2024 – The Year that Wasn’t

Jan

2025

Let’s see. The last time I posted on here I promised you a review of my favorite non-alcoholic beer. And that was. . . oh. Oh. Uh. That was quite a long time ago. I straight up can’t tell you where the time went because I just don’t know. Over two years have gone by in what seems like the blink of an eye. In all those days, what have I manged to achieve creatively? Nothing. Unless you count the Star Wars/Aliens mashup RPG campaign I ran for my friends which, while fun, doesn’t really add anything to my list of credits.

The main feeling that carried me through 2024 was anxiety. Carried isn’t really the right word. Careened on a whip-like bullet train is more apt. At the start of the year great big question marks hung over the future of my day job. The uncertainty around it didn’t fully resolve until the country was well into the election cycle which brought about a whole deeper level of fear. That situation is only going to get worse as we head into 2025. I fear my family and friends are going to have their rights stripped away. I am ashamed that my country chose greed over morality. Enjoy your 30 pieces of silver while you can, America.

I don’t function at my best creatively when I worry about whether or not my neighbors are going to follow through on the violent rhetoric they supported during the election .

It also doesn’t help that for the past several years of my writing I haven’t felt the support of anyone. What’s the point of creating when no one cares about what you create?

“You don’t understand the humiliation of it- to be tricked out of the single assumption which makes our existence viable- that somebody is watching” – Player, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

And so I have not written. I’ve doodled ideas and written down quick lines of prose. I’ve dreamed of stories. But I have not written.

Much like before, my good buddy alcohol was right there to smooth over all the jagged edges in my brain. And 2024 slipped by like so many rounds at a bar where everybody knows your name.

But it wasn’t all bad or at best, hazy. I reconnected with a number of my friends from college. And made some new friends for the first time in over 15 years. And, despite what I just wrote about my drinking, I recommitted myself to my health. I’ve been attending classes at Cyclebar multiple times a week. The impact it has had on my body and my well-being has been transformative. Going to those classes each week, watching my stats improve, and seeing the muscles in my body regain their definition reminded me that setbacks are a normal part of life, but you can claw back to where you were if you are willing to put in the work. And it is with this newfound sense of pride in my health that I have committed myself to not just a Dry January, but a dry-ish 2025. My love of beer and bourbon isn’t going to change, but those things need to go back to being the occasional spice sprinkled over events and not the events themselves.

I’m fully intend to get back to writing this year. Whether or not anyone will care or buy a story from me is completely outside my control. I hope I can remember that.

No Sh!t, I Review a Non-Alcoholic Beer

Feb

2023

Sober January has come and gone. And, despite the misgivings I expressed in my previous post, I made it through without incident. However, there was one day, a Saturday, where my friends were gathering at a local brewery. I RSVP’ed as a “no” for the meeting since I didn’t want to put myself in the way of a Peterbilt truck worth of temptation. Yet, the thought of having a beer that evening wormed its way into my head and would not get out. I just really wanted the experience of drinking a beer. Not for the sake of inebriation, but more for the ritual: the bouquet of hops, the tickling of carbonation mixed with the a mouthful of sweetness. Then I remembered reading somewhere that non-alcoholic beers were having a moment. So, I Googled “non-alcoholic beer”.

Continue reading →

Sobriety and Monsters?

Jan

2023

My family’s history with alcohol is complicated. Actually, it’s my history with alcohol that is complicated. It is pretty straightforward with my family. Alcoholism bores deep into the old family tree and runs its veins through all the branches with the same frequency as men with big noses. And there’s a lot of dudes with big noses in my family, self included.

Do you drink? If you do, do you recall the first time you tried alcohol? I do. I was probably four years old. My dad’s parents were visiting, and I adored my Grandpa Lickman. His hands were these powerful, gnarled cudgels that held my attention because he’d lost one of his fingers to a table saw. When he laughed it filled the halls of our home with joy. And he always seemed to have a beer in his hand. One evening during this visit I was looking up at grandpa as he cracked open another can. My curiosity got the best of me.

“Grandpa, can I try your beer?”

Goddamn, how he laughed at that. “You want to try my beer?” (I can still hear the charming, Yooper tilt of his accent. ) “Sure!” And he pressed the cold can into my hands.

Continue reading →

Some Small Changes

Nov

2022

I’m not sure how to remove the link, but I no longer have a Twitter account. I have no interest in being part of Elon Musk’s plans for that site. From what I can tell, he has turned it into a social media tire fire in the short time he has been in control of it.

You can, however, find me on Instagram now. I am beerandmonsterswriter. It has been forever since I tinkered with the layout of this site, so it might be some time before I can remove the Twitter link and add one for Instagram.

Also I have a new portrait up on the About Me page. The talented Kayla Chandler of Ghost Possessions photographed me at the Dark Market several weeks back. I am so pleased with how the photos turned out and I just had to use one of them for the site.

That’s all for now. Thanks for checking in.

An Update on Faylinn

Nov

2022

Whoops. It seems I’ve let this place get a bit dusty, doesn’t it? I hope to change that in the coming weeks. In the meantime, for those that do not follow me on Facebook, here is an update on Faylinn. She went through surgery back in February. While she recuperated at home we awaited word on her biopsy results. Despite what I wrote in my last post, I should have purchased a lottery ticket on that day or submitted a story to Clarkesworld, because luck was with us. The tumor was benign. Her surgeon sounded just as relieved as we were. He kept saying, “I never get to say this.” Her recovery since then has not been easy. After all, they shaved her belly and split her open like a dead tauntaun. She has developed a small problem of incontinence, but that could just as well be due to her age more than the surgery. We are managing it with medication. She is pretty much back to her old, opinionated self. And for that I am beyond thankful.

