J m McDermott/joe m mcdermott

I mumble “buy assets not liabilities” to myself while selecting pop rocks at a toy store…

GIFT You better sit down for this. Some families put an angel on top, others a star; still others a rasberry omelet; it depends on what’s handed down. I have just the thing at home for picking that up. The verbs are often doubtful, but the nouns contain actions, each one proof of an incident where feeling and expression contradicted each other. I’m not sure how high off the ground I am. It’s exhilarating the way life catches hold wherever it can find shelf space. Slice my brain horizontally, discover America. Don’t bother wrapping it. The grand narrative of progress has nothing to do with saving time.

Slice my brain horizontally, discover America.

Gillian McCain

The Libby app is superior in every way to every ereading app I have ever used and it’s not even close.

Trying to write a year of reading post while not discussing the trauma that made fiction reading nearly impossible for years, and I still struggle with contemporary work because brains dont work the same after years of domestic abuse and Living in constant fear of a sociopath.

Teaching my parents how great it is to hire someone to put up the Christmas lights (both over 70) is a put a star in my crown moment indeed. when I was a security guard, ladders were the single most dangerous thing and caused more life-altering injuries than anything else.

Good for those teams; insane that they're banning trans women from e-sports now.

a white and yellow stuffed animal is sitting in a field of tall grass ALT: a white and yellow stuffed animal is sitting in a field of tall grass

Bread and dog. All I love in life. If you see this post your favorite pokemon.

If this were even remotely true, it would be a compelling argument for state funded healthcare for all. Communities without access to healthcare and get care for their animals become the vectors of outbreaks.

Not to defend Olivia Nuzzi, who broke every rule in journalism and promoted a charlatan to his current position. But it's incredibly telling that she will lose her job, but RFK Jr. gets to stay in his job despite the reports of his drug use, his affairs and his defenestrating of public health.

So… why doesn’t Major League Baseball give out know-ball prizes for literature and science? You know, soccer apparently has a peace prize, so it would make sense

Would LoVE Ahsoka to reinvent the Force. Would LoVE Strange New Worlds to reinvent the federation. Etc. etc.

I don’t really care about canon in long complex series, and basically think every story should do what works best for that story and handwave away any ”fans” that say you’re not allowed Because of Previous Accepted Lore.

If AI agents are so great, why don’t we replace tech CEOs and see what happens.

If you can explain what valuable customer experience medical insurance providers offer over a public option, and why ai isn’t a bubble, you can explain the American economy. (I.e. hallucinating lunatic.)

If you can’t imagine your book selling well at Target and wal mart maybe stay with independent publishers and be weird and be patient for whatever distribution models come next.

In the 70s, 80s, 90s reasonably talented and hardworking authors produced so much work. So many books. bookstores and distributors were regional, not national, and there was shelf space for lots of new ideas.
Now the largest bookstores are Costco and they carry only kings and scalzis

We have lost something you don’t even know existed if you are under 35 from a time of plenty and beauty that will probably never come again. And it’s only getting worse in ai and amazon everything

Like the idea of writing a book every two years, when I started down this path in 2003 was a realistic possibility in the midlist. Not easy or lucrative but doable. the systems are themselves. The fandom did not embrace the young and new. The companies collapsed and merged.

The crazy thing about writing books now is it used to be a pretty good living for a good number of people, and now it’s academics and patreon and already-rich and a handful of gazillionaires

I like sonnets even if I dont think im very good at them. jmmcdermott.blogspot.com/2025/12/sonn...

One of the clues AI LLMs is a hot mess and bad is how many SF/F nerds who understand the tech and implications are saying HARD NO.

Cannot say this enough: Most of the people in charge in the US right now are bottom of the barrel dipshits with very low competency, utterly deluded worldviews, no sense of community, and no moral or ethical compass.

It's maddening.

Novelists who should be declared national treasures are posting three-figure royalty statements, if that.

J M McDermott - Last Dragon. Paperback 1st edition; slightly ratty cover.

12) Last Dragon by J.M. McDermott (2008). I honestly don't how this book isn't seen as a modern classic of the genre. Instead, unjustly, it's very out of print. Nonlinear narrative, flashy prose, arresting voice and somehow it still all *works* as an actual narrative.

Check out Natania Barron’s Arthuriana series…

jmmcdermott.blogspot.com/2025/12/sonn...

I don’t know any job where you can be asleep in meetings on camera and keep your job. Except 1.

I actually got an offer on it from a (now defunct) small press that had such a bad contract, I couldn’t sign it, and ended up earning more than the advance they offered going indie… to no acclaim whatsoever. So it goes.

The Mountain The Mountain - Kindle edition by McDermott, J. M.. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Mountain.

Set up a free ebook giveaway of this post apocalyptic squirrel novella suitable for all ages just to hopefully find some new readers: www.amazon.com/Mountain-J-M...

The obscurity as an artist is a joy that lets me focus on my work. Does make shit harder to sell, though.