Things are… well, interesting right now. As I’m writing this, most of my office has been either thrown out, tucked away, or rearranged as we get our house ready to sell it. After nearly exactly four years in this house, and close to fifteen years in Atlanta (minus a six-month stint in Dublin), my family and I are now officially in the process of moving: this time, to London, England.
This isn’t a sudden decision — in fact, it’s been something we’ve been working on more or less since we had to move back from Ireland. It went into high gear early this year as I applied for my British citizenship (I’m eligible due to my mother having dual citizenship). I’m still waiting for a decision, but my family are now looking for work in London: one person is already in process of getting their visa, while the other is working internally within their company. So, unless things go catastrophically wrong, odds are I’ll be living in the UK sometime in early 2023, and a British citizen to boot.
That means a lot of change. Part of that change at the moment is not having easy access to the things I’m used to, like my microphone setup (which is why there’s no voiceover this month). It also means I’m having to be conservative with what work I pick up, because I can’t predict my availability as well as normal. The upside, of course, is that I can work from pretty much anywhere, so once I settle I’ll be able to get back into the swing of things.
Of course, my experience in Ireland taught me that “working from anywhere” doesn’t mean “working in the same way no matter what.” Time zones, for example, are a harsh mistress — being five hours ahead of Eastern time and eight hours ahead of Pacific time makes meetings with American clients more challenging. And, to be honest, a large portion of my potential clients are American. Of course, I’m going to work hard to expand my European client base to help offset the difference, but it does mean the potential more evening and late-night meetings.
But that’s in the future. Right now I’m in a weird gap between “not yet moving” and “no longer living here.” This week is chock full of appointments for the house, as well as meetings and recordings to get ahead of things for when things change. When (or even if) the house sells also shapes our plans — if it sells early, we’ll have to find temporary accommodations while we pack up our remaining things to ship overseas, as I talked about last month. If it sits on the market for a while, we’ll still have a place to live, but it gets harder and harder to try and manage a house sale overseas, so we have to calculate if someone stays behind to manage that, or if we hold off on the move until the house is sorted out.
Anyhow, that’s a long way of saying major Pugsteady moves are in a bit of a holding pattern while I sort things out.
News Roundup!
That said, there are a few things worth talking about this month.
Save Against Fear went well! I had some travel hiccups as I get used to how things have changed since the pandemic, but the actual show was great. It was so nice to see people in person again. I sat on several panels, which were all great and really fun. I even ran a secret playtest for an upcoming Pugmire project! All in all, it continues to be a great (if small) show.
Second, Transgressive Horror is now available on DriveThruFiction! This is an essay anthology I contributed to, covering a number of horror movies that broke the rules (explicit or implicit) about how movies should be made. I covered The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), and I talk about this Hammer film broke the rules on how Sherlock Holmes films were perceived, which changed the shape of the original story in surprisingly radical ways. It also contains essays from such folks as Larry Blamire, Matthew Dawkins, Richard Dansky, Ken Hite, James Lowder, Chloe Maveal, Cynthia Celeste Miller, and many more!
Finally, we’ve started season three of the Darker Hue Studios podcast, Genreless. This time, Chris Spivey and I are talking about superhero TV shows, which will be a long and winding road, I’m sure. We just covered Agent Carter and Daredevil, and next week we’ll be talking about Jessica Jones, so now’s a great time to jump on board!
My Media
Lately I’ve been dipping into my backlog of audiobooks. Over the years, due to various sales and bundles, I’ve built up a number of audiobooks that I said I would listen to when I felt the urge. Well, that happened, and after some toying around with software, I found a way to link my Google Drive with my phone so I can easily get those audiobooks on my phone and catch up on my backlog. In particular, I’ve been enjoying the Space Team Universe series from GraphicAudio. It’s a comedy sci-fi series that has notes of Red Dwarf and Guardians of the Galaxy, performed by a full cast of actors with sound effects.
But the thing that has surprisingly grabbed my interest are the Vampire Hunter D novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi. I picked up *twenty-nine* novels in ePub format via a recent Humble Bundle, and they are… well, I hesitate to say “good.” They’re very pulpy: a solitary mysterious hero fights a villain, there are a couple of twists, and the hero rides off into the distance. Each novel is less than 200 pages, so they’re easy to ready in a day or two. But the novels are about, naturally, a vampire hunter, but they’re set in a post-apocalypse world circa the year 12,090 CE. It’s a blend of sci-fi and gothic fantasy that deeply appeals to me — I mean, hell, Pugmire is a post-apocalyptic blend of sci-fi and fantasy. They have some rough edges, and how the novels treat women isn’t great, but they are a hell of a lot of fun to read. And the covers and interior illustrations are beautiful.
Whoops, got to get back to work. See you next time!