View From a Hotel Window, 11/7/25: Austin, TX
Posted on November 7, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
No parking lot, but look! Men at work! Good for them. Dudes in high-viz is part of what makes America great.
I’m in town for the Texas Book Festival, and I have two events, one tomorrow and one on Sunday, plus I am participating in the LitCrawl on Saturday night. Here’s the Book Festival schedule, where you can look me up. Also, here is the Lit Crawl schedule, where you can also look me up. After each of the festival events I believe there will be a signing. Come see me! Don’t leave me here to eat brisket all on my own.
— JS
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Actually Playing Games In My Steam Library: Dave the Diver
Posted on November 6, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 16 Comments
If you’re anything like me, you probably have a huge stack of video games that you’ve bought and never played. In my case, I have 400+ games in my Steam library, and I’ve played maybe about twenty of them. My dad has also played about twenty of them, and I’m not sure how much our lists overlap.
Point is, we have a lot of games, and it’s high time I start getting back into a hobby I have long been neglecting: gaming. In fact, in my new house, I plan to have my own gaming room, so hopefully this post is the first of many. (Also, thanks to everyone who commented on the last post about my house, I appreciate all the congratulatory exclamations as well as the tips and advice!)
For this new segment, I wouldn’t exactly call them full game reviews, as I’m not necessarily planning to complete these games. The point of this is to make me try new games instead of just playing Fortnite all the time, and blow the dust off the games in my library. Really all I’m trying to do is try a new game, play for just a couple hours, see if it’s mostly fun, if I like the vibe, and if it’s worth continuing to play.
For today’s game, I’ll be talking about Dave the Diver. Though it was released in 2023, I had never heard of this game until about two months ago when I saw it in a Tik Tok over some cozy games to play during the fall/winter. As someone who loves cozy games, I went on Steam to check it out and saw that it had a huge amount of “overwhelmingly positive” reviews, and it was only twenty bucks.
The basic summary is that you play as a diver who explores the sea and fishes for fish during the day, then utilizes your fresh catches to run a sushi restaurant on the beach at night. Here’s a trailer!
[フレーム]
Immediately, I loved the art style. I’m a sucker for pixel art, and this game has such charming environments with tons of color. It’s clear that a lot of heart was put into the art of this game, as pixel art is truly a labor of love. It’s not an art style I would’ve expected for a fishing game, but it just works so well.
I thought that my favorite part of this game would be the restaurant management aspect of it. From pouring drinks and serving sushi to putting new items on the menu and deciding on the interior design and decorating, there’s plenty to keep you busy on land. But honestly I really love the semi-open-world style exploration of the ocean and seeing all the super cool fish and plants and discovering lost treasures and resources.
I say “semi” open-world because Dave the Diver is one of those games that heavily relies on you upgrading things with the money and resources you get, such as upgrading your diving equipment so you can dive deeper and for longer durations. So at the beginning, you’re pretty limited to just the shallower water and you run out of oxygen pretty quick, but once you progress enough to stay under for longer and go deeper, there’s so much to see and do.
This game really throws a lot at you in the beginning, as it has a ton of mechanics it needs to explain to you in a very short amount of time. You have to learn how to dive and how your equipment works, plus how to upgrade stuff and make weapons. Then you have to learn how to run the restaurant, add things to the menu, draw people in with social media and advertisements, learn how to pour drinks and upgrade things, it’s honestly a lot right out the gate. It definitely felt a little overwhelming at first but honestly it’s easy to compartmentalize the mechanics into the “fishing” portion of the game and the “restaurant” half of the game. It’s sort of like two games in one in that regard.
While I’m only a couple hours in, I’ve really been enjoying it so far. I like the vibes, the art, the music, and the fishing and serving sushi is plenty fun. It’s an enjoyable time, and I have a feeling it will only get better and better as I continue to upgrade and discover way more. There’s even mini games within the game, which is something I absolutely love when games do. It’s so cute to put a game in your game!
I definitely think this game has a lot to offer for its relatively low price point, and I think if you try it you will definitely get plenty of hours of enjoyment out of it. Personally, I’m very excited to play more of it and am glad I gave it a shot.
Have you heard of Dave the Diver before? Do you like restaurant management games? Is pixel art totally your jam? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
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Tonight’s Moon, 11/5/25
Posted on November 5, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 7 Comments
Full Moon on Guy Fawkes. Pretty cool-looking moon, too.
— JS
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Saja, All Fixed!
Posted on November 5, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 19 Comments
[画像:Saja, sitting on the stairs, looking drowsily at the camera. ]
This handsome little man got fixed today! It’s super important to get your animals fixed, especially if they’re indoor/outdoor like our kitties are. Spaying and neutering is essential for being a good pet parent, and I’m so glad we were able to get Saja taken care of.
He is very drowsy and sleepy, so after feeding him a Churu tube, he is off to his cat bed to rest for the evening. Enjoy his drowsy glam shot, and have a great day!
-AMS
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Thoughts From an Off-Off-Year Election, 2025
Posted on November 5, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 56 Comments
Well, that was an evening, wasn’t it.
Zohran Mamdani won decisively in NYC, of course, and that was the headline event in terms of optics, but then there was everything else, that went the Democrats’ way this election night: Governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, along with the undercard races, Democrats gaining a dozen seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, surprising statewide victories in Georgia, Democratic Supreme Court Justices being retained in Pennsylvania, and out in California, Proposition 50 passing comfortably. Almost none of these were razon-thin wins; the Democrats ran up margins.
Over on Truth Social Trump had a tantrum about it, but then, he would, wouldn’t he, and the simple fact of the matter is, all of this is substantially his fault. Turns out that out-and-out grifty fascism isn’t, in fact, very popular, especially when the promised benefits of that nonsense — lower food prices and inflation kept in check — are nowhere in sight, and when the only part of the government that is working is the part that floods cities with armed paramilitary violating people’s constitutional rights. Trump doesn’t appear to think this election was about him and his government, but of course nothing is ever his fault.
I’m not naive enough to believe that this is it, this is the turning point where the nation shies away from the brink, not in the least because the result of this off-off-year election year will be to convince Trump and his pals that the problem was that they didn’t suppress voting more, so 2026 will absolutely have more shenanigans. Fascists don’t like free elections! Who knew! And that will be a thing we get to deal with. With that said, I don’t imagine things are going to get better for the Trump administration in terms of, well, anything, between now and November of next year. It’s entirely possible that their cack-handed attempts to rig elections simply won’t be enough. That’s not to say that they won’t try, however.
Those caveats noted, let’s not pretend last night wasn’t, in itself, a big deal. Democrats essentially ran the table in the big races and even flipped some long-held GOP seats in the deep south, and that’s not nothing. Mamdani throat-punched the Trump-endorsed Cuomo not once, but twice — as well as he fucking should have (the fact that 40% of New York City voters went for a sex creep who pretty much believed he was entitled to the mayorship, is a whole other discussion to have some other time). It’s also not nothing that a Muslim Democratic Socialist got over 50% of the vote in a three-way race and still would have won even if all of GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa’s votes had gone to Cuomo instead. Sliwa said last night that he’d been offered 10ドル million to drop out. I’m glad he didn’t, but even if he had, Mamdani would still have been making his victory speech.
There’s been some hand-wringing among the pundit class that Mamdani, famously brown and an immigrant, might now be the poster boy of the Democratic party, which seems stupid on its face and doesn’t get any better as one drills down. There is no doubt the GOP will strive to scare a bunch of rural white people with Mamdani, because the modern GOP is an unapologetically racist party that exists to scare other unapologetic racists (and people who are willing to be swayed by unapologetic racism) into compliance against their own interests. What all of them miss is how Mamdani actually won, despite all the frankly despicable racism and anti-Muslim bullshit that was thrown at him. It’s a formula that, as it happens, is easily transferable to other Democratic candidates in other races, even when their underlying conditions are different than in New York:
1. Campaign on big issues that are directly relevant to your voters2. Don't get distracted from point one3. Present as a decent human with manageable baggage4. Don't be old as fuck.Go forth and do likewise
— John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) 2025年11月03日T21:20:56.648Z
I’d say there are probably two other points to add here: Mamdani ran a campaign based on optimism and inclusion, which stands in stark contrast to the politics of the modern GOP, which is fueled by hate, fear and exclusion. Also Mamdani ran to win, as opposed to running to not lose, which is a different thing and has a different tenor to it. I think there’s a sense, particularly among younger voters, that the modern Democratic party runs campaigns to not lose more often than not, which makes them safe and not capable of actual change, and also pisses people off, because right now is not the time to run cowardly campaigns. If what the DNC and others in the Democratic party, and the general pundit class, are taking away from Mamdani’s win is oh, no, a Muslim socialist rather than looking at the mechanics of how he won and won a fucking majority of votes in a mayoral election with the largest turnout in decades, then they are stupid and need to stand aside and let others lead.
