This was a busy month with five Fridays and six pieces published, many of them longer than what I’ve been writing. Thematically, it started a bit dark, but I tried to bring in some cheer for the holidays. Then the whole Nazis on Substack controversy erupted and that chewed up a bunch of my thinking and writing time—I’m still not over it. Finally, I wrapped up the year with some recommendations, a feature I think I’ll do more regularly. I hope the Hyperjabber emails didn’t wear out their welcome in your inbox this month.
Stillpoint — This one turned out longer than most of my stories despite my efforts to keep it shorter, but it’s a space opera that spans a billion years of history, so what’s a poor writer to do? It started with my desire to do something different with time travel which then mixed with the idea of a planet hopping Indiana Jones. At one point, the story included a line about a laser whip, but that didn’t survive my attempts to shorten and further concentrate the story.
Twenty More Minutes — I’m a member of the Story Club Substack hosted by
, and he did a lesson on the James Salter story “Twenty Minutes.” That story was excellent, but I was even more intrigued by the idea of writing about dying. Then I thought, what if I imagined my own death. It turns out, this is not that easy and somewhat traumatic. I found myself returning to the motifs of wetness and dryness and of lightness and darkness to help me get through the story.Helios|Erebus — I truly do love this album, but this review/story was harder than I anticipated. The basic idea held steady throughout the writing, but the narrator and incidents described evolved through many iterations. I also spent a lot of time on the 1,820 day calendar described in the story. Inspired by real Mesoamerican calendars, I worked out in detail how three different cycles generate the calendar. I’d like to someday revisit this world with a new story based around the specifics of the calendar. We’ll see. The story also includes a few “easter eggs” for folks who spend some time listening to each of the album’s songs.
The Most Wonderful Time — My holiday story for 2023 features a concept that I think about frequently: what if there different types of time and these different types influence what happens during those times. Perhaps there’s a type of time called wartime and when it is in effect, people are more prone to war. I quite like this way of thinking about time and am certain it will pop up in future stories. However, when I sat down to craft this holiday story, my goal was to write something more cheerful than the previous three and I hadn’t yet zeroed in on a specific idea. Turns out that writing something “cheerful” is not that easy for me. Not sure what that means….
Substack and the Nazi Question — To be clear I have not seen Nazi propaganda on Substack. Maybe I’d find some if I went looking for it (or followed links provided by others who have encountered it), but I’ve been lucky enough to be spared that experience so far. However, management of Substack says that there are Nazis here and that Substack will continue to host them without any restrictions beyond what’s outlined in their content guidelines (for instance, apparently even Nazis aren’t allowed to publish porn on Substack). This doesn’t really make me happy, and this post describes my initial thoughts on the issue. I have a lot more to say about this whole debacle, but I won’t fill your inboxes with it. Future writings on this topic will be shadow posted: I’ll post them on my Substack site without sending them out. They’ll be referenced in the monthly Postscript so you can choose if you want to bother reading them.
Quickies, Volume 1 — As implied by the “Volume 1” bit, I plan to make this a regular feature of Hyperjabber. These will be short recommendations (free of Nazi propaganda) about books, music, films, other Substacks, and whatever else I’ve found interesting. I hope you also find them interesting.
A Primer Regarding Nazis on Substack — This essay attempts to catalog the various arguments I’ve encountered regarding Nazis on Substack. It tries to be more objective than my previous essay on it which was more of a reaction piece. As promised, this one wasn’t emailed or pushed out to subscribers, but it’s here if you want to read it.