But, still. Fuck cancer.

Fuck Cancer

Feb

2022

Several weeks ago, our regular vet detected the presence of a tumor in Faylinn’s bladder. Immediately, we made plans to visit a specialist at MedVet. On Friday, we met with the specialist. The news that came out of her appointment is of the bad, good, bad variety.

The bad: Our vet was correct down to the dimensions and location. There is a tumor on the front of Faylinn’s bladder.

The good: An assortment of tests did not detect any additional tumors in her body. Her lymph nodes, lungs, and the rest of her bladder are all clear. We caught it before it metastasized. Also, for the vast majority of bladder cancers in dogs, the tumors grow close to and along the tubes which lead down to the kidneys and the urethra, making surgery impossible. In Faylinn’s case, the tumor is at the front of her bladder in about as perfect a spot as it could be for surgery. It should be a straightforward operation to remove the tumor with no complications.

The BAD: Unless we are winning-lottery-ticket lucky and the tumor is benign, removing it will not cure the cancer. Without some sort of secondary treatment, our little nurse will be crossing the rainbow bridge in a year.

When Chaos was diagnosed with cancer, I went into full denial mode. Not about the disease, but about his chances of recovery. I documented my thought process through that runaway wagon cart nightmare on this very site. That experience. . . I still struggle to process it. I don’t know if I can go through that wringer again, nor do I think I could subject Faylinn to the level of suffering Chaos endured. I am trying to be realistic about our chances and to start processing the grief now.

Fuck cancer.

A Tale of Two Pumpkins

Nov

2021

Beer. It’s in the title of my website. And I love to share the experience of discovering a new beer with my friends whenever I can. However it is an experience my wife rarely joins me in, as her taste in beer is quite narrow. So, imagine my delight when, while browsing the shelves of our local Lizardville, she pointed out a can for a style of beer I knew was far outside her usual tastes.

“You want to try that?” I asked, “Have you had a pumpkin beer before? I don’t care for them much myself.”

“No,” she gestured again at the label “The artwork caught my eye. It looks cool, and you know I’m discovering my witchy side.”

I scanned the can with a more appraising look. She had a point. The design on the can featured an eye made up of a number of flowering symbols entwining together. The entire label was painted in stark orange on black. “T’witchy” it proclaimed. “9.25% ABV”. I gave an appreciative whistle. As my wife moved away, a very specific ingredient included in the brew caught my eye.

You know what else I love? A good prank. I picked up the can. Not only was I resolved to review it, but I was going to ask my wife to join me in the sampling. But I couldn’t just throw her into the deepest waters of craft brewing. No, I needed something to contrast it against. I wanted her to see a negative before I provided her with a positive, to paraphrase Dr. Eldon Tyrell. I glanced at the other pumpkin beers lining the shelves and grabbed one which appeared to be an innocuous example of the style. I’d be lying if I said its name didn’t play into my decision. “Haunted Hayride” was its name.

“Beer and monsters, indeed,” I smirked.

Continue reading →

I Reckon That’s One For the Bucket List

Oct

2020

A common refrain I hear among writers is that they fell in love with the written word at a very early age. That ‘twern’t me. Television, Movies, and, to a lesser extent, radio were the tools I used to stuff my imagination. As my 1st and 2nd grade teachers could attest, words on page failed to hold my attention for long. But I can pinpoint exactly when that disinclination towards reading started to change.

I must have been about eight that night I spied my older brother and his friends playing Dungeons & Dragons. Of course at the time I had no idea what it was. “Were they playing a game?” I wondered. They were rolling dice, but there was no board. Instead stacks of books and sheets of graph paper covered the table. I couldn’t follow the action but one thing was clear to me. My brother and his friends were having fun. A lot of fun. Being the inquisitive younger brother it was not long before I was shooed away from the table. Continue reading →

It’s Been a Minute of Sour Times

Aug

2020

Two years since my last update. In case anyone is checking this website on a regular basis, I want you to know that I am still writing. Progress has slowed due to personal issues. However I was invited to join a project at the start of the pandemic. It is an opportunity I’ve been dreaming of since I was a kid and I am a super excited about it. The final details are still being hashed out, but I hope to have an announcement by the time the leaves start turning yellow.

My Hero Died Two Deaths

Jul

2018

Harlan Ellison died this week. If you’re visiting this page because I’m a writer, then hopefully I don’t have to tell you who Harlan Ellison was. But, just in case, Google him. You’ll see a wealth of obituaries that will inform you that Harlan Ellison wrote over 1800 stories in his lifetime, that he won pretty much every award a writer could earn (some of them multiple times), that we wrote the most famous episode of the original Star Trek (“The City on the Edge of Forever”), and a thesaurus’s worth of synonyms for the word, “angry”.

A few of those write-ups will even include that he was a prominent voice in the New Wave science fiction movement, a group of writers that blended experimental techniques with a strong emphasis on stories that dealt with the civil rights movement. You might read that Harlan Ellison burned with passion over civil rights, that he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma and visited inmates in prison. You may find a mention or two that he acted as a mentor to other ground-breaking writers, such as Octavia Butler. He was the proto-SJW. Note: I mean that as a compliment.

But what you won’t find in these official articles is what a huge, god-damn influence he was to many writers and the writing craft, and just how difficult he made it to reconcile that fact during the last decade of his life. Continue reading →