With regard to California’s Proposition 50, I’m glad it passed and I hate that it’s come to this, but come to this it has. The GOP is now Trump’s party, and Trump doesn’t actually give a shit about democracy and never has. This fact delights a lot of GOP politicians on both the national and state level, who find democracy an annoyance at best and would happily stuff everyone but white male landowners into a hole if they could. Texas’ wholesale plan for an off-season revamp of its legislative districts to turn the state even redder is egregious. The fact that the GOP expected Democrats only to whine about it but otherwise do nothing was, well, naive, especially when California is being led by an ambitious egotist like Gavin Newsom, who clearly has the presidency in his sights for 2028.
At least Newsom’s redistricting proposal was put to an actual popular vote, rather than simply shoved into being like it was in Texas, so there is some veneer of propriety to it. To be clear, I suspect that if redistricting was put to a vote in Texas, it would pass. But I don’t imagine it even occurred to Abbott, Paxton, et al to do it that way — they find democracy annoying, after all. In a perfect world neither Texas nor California (nor any other state) would get to resort to such electoral shenanigans, representative districts would not be relentlessly gerrymandered, and we could all eat ice cream sundaes and never gain weight or get gassy. We do not currently live in this perfect world.
Finally, on a personal note:
News organizations are starting to call the New Jersey governor's race for Mikie Sherrill, and she recently called out one of my books as a recommendation, I'm not saying that recommending my books will nab you a governorship, but I am saying that the batting record so far is 1.000
— John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) 2025年11月05日T01:32:51.811Z
THIS IS TRUE. Sherrill recently recommended The Dispatcher as “a fun beach read” (true) and now she’s Governor-Elect of the great state of New Jersey. Is this a coincidence?!? I mean, yes, yes, it is, correlation is not causation and all of that but even so, if you were running for governor of a state in our great nation, I would say at the very least recommending my work during interviews couldn’t hurt. Just try it now and then, is what I’m saying. You’re welcome.
Anyway. A good night for people who are not racist fascists and/or sex creeps. We need more nights like these, especially hopefully a year from now. They will not happen without effort. Take a couple days off to enjoy the moment and then let’s all get to it for 2026.
— JS
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The Big Idea: Charles H. Melcher
Posted on November 4, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 3 Comments
Some stories go beyond the page, presenting themselves as “living stories,” as author Charles H. Melcher calls them. Read all about these living stories in the Big Idea for his newest book, The Future of Storytelling, and see how a story can be capable of invoking all the senses, make you the main character of the story, and offer a glimpse into the future.
CHARLES H. MELCHER:
My quest to find the people and technologies that are reinventing storytelling has often led me to some unexpected places.
One evening in 2014 I found myself in a former mail-processing facility in London, taking in a performance of The Drowned Man by the immersive theater company Punchdrunk. The conceit was that you were in a Hollywood-like film studio where a movie was being shot. Upon entering, guests were given masks and asked to keep them on at all times and not to speak. Otherwise, there were no rules, and the nearly 600 guests were free to roam around the building like ghosts, either exploring the many intricately designed rooms or following specific actors as they performed scenes in different locations.
After a couple hours of wandering and watching, I grew tired and was thinking of calling it a night, when just then a beautiful young actress in a tight leopard-print dress and ruby-red lipstick drifted into the room. I chose to stay a little longer and see what unfolded. I followed her, along with some of the other guests, as she performed different scenes, until she ducked behind a door that I hadn’t noticed. On a whim, I decided to see where she was headed, so I followed her. She was waiting for me on the other side and quickly shut the door behind me and locked it. She motioned for me to follow her down a hallway into a little office. There, she reached up and took off my mask. My cloak of invisibility had been removed, and I felt exposed, face-to-face with this actress, just the two of us.
She hung my mask on a coat rack and took a Humphrey Bogart– style trench coat off the hook. She put it on me, tying the belt and adjusting the collar just so, and then led me by the arm down a narrow corridor that got progressively darker until it was pitch black. Finally, she let go.
I was alone in the dark, every one of my senses on high alert. After what felt like a long time, I suddenly heard a voice over a loudspeaker yell, "Action!" followed by a popping sound and an explosion of light, then another pop and another burst of light. As my eyes adjusted, I realized I was surrounded by about thirty silver umbrellas, the kind photographers use to diffuse strobe lights. And then I saw her, the actress, starting to walk slowly toward me—but she was completely transformed. She had an intense, almost crazed look in her eyes. I was worried that she was no longer a friend but a foe—maybe even insane. As she drew closer to me, I froze, fearful that I was going to need to physically defend myself against her. She raised her hand up toward my neck and then laid it gently on my cheek. When she took another step forward, I could feel the warmth of her body up against mine. I could smell the sweetness of her perfume. Instinctively, my hands went around her waist.
As she looked longingly up into my eyes, I was no longer afraid of her—now I was afraid of myself. What role was I willing to play here? I’m a happily married man, but there I was, alone in a room with a beautiful starlet in my arms. While I contemplated whether to lean in for a kiss, I heard the same voice over the loudspeaker yell, "Cut!" and everything returned to pitch black. The actress moved away and I was alone, every part of my body shaking with excitement and uncertainty. Then I felt her hand on my arm, and she led me back down the corridor into the small office, where she removed my trench coat, hung it on the hook, and put my mask back on. Finally, as she was about to see me unceremoniously out the door, she stopped and whispered in my ear: "I think you would be great for the part." I was off again, left afloat among the hundreds of other ghosts in the building. I’d entered the experience as a voyeur, but by the end, I was playing a role—in fact, I realized I had been auditioning for the role of the leading man. And as unsettling as it was, I loved it. For the rest of the weekend, I walked around London just a little bit taller, feeling like James Bond, with the sense that adventure might be waiting for me around any corner.
This experience made me realize that I was craving a new type of storytelling, one that is participatory, multisensory, interactive, and highly personal; stories that aren’t confined within a screen, a pair of headphones, the words on a page, or a theatrical proscenium but exist all around us, engage with us, and even change based on our decisions. And I’m not alone: Creators and audiences all over the world are embracing embodied, immersive stories, although the scale and breadth of this trend is still invisible to most.
A revolution in storytelling is taking place, and it is going to have profound implications in almost every field. It’s happening in the top-secret tech labs of Meta, Apple, and Google; in avant-garde performances at fringe theater festivals; in escape rooms housed in storefronts of suffering shopping malls; in cores of quantum supercomputers containing next-generation artificial intelligence; in the newest VR and AR headsets; and in centuries-old museums. It’s happening at festivals like SXSW, Cannes Lions, and Comic-Con; in restaurants and bars; in old garages and abandoned bowling alleys; in Hollywood studios and Madison Avenue advertising agencies; on university campuses and at nonprofit organizations. It’s happening in the middle of the desert in Nevada and on a palm-sized device that lives inside the pocket of nearly every person who will read my book The Future of Storytelling.
As the publisher of Melcher media and the founder of the Future of StoryTelling (FoST) Summit, I’ve been incredibly lucky to get invited into the studios, labs, offices, and academic corridors where the future of living stories is being invented. I have come to believe that if we can understand the mechanics and unleash their full power, living stories – a term I coined – have the potential to become more popular than Hollywood and gaming have ever been. Artists and storytellers have a new opportunity to serve their audiences by creating experiences in which the audience plays an active role.
Something beautiful happens when creators relinquish control of the narrative to their audience. The reason living stories are so powerful is that they engage not only our eyes and ears but our whole person. They gift us experiences that our brains and spinal cords are primed for, thanks to millions of years of evolution. You can feel your response to a living story in the hairs on the back of your neck, in the pit of your stomach, in the ache in your thighs as you move and choose, emote, and think through these experiences.
Just imagine: How different is it to read a book or see a movie about surviving a natural disaster than to believe in the moment that you did? How much more satisfying is it when you, not King Arthur, are able to pull the sword out of the stone? Stories have always provided us with a safe, instructive way to survive the world, as we observe characters making choices (often the wrong ones). With living stories, those characters are us, and we learn from the choices we make, and learn deeply, because we feel them throughout our own bodies. Living stories are a gateway to a more intense emotional life, to living more fully in the world.
