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The Murderbot TV adaptation

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Ahhhhhh! I watched the whole first season Thursday. The episodes were short and not episodic, so it was one big thing cut up into episodes instead, really. The casting was brilliant, even for this face-blind person, such that it was immediately obvious who everyone was and it was very easy to keep them all straight. If you don't have face blindness, well, it's very hard to tell unfamiliar people apart or figure out who's who when they have similar looks. These actors were visually distinctive and wore distinctively different clothing. Is this what it feels like when something is translated into sign language for you, or there are captions on photos? Because that felt like such a kind and generous thing to do. I really appreciated it. It would have been so easy to put them all into uniforms. Things I loved about the adaptation: The cast. They were all lovely actors and all did a wonderful job with the story. Visually distinctive casting aside, they were a pleasure to spend t...
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50 Murderbot and Character

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Happy 50th anniversary of the podcast! Or something! I'm tackling the character of Murderbot, who's a depressive angry ex-slave cyborg with PTSD who's on the run. We love Murderbot, but why, specifically? I get into it, along with a lot of other examples that work the same way. Center internal conflict that drives them like an engine! How cool is that? I'm fascinated by the way we don't know ourselves, misrepresent ourselves, think we're one way when we're another, and don't actually know what we really want that would make us happy. We're such a mess! All of us and Murderbot too. Next week: probably Sarah Dessen's  Lock and Key  since I can't quit bringing it up. Woohoo!  
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49 Harriet the Spy

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Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh is one of the best books ever. It gets into everything good: how to transition from a complacent child to a self-aware person, what it means to be a writer, who we write for and how it affects them and us, what it means to be aware of your own emotional state and how to articulate and manage that. Did you think this book was about a kid with a spy route who peered in people's skylights and windows and went up the dumbwaiter? It is, but it's about SO MUCH MORE. I get into all of that, as well as the song of the gray catbird, Leverage Redemption , Head!Finn, the ongoing sagas of a) reupholstering loveseats (all done!), b) building the screened porch (frame is done!), and rewriting The Esker Road , OMG feels like I will be doing it forever but have made MAJOR STRIDES this past week so hurray for that. Writing! Life! Having way the hell too many projects and too much stuff! Sacred cheese of life!    
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Emma Burns Writes Books

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Hey! Go visit my new site, Emma Burns Writes Books .  I write the books. Every day I write the books. Books! Look. I am all about the books. I am here because I write the books. I would LOVE if you would read them and talk to me about them. They are a good time, these books. Well, you're going to read them and go "gaaaaaah don't do that oh no what are you doing nooo stop!" only you probably use punctuation even in your head. Even I feel that way when I read them. "Oh no! You're making a terrible mistake! Don't do it, Harriet/Ariel/Isaiah/Becca/Winston/Davy/Annamarie/Cole/Lisette/Millicent/Rosalie/Gregson/Zeke/Zach/whoever! Oh no, you did it! How are you going to get out of this now?" I really love to write young people getting themselves into impossibly terrible situations and then getting themselves back out of them.  Go on over there and pick out a book to read. There are links to Amazon where you can buy an ebook (so cheap) or a paperback (not muc...
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48 Cold Comfort Farm

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Stella Gibbons's amazing novel Cold Comfort Farm features a main character without a real character art of her own, who walks into the lives of her messy dramatic cousins and solves all their major life problems. Flora Poste said from the beginning she liked cleaning up messes and making everything tidy and that's exactly what she does with the Starkadders. They are living with maximum misery and drama, each of them taking on a role where they can weaponize their misery to be the star of their own show. Flora goes methodically through the family, solving their problems and making each of them happy. I adore this book. I saw the movie first, many years ago, then read the book. The movie is very close to the book, if that worries you. I found so many things to use in this book, too. For example, I realized exactly what's wrong with my giant fluffy disaster of a draft, as well as how to fix it, so once again you've solved it for me, Sacred Cheese of Lifers! No? Not the te...
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Apple Podcasts

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The old feed of the podcast is still up on Apple Podcasts (not sure for how long, also it's possible I downloaded the episodes) but you'll need to go to the NEW feed to get recent and future episodes. Go to search. Search for Sacred Cheese of Life. Pick the new one that has episode 47 A Rose for Emily. Follow! Hurray! I myself was baffled by this today, but shouldn't have been, in retrospect. It's a different rss feed. The new feed is: https://media.rss.com/sacred-cheese-of-life/feed.xml It will be included in many other podcatchers and venues going forward, but I don't use them so I'm not sure when they'll be live. Search for it on your favorite podcatcher! If there's one you want it added to, let me know. Except Pandora/Sirius because their contract was evil. A world of nope. Good times! Sacred cheese of life and whatnot!  
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47 A Rose for Emily

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You have to read this before listening because the ending will be ruined otherwise. I will not be responsible for that! Read it! Gaaaaah! There is no rose! I can't remember whether a friend of mine or I wrote about the rose in the story for an exam in high school. Except there's no rose. We didn't get that online. There was no online yet. Goodness knows where it came from. But I always think about the rose that isn't there. Well, everything in the one room is rose, as in the color. And obviously the title suggests it! That's where it came from.  Also we were really tired. ALL THE TIME. Are we sure high school is a good idea, as it is currently imagined? I say no.    
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