A collection of thoughts for your pleasure:

• This Thursday evening, if you’re in the greater Boston area, I’ll be delivering a short talk and Q&A about science fiction and fantasy at the Ames Free Library!  The event starts at 6:30; I’ll read a bit, talk a bit, and answer questions.  Come on by!
• A couple Thursdays after that, on Feb. 18, Pandemonium Books and Games will host a three-author event in which Charles Stross, Walter Jon Williams, and I will choose champions from the audience to fight to the death with boffer swords (it’s possible to kill someone with a boffer sword, you just have to work harder), or else possibly discuss our books, fantasy, science fiction, and whatever insanity occurs to us at the moment.
• I, the World’s Slowest Television Human, am five episodes into Jessica Jones now, and still loving it.  Specific greatnesses: how Ritter’s dialogue is beat-for-beat noir, the show’s constant and self-conscious gender-inversion of noir tropes, the soundtrack, Luke, Trish, Jessica, Tenant as a subversion and commentary on his Doctor…  Also, I like how the show abandons the easy procedural formula for a more subtle, HBO-ish “introduce specific series relevant problem-solve specific series relevant problem” structure, to preserve tone and pacing.  (Trying to feature a new case every episode would feel too tight for the noir pacing JJ wants to imitate, IMO—this was basically my only problem with Veronica Mars s1: the procedural elements frequently forced a pace too up-tempo for non-noir.  Which was fine for VM, which wanted to be a combination of noir and Nancy Drew, was fine!  But JJ wants to be a pure-play antihero noir, as far as I can tell, and it’s succeeding brilliantly.)
• Kaitlin Tremblay’s survey of friendship in video games, and the power of lack of romance, plays into a line of thought I’ve been developing since Agent Carter blew my mind open last year, about the radical nature of friendship.  One day soon, probably after I finish a draft of this book, expect to see a long essay from me on this subject.
• My next few months are a little wild.  I’m writing a book now; after I’m finished with a draft of this I’ll start drafting another book.  I’ll keep to my once-a-week schedule, but for the near term, expect slightly fewer four thousand word pieces of RPG neepery.  Apologies for that.  I’m fighting to restore your regularly scheduled neepery service with all due speed.
• Speaking of which, get on board with The Witch Who Came In From The Cold.  Cassandra Rose Clarke’s written our second episode, out today—and the plot continues to thicken.  Subscribe now!