I wrote The Future of Storytelling not to undermine the traditional storytelling forms, or to suggest that they should or will be replaced. I wrote it because of my love for living stories and my excitement for what these stories can and will do now and in the future, due to breakthroughs in technology, storycrafting, world-building, and our perpetual yearning for new paradigms.
For storytellers, audiences, and stories themselves, it’s an exciting time to be alive.
The Future of Storytelling: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Author socials: Website
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We’ve Voted!
Posted on November 4, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 24 Comments
All the Scalzis voted today, because that’s what you do. Here we have are electing township trustees and board of education members — not hugely sexy, but actually important for where we live. Every election counts, is what I’m saying. If today is a voting day for you, I hope you went out there and did the thing — and if you haven’t done it yet, as of 12:30pm, it’s not too late! You have several more hours! Do the thing!
— JS
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A Change Of Pace
Posted on November 4, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 53 Comments
Hello, everyone! Recently I did a piece over the fact that I’ve been writing on the blog more or less officially for a year now, and I asked y’all what you thought of the content so far and what y’all want to see more of, and all that good stuff. I also said that it’s pretty clear from my history that I tend to write about restaurants, outings, and unique experiences more than anything else, as it’s what I have really enjoyed doing and writing about and it also makes for new and exciting content.
Despite these types of pieces being my most commonly written genre and them being well-received, I’m here to say that I’m going to be slowing down on those types of posts specifically.
I wasn’t exactly expecting to get a whole dang house right now, and now that I have one, my priorities are shifting. So too must what I do and what I spend money on shift, as well.
As much as I love dining out, partaking in bougie experiences, and driving far away from home just to do weird activities, again, I have a whole dang house now! I suddenly have… a utility bill?! And the house itself plus all the awesome decorating I’m about to do is not, uhhh… cheap.
In response to this, I must reel in my extravagant purchases and galivanting around the surrounding cities, spending all willy-nilly on excellent food and drinks. Instead, I will have to start making my own excellent food and drinks, and I hope that y’all end up enjoying that content just as much. I know some people in the comments of my previous post said they like my baking posts and would like to see more cookbook reviews/cooking at home content. So, it’s y’all’s lucky day because that’s about to be a huge chunk of what I do!
Aside from cooking at home and talking about cookbooks, being a home cook, cookware I like, etc., I’m also planning to do posts over the house itself. Things like the decorating process, how I’m devoting an entire bedroom to my 200+ Squishmallows, fun things like that. I also plan to do more movie reviews, because I have lots of streaming services and will be at home plenty enough to watch stuff now. Also, more sticker content! Basically things that I can do at home. I’m about to become the biggest homebody you’ve ever seen.
Honestly, change is very difficult for me, and it’s going to be hard to do things differently than I have been doing them for years. I think that all things considered, though, that this is a good change. I love cooking and baking, and having the chance to improve my skills and learn more about home-cooking is exciting. I truly love going out, but it can also be exhausting. This past year in particular it’s really been getting to me how busy I am and how much running around I do. I think it’ll be nice to be more anchored to one place. My new home.
And this isn’t to say that I’m never going out again or won’t be dining out literally ever. Just that my focuses are shifting right now. It’s all very exciting, honestly! I’m glad y’all are here through this journey, and I can’t wait to share more.
-AMS
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Reminder: Scam Artists are Scammy
Posted on November 3, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 8 Comments
Reminder to all that scam sites will fake author testimonials with fact-free "AI" drivel. Also, I will never ever ever give a testimonial to any "global reader community" so if you see one from me, you will know it's utterly full of shit. Fuck these scammers for preying on people's hopes.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) 2025年11月03日T15:34:02.500Z
Found via Facebook, a fake testimonial from “me” being excited that a scam site got “me” a dozen reviews on Amazon and Goodreads over the space of a few weeks. I obviously did not make this testimonial, and also, bluntly, I wouldn’t be excited by a dozen Amazon/Goodreads reviews. “3 Days” pictured here, already has 3300 ratings/reviews on Amazon and over 4000 on Goodreads. I’m not now, nor have I been for some time, in the business of trying to plump up my Amazon/Goodreads review numbers. I certainly wouldn’t be recommending a service to do the same. They’re scams all the way down.
I suspect the people who regularly read here know that I or other well-known authors are not in the business of giving testimonials to sites that purport to “help” authors with reviews, but there are lots of aspiring writers who, shall we say, live in hope that there’s a shortcut to getting one’s name out there, and that something like this may be one of those shortcuts, and who might see my name, or the name of some other similarly notable author, and allow themselves to be convinced this sort of scam is a good idea. So this post is to tell them: No. Sorry, no. No author you have ever heard of is going to be scrabbling for Amazon or Goodreads reviews, and even if they were, they wouldn’t be doing it like this. Save your money.
— JS
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The Time Traveler’s Passport is Now Out!
Posted on November 3, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 7 Comments
What is The Time Traveler’s Passport? It’s an Amazon-exclusive anthology of six short stories — one written by me! — that have time travel as an integral part of their plot. Not even counting me, it’s a pretty grand line-up of authors: R.F. Kuang, Peng Shepard, Kaliane Bradley, Olivie Blake and P. Djèlí Clark. My story “3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years” was released early on the Amazon “First Reads” program, but now the entire anthology is up and ready to be read.
Here’s the link to Amazon’s page for the anthology. If you have Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited, you can check out these stories at no additional cost; for everyone else you can buy the entire anthology for a nice low price, or pick and choose the individual stories. The stories also come with audio narration (mine performed by Malcolm Hillgartner), so you have options on how to take in the tale.
These are all excellent stories by fantastic authors (credit here to editor John Joseph Adams for putting it together), and well worth your time to check out. Enjoy!
— JS
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A Genuinely Unexpected Commemorative Item
Posted on November 2, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 21 Comments
Athena called me yesterday with a quest, which was to go to a house about a mile away and pick up a plate. I wasn’t entirely sure what the point of the quest was until I saw the plate: A commemorative plate with our church on it, from the 70s, celebrating a century of Methodist presence here in town. Along with the plate was a program for the actual Bradford United Methodist Church centennial celebration, which happened on September 10, 1972. I would have been three at the time, and also, in California, for this particular event.
I should be clear that the building we now own, the former Methodist church (which we now formally call The Old Church, and less formally, simply “the church”), does not date back to the 1870s. The program helpfully includes a history of the Methodists here in Bradford through the 1970s, and informs us that our building had its construction commence in May of 1917, and was dedicated for worship on November 24, 1918. This means that officially our building’s 107th birthday happens in about three weeks. That’s a lot of candles.
When we first got the building, I thought it had been built in the 1930s, so the building is appreciably older than I first assumed. It’s probably not the oldest building in town, but it’s close to it — there was a major fire in town in 1920 that burned down most of the existing structures. This building survived that particular calamity.
From the centennial program I also learned the construction cost of the church: 17,000,ドル not counting the pipe organ, which cost an additional 1,700ドル and was installed a year after the church was opened for worship. I put this sum into some inflation calculators to see how much it would be in 2025 dollars, and the answer was between 340,000ドル and 365,000,ドル depending on which inflation calculator you used. I don’t dispute that inflation gradient, but I am also reasonably sure you couldn’t build a structure like this one, at the size it is, and with the amenities it has, for that amount; it would cost at least three times that much now, if not more. We bought the church entire for 75,000ドル. In any era, we got a very good deal on this church.
Also apparently the church at one point had ivy growing up its sides, so the illustration on the plate would suggest, although the picture in the program itself does not show any of that. It may have been artistic license. The centennial celebration, incidentally, was pretty modest: Standard services in the morning, a “carry-in dinner” at noon, and then a 2pm program of “singspiration” and special music with comments from former ministers and friends. Then a fellowship hour at 4:30, and at 7, a special concert by the Teen Ambassadors Singers, sponsored by the Bradford Area Council of Churches. Sounds like a lovely Sunday, honestly.
I’m delighted that our neighbor gifted us this plate, and this centennial program; between the both of them I feel like I have a much better idea of the building we now own and are the custodians of. Both the plate and the program will have places of honor in the church. I’m happy that we have this building, and hope to keep adding to its history here in town.
