Is there anything more luxurious than reading outside? I’m not sure there is. Maybe reading outside without the knowledge that you’ll have to go back in and do work? Yeah. That is true hedonism right there.

Alas, that is not today.

Yep, today’s post is late because I was finishing Ada Palmer’s Seven Surrenders. If you’ve read it, you accept this as a valid excuse. If you haven’t…I can’t say “you should” because it’s an incredibly odd series, but if you’re in the market for a mind-bending exploration of the Enlightenment Era’s philosophy set 400 years in our future about miracles, serial killers, and the meaning of Utopia, may I suggest a lounge chair by the pool and several hours during which you shirk all responsibility?

I’m dealing with big issues in my world, too. Right now I’m wrestling with representation, populating a complete world without falling into tired stereotype, and what dinosaurs would do if they were alive now. I, too, am a bastion of philosophical thought. I think dinosaurs would like parks and stepping on cars. That is as much as I can confidently declare.

Look how happy he is!

I think we’re getting somewhere.

I’m a little under the halfway mark in Blood and Bone, and things are really heating up. I’m sorry for what I’m about to do to the girls but also taking sadistic joy in all this chaos. It’s like the way nerdier version of setting fires in your Sim City.

A 20th Century exploration of Hume’s philosophy.

There’s also a giveaway at Goodreads that you should enter! You’ll like it. This edition is completely wireless, never needs charges and has an incredibly real-seeming signature on it! Technology is amazing.

And in the meantime, I hope you all get time to do your equivalent of reading outside. Come back next week for a more serious conversation that explains my firm refusal to include certain events in my books. Or don’t, if you would rather stay out in the sunshine, I really don’t have any room for side-eye here!