Happy holidays!
This is the first real real blog I’m posting on this site, and what better time to talk to you all than in that liminal period between Christmas and New Years? I was unsure if this would be an actual announcement, but since I’m not really announcing anything, blog feels more apt.
Anyway, the first thing I wanted to say is that broadly, I'm doing great, but work has been kicking my ass. This is technically my first real job with a paycheck, but while having it provides me the freedom to follow my own passions and interests when I’m home, it also constrains my time in ways that are egregious even compared to a typical nine to five. It's maddening, especially because I want to jump back into commissions more than ever next year.
That’s right. I want to switch that dubious “Commissions: PENDING” sign in my Discord to “Commissions: OPEN”. I have been seriously slacking on actually completing the commissions I have received, but that is going to change, in part because I have further refined how I communicate my skillset to prospective customers with my new commission sheet. I’ll continue to tweak it, but I do believe that this sheet will better allow those who want to hire me to understand the types of stories I am most capable of creating. So we’ll see how that goes!
But now, it’s time to talk about something serious. The holiday and end-of-year season has always been a period of introspection and taking into account the happenings of the previous year. We could spend hours reliving every bad, terrible, no good thing that happened on a broader societal scale over the last year, so I won’t. Instead, I’ll talk about myself.
In short: I failed to meet the personal and professional goals I set for myself. I graduated college, finally, and I’m still floundering trying to get into something approaching the career I actually want. It feels like everyone in my personal life is starting families and joining the human race–of course, at least half of those people seem to be encountering divorce and other difficulties so, bullets dodged, question mark? But that doesn’t change the fact that I feel at times like I’ve uncomfortably stagnated. The logical part of my brain tells me that I’m still young (and I am! I am still young, youngish, at least), but what they said about your mid to late twenties being a 24/7 humiliation ritual was only partially exaggerated. This wasn’t the worst year I’ve had emotionally, but it was in the ballpark. And that’s why I wanted to give a special shoutout to you. Yes, you. The fans, the boy, girl, and nyanbinary folks reading this. YOU are the people I wanted to shout out right now.
I've always maintained I have the literal best fans in the world. Well, over the past year, you people have somehow found a way to prove me both wrong and right at the same time. On the one hand, you’ve always been incredible–funny and introspective and creative with wonderful ideas. Like, that’s a given–you only need join the Discord to see the scintillating discussions we get up to in there.
You all have been a fount of creativity and humor, and many of you have been excellent sounding boards for me in terms of brainstorming, proofreading, and revising my work. Again, best fans in the world.
But then.
Somehow.
2025 saw the arrival of additional, incredibly smart, funny, creative, and brilliant fans and friends! I thought we were at critical mass ages ago! Somehow, my work was good enough to attract more incredible people to my community. I truly and genuinely feel blessed–there are writers who can go for years and not have anything close to the community I have. All I've ever wanted was for my writing to be genuinely meaningful to people, and I didn't always think I’d be able to get there. But I am reminded every time I post a chapter that it is, and it makes me want to weep sometimes. Perhaps this is “only smut”, but I submit the idea that even if it’s “only smut”, if you as a creator can make one person happy, it means something. And you all choosing to join the Treehouse-Boycave conglomerate… makes me very, very happy. Like, more happy than you know. I am smiling ear to ear right now as I’m typing this because it feels like it’s hitting me again for the first time.
So, the new year is coming, and to be honest, I genuinely don't know what it has in store for me. My job period is ending soon and, frustratingly, I don’t exactly have anything imminently lined up to fill that void. I will continue the humiliation ritual of applying and interviewing, and hopefully I’ll be able to do more writing on the side. I can’t stress enough that I sincerely enjoy writing. It’s definitely work, but it is, relative to most other forms of labor, remarkably fun work. It will be difficult finding the time to write if I end up back in my family house, which is likely to happen, but I’ll make it through. I am, against all odds, feeling hopeful for the first time in a while!
Okay, time for the (mostly) spoiler-free book review.
Embers of War Book 2: Fleet of Knives by Gareth Powell
I bought this book off the shelf of a Barnes and Noble not because I thought the cover was good–in fact, all things considered the cover looked a bit boring, but I thought it might be a bit of fun sci-fi schlock to chew on every so often. I pulled it out of the bookcase and purchased it without actually checking to make sure it was the first in the series (it was not), but decided “You know what, I think I’m going to read it anyway”.
And you know what? I was pleasantly surprised! The pull quote from Adrian Tchaikovsky, who wrote Children of Time (which I enjoyed) inspired confidence, but I found myself enjoying it a lot more than I otherwise would’ve.
