilliant author himself Jim Butcher! we talk about his writing process and how he developed his stories, as well as to what he is working on now. this is a great listen for fans of both his work and for anyone needing a new suggested book and series that you will fall for easily. this was an amazing oppurtunity and we had a great time doing this!

Laura goes on a rant about whether or not tv shows are capable of handling sensitive topics. Hannah has been enjoying shows that have a "gritty" feel to them and also read a great indie book. Then Hannah and Laura dive into the first third of the plot of Jim Butcher's Grave Peril, which definitely has them questioning Harry Dresden's apartment quite a bit.***SPOILERS for Bridgerton Season 3 from 3 minutes 15 seconds to 21 min 15 secs******CW from 3 min 15 sec to 22 min 30  sec of the episode: discussions of homophobia, racism, infertility, sexual assault, loss of a child, miscarriage, and mental illness.******This episode contains SPOILERS for Grave Peril by Jim Butcher. Spoiler section begins at: 56 min 37 sec.******CW for plot section: discussions of violence; gore; chauvinism; death; nudity; sexual abuse; physical abuse; death of children; self harm; exorcisms; possession***Media Mentions: Grave Peril by Jim ButcherBridgerton---NetflixThe Boys---Prime VideoSex and the City---MaxBrokeback Mountain---MaxPlus One---NetflixWhen Harry Met Sally---HuluThe Hunger Games---PeacockStar Trek: Lower Decks---Paramount+Community---PeacockUnpregnant---HuluHouse---PeacockER---HuluMushroom Blues by Adrian M. GibsonUgly Betty---NetflixThe Book of Love by Kelly LinkThe Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick RiordanThe Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. SchwabWhat We Do In The Shadows---HuluSesame Street---MaxStephen King's worksStephen Graham Jones' worksBuffy the Vampire Slayer---HuluRing Shout by P. Djeli ClarkFallout---Prime VideoBlue Eye Samurai---NetflixNamina Forna's worksBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Hannah and Laura have finished up Fool Moon: A Loup-Garou Story, and they have so many thoughts. The main thought? This text is not meant to be heavily critiqued. They also chat about crappy, yet addicting reality TV, a book that handles some really heavy topics, and how awesome libraries are.Apologies for some audio issues on Laura's end.**This episode contains SPOILERS for Fool Moon by Jim Butcher. Spoiler section begins at: 1 hr 10 min.**CW for spoiler section: discussions of chauvinism, violence, murder, blood, sex, nudity, gun violence.Media Mentions:Fool Moon by Jim ButcherStorm Front by Jim ButcherGrave Peril by Jim ButcherHunter X Hunter, Vol. 1 by Yoshihiro TogashiHunter X Hunter, Vol. 2 by Yoshihiro TogashiHunter X Hunter---NetflixJujutsu Kaisen by Gege AkutamiAll Creatures Great and Small---PBSPerfect Match---NetflixThe Acolyte---Disney+Star Wars---Disney+The Hate U Give by Angie ThomasThe Midnight Library by Matt HaigBlue Eye Samurai---NetflixMad Men---Prime VideoDollhouse---Prime VideoPsych---PeacockThe Hunger Games---PeacockBodies Bodies Bodies---HuluSquid Game---NetflixThe Good Place---NetflixBridgerton---NetflixThe Wheel of Time---Prime VideoCrying in H Mart by Michelle ZaunerThe Eternal Ones by Namina FornaFallout---Prime VideoEcho---Disney+Daredevil---Disney+Nora Roberts' worksPride and Prejudice by Jane AustenPaladin Unbound by Jeff SpeightMystic Reborn by Jeff SpeightBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Zach & Jim blow the dust off a video format they haven't returned to in about a year, Rate a Magic System, for a full spoil discussion of the magic seen in Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files. After diving into the various elements of magic, they also “score” the magic system with a highly objective rating grid. Enjoy! — Again, SPOILERS! Want to purchase books/media mentioned in this video? The Dresden Files: https://www.amazon.com/Dresden-Files-17-book-series/dp/B074CF4JMZ Ways to connect with us: Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FantasyForTheAges Follow Jim/Father on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13848336-jim-scriven Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/jMWyVJ6qKk Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Fantasy4theAges Follow us on Instagram: fantasy_for_the_ages Follow us on Mastodon: @FantasyForTheAges@nerdculture.de Email us: FantasyForTheAges@gmail.com Check out our merch: https://www.newcreationsbyjen.com/collections/fantasyfortheages Jim's Microphone: Blue Yeti https://tinyurl.com/3shpvhb4 Jim's Camera: Razer Kito Pro https://tinyurl.com/c873tc2n ———————————————————————————— Music and video elements licensed under Envato Elements: https://elements.envato.com/ #FantasyForTheAges #readingrecommendations #fantasy #UrbanFantasy #MagicSystem #DresdenFiles #SFF #booktube #booktuber Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4f0U6Xmwb9G-4yy9faUuwA/join

