The Creative Act: A Way of Being

 

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I studiously avoided reading reviews of this book until I was done because I (correctly) predicted there would be those who praised it as a new book of holy scripture and those who would utterly trash the work as thin and inconsequential. Neither of those two camps is right. And while I do not condone tossing a book before you've given it a fair chance (though I have utterly given up on a book or two, opinions will differ on what a fair chance is. I can see the naysayers who feel that the book is a bunch of twitter quotes strung together, and I can even see why people who went into it not expecting a philosophically-oriented book would be turned off to it (though why you would think that a book about creativity would NOT have a philosophical orientation is beyond me). That said, I lean towards the cult of those who sing this books praises. I'm not all-in drinking the Kool-Aid, but I am at the edge of the clearing watching everyone line up, considering.

If one reads the book to the end, one finds the admission:

You are you.
The work is the work.
Each person in the audience is themselves. Uniquely so.
none of it can truly be understood, let alone distilled to simple equations or common language.

And herein lies the heart of the matter. Creativity is very difficult to pin down. There are exceptions and contradictions. What works one time doesn't work the next. That's the whole point of creativity. If you're looking for an end-all-be-all truth, study Accounting. Paint-by-numbers is not creativity, and it never was. It's good practice, and one can learn principles from it, but the true teachers in creative acts are experience, intuition, and failure.

Rubin does, however, share practical ways of thinking/being for those who might be struggling through the creative process. He also shares ways to ensure that you are creating good art when you think you've got a finished product. Any writer who's been writing for a while will tell you that the most difficult part of writing is editing. And if they don't, you can bet that their work shows it. I can categorically state that my early work, even those for which I was paid good money, could stand another edit. Or two. Or ten. Here Rubin doesn't spare the rod, but reminds us of our responsibility to create the best work we can, while giving us some tools to work with.

Now many of these tools come in the last third of the book, but if one doesn't buy into the foundational principles (remember that old concept of "willing suspension of disbelief"?), then the latter parts of the book are going to be far less impactful. No, you don't have to drink all the Kool-Aid, but you have to be willing to read and observe with an open mind. If you can't at least accept, theoretically, that "art is our portal to the unseen world," then this book is not for you. But if you'll give that thought a serious chance, the rest of the book will make sense to you. Again, if you want paint-by-numbers-so-you-can-monetize-everything-with-high-productivity, you need to look elsewhere.

If you're onboard with exercising a little faith, you'll be able to grok the book. The practicum really starts with the chapter on "Seeds," about a third of the way in. From here to the end, I've marked so many passages and taken so many notes that I won't take the time to put them all (if any) into this review. I've begun marking it up (in pencil - yes, I write in my books) with marginal notes, much like the ancient rabbinical scholars used to litter a verse of scripture with their annotations. As a result, this book has become highly personal to me and will continue to do so as I revisit it. It serves as a mirror to my own creative process, revealing all of its beauty and flaws. I will gaze into this book many times in the future both for inspiration and for practical solutions when I'm stuck (and there are many methods given for how to become un-stuck in the last third of the book).

I have a handful of reference books that I keep "hot at hand" in my writing area. An old Roget's Thesaurus, Tim D. White's Human Osteology, Francis D.K. Ching's A Visual Dictionary of Architecture, and now: Rick Rubin's The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

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Common/Uncommon Book

 More on this later, but I just returned from a trip to Europe and bought some writerly goodies while I was over there: The Leuchtturm 411 notebook and a Retro 51 Tornado Woodworks Bourbon Rollerball Pen. I am in love.

I've been wanting to do a "Commonplace Book" for a while, and had the rudimentary beginnings of one in my bullet journal, but have migrated those notes out. However, I wanted to also use this notebook to capture writing ideas. So, if you flip the notebook upside down, to the back, you'll find my "Common Book" with great quotes, sentences, phrases, and just plain cool words that serve as inspiration for my writing, including some transcriptions from notable passages (I have one from Rikki Ducornet's The Jade Cabinet, for example, regarding the Hungerkunstler). 