— JS
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A Decade of Scamperbeastery
Posted on November 1, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 20 Comments
A decade ago today, Sugar and Spice came to live with us here at the Scalzi Compound. They were semi-feral kittens who lived on the porch of my mother-in-law’s neighbor; we were originally going to just get one but the two of them seemed particularly attached to each other, and both Athena and Krissy thought it would be cruel to separate them, so, fine, we took them both. Two kittens at once means quite a bit of chaos, which is how I eventually started calling them “The Scamperbeasts.” They were the founding members of a club that grew to include Smudge, and now, Saja.
Neither Sugar nor Spice seem inclined to make a big deal out of the day — they are both napping right now, Spice four feet from me in the cat tree in my office — but I thought it would be nice to make note of the day anyway. A decade is a lot of time in the life of a cat, and a fair amount in the life of a human, too. I glad our times on earth have intersected. Even if Sugar does randomly hork up weird things onto the carpet on a semi-frequent basis, and Spice regularly wakes me up at 3am to show me her butt. None of us are perfect, now, are we.
— JS
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New Cover: “The Scientist”
Posted on November 1, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 3 Comments
Krissy is off with friends for Halloween, so I did what I do when left to my own devices: I recorded a cover song. This one is from Coldplay, although my favorite version of it is from Aimee Mann. I tried covering her version but it turns out she sings higher than I do. Who knew? This one is more in my range. But here’s her version, because it’s great. I hope you like my version too.
— JS
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A Trick or Treat Thought for Halloween
Posted on October 31, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 21 Comments
Originally posted on Threads, but I’m posting here because for some reason Threads doesn’t embed here:
“Trick or treat candy is for everyone. Cute kid in an adorable costume? Candy. Teen not in a costume feeling self-conscious but hoping you’ll give ’em candy anyway? Candy. Adults accompanying the trick-or-treating little kids so they don’t run into traffic in a middle of a sugar high? Oh, you best believe they’re getting candy. You, giving out the candy? Have a fun-size treat, babe, you deserve it. CANDY FOR EVERYONE, all the time and this year most of all.”
That’s it, that’s the post. Happy Halloween, everyone.
— JS
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A Mini-Vacay In Columbus: Part 3
Posted on October 31, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 10 Comments
For our third and final day in the bustling metropolis of Columbus, Bryant and I decided that instead of brunch, we just wanted coffee and pastries. We had to be out of the Airbnb by 10am, which was actually one of the main complaints I saw in the review of the place. It did seem a little early to me, as well.
Back to the coffee, Bryant really wanted to try Fox in the Snow cafe, but I told him I’d been there once before and hadn’t cared for it. I went a few months ago with a Columbus friend to one of their locations, and I was super excited to try it, as it’s very popular online and a favorite among locals. When we got there, my friend ordered a caramel latte. The employee said they didn’t have caramel, only vanilla. So we both ended up getting a vanilla latte since it was apparently the only flavor they had. I also ordered a ham and cheese croissant, and he handed it to me right out of the case. I asked if I could please get it warmed up, and he said “we don’t do that here.” What do you mean you don’t warm up pastries?
Overall, the employee was definitely on the ruder side, I was shocked they seemingly only had vanilla, and my pastry was cold and hard. I definitely expected better based on the hype and the price point.
Thankfully, this time around, my experience was much better. Some places do deserve second chances!
The employees were much friendlier this time, and one even complimented Bryant’s sweater. We both ordered an iced chai, and got a blueberry cream cheese pastry to split:
As certified iced chai lovers, Bryant and I thought that these ones were pretty exceptional. They were perfectly spiced, but also sweet and creamy. The blueberry pastry had a yummy sugared crust, and plenty of filling. They did not skimp on the blueberries nor on the cream cheese filling. Both items were actually ridiculously good, and we contemplated going back for a second chai because one truly did not feel like enough, but we resisted, because we actually had a second cafe we wanted to check out.
That’s right, y’all, we’re doubling up on cafes.
Up next on our list was Pistacia Vera in the German Village. Now here was a cafe I had heard so much about online. Whether it was Tik Tok or Instagram, all the foodie girlies were downright obsessed with this place, so obviously I was very excited to try it.
I also realized that going to a cafe would be a great opportunity to do the Big Idea for that day. Nothing better than sitting in a coffee shop on your laptop (I have never actually done this, this was going to be the first time believe it or not).
When we got there, all of the outdoor patio seating was completely full up (there honestly was not much), and there was no seating at all inside. That was pretty bizarre to me. I asked if they had WiFi and they said no. Tragic.
Tons of beautiful pastries lined the glass cases, and it was honestly kind of overwhelming what to pick. We ended up picking a pistachio praline eclair, a plum raspberry almond tart, and a chocolate chunk pistachio cookie.
(I swear I could not get a good angle on these.)
[画像:A big, round, chocolate chunk and pistachio cookie. ]
The raspberry tart was seven dollars, which is definitely a good bit, but it was actually a very dense slice. I was blown away by how good the tart was. It was packed full of raspberry and almond flavor, and it was so soft and moist. I loved the plum slices and almonds on top. Honestly it was amazing, but I kept having to take one bite and put it back because it was a lot.
As for the pistachio eclair, it didn’t taste like anything at all. It really didn’t have much flavor, and Bryant was even like, “well, I don’t taste much.” So that one was a let down, and was five dollars.
Our other pistachio goodie, the cookie, had that absolutely perfect cookie texture of chewy and dense with a crisper outside. In terms of flavor it was pretty good, but I wouldn’t say it was like, wildly amazing or anything. It was three dollars and fifty cents, which I think was actually a good price for the size of the cookie, especially when you consider that it’s pretty dang stuffed with chocolate chunks and pistachios.
But you know what was not a good price? Their coffee. Bryant and I both got an iced maple butter latte, which is listed on their menu as having espresso, maple, salted cream, and oat milk. It was a 16oz iced latte. For NINE DOLLARS. No cold foam, no maple cookie topper, or anything else you can think of that would’ve maybe jazzed it up somehow to make it worth nine dollars. After looking at their menu, that’s not even the most expensive latte they have. Their pistachio latte is ten! Ten dollars! And a lot of the drink is just ice! Plus it was just a standard latte, it wasn’t even mindblowingly good.
So in total we spent over forty dollars on two iced lattes and three pastries plus tip, and there wasn’t even any seating or WiFi and the workers weren’t even friendly. I’m literally distraught. I have never paid that much for a latte, and I hope to never pay that much for one again. I usually pay 6ドル-7ドル and even that feels like a lot, but I sure as hell ain’t going to make it at home so what am I gonna do. Whole lotta nothin’.
Anyways, at this point I really needed to get the Big Idea done and I didn’t really think it was feasibly to try to go a third cafe just for some WiFi, especially because they may not even have it. So, I did the only sensible option left. I went to a library.
The Upper Arlington Public Library was my savior that day, its Internet free and fast, its heart courageous and brave. Thank you, public library, you’re always there when I need you.
Bryant and I still had some time before our ticketed time of 1pm for the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, so we decided to go across the street from the library to Littleton’s Market.
Littleton’s Market is a gourmet grocery store that has tons of specialty ingredients hard to find at regular stores, a bakery, a coffee shop, a cafe that serves a surprisingly huge selection of food (including oysters), plus serves beer, wine, and cocktails, and even has events like wine tastings! As someone who loves unique and funky food items, perusing this store was so much fun. There was lots of cool stuff and tons of amazing looking food. Plenty of people were enjoying lunch outside on their patio which even had heat lamps around. It was such a nice atmosphere and such a cute store with a lot of great stuff. I hope to go back sometime when I haven’t just had way too much coffee and pastries.
Finally, it was time for the pièce de résistance: the conservatory.
I have only been to the Franklin Park Conservatory once before, back in May, so I was excited to see if anything was different this time around. This was Bryant’s first time at any conservatory or botanical garden literally ever, so that was exciting, too.
When I tell you we had the best time, I really mean it. The Franklin Park Conservatory is an absolute treasure. Every section is incredibly beautiful, made even more visually stunning by the Chihuly glass sculptures (18 in total!). There’s so many different biomes to wander through, each having totally unique flora, and even some fauna, with an awesome koi fish pond in the Pacific Island Water Garden section. There’s a truly amazing display of bonsai trees, all of which are decades old and meticulously cared for. For the fall, they’ve decorated the outdoor portions with hundreds of pumpkins.
Not only do they have an extensive plant collection for your viewing pleasure, but they also host tons of events and classes. Whether you want to learn how to better care for your plants, bake a cake, craft a stained glass pumpkin, or sip cocktails, they’ve got a huge variety of events to choose from. Literally like almost every day they have something different going on.