Hannah and Laura are finishing up the plot of Fool Moon: A Loup-Garou Story.  Honestly, they're confused by a lot of things in this final section of the book, but enjoying the ride. They also chat about some great audiobook listens, fun podcasts, and how recency bias can affect reading. And if anyone figures out what the opposite of a werewolf is, send OWWR pod a DM. ***This episode contains SPOILERS for Fool Moon by Jim Butcher.*** Plot section begins at 36 min 40 secs.*****CW for the plot section: discussions of violence, nudity, murder, blood, death, gunshots, sex, chauvinism, mental illness.**Media Mentions:Fool Moon by Jim ButcherMoana---Disney+Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van PeltThe Mindy Project---HuluUgly Betty---NetflixSingle All The Way---NetflixThe Princess Switch---NetflixA Knight's Tale---NetflixA Christmas Prince---NetflixIdea Man---Disney+The Bad Batch---Disney+Sesame Street---MaxThe Muppet Show---Disney+Labryinth---PeacockThe Dark Crystal---HuluFraggle Rock---AppleTVCrossroads---NetflixThe Bechdel Cast podcastConan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcastHot Ones---YouTubeBridgerton---NetflixHow Did This Get Made podcastCoyote Ugly---PeacockMadame Web---NetflixThe Titan's Curse by Rick RiordanA Dowry of Blood by S.T. GibsonInterview with the Vampire by Anne RiceFiction Fans podcastFriends Talking Fantasy podcastThe Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky ChambersA Closed and Common Orbit by Becky ChambersThe Eternal Ones by Namina FornaTask Master---YouTubePaladin Unbound by Jeff SpeightMystic Reborn by Jeff SpeightBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Hannah and Laura gush about a new favorite book, their recent watches of the Dune franchise, and also chat too much about Colin Bridgerton. Then they dive into the second portion of Fool Moon: A Loup-Garou Story.**This episode contains SPOILERS for Fool Moon by Jim Butcher. Spoiler/plot section begins at: 1 hr. 8 min.CW for the plot section: discussions of nudity, violence, murder, blood, death, gun shots, wounds, chauvinism, sexApologies for audio issues on Laura's end. Rural areas don't have the greatest internet access.Media Mentions: Fool Moon by Jim ButcherThe Sword of Kaigen by M.L. WangThe Long Way to a Small, Angry PlanetA Closed and Common Orbit by Becky ChambersDune: Part One---MaxDune: Part Two---MaxBridgerton---NetflixThe Bad Batch---Disney+Stranger Things---NetflixKim's Convenience---NetflixParks & Rec---PeacockMegan Miranda's worksThe Safest Lies by Megan MirandaSpeed---HuluThe Bee Sting by Paul MurrayShuggie Bain by Douglas StuartRyan Cahill's worksClaire Keegan's worksLonesome Dove by Larry McMurtryBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

