Category: Uncategorized

It occurred to me to check and make sure that the list of my 14 Rules for Life was actually, ya’know, still here.

It wasn’t.

Well, fiddlesitcks.

So, without further ado, here are Devlin James’ 14 Rules for Life in their entirety. Your Mileage May Vary

1. No one gets to tell you who you are. Not a parent, not a teacher, not the clergy, not a counselor. Only you have that right.
   • It’s always okay if you can’t answer that question yet.
2. Never turn down free food.
   • If it comes from a trusted source. I’m lookin at you, coworker-baked peanut butter sriracha cookies.
3. A mistake only becomes an error if you fail to learn from it.
   • I’m still lookin at you, coworker baked peanut butter sriracha cookies.
4. When someone does a job you don’t want to do, thank them for it. They not only did the job, they helped you out.
5. Just because I am this way, does not invalidate you being that way. Your truth is as valid and beautiful as mine.
   • I’ve no more right to yours than you have to mine.
6. If you kill the joe, make some mo.
   • The same is also true for the last tray of ice cubes.
   • If you don’t know what the joe is, look it up. Don’t make others do for you.
7. Never start a fight. But always finish it.
   • That does not necessarily mean with violence.
8. Always turn the other cheek, but remember, you’ve only got two.
9. Never get in the middle of a goddamn sword fight.
10. The highest form of martial arts, uses nothing but thoughts and words.
11. Opinions are like nostrils. Most people have at least one, and others are rarely interested in their contents.
12. Life is the best teacher, but it’s unaccredited.
13. The vilest nastiest people out there are even more miserable than they make you feel.
14. It takes way too much energy to hate. Be lazy, and forgive most of the time. Save your actual hate for folks who REALLY deserve it.
    • In my case, that’s Howard Shultz, Clay Bennet, and the ghosts of Daniel Stern and Aubrey McCelndon. From Hell’s Heart, etc..

Stardate: 20250205

Intro:

February already? Wow! This year feels like it’s already been six months long.

So, what do we have ins tore for THIS month? A mixed bag of good news, bit of irritating news, and an eye-opening trip to Ikea.

But First! This time around we’re doing a deep dive on my SECOND rule of Life:

Dev’s Rule #2:
Never turn down free food.
– If it comes from a trusted source.

And now the NEWS!

News:

There’s a lot.

• Last time we discussed the entire Flame & Claw trilogy being available on e book, but DID YOU KNOW… Book one, “Peacebreaker” is available as a paperback? Both on Amazon and Bookshop.org.
  
• I’m starting to have serious doubts about continuing on the Itch.io platform. First, they hold your payouts until you hit a certain threshold (irritating, but whatever). But then, you have to wait for the order to be over a week old, AND THEN even after you finally initiate a payout, they take 10-14 more days for it to be ‘human reviewed’ – I’m currently on day EIGHTEEN as I write this. My first sale on Itch was December 11th, a month and a half ago and I still haven’t seen a penny of it. Have any of you had similar experiences?
  
• Dateline Patreon: After a long hiatus, I’m blowing the dust off the Galaxy. That’s right, for as little as $5 a month (they got rid of per-creation billing, the swine) you can see the latest chunk of what I’m writing. A ‘Chunk’ is a few chapters or a short story that’s been proofread, but not professionally edited (yet). It’s the story in it’s raw form, and it will include content that won’t be in the eventual finished novel. Jim Butcher said at a book signing J and I attended that he doesn’t have a Dresden Files timeline in his head, he as a DF Multiverse because he remembers scenes that were never published as being in the books. Well folks, the Galaxy lets you see my Multiverse.
  
• Dateline Right Over There…: If you’re actually reading this on my website, you’ll get the joke. But if you’re savvy enough to be reading this in an aggregator, I meant a newsletter link on the Smything’s page. It was always my intent to turn this blog INTO a newsletter, and I’m finally figuring out how. Don’t worry, it’ll stay a blog too. 🙂

In The Library:

Twelve Months by Jim Butcher.