Plus, they have a neat gift shop, and you can even buy plants there. Of course, Bryant and I each had to take one home to commemorate our time at the conservatory.
Bryant said that being surrounded by so much greenery and beautiful flowers cured his depression. Honestly, I totally agree. I felt so at peace amongst the palms and ferns, literally just in awe of the huge, incredible, beautiful plants around me. It was a great experience, and I wish I lived closer so I could go more often.
After walking around so much and working up an appetite, it was time for our final destination in Columbus, Taj on Fifth. Bryant and I love Indian food, so I booked a 4pm reservation to have an early dinner before hitting the road.
Located on Fifth Avenue just North of the Grandview Heights area, Taj on Fifth opened last year and prides themselves on traditional Indian cooking with a modern twist, and they even grind their spices in house!
When we got there, we were the first ones in the door since they had just opened for dinner service, so I took the opportunity to snap a picture of part of the interior.
I actually really like the vibe they’ve got going on here. I like the wood and leather look, and the covered patio on the right makes it so that you can enjoy it any time of year. I would say the only qualm I have is the flatscreen TVs at the bar, but y’all already know that is a very specific issue that I’ve had with multiple places. I just think it detracts from the nice look of the place. But I digress that it really is just a personal thing.
Since we were there at four on a Wednesday, it was during Happy Hour. It’s Tuesday-Friday from 4-6 and you get 5ドル off their signature cocktails, 2ドル off a glass of beer or wine, and 2ドル off small plates as well. With a deal like that, I simply had to try their Chai-Espresso Martini:
[画像:A coupe glass full of espresso martini with a good amount of foam on top. ]
This had OYO Honey Vanilla Bean Vodka, espresso brew, Taj House Chai syrup, and pecan bitters. I absolutely loved this espresso martini. I thought it was a unique and yummy take on a classic drink, but it still retained all the good aspects of the traditional cocktail. The Chai flavor only enhanced the drink, it didn’t detract anything. After the 5ドル discount, this cocktail was only nine bucks! Or it might’ve been ten. Somewhere around there.
And here’s a look at their large plates menu:
Before we ordered our entrees, we decided to try their Mixed Pakora Platter, which was one of their small plates:
[画像:Lots of crispy fried veggies with sauces on the side! ]
This came with cauliflower, potato, paneer, onion, and kale. It was served with a cilantro-mint chutney and a tamarind chutney. This appetizer seriously smacked. Everything was perfectly crispy and even the kale had great texture. The cilantro-mint sauce was so fresh and herbaceous, and the tamarind sauce had so much flavor, a little went a long way. This was such a good portion, there was plenty for both of us. We tore this appetizer up, and it definitely seemed worth the 15ドル (thirteen since it was happy hour!).
For our entrees, Bryant got the Taj Stuffed Paneer, which was 23,ドル and I got the Saag Paneer for 19ドル. Of course, we had to get garlic naan to go with it, too, which was 6ドル.
Look how scrumptious that looks! It might look like a small portion in the photo, but I can assure you these were definitely generous portions. Even though both the saag paneer and stuffed paneer were listed as mild, I definitely felt like my saag paneer was rather spicy. Bryant’s dish seemed a considerable amount less spicy than mine, which is odd because I don’t really think of Saag Paneer as being that spicy of a dish. Most Indian places I’ve been to ask how spicy you want it on a scale of one to whatever, but Taj on Fifth just has their food come as it is. I can respect that, but I am pretty weak to spice.
Since it was so spicy, I asked for a side of their mixed raita:
[画像:A small bowl of a creamy white yogurt sauce with herbs and spices in it. ]
I’m not sure what all was in here other than basically yogurt, herbs, and spices, but this mixture was delish. After mixing it in to the saag paneer, the yogurt sauce cooled my meal down a lot while giving it lots of good flavor from all the fresh herbs and spices. I’m so glad I thought to try it.
Besides the good food and delicious drink I had, the service was also very friendly. When the bill came, I mentioned that I actually wanted to get a mango lassi to go, and instead of fixing my check and printing me a new one with the lassi on it, they gave it to me for free and said it was on the house! The lassis are six dollars so that is definitely a considerable freebie.
We were there for over an hour and no one else came in the entire time. Our waitress even asked us how we heard about them (Tik Tok), which is giving me the vibe that this place is a hidden gem that isn’t getting the traffic it deserves. If you’re in Columbus, I highly recommend Taj on Fifth. They could use some love!
Mango lassi in tow, we hit the road back to the West, the sparkle of the city still gleamin’ in our eyes as we chased the sunset.
All in all, even with some slight disappointments, this Columbus trip was one to remember! I’m so glad we went on it.
Have you tried Fox in the Snow cafe? Are you an espresso martini maniac like me? Do you like Indian food? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
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A Review of Grokipedia, Using Myself as Test Subject
Posted on October 30, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 42 Comments
What? You didn’t know that Grokipedia exists? Well, it does, and it’s Elon Musk’s attempt to run Wikipedia out of town on a rail: An “AI”-generated compendium of information about things and stuff, that also, not coincidentally, aligns with Musk’s weird techno-fascistic view of the world, because he’s got his hand on the tiller with Grok, especially when his pet large language model plunges deep within itself to find an actual fact.
I have personally found a good way to spot-check “AI” is to ask it questions about me and see what it gets wrong, and so, in a similar fashion, I popped over to Grokipedia to see what its article about me says, and how accurate it might be.
And how accurate is it? As accurate as anything made with an LLM, which is to say: meh, not especially, because fundamentally LLMs aren’t built for accuracy, they’re built for statistical probability, and these really are two separate things. Grok can find out things about me on the Internet, and put those things into Grokipedia, but it doesn’t appear to have the ability to discriminate between what is truth and what’s not. If it shows up enough on the Internet, Grok’s happy to print the not truth.
Two small examples of this: Grokipedia incorrectly lists my birth order in relationship to my siblings; it decided to choose between three options and got it wrong. Likewise, Grokipedia confidently asserts, across more than one article, I will note, that Steven Spielberg is involved with the film adaptation of Old Man’s War. The Spielberg thing isn’t true, but it was a rumor that did the rounds on the Internet, because Spielberg is Spielberg, and because OMW is one of the most successful science fiction series that is still (alas!) unproduced as a film. I have repeatedly said Spielberg isn’t making the movie, but me saying that is outnumbered by the number of sites asserting it, so if you’re Grok and you’re basically a statistical engine, who are you going to believe: The one guy who wrote the thing, or the dozens of web sites that cut and pasted the rumor?
(To be clear, it’s not just Grok that gets this wrong, because the architecture of all LLMs is similar. I just asked Gemini and Copilot “Can you tell me if Steven Spielberg is involved in a film version of Old Man’s War” and got affirmatives of varying strengths. Gemini confirmed there are rumors but cautioned that the project is listed as “in development,” whereas Copilot not only straight-up confirmed that Spielberg is officially attached to direct, it even offered up a release date: May 15, 2026. Which means Spielberg has seven months to produce a screenplay, cast the thing, ramp up pre-production, film it, jam in all the post-production and squeeze a score out of John Williams. This on top of the actual movie he has due out in June 2026! So, good luck to him there.)
There are other errors of fact and inconsistencies within Grokipedia; for example, listing one of my books as my first published, and then a few paragraphs later casually mentioning another one of my books which in fact is the first published. Other books of mine are offered with incorrect titles. The article is fairly long and reads as if it was rather sloppily-edited, which isn’t true: It wasn’t edited at all, or, at least not by a human. It’s fair to say Grok’s inherent editing qualities are similar to its information-retrieval-and-assessment qualities, which is to say, not great.
Now, here’s the thing: I am me, and thus, am the definitive expert on me, and I am here to tell you that if you were to rely on the Grokipedia article about me for reference, you would get several things wrong, some things trivial and some others rather less so. If Grokipedia is getting things about me wrong, what else is it getting wrong in other articles, where I do not have the same level of domain knowledge? I can’t trust it to be accurate about me, so how can I trust it to be accurate about any other thing? The answer is, I can’t. Again, it’s put together by an LLM, and LLMs, by their nature, get things wrong.
(As a contrast, incidentally, the current Wikipedia article on me is accurate, put together as it is by actual humans and occasionally updated by them as well. No mention of Spielberg there.)