At the front of the journal is my "Uncommon Book" where I capture ideas according to the following key, inspired by some of the schools of magic in D&D:

 

And here are the new tools I get to use: 

I went on vacation seeking inspiration, as usual. I came back with several pages worth of inspirational ideas, as well as a container for them! 

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Agent of the Imperium: A Story of the Traveller Universe

 

Agent of the Imperium: A Story of the Traveller Universe by Marc W. Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I make no bones about it: The Traveller RPG and it's primary setting, The Third Imperium, is one of my favorite places to take my imagination and has been since the early '80s. As a young child, I always wondered who the creator of the game, Marc Miller, was. As an adult, I've had a chance to meet him, game at this table, and really get to know him in a different way than just being a star-struck 12 year old fanboy. Marc is not just a creative genius, he is a gentleman and a kind, benevolent person, politically active in calling out racism and prejudice, just a general all-around good human being.

Back in 2023, after a very long conversation about politics and gaming (I'll spare you all the details), I bought this book from him at the gamehole convention. Of course, I asked him to sign it. He was very excited about the premise, wherein the main narrator has his consciousness loaded into a "wafer" that allows his personality and experiences to be plugged into a host body. He acts as a spokesperson who speaks as if the Emperor or the Empress (depending on when the narrator has been activated) and makes the most difficult decisions, often sacrificing thousands or even millions to save millions or billions. He is the one who makes the difficult decisions, acting, in ways, as a sort of god with the fate of the (known) universe in his hands. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. And these are not decisions that are made lightly. There is a pathos to the power, with some degree of regret and the haunting of the ghosts of the past that one might expect in such a situation.

But the central conceit of the book allows a broad view of a large universe. It is a rather brilliant mechanism, and one that requires a delicate balance between the vast and the personal.

In what could be a sanitized, clinical exposition on the setting of the Traveller RPG, Marc Miller takes a different tack, posing questions about what one would do if one had uninhibited authority, including the ongoing questions about the needs of the many versus the needs of the few. The humanity here is never lost, with all the attendant good, evil, and indifference that this infers.

I don't have time to go into details of Miller's Traveller universe. Suffice it to say, it's complex, but does not bury itself under details. There are nuances in the book that I had not expected from the source materials of the original game. For instance, there is the "problem" of the Zhodani, a human race that has embraced the use of psionics to the point where honesty is the only policy that makes sense in their culture. It is often compared to a pure communist system (Marc confirmed this to me directly in a conversation we had once). But here, there is a textured cultural take on a small sliver of Zhodani society showing both the diversity that is possible in a society where there are no lies and all thoughts are transparent, while simultaneously showing the impossibility of such a society understanding a culture that dissembles, deceives, and lies (i.e., the rest of Humaniti).

I'm glad I'm familiar with the Traveller universe. Yes, I could read this without it and still understand what's happening, but having been steeped in the lore for over 40 years now, I have a much clearer understanding of the impact of the events being portrayed here. But this should not stop the reader who has never played the game. The novel stands on its own feet. But if you'd like to know more, to engage in the actual ongoing creation of the setting, there's always the roleplaying game. Such is the creative magic of RPGs!

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Ossuary of Dreams: Twenty-Five Tales of German Horror and Weird Fiction

 

Ossuary of Dreams: Twenty-Five Tales of German Horror and Weird Fiction by Robert Grains
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My kids are great. They're all adults now, so to call them "kids" feels a little disingenuous. But my kids are great (and my wife and grandkids, too, I must add).

"So why," you are likely asking yourself "are you leading off a review of a collection of weird horror fiction with 'My kids are great'."? Well, here's the deal. At around Christmas time, I do a bunch of massaging to my Amazon wishlist. Before you go ballistic, I try to order my books direct from publishers or, even better, directly from authors, so get off your high-horse for a second. I keep that Amazon wishlist to help my kids with Christmas shopping for dear old dad. One of the biggest issues with this is a recency-bias. If I see something new and shiny and it's getting near Christmas, I add it to my wishlist.