This is a spoiler-free review of the audiobook version narrated, again, by the incomparable James Marsters.

This is a book about healing. Healing on a personal level from the staggering loss of a loved one, healing on community level after the events of the last two novels in the series, and healing on a societal level after those same events.

Butcher admits this book is a huge departure from the usual format of the series. Most books in the Dresden Files depict the “worst weekend or week of Harry’s (the main character’s) year.” This is the ENTIRE year. Starting a day or two after the previous book, “Battle Ground”, “Twelve Months” sprawls out the next roughly 365 days. Some of them are mundane, just Harry trying to rebuild his life after it was smashed to bits. Some are pure chaos as the forces of darkness, the Queen of Winter, and even the United States government descend on the ruins of Chicago.

I lost count of the times I had to stop and reach for a tissue. Parts of this book are so raw I’m surprised they didn’t leave bloodstains. Some are so beautiful that words fail me. Through it all, Marsters provides a faithful, and immediate narration. You get the feeling that you’re sitting down with your best friend over mugs to have a heart to heart.

All that said, if this is your entry point to the Dresden Files… Pick another entry. You need to know who these people are and what has gone before, because Twelve Months isn’t enough time to relate it all to you.

There are a few warts in the tale. Harry’s always been a bit anachronistic in his attitudes towards women, but hearing female characters referred to as “(someone’s) woman” gets old fast. Also, there’s a reference to agitators in a protest that feels a lot like “See! There ARE professional bad actors! Really!” Bud, we know. ICE hire them all.

Despite that, this book (for fans of Harry Dresden) is a must read and should shoot to the top of your TBR pile. #1 with a Rocket.

The Good

Ok, what this issue’s topic? Oh! Right. My second most-important rule for life. Rule number two seems a bit silly at first, but it’s surprisingly deep.

Never turn down free food.
– IF it comes form a trusted source.

Seems straightforward, right?And it is, until we dig a bit further down. What happens when you turn down free food? Yeah, you go hungry, but more than that. Someone made that. Someone probably made that for you personally or for a group you’re a part of like co-workers, or book club, or just folks they know.

So, even if it means eating something you don’t necessarily love, give it a try. They put a lot of effort into it.

I can already hear the cries of “But Dev! The codicil!” Well, let me tell y’all a story. I will change the names to protect the innocent, and the guilty.

I used to work in an office with a lot of amateur bakers. And dang, they were GOOD. Most Monday’s we’d be greeted by a Tupperware full of yeasty, or chocolatey, or even cinnamon-y goodness. This had begun years before I joined the company, and ran right up until a few weeks before I left it.

What killed it? Let’s call them Zelda’s Peanut Butter cookies.

Now, when I say these baked goods appeared most Monday mornings, I meant they were there when the doors opened at 8, and we had an empty Tupperware by 8:15. We were a ravenous pack of jackals.

Now Zelda, who was one of the bigwigs at the company no less, was a master baker. Her warm-spice choco chip cookies could reduce even the hardest heart to tears with one bite. But on this day, she did not make those. No. After making sure on Friday no one was allergic to peanuts, she made us all peanut butter cookies. We assaulted them like Normandy Beach on D-Day.

But we were all of us, deceived.

For in the dark halls of Zelda’s kitchen, a secret ingredient was added. One ingredient to rule them all, as it were…

Zelda made us Peanut butter Sriracha cookies…

On paper, this sounded like an interesting, and even tasty idea. A bit of peppery spice goes shockingly well with peanuts. But, my dear reader, you’re thinking of the Sriracha sauce they put on the table in restaurants. That was far too mundane for corporate princess Zelda. No, she made her own. And it was strong enough to melt tank armor. Worse, she didn’t TELL us about the addition.

It began with a few tears, and ended with a mad rush to the break room for the jug of milk kept in the fridge for coffee, and when it ran dry, for ice water. Lots of ice water.

I added the codicil to rule two that night.