Aside from the factually-iffy nature of Grokipedia, evidence of Musk’s political and social positions are very clearly baked into the site, or at least, into the article about me. The article spends more than a thousand words detailing my political positions, my involvement in the “Sad/Rabid Puppy” Hugo-related nonsense of a decade past, and, generally, Why Conservatives Don’t Like Me. The last two of these is mostly rehashing how both author Larry Correia and multi-hyphenate grifter Vox Day had bugs up their respective butts about me for a bit. I’m pretty sure Correia hasn’t given me much thought in several years, and honestly who knows what hole Day has fallen down recently, so in general I’m not sure why so much of the Grokipedia piece is given over this sort of thing, other than because this is where Musk’s own biases are, and what’s important to the boss is going to be important to Grok.
I will note that Wikipedia, which Musk has recently spent time castigating as “woke,” because of course he has, that’s his shtick now, has almost no mention of any of this; my political positions are limited to a couple of sentences in the “personal life” section, and the Sad Puppies nonsense, and my tangential-other-than-being-an-approved-whipping-boy role in it, is appropriately put into its own article. Its prominence in my Grokipedia article mostly feels like an attempt for a conservative-leaning site to reframe and relitigate this stuff, which, you know, meh. Any suggestion that Grokipedia is more interested in straight-ahead dissemination of factual information rather than the presentation of certain political viewpoints and perspectives, and certainly in comparison to Wikipedia, is belied in what information it chooses to present and how.
Which, again, is an issue: If this very evident bias is a thing for a subject I intimately know about, i.e., me, how much of an issue is it for the things where I do not have substantive domain knowledge? Having used Wikipedia for a while now, I feel reasonably sure that its biases are not “liberal,” they’re “pedantic,” as in, the sort of person who spends a lot of time creating/editing Wikipedia articles is less interested in shoving a political viewpoint into the articles there than they are in demanding every little fact presented has verifiable third party support. Musk wants to castigate Wikipedia because he is launching a competing product and because, as Stephen Colbert once memorably put it, “facts have a liberal bias,” meaning that they often don’t fit into the (current) conservative viewpoint. Also, Musk is an asshole, which is not to be discounted here.
Which is to say, if you have to choose a “pedia” to trust, you might choose the one assembled by a bunch of pedantic nerds saying “well, ACTUALLY” to each other until the heat death of the universe, over the one assembled by an LLM controlled by an insecure Nazi salute-throwing billionaire who sprints to reprogram that LLM every time it shares a fact that makes that billionaire angry or sad, or doesn’t fit into his Playskool Machiavellian ambitions and plans. In this particular case, a thousand pedantic nerds is much better than a single rich one.
Anyway, hi, I’m John Scalzi, and the Grokipedia article about me is not great. If you like, you can use that as an anecdotal bellwether for the overall veracity and utility of that site in general. We’ll see if it gets better over time. But in the meantime I’m going to consider it at this point like most things that route through Elon Musk: Fashy, unreliable, and generally to be avoided.
— JS
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Today in Personal Nostalgia: My First Business Card
Posted on October 29, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 26 Comments
I came across it this evening as I was going through some old files and was surprised to find it; I didn’t know any had survived between 1991 and now. Be that as it may, indeed, 34 years ago this was my business card. Being a movie critic was my first job out of college. How did I manage to convince a respected regional newspaper to hire a 22-year-old with no actual film reviewing experience for a hotly-coveted gig? One, I spent the summer prior to joining the newspaper doing a three-month crash course in the history of film, up to and including bringing home a triple feature of classic films every night from the local video store (my roommates loved that). Two, I was cheap. My first year salary was something like 23,000,ドル but then again this was 1991, when I could rent a nice apartment in Fresno for, like 450ドル a month or something, and fast food was still actually cheap. I got by just fine.
Mind you, I was under no illusion, then or now, that I hadn’t gotten unfathomably lucky with my first job out of college. Professional movie critic gigs weren’t readily available, even in 1991; summer crash course or not, it was really only the whim of the newspaper editors at the time, who were trying to polish up the reputation of the Bee by adding what was essentially a luxury position to the staff, that opened up the slot as it was. It was terribly fun while it lasted, but it didn’t last forever; in 1996 I was told that the paper was going to quit having me review movies and move me over to a general reporting slot. I responded by going home that afternoon and securing a job at America Online, a (then) up-and-coming tech company who wanted to have a writer of its very own on staff. I wouldn’t be doing movie reviews at AOL either, but at least they were paying me twice a much as I was getting at the Bee.
(This was, of course, also unfathomably lucky. Observers will note “unfathomably lucky” happens a lot in my career. No, I don’t know why. I try to be appreciative when it happens.)
Fresno was and is frequently the butt of jokes in California but I have nothing but good memories of my time there, not in the least because it was there that I met Krissy. Likewise, I have nothing but good memories of my time at the Fresno Bee. It was a great place to have landed right out of college, with smart colleagues and patient editors, cheap rents and affordable fun. Plus I got to watch movies and tell people what I thought about them, and interview movie stars and filmmakers, which was a cool thing to do when one is still, essentially, a kid. I wouldn’t have missed a moment of it. It was a good time in my life.
PS: Fun fact: “Scoopy,” the Bee mascot of the Fresno, Modesto and Scaramento Bee newspapers (all owned by the McClatchy chain) was designed by Walt Disney. It was a fun little thing to have on one’s business card.
— JS
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The Big Idea: Jes Honard & Marie Parks
Posted on October 29, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 3 Comments
Great minds think alike. For authors Jes Honard and Marie Parks, their great minds had to do just that to co-author the second novel of their Grigori Cycle series. Come along in their Big Idea as they share their thoughts and process not only for Undeniable, but also their first book, Unrelenting.
JES HONARD & MARIE PARKS:
We’re a society of high achievers.
From a young age, the world demands we set goals and check them off.
If we fail, we’re losers. If we succeed, we move on to the next task.
There’s not much space to consider who’s impacted—including ourselves.
Nor do we feel we have permission to pause, reflect, and grow. At most, we might buy ourselves a congratulatory ice cream before moving on to a fresh goal.
The Grigori Cycle is written by not one, but two high achievers. When we met on a roleplaying forum dedicated to the 90s book series Animorphs, we joked that we shared a brain. And when we first sat down to write Unrelenting, the first book in the series, we’d already spent years checking off the boxes of our infinite to do lists.
Write what you know, they say. Is it any wonder the main character of Unrelenting is filled with an obsessive focus on her goal?
True, Bridget’s search to find her missing sister is more consequential than finishing a novel. But the way she approaches the mystery is, well, unrelenting—even when she stumbles into an ominous world of magical contracts and millennia-old supernatural beings.
We were a few chapters into Bridget’s story when we decided, almost on a lark, to pitch our definitely-not-finished book to a small publishing house. (Not-yet-published authors, do not do this. We did everything backwards.)
By some miracle, they asked for the full manuscript, and suddenly we had an extremely tight deadline.
Unrelenting had started as a fun, creative project. But in that moment, it became a mission requiring a feverish pace. We spent hours in Zoom rooms, obsessing over plot lines, character arcs, and the minutiae of description. Truth be told, it didn’t take too much for us two high achievers to enter method-actor mode and embody our protagonist.
But one day, we finished the manuscript.
Want to know the extent of our celebration?
We filmed a 2-second GIF of ourselves dancing.
The next day, our noses were back to the grindstone with revisions.
No ice cream for us.
In the first book, Bridget also succeeds, but only by a narrow definition of the word. By the time we reconvene with her in the sequel, Undeniable, she has faced devastating losses.
But Bridget doesn’t pause. She doesn’t take stock of her life and mental health, now that her initial goal is achieved.
She presses onward.
Instead of allowing herself to grieve, she sets her mind on using the magic tools she’s discovered to bring a loved one back to life. Why process emotions when you can live in denial and hyperfocus, right?
Like Bridget, we also pressed onward with writing Undeniable. But we didn’t have to deny ourselves our own character arcs.
This project was a catalyst to think about how society’s mandate of endless achievement is, frankly, bullshit. And not just in the abstract. In the midst of creating this manuscript, we experienced a cross-country move, a divorce, and the deaths of loved ones.
We didn’t always succeed in reminding ourselves to rest, but we did manage to center the joy of writing and of being friends. As a result, writing this book felt less like a manic race than its predecessor.
We used Undeniable to explore the darker side of the coin. What happens when you push your support system away?
Bridget has grown to accept others’ help, but she still hasn’t learned that their goals deserve as much space as hers do. As a result, she fails to treat her allies with the care they deserve. She takes risks, steps on toes, and disregards the feelings of the people closest to her.
