Sunbird

Bikers who insist on holding up traffic by refusing to use the bike lanes the city has so thoughtfully provided. Like srsly, you're asking to get hit.

When you immediately start looking for ways to get your hands on any book that Brandon blurbs or praises.

@Oversleep Do it! The Dresden Files are indeed really good, but I think The Aeronaut's Windlass is even better.

Heh. I guess that's what I get for posting without checking any dates. XD

So it sounds like Friday the 5th is the best option for most people...?

Always! Finished the Jasper Dent trilogy. Rather disturbing, but it didn't end as badly as I feared it might. I've now started Steeplejack by AJ Hartley, but haven't gotten far enough in to really form an opinion yet.

I would love to pull that, but it wouldn't work at my church because it's a congregation specifically for young singles. I'd have to do it to a stranger who doesn't know that I have no husband or boyfriend. Just the idea sure cheered me up, though.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I really needed to hear that.

@Cognizantastic People like that rub me the wrong way too; they're the kind of jerks who give religion in general a bad name. I'm a religious person, but I know very well that good people can be found in and out of organized religion. Sorry you have to put up with that nonsense.

I don't understand why some people are so cruel. Today in church a guy (I'll call him Bob) started calling me a fattie kind of half under his breath (but loud enough that everyone on our side of the room could hear him) after he apparently took offense at the fact that he had cleared his throat and then I had too shortly afterwards. I guess he thought I was making fun of him? One of the other men in the room managed to get Bob to shut up until the end of the lesson, at which point I left silently and quickly. Those of you who've met me in person will know that I am visibly overweight, but still, what kind of cremhole throws that in a girl's face in the middle of church?

@Morzathoth Yes! Give in to the puppy eyes! Dead Beat is one of my favorite Dresden Files.

I know I know some; the problem is digging them out of the vast, dark caverns of my memory. One I can think of off the top of my head is L. Palmer, author of The True Bride and the Shoemaker. She's not famous (not yet, at least ), but I read her book and liked it a lot. Okay, I did some digging through my GoodReads shelves and have come up with some other possibilities. I'm like 90% sure Janci Patterson was one of Brandon's students. Of her books, I've read A Thousand Faces (which I heard about from Brandon's Twitter or Facebook) and Chasing the Skip. I liked Chasing the Skip better. Jessica Day George's bio says she went to BYU, so she might have taken Creative Writing with Brandon. The only book by her that I've read is Silver in the Blood, but I thought it was pretty awesome. Eric James Stone's bio says he took Creative Writing at BYU, so he seems like a good candidate. (And Brandon showed up to his signing at the Orem B&N earlier this year, which seems to support the idea.) I've read Rejiggering the Thingamajig (a collection of his short stories) and his debut novel Unforgettable and thought they were both fantastic. I know Dan Wells didn't take the Creative Writing class from Brandon, but I think they might have taken it together when it was being taught by David Farland. In any case, they're good friends, and I highly recommend Dan's John Cleaver series--first book is I Am Not a Serial Killer. (That is, if you are not too squeamish. There are embalming scenes that bothered me on my first read, and the murders are a bit on the gruesome side.) My other favorite thing by Dan Wells is A Night of Blacker Darkness, which is currently only available as an ebook. UVU did a stage production of it last fall, though, which I saw and which was riotously funny. One more thing--you mentioned Brian McClellan but didn't say whether you'd read his books yet. I read the Powder Mage trilogy, and if you haven't read it yet, I recommend it. It gets kinda dark at times, but there's lots of awesome too.

So apparently the author Brad Thor might be entering the US presidential race as a third-party candidate... Listen to a recording of the interview or read a transcript here. I would totally vote for him.

Life

@Queen Elsa Steelheart, your avatar makes me want to read a book or see a movie about Elsa participating in an epic heist.

What's wrong with being a lizard person?

I work until 3pm Monday through Friday, so the usual 7pm meeting time is ideal for me. I'm good for any day next week, though, if we stick with an evening meeting.

Ok just gotta share a few things that have made me happy today. I saw a book tagline that said, "How can there be a murder when there's no body?" And I immediately thought, "Obviously you've never seen Buffy dusting vampires." Singing along to Train's song "50 Ways to Say Goodbye" at the top of my lungs in my car today. This video of Bill Clinton enjoying some balloons:

Finished the second books in the Jasper Dent, Vampire Files, and Arkwell Academy series in the last two days. On to books #3!

I think it's more likely she just was completely not paying attention.

Granted. However, you are required to carry as many as you can stuff into your pockets with you at all times, so whenever the weather is hot, your clothes get covered in melted chocolate. I wish for my bank account to always maintain a balance of $1 million, instantly refilling itself whenever I spend money.

When I go about trying to get someone new into the Sanderfandom, I usually start by recommending Steelheart because it's not such a brick as some of his other books, and it's fast-paced and funny, and it puts a fresh twist on the superhero genre, which is VERY popular right now, as I'm sure you all know. Those factors give it a better chance of getting someone hooked on the first try than some of the Cosmere books, IMO.

Heh. At least the sousaphones get to wear their instruments instead of having to carry them around with just their arms. XD

@Mistrunner You might have answered this question already but... Do you play a particularly heavy instrument or is it just the fatigue of having your arms up all the time that's taking its toll? When I was in high school marching band the mellophones and trombones were always having a hard time with that.