What we have here is a world where humanity has spread out to the stars and begun the process of colonizing other worlds and territories. Predictably, they’re not alone, and there are several alien races and species to contend with. I can’t get into the entirety of the lore–I was able to follow the plot of the book itself with no problem, but while Powell put in a lot of reminders for previous concepts there are still a few gaps in my mind when it comes to how the Archipelago War started and what the sides were fighting for–but the most interesting thing about the setting is, without a doubt, the ships.
Spaceships in this setting contain a kind of fusion between artificial intelligence and real sapient-species brain matter and activity, giving them lightning fast reflexes and independent processing power. This also gives them a personality. Many times in sci-fi, the ship is considered spiritually a part of the crew–in Fleet of Knives, the ship is quite literally a part of the crew. And this ship’s name is Carnivore-class decommissioned warship, Trouble Dog.
I can’t get into what I love about the Trouble Dog, the de facto main character of this book, without going into spoilers. So that’s what I’ll do.
Click For Spoilers
The first main character we’re introduced to is Sally “Sal” Konstanz, acting captain of the Trouble Dog. Sally and the Trouble Dog were on opposite sides of the Archipelago War, but by the beginning of this book, they’re together, sisters divided by form but threaded by fate and determined now to do their part in ending violence across the galaxy. What makes the Trouble Dog–and indeed, all ships with a personality–interesting is that she was built for one purpose. That purpose is to rain down hellfire upon suitable targets. There’s something really interesting going on about nature-versus-nurture, the way the military strips us of our individuality and ethics, and the hard-fought battle to get them back. Despite this, Trouble Dog is a warship through and through–and proud of it. She is proud, and in my opinion rightfully so, to be so potently capable of reducing cities to ash if need be. She does not fear her power, but she is sorrowful of the ways her power has been used. Her characterization as she fraternizes with the crew who literally inhabit her metal bowels is extremely fun to watch, especially playing against Sal, the main human protagonist. Sally has her own trauma from the Archipelago War–it becomes clear in this novel that everyone is running from something, which is a trope I really enjoy when done well. Everyone talks in a way that is very human–it’s almost pulpy how candid they are, but I adore it.
The cast is rounded out by Johnny Schultz and Ona Sudak. Johnny is the only male main character (I count anyone who narrates a chapter more than twice a main character), and he is very fun to follow, in part because his arc was particularly thrilling right out the jump. A freewheeling blowhard, Johnny finds himself between a rock and a hard place when his ship the Lucy’s Ghost gets horrifically totaled during a failed attempt to plunder an ancient abandoned alien generation ship. Now stranded on the gargantuan cemetery, he and his crew find themselves relentlessly hunted by menacing creatures… while simultaneously gaining a new and incredibly adorable member: Lucy herself! Due to ancient alien mumbo jumbo, the Ghost’s consciousness is inadvertently pulled into the wreck of the alien derelict and inserted into a newly-grown body, identical to that of Lucy before her brain was inserted into the ship. It’s a trope I love a lot, the little girl (or boy) that the heroes must protect in the alien hellscape (shout out to James Cameron), and she does not disappoint. Now with an additional body to protect, Schultz and his crew have to survive long enough to get rescued by the crew of the Trouble Dog. Does Lucy’s body come out of the vat with clothes on? We don’t know! It’s unclear! But this was, like, my third thought after she showed up as a character. I cannot imagine how that conversation went between Powell and the editor.
Ona Sudak is equally fun to follow as the de facto antagonist. A straight-laced and matter-of-fact woman who orchestrated the greatest war crime of the Archipelago War, she was set to answer for her deeds by firing squad before she was rescued at the behest of the Marble Armada, an ancient, hidden fleet of starships from the last book with the directive of ending war, whatever it takes. They find Sudak’s pragmatism appealing, and recruit her to lead their forces. But even Sudak, pragmatic and utilitarian, is clearly running from something regardless of her affectation of being coldly and cruelly logical. I adore characters who lie to themselves this hard.
The action is fun, fast-paced, and has equal parts blazing-fast futuristic ship-to-ship combat and on-the-ground guns blazing. The setting of the world felt lived in, though I couldn’t help but notice the times they reference a ubiquitous historical concept like “Einstein” or “the Crusades” but fail to include additional references that may have occurred in the intervening centuries between our present day and the time period of the book’s setting. Easily, the Trouble Dog is the strongest character, and I found the chapters narrated by her ended too soon, but Sal, and especially Johnny were also characters I found enjoying even more. Sudak was just as fun, but because she for the most part lacked humanistic characters to act against, I found myself ever so slightly more bored of her chapters than of others.
I wish we could’ve visited more planets, though the planets that were visited were fun and had their own flavor to the world. I, personally, will seek out and buy the first book in the series at the earliest opportunity.
That's about all I have to say. Feel free to comment, read my stuff, etc. Thanks!