The big idea in Unrelenting and Undeniable isn’t just that unquestioning focus causes more harm than good—it’s that old habits die hard, even in the most extraordinary of circumstances. To break the cycle of toxic achievement, we have to look outside of what we’ve been told to do. We can lean on our most trusted friends to help us find new metrics for success.
When our world is falling apart around us, it can be too easy to get caught up in the doing of it all. But whether your personal goals are big or small, don’t forget to pause from time to time. Reflect. Breathe.
Ask where your impact can be felt most, and if you need to ask for help. (Yes, this is a note to self.)
And whether you hit your goals or not, don’t forget to celebrate your self-care efforts and the people who are with you every step of the way.
Unrelenting: Amazon |Barnes & Noble |Bookshop |Powell’s
Undeniable: Amazon |Barnes & Noble |Bookshop |Powell’s
Authors’ socials: Website |Jes’ Instagram |Marie’s Instagram |Jes’ Bluesky |Marie’s Bluesky
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A Sad Commentary on the State of Writer-Related Spam at the Moment
Posted on October 28, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 17 Comments
I’m getting a couple dozen “let us promote your book” bits of spam mail daily, of various sorts, enough so that I regret to say that any legit offers for book-related appearances are probably being swept up in the spammy whirl, and it’s increasingly difficult to sort out which is which. So if you’re a real live human and you’ve recently sent me something where you’ve ask me to make an appearance and I’ve not responded, that’s one reason why I might not have. I don’t anticipate this situation getting better anytime soon. I don’t like it either.
— JS
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A Mini-Vacay In Columbus: Part 2
Posted on October 28, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 21 Comments
For my and Bryant’s second day in Columbus, we had to start things out right by going to brunch. Much like Monday, Tuesday is a rough day to eat out because a lot of restaurants are closed. This is even more true for brunch places, as many of them are only open on the weekends. Plus, a lot of restaurants that normally do lunch and dinner also tend to do brunch only on the weekends. So, we had somewhat slim pickings for brunch, especially if we didn’t want to go somewhere that was just pastries and coffee.
We finally settled on Simply Honest Cafe, which is open everyday from 8am to 2pm. Perfect brunching hours! It’s in German Village, so we actually drove because it was just a bit too far of a walk for us, but it was a very short drive down. Fun fact about Simply Honest Cafe, they actually partner with other small businesses in the area. Their coffee is from Roaming Goat Coffee Co., also in Columbus, and get some of their produce from Yellowbird, a Columbus foodshed.
Simply Honest Cafe is a casual-style eatery, where you order at the counter and they bring the food out to your table. The inside is pretty open and spacious, and they even have a cute patio with string lights. Inside, there’s tons of plants hanging around, which I thought was a nice vibe. It wasn’t very crowded, so I took a picture of the interior:
When we walked up to the counter to order, there were so many options! The menu was honestly huge, and it was a bit overwhelming because I felt like I had to choose right away even though there was no one in line behind us. Which was no fault of the employee taking our order, she actually assured us that we could take our time, so it was just my own weird anxieties that made me feel that way.
First thing first, we just had to try their iced cookie butter latte:
These looked absolutely scrumptious, with a cookie butter drizzle inside the cup and on top of the whipped cream, plus one whole Biscoff cookie on top! This latte was so sweet, creamy, totes delish all around. These were six dollars a piece. They also have a Dubai chocolate latte I’d really like to try if I go back sometime soon.
For my main dish, I got their sweet potato hash, with crumbled turkey sausage, roasted sweet potatoes, caramelized onions, citrus kale, avocado, smoked gouda, a fried egg, cilantro, and arbol chili mayo:
This sweet potato bowl was ridiculously good. It tasted so fresh and healthy, it was really light without sacrificing flavor. The sweet potatoes were nice and soft from being roasted, the avocado was perfectly ripe, and even with the chili mayo it wasn’t too spicy at all, just had great flavor all around. It was very balanced and filling. I feel like I made a great choice with this dish, and it was fourteen dollars.
Bryant really wanted some good ol’ pancakes, so he got a stack:
This is their buttermilk pancakes topped with a whipped honey cinnamon butter. They say on their website that their buttermilk pancakes are made from scratch, so that’s nice. Bryant was nice enough to share, so I tried a bite and they were warm and fluffy, honestly you can’t go wrong with pancakes. I also liked that the strawberries were really fresh. If you’re craving a stack, these are pretty great, and only eleven dollars. But if you just want one, you can get a single pancake as a side for four dollars.
There was one more thing I was really craving: biscuits and gravy. But I didn’t want to have it all to myself, so I asked Bryant to share with me. He agreed so I went ahead and ordered their biscuit and gravy breakfast, which comes with two eggs and a side of potatoes:
For fourteen dollars, I felt like this was a really good portion of biscuits and gravy. I loved that it came with eggs and potatoes, as I can honestly think of no truer breakfast combo. I’m glad we shared this because those biscuits were very filling!
I thought the service, though casual, was very friendly. The guy that brought our food out complimented Bryant’s sweater and even asked him where he got it because he liked it so much.
We had a super pleasant experience at Simply Honest Cafe and I’d really love to go back. It’s quick, affordable, and has really good food and coffee. Apparently they do catering, too!
After brunch, we decided some shopping was in order, and went to a Barnes & Noble. It’s been awhile since I’ve perused a bookstore, but lately I’ve had a stronger desire to read than I have in recent past, so I’m glad Bryant suggested it. We decided we’d each pick out a book and then swap when we were done with them. Here’s what we decided on:
[画像:A shot of the two books we picked out, mine being ]
Perhaps when I finish mine (or both) I’ll report back on how they were! I also bought a Lego set because I’m weak-willed and can never say no to another set. I got the Great Wave Off Kanagawa set, and it is taking me for-flippin’-ever to build. But it’s gonna be awesome when I’m done.
The Barnes & Noble was next to a Sephora, so I grabbed a couple items I needed to restock for my skincare routine. The stores were also next to a World Market, which I was very curious about, so we went in there and I was blown away by all the different stuff they have. I don’t know what I was expecting from a place called World Market, but they had so much stuff that just felt completely random like tons of chairs and rugs and furniture, cooking ware and dishes, holiday items, so much foreign foods and snacks, soaps and bathroom items, even alcohol! A lot of alcohol, even! It was absolutely wild and I spent way too much time looking around and convincing myself to not buy everything I laid eyes on.
They even had my favorite chips, Honey Butter chips from Korea. Man I love those things.
Anyways, after going back to the Airbnb and chilling, it was time to go to our (rather early) dinner reservations. I made 4pm reservations at Lindey’s, because we were going to be attending the Stardew Valley concert at the Palace Theater at 7. Bryant actually got us the tickets a couple months ago, and I planned this trip completely around the concert. If he hadn’t gotten the tickets, we wouldn’t have even gone on this fun excursion to the city!
I was so excited to dine at Lindey’s. I follow so many Columbus-foodie type accounts on Tik Tok and everyone always rates Lindey’s as their number one spot in the city for fine dining. I have heard nothing but endless praise for Lindey’s and was so happy to finally be trying it.
I can tell you right now I’ll probably never go back.
Lindey’s opened in 1981, and is located in the German Village, so there’s lots of street parking or they have valet. I decided just to park on the street like a block or two away. Lindey’s is located on a corner, and there’s a step up from the brick walkway to a concrete slab to get through the ornate wooden double doors.
Immediately upon entering, I thought that Lindey’s looked very familiar. It looked a lot like Smith & Wollensky in Chicago. A dark, wooden bar, white tablecloths, and that exact same shade of green bar chairs and booths.
We were the first people there other than two gentlemen at the bar, and we got seated at the one table that was directly next to the front door and host stand, and the waiter’s station was directly behind the host stand as well. This was an unfortunate place to be sat, as the door opening consistently was very chilly and loud, we heard every single person that walked in say “reservation for X” and talk to the host, and the waiters were also like, standing directly next to us throughout the whole meal because they were busy at their station putting stuff into the computer, putting dishes they picked up off tables into the dish bin, etc. It was honestly very distracting and overstimulating, especially because our seat was under a speaker and the music was pretty loud.
Just like Smith & Wollesnky, Lindey’s decided to make their menus huge, cumbersome, floppy paper menus (and in green!):
Even the drink menu was just as huge:
[画像:A large white rectangular menu listing their cocktails, wines, and non-alcoholic options. ]
Considering how small the table is, I truly don’t understand why they would have such large menus. With just our two menus they took up the whole table, let alone if we actually had four people at our four-top table.
