February 2025

 It's February, and it has been so cold. Throw in a little travel and a little severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, along with reading increasingly chaotic and depressing news delivered on a speeding conveyor belt, and I have basically filled a month. 

Books I read: 

I had an advanced reader copy of Listen to Your Sister, Neena Viel's debut novel, and about a quarter of the way through, I decided I was not going to finish it. I made my notes on NetGallery stating that, and I put the book down, only to pick it up again and finish it. It went from I'm not that interested in this to What the hell is going on to Where the hell is this going to ok? That wasn't so bad. Now I have to go back and add my review.

I also read Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay. It was a quick, easy read, well-written, and a disturbing topic. Basically, it's about a fake movie that was never released about a kid who was turned into a monster that kills people. You get the story from the point of view of the actor who played the kid who was turned into a monster. He's older, trying to get the movie remade and doing horror conventions because some of the original movie was leaked onto YouTube and picked up a cult following. 

I started reading Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones even though I need to finish the last two books in his Indian Lake Trilogy. Werewolves and Slashers - Back to the Horror novel classics.

Movies I watched:

I watched Nosferatu by Robert Eggars. The movie looks amazing, the actors are great, and the story, while not fun, is interesting. It's basically watching spooky moving art—that's basically his movies. I heard he's working on a Werewolf movie set in 13th-century England, and you know that's going to be great.

I picked up Covid at early on this month, and while hidden away, unable to function, I proceeded to watch Final Destination 1-5 - which are basically Rube Goldberg death machine movies. I remember actually watching the first couple, likely rented from Blockbuster when it still existed. The last few seemed like I had watched them because they gave away a lot in the commercials. The 4th movie is plagued by 2009 weird attempts to impress with 3d - thrown in but not part of the story. Pretty weak. The 5th was 3d as well, but they held back a bit more, and it helped. The worst part about watching these is that I found out a new one is coming out, and how can I not watch that one, too. Covid keeps giving.

As for Writing, Not much has happened so far this month as I had Covid, and it dulls the brain, leaving me only able to watch bad television and sleep. I do have a story I wrote a little while ago called The Last Automator. The plan is to have that edited and shared next month. 

That's it for February

Because apparently I love jumping social media sites, I'm moving on from Threads to BlueSky and trying to grow a following there. One day, I will share more than just links to my monthly updates. If you are on BlueSky and interested, follow me here: https://bsky.app/profile/spwhite.bsky.social

This picture was taken on Clearwater Beach earlier this month. It was nighttime, and the fog was thick. The camera makes things a bit more visible, but I could not see more than a few feet ahead of me. I could only see the ocean when my feet were near the water. There were what I hoped were people walking around on the beach, but I couldn't be sure because I could only make out shadows. If I was going to be murdered on this beach at night, this would have been the night. 




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