April 2026

This month, I wrote April’s zine about ghosts and what to do if you find yourself in a haunted house scenario. How to live with or get rid of them. It was fun, but what’s funnier is that I will get to keep a copy and leave it somewhere the people who eventually buy my house will find. Maybe I’ll bring copies to real estate open houses and hide them around so folks can bump into them and be a little freaked out. I think I’ll need to figure out how to age it a bit. Add to the realism. 

I wanted to write more, but nothing in my brain is really ready for the long-term commitment of a novel.

It’s funny, I watched a BBC archive video where they interviewed two writers who churned out pulp novels made to directly line the shelves at the local libraries. Books written and published with the intent that no one would ever buy them, but because they are at the library, folks would read them. They wrote basically the same romance novels and westerns, all published under different author names. Both together had written hundreds of novels. The full-time writer was pumping out 2 books a month for the livable wage of 50 pounds. That was for the whole month. When one book was finished, he immediately started the next one. The reporter asked him if he had a great novel in him, and of course, he said yes, but he had no time to work on that. He had other books to write and deadlines to hit, or he’d end up like that other writer they were interviewing. He wrote less books but had to supplement his income by being a dustbin/trash collector. 

I watched the Bone Temple. It’s a sequel to the movie 28 Years Later, which is a sequel to the movie 28 Days Later. In 28 Days Later (it’s an old-ass movie, so here’s a spoiler), the uninfected turned out to be some of the real monsters. This was missing a bit in 28 Years Later, but The Bone Temple made it very clear that some uninfected are the real monsters. My favorite part was Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Ian Kelson in a dance performance of Iron Maiden’s classic Number of the Beast. So good.

As for some books I’ve gone through this month, the first was The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman. It’s the actual sequel to Practical Magic, and now I have read all the books. Will I rewatch the movie and watch the sequel when it comes out? Yup. Did I watch the movie after finishing all the books? Yup. And you may ask, was it worth it? Well, yes, compared to other book series I have read, this one is messy, the timelines are weird, things are missing from novel to novel, and there are so many open questions not worth figuring out. From the movie standpoint, it’s a snapshot of 1998 for sure, and the music is insane, again screaming 1998. In the case of the books and the movie, though, it was just entertaining, and if you are looking for a light, fun read that focuses on love, curses, and talks about herbs, spells, and magic, then do it. Get in there and enjoy the weirdness.

I started reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It’s been sitting on my shelf since it came out. Figured I’d read it before watching the movie. I think it would be cool if I knew some of the math involved, but it’s wrapped in the story so well that it doesn’t even matter. I read those parts wrapped in the story and get it just enough.

Also reading The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk and Jennifer Croft. Just starting this one, it’s a fictional story about a real person in Poland who claimed to be the Messiah and attracted some followers. As with her other books, I love the writing and descriptions, and it reminds me that I don’t add enough descriptions of things in my stories. That’s a great reason to read all the things; you never know what kind of writer you want to be until you see a mix of all the writing and mix and match your way to something original. 

I read the poems in Conflict Resolution For Holy Beings by Joy Harjo for the April Difficult Book Club. It has a lot of jazz references for poetry written recently. That threw me off a bit. I like jazz, and there are some amazing contemporary jazz musicians making some crazy awesome music, but the beat poets referenced it so much and aligned themselves with jazz, and it made more sense. Overall, though, some good, thoughtful poems, but the weird out-of-time jazz stuff threw me off a bit. 

That’s it for April, I’m ready for real spring to kick in and warm up a bit. 

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This is a picture of some spooky spring daffodils flowering at the house.