Such was the case with Ossuary of Dreams. I don't remember why I added it to my list last minute, but I did. Maybe it was the cool title or the even cooler font on the cover (no seriously, I live that font), or maybe I read a review about it that impressed me . . . I don't know. But, added it, I did.

So, this might be a sort of apologia to my daughter, who bought me the book. Kiddo, I really do appreciate the gift. It means a lot to me . . .

But I gotta give this one two stars.

The collection had its high points.

I found "A Walk in the Morning" to be a highly effective story.

There are echoes of Dhalgren in Grains hurtling-toward-the-collapse story "Our City at Night," but with a strong injection of occult forces. Here, I found that I prefer Grains at longer word counts. It gives his voice needed breathing space and makes the flourishes more emphatic and impactful.

I rather liked the unfolding-apocalypse (with a dream-time glimpse into the pyrrhic acknowledgment of respect to the lone survivor, imparted by the new God of this world) portrayed in "The Golden Age". I, for one, embrace the arrival of our robot overlords. This was an effective story, paced perfectly, with an air of reverent restraint that fit the tale to a tee. Well-played, not-quite-terminator.

"The Portraits of the Baron," the second-longest work in this collection, was, admittedly, very enjoyable. I loved the deep dives of esotericism here and the ending, while predictable, was satisfactory and held an ironic twist. This is the strongest work in the book.

"Metamorphosis" is an apocalyptic horror story somewhere between Clark Ashton Smith and China Mieville, wherein the narrator embraces the inevitability of change on the cosmic level, accepting fate with a philosophically stoic attitude that masks the shock of an undeserved fate of extreme horror.

So, there was something to like the collection. But, as Stepan Chapman used to say, there's also "something for everyone to hate".

I didn't hate most of the other stories. They ranged from "meh" to "I want to lem this book," but few of them went to the extreme of me wanting to do physical harm to the actual object. I reserve most of that hatred for one book in particular, which I'd like to see burned off the face of literary history. So, I didn't hate any of them that much. But there were some in there that I just kind of wanted to punch in the mouth.

I think that there are two fundamental problems, for me, with the work. First, the absolute fascination, nay, worship of overwrought and just plain faulty description drove me batty.

For example:

. . . a rumbling like from a squadron of unleashed poltergeists in the entablature.

This phrase has so many problems, I can't even begin to enumerate them. Well, maybe I can, but I really don't want to. Suffice it to say that I have more questions than answers about what is happening here.

Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident.

Secondly, the overuse and downright abuse of adverbs had my inner editor clawing at my innards the whole way through. I honestly wanted to scream at times. Instead, I sighed heavily (I wince at having used an adverb here - is there no escape?!?) so I wouldn't wake up my wife. the "ly" ending now makes me twitch whenever I see it, like an abused puppy. It's going to take a while before I can see it without twitching.

Finally, I think that while the translation is mostly very good, you can also tell, in places, that it is a translation. I speak conversational German, and I know how convoluted German sentences can get. I don't envy anyone translating such a work of purple prose from German to English. The effort was good, but it is inevitable that there are some hiccups, and given the often awkward phraseology, they really show.

Had this been my first weird fiction rodeo, and had I read this, say, thirty years ago, I might have felt differently. But I can't, in good conscience, say anything beyond "it was ok," hence the two stars.

As always, your mileage may vary.

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Garycon 2025 Rogues Gallery

 

As you can probably tell by my paucity of posts, life has been very, very busy. Particularly with my day job because, well, screw Trump and his lack of actual economic and diplomatic policy. Tariffs are taking a stupid toll on those of us who work in procurement and supply chain. Yeah.