Aside from the regular dinner menu and drink menu, they handed us this daily special:
[画像:A small paper menu listing their daily special, which is sea scallops for forty-eight dollars. ]
The special being on a paper menu is completely fine, but I expect nicer menus from a fine dining place than giant paper.
After looking our options over, we decided not to get a starter, but I did opt for a cup of lobster bisque.
[画像:A small white bowl of lobster bisque with a dollop of creme fraiche on top. ]
The cup was ten dollars, and came with creme fraiche and shrimp on top. I’ve mentioned before that I’m very picky about lobster bisque, and thankfully Lindey’s passed the test. I quite enjoyed this lobster bisque, it was creamy and piping hot, and had sizeable pieces of lobster in it. I do think ten dollar is a little much for a smaller portion, but it was pretty good.
Bryant stuck with water throughout the meal, but I decided to try a cocktail, and got the Sugar Magnolia:
Watershed chamomile gin, St. Germain, lemon juice, lavender syrup, eucalyptus tincture, and Barcina Cava. It was light, bubbly, not overly dry, and looked very pretty. I liked this drink but I don’t know that it was worth the eighteen dollars. Admittedly, it is one of the more expensive cocktails on the list, so I could’ve chosen a cheaper one if I really wanted.
Our waitress brought out some bread for the table:
[画像:A small basket of bread with a butter dish next to it. ]
While Bryant and I both really liked the crunchy seeded crisps, I do feel like the butter and bread was lacking. The butter was unsalted and unflavored, so it was just kind of bland and underwhelming. Plus the bread wasn’t warm.
For my entree, I decided to keep the lobster train rolling and picked the Maine Lobster Risotto:
Wow, now these plates are looking awfully familiar. It’s almost like they look exactly like Smith & Wollensky’s plates that are white, have a green line around it, and say the name of the restaurant at the top of the plate in green cursive.
Back to the food, I was honestly disappointed by this risotto. The gulf shrimp on top were overcooked and tough, and awfully fishy. The asparagus was toothsome and the risotto was bland. I just was not impressed, especially for the price point of thirty-seven dollars.
Bryant picked the Chicken Scarpariello:
[画像:A large white round plate containing chicken, peas, and gnudi. ]
The menu says it’s pan-seared chicken with ricotto gnudi (I thought it was gnocchi, to be honest), Italian sausage, peppadew peppers, wood grilled mushrooms, with roasted tomato sauce and lemon oil. So I found it strange that there were peas on the plate. It wasn’t listed on the menu, anyway.
I thought the presentation of this dish was kind of… not good. It looks haphazardly thrown together and messy. Bryant liked it, but I thought it was just okay. The gnudi was fine but kind of bland, the peas seemed like they’d been blanched so they were rather firm, the sauce was lacking. Again, I just wasn’t wildly impressed. This was thirty dollars.
Thoroughly unimpressed so far, I was definitely looking more forward to dessert.
[画像:A small(er) rectangular dessert menu. ]
I hate when paper menus are dirty. If one gets dirty, you should throw it away since they’re just paper. Dirty menus are seriously unappetizing in my opinion, but maybe I’m just being nit-picky.
Anyways, Bryant didn’t want a dessert because he was full, but I saved room and got a box for my risotto. Which the waitress boxed up for me! Love to see it.
I ending up picking the basque style cheesecake, as it seemed like the most unique thing on the menu:
An ube basque cheesecake with a mango passionfruit glaze and whipped cream. Y’all. Y’all. I was going to tell y’all to pass on Lindey’s, but I change my mind. Go to Lindey’s, sit at the bar for like fifteen minutes, and just get this cheesecake. It is so good, my mind was honestly blown by this cheesecake. It’s perfectly sweet and creamy with just the right amount of ube flavor, and the mango passionfruit glaze is bursting with fresh, tangy, tropical flavor that contrasts the cheesecake amazingly. This slice was twelve dollars and it was worth every penny. This is a prime example of why I say dessert is the best part of the meal. Holy cannoli.
After all that, we still had some time before the concert, so I got a pot of tea to sip on since it was so dreary and rainy out. Listed on their dessert menu under specialty teas, I opted for their chai, which was 4ドル.50 and came like this:
Our waitress also brought out some sugar packets for me, as well. I enjoyed the tea. The tag said it was Hubbard & Cravens. It was nice to sip on while we waited for the check.
Before we left, I decided to use the restroom. I almost never mention this in my posts over restaurants but I secretly judge the heck out of a place by its bathrooms. Anywhere that offers free menstrual products automatically gets bonus points.
Anyways, I asked where it was, and the waitress said it was up a small set of stairs and to the left. So I went up there and when I went through the door, I noticed it was really narrow. Like awkwardly so. And then I noticed that there were two stalls, neither of which were handicap accessible. Hmm.
When I got back to the table, I asked the waitress if there was a different bathroom that was handicap accessible. She said no, and that their building isn’t ADA compliant. To even get in the front door is an obstacle to those in a wheelchair. I was shocked to hear this. How could a fine dining establishment in Columbus not be handicap accessible? She said that it’s because it’s considered a “historic building” they’re not allowed to change any of the structure. It has to remain intact the way it is to preserve its historical-ness or something.
That is so totally bogus, man. I don’t care how historic a building is, y’all can find a way to make it accessible for everyone. That is truly unreal to me.
All in all, I did not care for Lindey’s. I thought it was tacky instead of classy, middling food for high prices, and has incredibly ugly dishware and menus. The best part of our experience was our waitress, who was an absolute peach and a wonderful server. She was extremely friendly, and even complimented my hair! The service and cheesecake really improved Lindey’s score in my mind.
Moving on from dinner, the Stardew Concert was something I was really looking forward to. Bryant is actually the one that got me into Stardew in the first place, so I have him to thank for my sporadic obsessive playing and love of the game and music. If you’ve never played Stardew Valley, it is a truly wonderful game, with an awesome pixel art style, super fun and unique music, and so much exploring, foraging, crafting, cooking, fishing, combat, oh man it’s seriously loaded with tons of different stuff to do, you’ll seriously never get bored of it.
For the concert, we were quite a few rows back but right on the aisle, so it was a pretty clear view straight ahead to the stage. There was an absolute monster of a line for the merch table, but you could also just scan a QR code and buy your merch from their online shop. Granted, it took like a week for it to come in and you had to pay for shipping, but I figured that was better than waiting in that line and then having to hold everything awkwardly the entire time.
There were quite a few people in cosplay of the characters from the game, and I even saw a really good Emily and Clint couple (which I also kind of hated because I hate Clint and he doesn’t deserve to be with Emily!).
The orchestra played the songs alongside a screen that either showed gameplay, or showed fanart-type backgrounds of locations from the game, like the farm and the traveler’s cart.
Honestly, the music was rough. The pianist continuously messed up in every single song, and was also the loudest and most prominent part of the orchestra. She fudged up the notes constantly, and the banjo was no better. Some of our favorite songs were just kind of butchered by the piano alone. There was one song that was strictly string instruments (not the banjo) and they absolutely nailed it. The violins were perfect and beautiful and I wished there were more songs that had just them.
The conductor mentioned that all the musicians literally showed up at the venue that day and they barely got any practice in beforehand, and it was apparent.
Also, the person DIRECTLY behind me was coughing up a lung the entire time and I was not only extremely annoyed, but I was also having health anxiety and fearing that I was going to get COVID or something from her, so that was unpleasantly distracting on a number of levels.
Plus, we parked in a lot right next to the theater, which only had about twenty spots total, and was twenty bucks to park in. Only to come back to the the car and see that we (and so many others) were trapped in their spots because they had people parked to the gills in this dang parking lot, with so many cars parked everywhere that everyone was blocked in by other vehicles. Rows and rows of blocked in cars! So we had to sit in our car for like twenty minutes before everyone finally made it back to their car and everyone was able to actually move their cars and leave. It was insanity. How are they allowed to do that (“they” being the parking lot operators that told everyone which spot/where to park)?!
If you’re wondering what merch we got, I got the Void Chicken keychain and Bryant got the White Chicken keychain, and then I got the poster and of course I had to get the Junimo t-shirt. Shit was expensive.
Anyways, by this point we were very full and very tired, so it was another decently early night. Second day in Columbus in the books!
Are you a big fan of brunch? Have you heard of either of the books we bought? If you’ve tried Lindey’s before, did you have a better experience than us? Do you love Stardew Valley? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS