The spookiest month of the year for book deals, updates and more! 📚
Plus Balloon Fiesta 50th Anniversary
It’s October, which around my neck of the woods, means there’s a lot to do.
This first weekend alone, we braved waking up at 3:30 in the morning to set out for the Balloon Fiesta on opening day. If you’ve never heard of it before, every October there’s the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, and this one is the fiftieth anniversary, which meant a lot more people were there. There had to be about 100,000 people there that morning for the festivities, and there are hundreds of balloons every day. This being the opening day of the 50th there were a staggering 625 balloons that went up just after 7am.
After a year off, it returned last year, but with some parts scaled back. This year it was back in full force and it was interesting to see. The kids had a lot of fun, got to meet up with some of their friends, which lemme tell you, they reported this to be one of the busiest and most attended days in the event’s history, so it was no easy feat. Still, they had a ton of fun, which was worth the two hours in traffic to park and get in (not kidding).
Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be working on a book. Silly me. I’m about 2/3rds of the way done and my editor is waiting on deck for the final draft, which should be a matter of a week or two. It’s going really well and I can’t wait to get it out to everyone.
I’ve been working my way through reading Nona the Ninth, which is just as great and frustrating as Harrow the Ninth was, but in a different way. I just capped off a second Witcher 3 playthrough, something I’ve been meaning to do since it came out and I got one of the worst endings to that game. This time I had a brand new Steam Deck to play it on, which helped a lot. The idea of sitting at my desk writing, then sitting at my desk and playing something was unappealing. Somewhere in between there, I played the new Return to Monkey Island game, which was really a treat. A great “you can never go home” kind of story.
I usually have stuff I watch when I’m using my rower at home to do my workouts. This past month it was the HBO series The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling by Judd Apatow, followed by Apatow’s George Carlin one. The Shandling one was much more heartfelt and sincere, due to Apatow’s professional and personal relationship with Shandling, while the Carlin one was good, but felt the need to capture every major milestone of a career filled with milestones and didn’t quite seem to know what to do with his later years where he turned deeper into counterculture comedy.
There were good things I picked up from the Shandling doc, though, namely to not feel bad about “moving on” to new creative endeavors, something I’ve been agonizing over with finishing off the Trystero series. Keeping yourself engaged and challenged as an artist is wholly important and something I need in my life.
After those, I’ve shifted to the Netflix Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners series, which is a tad gory at times, but decent enough to keep me occupied while I’m getting my meters in.
Until next time, I’ve gotta get back to work so I can get Cracked Palace out.