Despite all the intentional chaos our unhinged government is creating, I was able to get to Garycon this spring. Now, not all cons are absolutely amazing. And this Garycon was only amazing because I was able to see an old friend I haven't seen since high school. 38 years later, we were able to get together and hang out a little bit. Man, that felt good. I don't have a ton of contact with people I went to high school with, both because I am avoiding most social media and because I graduated from a small Department of Defense school in England. Upon graduating, we all spread to the four winds. So, the best part of Garycon was seeing my old friend. He'll be coming back next year, too, for which I am very, very grateful.

But this Garycon was . . . well, it was fine. But nothing spectacular. Of course, I had a great time and played in some great games, but outside of one particularly great DCC game (thank you, Julian Bernick), the games were . . . alright. Nevertheless, I'm trying to make it a habit to show the many faces I wore as a player, so here we go.

First off, you'll notice that two of my characters have the same name: Dweezel Space Jesus. I think that's going to be my default name for any DCC/MCC character I play at conventions. It fits the mood of DCC and it's easy to remember. Of the two Dweezel Space Jesii that I played, the elven sage in the lower left hand corner of the photo above was my favorite. This was the one I played in Julian Bernick's outstanding adventure "Expedition to Yuggoth," which is just what the label says, a 4th level DCC adventure to Yuggoth, home of Mi-Go, gigantic automata, and other nasties whose names Chaosium has copyrighted (they'll probably sue me for using the terms "Yuggoth" and "Mi-Go," but whatevs). As is usual with one of Julian's adventures, all descended into chaos rather quickly, which is just what I had hoped for. I think Julian exhudes some kind of spiritual force field that drives players insane in his presence. It's a wonderful gift, and I enjoyed it, especially the part where the party cleric was able to charm some Mi-Go into going back and killing off a party of mercenary lizard men who tried to rip us off as we were busy stealing - uh, I mean "transporting" - some . . . goods from the planet. We had trapped them in a building so we could off with the goods, and encountering the Mi-Go and being able to charm them just as we were getting ready to jump off-planet was a godsend. And by "God" I mean the Elder Gods, of course.

Here's our intrepid party of adventurers. Notice the lady in the back trying to sneak up on us and backstab:

Speaking of Chaosium, I played in two Call of Cthulhu games, one put on by the awesome guys at You Too Can Cthulhu, and another put on by the awesome guys at Court of Cthulhu. Both were great, mysteries were had, people died in grisly ways or sold their souls for their own personal gain. Call of Cthulhu always brings out the best in people.

I also played in a Traveller game where we had to infiltrate a red zone planet and find a Zhodani spy. Good times were had by all except the Zhodani spy and one of our party members who, if I remember correctly, lost a good chunk of their face. Important safety note: If you get in combat in Traveller, you've made a grave error. That system is deadly.

Last of all on the roleplaying front, I played the newest incarnation of a Conan RPG, Conan: The Hyborian Age. It's an interesting system with additive dice rolls and well-differentiated classes. I always like to play at least one game I've never played before at a con, and this was it this time. Good game. I'd play it again.

With every con, I try to get into at least one miniatures game, as well. I can't afford to buy all the minis in the world, so I pay good money to rent them at cons. This year, I played Legions of the Petal Throne for the third year in a row. I splurged and bought the rulebook, as well. It's way out of print and bloody expensive, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet.

Here's a little chunk of my army ready to charge, then in the midst of the final battle. Yon Koryani won. This felt like vindication after the horrific loss I suffered last year!

And this year, I played in two miniatures games. The second was Pulp Alley: The Lost World of Lemuria. It was a little more complex than I like in my mini games, but it was fun, nonetheless. Here are a few of my thugs in action:

So, good times had, as usual. Not quite as spectacular as, say, Gameholecon last year (where I played in one of the coolest adventures I've ever played in, to be honest). But going to Garycon is always great. I'll be there as long as I'm on two feet and breathing.

