124: March 2025

Last month, I turned in a formatted version of the second edition of Becoming Alien to my publisher. Almost as quickly, I was given the opportunity to pitch another book on a completely different topic. This month, I wrote and submitted a proposal for what I hope will be book #2. I won’t know for a few months whether that opportunity will pan out; if it works, you’ll be among the first to know about it, and if it doesn’t work out, well, at least I met one of the goals I set for myself this year, which was to write a book proposal.

The reading rut broke, too. In a strategy that has backfired on me a few times before, I tried preordering some books I was excited about, and added others to my birthday wishlist. About half a dozen books arrived at the same time, and for the first time in maybe years, I read four books within about two weeks. I especially enjoyed Back After This, Linda Holmes's third novel, which is about a podcast producer who gets suckered into hosting a dating podcast by her boss, right around the same time that she meets a guy who's perfect for her. The premise sounds melodramatic; most of the action remains close to earth. I've appreciated Holmes's previous two books quite a bit, and this one has some of my favorite interpersonal dynamics. It's a common complaint about rom-coms and romance novels that a poorly written romance plot requires characters to simply not talk to each other, because a simple conversation would solve all their problems. Holmes makes the trope satisfying by giving her characters good reasons to not want to talk to each other: shame, time, scheduling, not knowing what they themselves want. The payoff requires characters to have conversations, but before they can do that, they have to do a little self-discovery first. Growth! It's a beautiful thing.

What I wrote:

I covered the True/False film festival—one of the highlights of my moviegoing year—for Bright Wall/Dark Room.

Over at Seeing & Believing, I wrote reviews of Mickey 17, Black Bag, and On Becoming a Guinea Fowl.

What I talked about:

Think Christian had me on to talk about Mickey 17 in a conversation about class, creation care, and what it means to be a person.

I rejoined Adam and Dom at Eye of the Duck to break down Alien: Romulus. Lots of good stuff in this conversation about the special effects, and while it’s true that one specific effect tied to a casting decision I find morally dubious took up all the oxygen in the room, there’s some genuinely great effects work in this movie.

And The Fear of God podcast invited me back to talk about last year's The Vourdalak. This conversation went deep.