The Bad

So, how is rule number two bad? Well, tongue-melting cookies sort of bound to mind, but beyond that, it cuts you off from the unknown. Leaning into the codicil allows you to put a buffer between yourself and new experiences.

Because that’s what the rule was really all about. Trying new things. Staying only with the safe, the familiar limits your growth, and before long your focus is pulled inward, which makes it harder to see the plight of others around you.

Sometimes, a very few times, this protection of that buffer is necessary, but it also cuts off you growth as a person. So I try to remember the rule, not the qualifier.

The Fugly

The Bad got cut short today because I think the Fugly is gonna run long. I’m also once more playing with the definition of Funny-ugly.

A couple weeks ago, J and I needed to do something we’ve not done for a decade or so, drive down to Ikea. The reason is irrelevant, but what’s not is that I have some wicked-awful mobility problems, and making my way through the massive store complex with it’s poured-concrete floors is my personal image of hell.

The good news, is that this Ikea offered free use of wheelchairs for people like me who don’t have or need one normally, but would for this trip. Now, I hadn’t used a manual wheelchair since I was a child, and that was well… a very long time ago.

For those who’ve never had the pleasure, the primary muscles that power your movement are all located around your armpits. These are not something non gym rats tend to develop too much so within five minutes my arms were ready to fall off. I also developed friction burns on the pads of both my thumbs, but the physical repercussions aren’t what stick in my mind.

The store wasn’t crowded really, but there were a lot of folks there that Saturday afternoon. And what I remember most was the added mental burden of piloting myself around the displays and my fellow shoppers. I’m about six and a half feet tall, and I’m used to viewing the world form that angle. Suddenly losing half my height was much more jarring than I expected. Waist-high counters now may as well have been mountains. I couldn’t just side-slip through narrow gaps any more either. I had to not only plan my route, but choreograph in my mind where I could turn, pivot or even reverse.

The change in perspective had me thinking all the way home. People looked at me with a combination of pity, concern and in a few cases barely contained annoyance. Like me being there somehow inconvenienced them. Some of that was just the warehouse-shopping experience, but the rest made me realize just how quick I’ve been to judge people who are suddenly in my way, and that I have to remember that they’re having just as loud and crowded and bothersome a day as I am, probably more so.

They say not to judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. To that I add, ‘or rolled a mile on their wheels’.

So! Thank you for reading that. Next issue we delve into the My third rule for life:

A mistake only becomes an error if you fail to learn from it.

See you soon, and remember #DLtBW
-Dev

Stardate: 20251121

Intro:

They say ‘never meet your heroes’. Generally, because they can never live up to how you build them in your mind. By and large that’s true, though I think the ghost of Fred Rogers wants a word.

In an earlier phase of my life, I was lucky enough to work for a company that loaned out big, mean-looking bodyguard types to a lot of local fan conventions to protect their guests from overly-adoring fans. Being a big mean-looking bodyguard type, I was often dispatched for a weekend to stand behind the officers of the Starship Enterprise (not saying which one), and glower at anyone who skipped lines or made an unwelcome attempt to hug the famous person. I never had to physically restrain any exuberant fans, the glower was enough.

Of course, you know I’m a giant nerd, so I completely got the impulse to glomp.

But I also got to see the famous folks after they powered down whatever mental switch they flipped before facing fandom. Guess what. None of them were jerks. Even the few with reputations for being jerks were just normal folks who were tired. Heck, they were doing a Convention day after having just gotten off Screaming Baby Airlines flight 109 non-stop from the other side of the bloody globe without even time to find a coffee. THEN they’d begin signing a thousand photos and shaking hands with God-knows how many folks.

I just had to stand there and look like an ogre.

I recall one convention, with the a Captain no less. I got him from the local airport (another service my company provided), and took him directly to the hotel hosting the Con. On the drive, he told me he hadn’t slept in over a day because he’d been dreading the flight, but now it was over and he could relax. He rolled his eyes as he said it.