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The Jade Cabinet

The Jade Cabinet by Rikki Ducornet
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the interest of full disclosure, I know Rikki. I've helped publish her work a couple of times and have an irregular correspondence with her. Just sent her a letter (handwritten, of course) a few weeks ago, in fact.

Knowing Rikki and reading The Jade Cabinet again after having been away from it for so many years, I am struck, most of all, by the sheer restraint she shows in presenting this devastating, yet beautiful novel. It's a clear case of the power of editing and craftsmanship at work. Her pen is under strict control here, concentrating the power of whimsey and, indeed, some degree of madness into a self-restrained, almost ethereal (pardon the pun - one of the main characters is named "Etheria") critical examination of male dominance, the Victorian social paradigm, and the favoritism of technic over magic.

This is a character-driven novel, first and foremost. What I love about Rikki's work here is that none of the characters are presented as "either/or". Radulph Tubbs, a notably brutal man with few redeeming qualities, almost none, in fact, becomes, in his older years, a bit sympathetic. But not too sympathetic. More just plain pathetic. But the narrator (who, in a surprising twist, ultimately . . . well, I don't want to give away the surprise) feels a pity that borders on admiration for Tubbs' inner world, even though his actions in the physical world are violently misogynistic and crassly materialistic. Baconfield, the architect, who is hired by Tubbs, is a staunch industrialist, bent on bringing sterile order to everything, but later, through a series of misfortunes, becomes a mad mystic. Angus Sphery, father to both Memory (the narrator) and her sister Etheria, is a loving, whimsical father and a friend of Charles Dodgson (yes, that Charles Dodgson) who also abandoned his first daughter and ultimately ended up in Bedlam asylum. Sphery's wife, Margaret, likewise, lost her sanity, but for altogether different reasons.

Yes, it's that sort of novel. Full of frivolity, madness, and (mostly) tragedy.

And at the center of it all is Etheria, the mute daughter of Angus Sphery, who is essentially sold off to Radulph Tubbs for the price of The Jade Cabinet, a Wunderkammer, of sorts, filled exclusively with figurines carved from jade. One of these figures, which I will not reveal here, becomes the pivotal tool (I use that word reluctantly, but it works on several levels), the wrench in the works, as they say, that leads to the vanishment of the lovely, innocent Etheria and the subsequent emergence of the one true monster of the novel, the Hungerkünstler. No, not that Hungerkünstler, but one of the same mien.

Unlike many character-driven novels, however, The Jade Cabinet is fully-engaging throughout, with something for everyone (or "something for everyone to hate" as my friend Stepan Chapman used to say). The magic realism borders, at times, on that ill-defined subgenre known as "The Weird". The writing itself has a strong focus on not only the language itself, but the role of language as it affects the inner worlds of each character. Ultimately, I suppose, the work is about language and memory, though it never beats the reader over the head with a philosophical stick. It is subtle. And this is really the greatest compliment I can give to it: it breathes softly, with occasional rushes of wind, but it's underpinnings are mere whispers that overwhelm, if one is paying attention. It demands such attention, but not in a bombastic way; rather, it engages like a soft mountain breeze through the trees, simultaneously caressing the ears and overwhelming them. It is an elemental force: the force of the air.

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Spellburn March Madness

 Okay, nerds. 

You've heard all the office talk about March Madness, but you want nothing to do with sportsball. 

No problem. 

Spellburn is sponsoring its own tournament. The contestants are 3rd party DCC titles, of which yours truly has two entries all his own and more in his collaborative pool.

So, here's your chance to vote for Beyond the Silver Scream (Psst! Here's a free DCC Patron, straight from the book, if it will influence your vote - just don't tell the elections commission!) or At the Mutants of Madness. Or, if you're more fond of my collaborations, you can vote for The Umerican Survival Guide. 

You know what? You do you, man. Just vote for whatever you like. But be sure to support the awesome 3rd party publishers of DCC and MCC content! Scan that there QR code and you'll be teleported to the arena.

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If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!