July, In Like a Loon

Hello folks! It's July! It's my birthday month but I have a very very busy month ahead of me with travel and doctors and dentists and deadlines and a class I'm taking. I have another story poking at my head, wanting to be written, but I think that's just The Magpie bothering me, getting bored with what I am writing now.

It was a dark and stormy night.

In both fiction and in polite conversation, most consider the weather a weak or boring topic. But come on, what other things (aside from COVID-19) touch every single person in an area?

The eastern US just recovered from a heat wave, and then we got hit with tropical storm Chantal. (Chantal sounds so debonaire; not like a hurricane at all.)

Chantal just arrived, says she doesn't have those petit-fours that dowager aunt Joyce likes so much. But she did bring us 20 inches of rain and a questionable skirt length that shows her ankles!

I learned from a concerned text that what I thought was a bad storm on Sunday night was causing catastrophic flooding in other parts of the Triangle. Houses flooded, an entire shopping center in Chapel Hill was wiped out, and at least one person died when their car got caught in the flood. It was bad.

But here's why I'm telling you this:
1) I'm okay. If anyone saw news from Durham and worried about me: nothing happened to me or my loved ones or my property.
2) To encourage you to be aware of the weather. Storms are getting worse. I had no idea there was even a Hurricane Chantal until Sunday morning and people were talking about it.
3) To encourage you to, if you can, please donate to causes to help victims of the floods in Texas and North Carolina. In the coming days I'm sure some local charities will crop up, but in the meantime the American Red Cross is always a safe bet.
4) To remind you that weather isn't boring. It unites everyone in similar experiences, but at the same time it can divide communities because people deal with the weather effects differently, usually along class lines. Exploring how different people deal with the same problem is definitely a solid plot point for any story, really.

ICYDK about hurricanes: Hurricane categories are based on wind speed, used both in warning populations for safety and estimating what kind of damage to expect. The problem is that flooding doesn't enter into how "serious" a hurricane is. And I can promise you, it's serious. And after hurricanes like Floyd (a Cat 2 storm that dumped 20 inches of water in NC) people have lobbied weather orgs to include rainfall estimates in their categorizing.

I discovered the National Center for Environmental Information has a 2020 article about a metric of "extreme rain multiplier" (or ERM.)

The funny thing is, all I can find are people talking about the ERM, not any useful information for the regular folks. After research, I can confidently say that ERM is calculated by weather wizards and involves the goat room of Lumon. Instead of attempting to explain it here, I just took a screen shot:

We have some ways to go before the average person can figure that out.

(If you haven't watched Severance on Apple TV, go do it. It's as good as people say.)

Where to Find Mur in July (and onward)

Podcasts
* I was on The Failed Writers podcast a couple of weeks ago and had a lot of fun. Their interviews are quite different than I am used to, and I hope you check it out.
* I narrated Escape Pod 1000, "A Thousand Names for God and Infinite Mustard" by Matt Wallace. 20 years! 1000 episodes! I'm still amazed.

Appearances
* July 17-20: Readercon in Boston
* August 6: Appearance at Quail Ridge Books with Natania Barron
* August 12-17: Worldcon in Seattle

I Should Be Writing Livestreams on Twitch
(note- live podcasts are edited and posted later to the feed.)
July 10, 8pm: Rosie Evylin appears to talk about her new book, Wisteria Wishes at 8pm Eastern (livestreaming at a special time for the author's time zone.)
July 17: No stream (Readercon)
July 24, 3pm: Talking about more Bullies
July 31, 3pm: Dan Kois joins us to talk Hampton Heights.

Upcoming
Aug. 7: Sarah Gailey appears to talk about their new book, Spread Me.
Aug 9: I Should Be Writing turns 20 celebration!
Aug. 28: Tim Chawaga appears to talk Salvagia.
(All times EDT unless stated otherwise)

Ditch Diggers
On hiatus. Ursula is in BIG demand now, and doing a lot of world traveling this summer. I will try to get her on the show when she is at home and not jetlagged, but I can't promise anything.

Stuff I Make, Like, Endorse, Etc.

I have a new self pub book out! A Kick in the Pants: Prompts to Get Your Writing Moving encompasses the prompts I've released on my Patreon for the Kick in the Pants workshop and during a few NaNoWriMo Novembers. I also introduce all of the Bullies. It is $4 or free to Patreon supporters.

Really, Bezos Has Enough Money
It's Amazon Prime week, and a lot of indie sites are offering their own sales to compete! This includes Bookshop.org, which supports indie book stores when they sell physical, ebooks, or even audiobooks. Please check there first for any books you might be excited about!

In fact, from there you can buy Infinite Archive, Salvagia, Spread Me, Hampton Heights, and Wisteria Wishes (Lilac Love, actually, since WW isn't on Bookshop yet), and be all set for the upcoming episodes of ISBW! (affiliate links)

Do Authors Need Websites? (hint- yes)

I recently became an affiliate of WriterWebsite.com, which is a web service specifically for authors. If you want a clean site to promote yourself, giving help every step of the process, you really should check them out.

What Are You Playing?

I've been enjoying idle games, which require some fun setup and then just goes off on its own while you do your work. The hottest one I know of is Spirit City, Lofi Sessions where you make your avatar, your room, and pick activity, location, even time of day and sound effects. Then while your avatar does her work, you can work. The neat thing about is, as you work, you lure spirits to you. And these things are hands down adorable. (You have to figure out how to lure them, using hints.) This is not an affiliate link, but the Steam Summer Sale is on right now (July 2025), and the game is 33% off.

Also I bought a bunch of things on the Steam sale, but I'm still playing Stardew and BG3 in my down time. I'll report if I get further into The Alters, which is VERY cool, except it keeps crashing on my Steam deck at the same point.

What are you watching? Reading?
Watching nothing new, honestly. I still watch Taskmaster, Poker Face, and Murderbot. But this week, all three of the shows end their seasons, so I have to find more TV.

With Reading, I've been re-listening to the Murderbot books, still reading Hench (don't judge me, it's my before-bed book, so some nights it's a chapter, some nights it's a page.)

I am listening to Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazlewood, an age gap/enemies to lovers summer romance by a popular writer, but I'm struggling because I find enemies to lovers romances difficult. I just don't get how someone can fall in love with a total asshole. If I find out that someone I thought was attractive turns out to be a rude/mean/bad person, they become less attractive to me.

I also recently listened to The One by John Marrs, a modern day SF story about a dating site that claims to match you to your perfect mate using DNA. While it claims to have tons of twists and turns, several of the "gotcha" moments were pretty obvious. It did have some amazingly bizarre characters that I enjoyed getting to know, and some of the pairings were very fun (ie a serial killer discovered his perfect mate was a cop, the woman who discovers her perfect mate died last week, etc.)

Thanks for being subscribed! Remember that Infinite Archive is available now, and you can join the Patreon for all sorts of goodies. I Should Be Writing streams live on Thursdays and the podcast posts on Mondays.