What I remember most about that day, as he climbed form the car, he let the biggest rumble bomb I’ve ever heard. A loud thing that began with a shrill little squeak that descended into a ripping, tearing sound that echoed in the concrete loading dock we’d pulled up to like a string of firecrackers on the 4th of July.

He glanced over to me and said, I kid you not, “Set phasers to burrito-fart, Mr. James.”

I got him to the greenroom, got him a damn coffee, and then began the gauntlet. The signings, the meetings, the speakings, pretending you didn’t just tell all these same stories last weekend at another convention, the shakings of hands, the occasional surreptitious wiping off of hands if somebody’s palm was a tad moist…

Four hours later, I was about to take him to his room for a blessed nap, when we got cut off backstage by a fan in a wheelchair.

I went into glower mode, but Captain Burrito-Fart stepped around me and knelt down to look her in the eye. They talked for a good twenty minutes, and she told him through tears how much his character on the show inspired her. Then he took her hand, and thanked her. He told her how the fans were the fuel that kept him going and that he would remember her and her story for a long time to come.

They parted and I took my Captain to the elevator. On the way up, I broke the major rule and asked him how much of that was real.

“Every word, Mr. James. Every word. I’ve met dozens of people like that young lady, and I remember every single one of them. They are the fuel that keeps me going. Because through them, I can do some good in this broken foul world. And if we can’t spread a bit of happiness, then I ask you what even is the damn point?”

Millions of people think this famous actor is their hero because of the character he played. But Captain Burrito-Fart is my hero because of the man who played him on TV.

News:

Wow! That was a bit longer than I intended. Thankfully, the news is short this week. Flame & Claw book 3 is still at the editor’s as I write this. I love Charlie. They’re the definition of ‘good people’.

Anyway, everything is on track still, January, maybe February, all three book will release at once.

Ok, if you’re not following me on Bluesky then your missing out on the goodies I’ve been posting over there. Like the cover reveal for book 1: Peacebreaker.

In The Library:

Been enjoying the heck out of “Brigands & Breadknives” the third cozy fantasy book from Travis Baldree. I recommend the audiobook to your attention, as I do his first two works in the series.

It once again raises a question I thought I’d put to bed, but it won’t stay asleep. Should I do audio versions of Flame & Claw? I’d love to, but right now I can’t afford to pay someone to read them. I’d do it myself, but folks have compared the sound of my voice to John Goodman, hardly appropriate for a twenty-something lady.

Then again, Mr. Baldree doesn’t sound like a female orc ex-merc, but his voice totally works for his own material. Conundrums…

The Good

We tend to conflate heroic characters with those who created them. It’s human nature, I suppose to see our mythical heroes in the people closest to them. Sometimes, as in Captain Burrito-Fart, it’s all to the good. I suppose that they key is to remember that they’re human, not paragons, not villains, but human beings who are eminently fallible.

And then there are those who are exactly as the appear to be in our hearts. I mentioned Fred Rogers above, I’ve never met anyone who knew him, briefly or in a couple cases otherwise, who thought he was anything but the pure, decent champion of children and goodness he seemed on TV. I’m sure there were times he lost his temper, times he used bad language, or gave vent to frustration in a way that wasn’t constructive.

But he also gave the best advice I’ve ever heard when he said to ‘look for the helpers.’ Because people who help others, even for selfish reasons, are growing the world we all want to inhabit. One where our differences aren’t a source of pain, but of strength.

The Bad

Of course, there are times when the person behind our favorite stories is actually a horrible human being. Take the case of the lady who wrote about a boy wizard with a scar on his forehead. I won’t say her name because as with her fictional big bad, it summons things.

Her blind hatred of folks who were different from her, who meant her no harm, and were no threat to her precious little bubble of life has cost her so much public regard it still staggers me.

The Fugly

Of all the self-inserts in her big multi-volume story, I never expected her Mary Sue to be named Petunia…

That’s all for now folks! See you soon with some hopeful NEWS!
-Dev