I became quite delinquent in updating my blog last year. I’m going to try to do better in 2022.
I wonder how we would have reacted in March 2020 if we’d known that, two years later, we would still be in the heart of the pandemic and in more-or-less total lockdown. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have been very enthusiastic about the prospect. And yet, here we are. Working from home is the new normal for me and, I have to say, I don’t mind it at all. Quite like it in fact. I’ll probably never go back to the office full time again. My physical office has been given to someone else and, although I still have a phone extension there, it’s all virtual.
When the weather was milder we occasionally went to some local restaurants if we could eat out-of-doors, but a cold spell descended upon us last weekend. I haven’t been out of the house this year except to go to the mailbox, which is basically in our front yard. We mask up to go to the grocery store, although I might go back to ordering online for car delivery until we get past this…what is it, the sixth wave? For some strange reason last night, my dream-mind kept trying to recite the Greek alphabet.
We had a quiet holiday break. Back when it looked like the pandemic was easing up, we’d thought we might go to California to visit family, but once Omicron took hold we decided to stay put. We cooked meals, watched streaming, teleconferenced with family, and got some work done. I wrote and submitted a few short stories and did research for others. I also had to set up a new writing PC, which was a pain, but at least I don’t have to worry about the noises my 10-year old computer was making any more.
My to-do list for the first part of 2022 includes three more short stories to be written and two novellas, including one for Dissonant Harmonies II. I also hope to have some exciting news to announce next week.
A couple of nights ago, we watched Anxious People on Netflix. It’s based on the novel of the same name by Swedish author Fredrik Backman. At six 30-minute episodes, it makes for good binge-ing. It’s about a bank robber who flees the scene and takes a group of people attending a realtor’s open house hostage in a small Swedish town. The police force consists of a man and his son. When the hostage situation is resolved, the kidnapper has mysteriously vanished and the former hostages seem unusually reluctant to provide any details. It’s a heart-warming comedy about trying to do the right thing despite what the rules tell you to do. Quite charming.
Our major binge over the holidays was the 16-episode Korean melodrama Crash Landing on You. Sixteen 90-minute episodes, so it was quite a commitment. It’s about a Korean woman named Yoon Suri, head of her own fashion business and daughter of a wealthy businessman who has to assign a new head of his company after he’s released from prison for financial crimes. Shortly after he makes his decision (in addition to Suri, he has two older sons), while testing out a paraglider for her business, Suri is caught in an unusual storm and blown all the way into the DMZ between the Koreas, where she encounters a North Korean army captain. For various reasons, he decides to hide her from the government and try to get her back home. It’s a high-stakes dramedy (people can die) with lots of humor, too. The captain has four underlings who are terribly amusing, and the women in his village are hilarious. There are tons of complications to fill the 24 hours of the season, including a terrific villain we grew to loathe. It was interesting to see something set in that culture, about which we know so little. North Korean defectors served as consultants to help them get the details of their country as right as fiction will allow. The storytelling style was interesting, too. Flashbacks occurred without warning, which meant it took some time to orient ourselves to when something was happening, and they often revisited a scene we’d already seen, but either with more detail or from another character’s perspective. It was campy at times, and occasionally too repetitive, but we enjoyed it, often watching four or more episodes in a sitting. A number of scenes take place in Zurich, Switzerland, where I lived for a while in the late 1980s, so it was fun to see places I recognized in that city, as well as the familiar blue-and-white trams.
Publication news: My short story “The House of Sad Sounds” is now available in the anthology Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers, Vol. 6 and “Kane and Averill” came out this week in Black Cat Weekly #18. As the title indicates, the latter features my series detective Benjamin Kane.
I recently finished reading two books, one just after Christmas and one last night. They were The Man From Mittelwerk by M. Z. Urlocker, which comes out in April, and The Joy and Light Bus Company, the latest #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novel by Alexander McCall Smith. I met Zack Urlocker (the Z. in M. Z. — M. is his brother Michael) at Bouchercon in Dallas in the beforetimes and we had a nice time chatting at dinner during one of the events. The novel is an interesting blend of war story, noir, cosmic horror and whodunit. I provided them with a blurb, something I’ve only done a few times in the past.