A couple of fools talk about Fool Moon by Jim Butcher, which may or may not be a werewolf story. They also chat about reality shows they'd like to be on, and books within the thriller genre that seem to have the exact same plot but are shockingly, really successful.Apologies for technical issues on Laura's end.Spoilers for How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie from 5 min 10 secs to 7 min 07 secs.***This episode contains SPOILERS for Fool Moon by Jim Butcher. The spoiler/plot section begins at: 48 min 07 secs.***TW for the plot section: chauvinism; gore; murder; sex; violenceMedia Mentions: Fool Moon by Jim ButcherHow to Kill Your Family by Bella MackieThe Circle---NetflixSweetpea by C.J. SkuseStephen King's worksEarthlings by Sayaka MurataAnnihilation by Jeff VandermeerThe Last Watch by J.S. DewesLove is Blind---NetflixWish---Disney+Moana---Disney+Chicken Little---Disney+Law & Order: SVU---PeacockThe Perfect Stranger by Megan MirandaMegan Miranda's worksThe Sword of Kaigen by M.L. WangPsych---PeacockHow Did This Get Made podcastPercy Jackson and the Olympians---Disney+Brooklyn Nine-Nine---PeacockThe Last of Us---MaxFriends Talking Fantasy podcastDollhouse---Prime VideoTo Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher PaoliniTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles---Paramount+Nora Roberts' worksBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Hannah and Laura are chatting all about Harry Dresden. They can't stop and won't stop, he's THE protagonist. Hannah and Laura also talk about Star Wars shows, a book with many mentions of IBS, and a fun movie with morally gray characters.***This episode contains SPOILERS for Storm Front by Jim Butcher! The spoiler section/character discussion begins at: 35 min 48 secs.***Media Mentions: Storm Front by Jim ButcherFool Moon by Jim ButcherTales of the Empire---Disney+Tales of the Jedi---Disney+The Clone Wars---Disney+The Bad Batch---Disney+Star Wars: Rebels---Disney+Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace---Disney+Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith---Disney+The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks podcastStar Wars Rebels---Disney+Pet by Akwaeke EmeziFreshwater by Akwaeke EmeziThe Last Watch by J.S. DewesThe Sword of Kaigen by M.L. WangEarthlings by Sayaka MurataPriory of the Orange Tree by Samantha ShannonJonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna ClarkeQuietly Hostile by Samantha IrbyWow, No Thank You by Samantha IrbyWe Are Never Meeting In Real Life by Samantha IrbyThe Sea of Monsters by Rick RiordanThe Battle of the Labryinth by Rick RiordanChallengers Anyone But You---NetflixThe Crown---NetflixThe Last of Us---MaxAvatar: The Last Airbender---NetflixLegendborn by Tracy DeonnBrooklyn Nine-Nine---PeacockThe Divergent series by Veronica RothThe Bechdel Cast podcastM is for Monster by Talia DuttonThe Last Lunar Witch by S.F. HenneBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Scorpus! Scorpus! Scorpus! Hannah and Laura are wrapping up the plot of Storm Front and find it hard to follow Harry Dresden's motivations....In other news, Hannah and Laura share about some recent graphic novel reads, a memoir that reflects on society's treatment of fat people, and they also have both started, but not finished, a really popular tv show. This episode contains SPOILERS for Storm Front by Jim Butcher!***The plot section begins at 49 min 18 secs.***Media Mentions:Storm Front by Jim ButcherM is for Monster by Talia DuttonThe Office---PeacockParks & Recreation---PeacockBrooklyn 99---PeacockBambi---Disney+My Girl---NetflixMy Girl 2---NetflixKomi Can't Communicate, Vol. 8-10 by Tomohitos OdaHaru by Joe LathamSweetpea by C.J. SkuseShogun---HuluDazzling by Chikodili EmelumaduWhat We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey GordonFunny Story by Emily HenryBeach Read by Emily HenryBook Lovers by Emily HenryHappy Place by Emily HenryPeople We Meet on Vacation by Emily HenryHow To Lose A Guy in 10 Days---PeacockMaintenance Phase podcastAvatar: The Last Airbender---NetflixThe Winx saga---CWMadame Web---AppleTVBridget Jones's Diary---HuluFerris Bueller's Day Off---Paramount+Flicka---Disney+Country Strong---Prime VideoBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Our guest is New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher. Mr. Butcher is the writer and creator of the Dresden Files, the Codex Alera, and the Cinder Spires book series. His immensely popular works have been printed and shared all over the world, and The Dresden Files books have been adapted into a tv show on the SyFy network and a tabletop role-playing game. Mr. Butcher is a master of the art of storytelling, and he joins us today to talk about short-form and long-form storytelling, and the keys to creating and maintaining a devoted audience.

Laura finally finished a book series and also *shockingly* adores another TV show based on a videogame. Hannah has been listening to lots of great, queer YA books, and while getting into her thoughts on a movie she watched recently she changed her opinion on it completely. Then Hannah and Laura immerse themselves into the middle of Harry Dresden's case and the shenanigans that occur in Jim Butcher's Storm Front.***This episode contains SPOILERS for Storm Front by Jim Butcher.***Plot section begins at: 45 min 50 secs.Apologies for some minor audio issues throughout the episode.Media Mentions:Storm Front by Jim ButcherThe Poppy War by R.F. KuangThe Dragon Republic by R.F. KuangThe Burning God by R.F. KuangThe Fifth Season by N.K. JemisinThe Obelisk Sky by N.K. JemisinThe Stone Sky by N.K. JemisinFallout---Prime VideoYellowjackets---Paramount+The Circle---NetflixThey Both Die at the End by Adam SilveraGwen & Art Are Not In Love by Lex CroucherThe Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing by Merve EmreLegends of Zelda: Tears of the KingdomHouse---PeacockThe O.C.---HuluWhich Brings Me to You---HuluThe Hating Game---HuluStranger Things---NetflixDamsel---NetflixWin a Date with Tad Hamilton!---HuluHow To Lose A Guy In 10 Days---HuluGood Christian Fun podcastLove is Blind---NetflixUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt---NetflixDoctor Who series one---MaxBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

The Year of the Dresden is finally here! Hannah and Laura are covering the first third of Jim Butcher's Storm Front and friends, this book is a romp. Laura also makes a bold claim about television shows that she watched growing up and gushes about a new favorite book. Hannah has delved into a lot of recommendations that were given to her by Laura and loved one so much that she immediately watched the adaptation.Apologies for some technical difficulties on Laura's end.**Spoiler section for Storm Front by Jim Butcher begins at: 1 hr 21 min 20 secs.**Media Mentions:Storm Front by Jim ButcherKomi Can't Communicate by Tomohito OdaJade Shards by Fonda LeeA Sorrow Named Joy by Sarah ChornDragon Meat by Angela BoordFortune's Fool by Angela BoordShattered Spirits by Cal BlackThe Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose UtomiThe Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose UtomiJujutsu Kaisen by Gege AkutamiKotaro Lives Alone---NetflixSaved by the Bell---PeacockBoy Meets World---Disney+Maintenance Phase podcastRecess---Disney+Doug---Disney+Pepper Ann---Disney+As Told by Ginger---Paramount+Hey, Arnold---Paramount+Nimona by ND StevensonNimona---NetflixTender is the Flesh by Agustina BazterricaPercy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick RiordanPercy Jackson and the Olympians---Disney+Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief---HuluPercy Jackson: Sea of Monsters---HuluQuiet on Set---MaxI'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdyAngel---HuluBuffy---HuluThe Runaways---HuluFiction Fans podcastFairly Odd Parents---Paramount+Community---PeacockNew Girl---PeacockBe sure to follow OWWR Pod!www.owwrpod.com Twitter: @OwwrPodBlueSky: @OwwrPodTikTok: @OwwrPodInstagram: @owwrpodThreads: @OwwrPodHive: @owwrpodSend us an email at: owwrpod@gmail.comCheck out OWWR Patreon: patreon.com/owwrpodOr join OWWR Discord! We'd love to chat with you!You can follow Hannah at:Instagram: @brews.and.booksThreads: @brews.and.booksTikTok: @brews.and.booksYou can follow Laura at:Instagram: @goodbooksgreatgoatsTwitter: @myyypodBlueSky: @myyypodHive: @myyypod

Just off a big night out on the town in Beverly, Hannah and Sam are focused on brand-new releases, of a wide variety, plus an older book that is very much NOT related to the website it shares a name with. That book is "Storm Front," the first in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, an older book (2000) recommended to Hannah by a customer, which has a great combination of noir and magic, but also some tawdry sex, which is mildly offputting. Orgies! Which provides a transition to "A Short Walk Through a Wide World," the debut novel from librarian Douglas Westerbeke, which has some odd sex scenes and lots of bloodiness, but not a lot of plot. That leads to "Rainbow Black," by Maggie Thrash, a Satanic Panic story where our main character finds her parents in the clink for Satanism. It's a little witch-hunty.  That leads us back in time to "Clear," a story where you learn all about Scottish history and how the landed gentry were evil bastards, but Sam is highly skeptical of the way it all wraps up. It reminds Hannah of "The Colony." But also of "The Safekeep," which Hannah dubs, "fantastic." It comes out in late May. Look for the big twist! Finally, Sam wraps up with some thoughts on the new Leigh Bardugo adult novel, "The Familiar." He enjoys it so far and isn't clear on why Hannah was down on it. Better than "Ninth House" and "Hell Bent," anyway. 

Skin Game, book 15 of Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, is a whole load of fun. But it also introduces some new, quite dark elements to the series. Lots to dig into here, which Zach and Jim do as Zach recently completed the book. Spoiler-lite, so we end up talking rather cryptically at times, but if you know, you know! #DresdenFiles #urbanfantasy #Booktube #Booktuber #SFF #Fantasy #Fantasybooks We hope you'll Like and Subscribe! Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/jMWyVJ6qKk Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FantasyForTheAges Check out our merch: https://www.newcreationsbyjen.com/collections/fantasyfortheages Rate & review us at Apple Podcast or wherever you download content. Email us: FantasyForTheAges@gmail.com. Find us on social media: Mastodon: @FantasyForTheAges@nerdculture.de Twitter: https://twitter.com/Fantasy4theAges Instagram: fantasy_for_the_ages Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FantasyForTheAges

Time to heat things up by moving into a spoiler-lite reaction of Cold Days, the 14th book in Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files. Zach just recently read it, and here he discusses his thoughts with dear old Dad. Safe to watch, whether or not you've read this yet. #DresdenFiles #urbanfantasy #Booktube #Booktuber #SFF #Fantasy #Fantasybooks We hope you'll Like and Subscribe! Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/jMWyVJ6qKk Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FantasyForTheAges Check out our merch: https://www.newcreationsbyjen.com/collections/fantasyfortheages Rate & review us at Apple Podcast or wherever you download content. Email us: FantasyForTheAges@gmail.com. Find us on social media: Mastodon: @FantasyForTheAges@nerdculture.de Twitter: https://twitter.com/Fantasy4theAges Instagram: fantasy_for_the_ages Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FantasyForTheAges

New York Times Multiple Best-Selling author Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, The Codex Alera, and The Cinder Spire novels) joins me to discuss his new book, The Olympian Affair, the writing process, storytelling, and Star Wars. Pull up a chair, grab your favorite coffee mug, and let's have some Coffee With Kenobi!__Visit CoffeeWithKenobi.com for the latest podcasts, news, videos, and more!__Book your trip to Galaxy's Edge, Walt Disney World, Disneyland, the Disney Cruise ships, and beyond with Coffee With Kenobi's Travel Partner - CoffeeWithKenobi.com/MouseFanTravel __Become a member of the CWK Alliance to support Coffee With Kenobi, get access to audio and VIDEO of our exclusive weekly podcast, CWK Pour-Over, and more! CoffeeWithKenobi.com/CWKAlliance__You can also listen to CWK Pour-Over on Spotify CoffeeWithKenobi.com/Spotify__Tune in to CWK LIVE and have a cup of coffee with Dan Zehr on Monday nights at 7:00 p.m. CST on our Facebook feed or YouTube channel. If you cannot join us live, you can find the video replay on either place or listen to the audio of CWK LIVE here on Coffee With Kenobi's podcast feed! CoffeeWithKenobi.com/LIVE__Join our community in the CWK Cafe and be part of the conversation - CoffeeWithKenobi.com/Community __Shop Coffee With Kenobi shirts, hoodies, stickers, phone cases, and more CoffeeWithKenobi.com/Shop__Need help launching your podcast or blog or want to expand your existing brand? Want Dan Zehr to speak at your event? DanZMedia.comThanks for listening, and have a great week; this is the podcast you're looking for!- Dan Zehr (@MrZehr on Twitter) ---------------------------------------Follow Coffee With Kenobi on XFollow Coffee With Kenobi on InstagramLike Coffee With Kenobi on FacebookSubscribe to Coffee With Kenobi's YouTube ChannelMusic: Jazz Music: Eye to Eye by Steve Torok This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3271982/advertisement