The New Whip
Posted on June 23, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 12 Comments
After putting 90k miles on the ol’ Honda Odyssey after three years and three months, it was time to move on from my 229k minivan with its many, many issues and set my eyes on brighter horizons.
That horizon being this 2026 Honda Civic Sport Touring Hybrid:
Ohh yeah, get a look at that Blue Lagoon color (with grey leather interior). She’s a beaut, alright. Got it off the lot with a cool 31 miles on it.
With a rate of 49 miles to the gallon, you best believe I’m gonna be taking this baby everywhere. She drives like butter. Soft butter. Can’t even feel it shift gears it’s so damn smooth.
After a decade of having a minivan, an SUV, and then another minivan, the sedan was a surprising choice to everyone, including myself.
But, yes, here is the new whip. You can expect to find it parked all across Darke county, probably mainly at the winery and my parents’ house.
-AMS
The Big Idea: Meg Elison
Posted on June 23, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 3 Comments
With the 4th of July on the horizon, not everyone is feeling particularly patriotic. Author Meg Elison has been brushing up on her American history and all the unpleasantness that comes with it. Take off your ball caps, place them over your heart, and follow along in today’s Big Idea for Foundling Fathers.
MEG ELISON:
On September 11, 2001, I was supposed to be at Disneyland.
I woke up that day to find everyone glued to the television, watching what was happening in New York. I was still blinking away sleep when the second plane hit. We still went to the park, which reopened the next day. Disneyland was half-empty, even for a weekday during the school year. People were not anxious to gather in large groups and anything fun seemed frivolous.
The evening parade in the park is always popular, with people lining both sides of the street and waving to their favorite big-headed corporate mascots. We gathered for it at dusk, and tried to summon the spirit to enjoy it. But instead of the typical parade fare, the mouse-powers that be decided to haul the Fourth of July parade out of mothballs and put it on. Dancers in colonial drag marched beside a lit-up American flag the size of an F-250 and we all sang “God Bless America,” for what was to be the first of one thousand times that year.
I was nineteen years old, ripe for cynicism and fresh off the late-adolescent revelations that come to many American high school students after our state-mandated propogandist education has concluded. I had begun to catch up on the things I’d never been taught: the Japanese-American incarceration of WWII, the Tuskegee experiments, the ultraviolent suppression of organized labor, redlining… just opening the closet door and getting buried in a dusty avalanche of skeletons, some of them still warm.
The flamboyant display of patriotism and warmongering that characterized the early aughts was the first time I realized what kind of mess I was in, living in the U.S. for the rest of my life. I began to examine possible ways to move forward. I became obsessed with temporary autonomous zones, consensus-lead communes, and ways of living that hadn’t ever really been tried. I wanted out. It never occurred to me to try and go back.
I’m always amazed when someone suggests that to fix what’s wrong with this nation, the answer is not to re-think the whole project and to make sweeping change, but to return to our corrupt roots. This is the position of Constitutional literalists, raw milk tradwives, and reactionary conservatives alike: the answer to our problems must be in our past. Not our actual flawed past, the one with genocide and chattel slavery and inequality, but the sanitized past they imagine as orderly, lawful, and correctly balanced so that nobody but a white man who owned land got to decide anything at all.
As someone who has actually done the assigned reading, I discovered that the founding fathers’ letters and papers reveal their chicanery, their fear and timidity, their agnosticism bordering on atheism, and their boneheaded ideas. On the eve of revolution, Franklin tried to bring a royal government to Pennsylvania and didn’t publicly change his mind for ten years thereafter. John Adams, as president, gave us the (recently relevant) Alien and Sedition act of 1798, advocating for denaturalization, restricting freedom of speech, and generally shitting on the neonatal Constitution as well as the concept of rights for anyone he didn’t like.
Washington made sweeping tactical errors on the field as a general, resulting in assassinations and massacres, responding to popular uprisings like the Whiskey Rebellion (1791) with overwhelming military force. He later went broke speculating on land (though I suppose this proves there is a long tradition of real estate scoundrels in the office of the president). Thomas Jefferson crashed the economy in 1807, which is not even to speak of his well-documented practices of owning enslaved people throughout his life and siring his children on some of them. In each case, they were the not the products of their time, as is so often argued, but of their demonstrated values and received privileges.
They were just guys.
When I thought about the people who harbor this infantile delusion of a pure past, it reminded me of Ira Levin’s bicentennial novel, The Boys from Brazil. In it, a plot to clone and reinstate Adolf Hitler culminates in a series of assassinations, so that the boys experience the deaths of their fathers during a critical moment in their adolescence. The plotters and puppet masters of Foundling Fathers have undertaken a grander, Disneyland-level attempt to construct an environment that looks and feels like 1750 to shape the young Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, and Adams into leaders who can make America something again.
There are holes in the plan, of course. The boys have occasionally spotted aircraft, which require explanation. And one day, Benjamin Franklin walks himself to the privy and finds the strangest object. It’s a black rectangle of heavy glass, like a jewel in his palm. And when it flares to life, it shows him a world he’s never seen before.
I did not write this book in the spirit of the fearful patriotism that calls out an emergency electric light parade. I did not continue in the spirit of the musicals 1776 or Hamilton, despite their undeniable influence on my dalliance with absurd Americana. I came to this with the wary anticipation of the great cloning stories: Jurassic Park, where man’s arrogance about technology and biology leads to their doom. I drew on “Clone High,” where our insatiable appetite for celebrity lasts long after the deaths of legendary figures like Cleopatra and JFK. I brought with me the absurd impotence of Futurama’s “All the President’s Heads,” with Nixon howling in a jar.
I wrote this book as a gift to America for her 250th birthday, in honor of all that she has pretended to be and has not yet become. I chose a satire because it’s illegal to behead statues in a public park or deface legal tender, and disrupting a parade will get you banned from the Magic Kingdom.
It is the gift that she deserves.
Foundling Father: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Dramatic Flowers are Dramatic
Posted on June 23, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 8 Comments
For no particularly good reason, here, have some pictures of flowers and plants from around my house that I’ve taken in the last couple of days, which I then photoedited to look dramatic and possibly gothy. In order: Dahlia, Gooseneck Loosestrife, Sempervivum, Day Lily, and a bunch of peaches which now look like alien eggs. Don’t get too close, there’s a surprise inside!
— JS
Who Won the ARC of Monsters of Ohio?
Posted on June 22, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
It was “Bjorn,” who along with 12 others, correctly guessed that the Ohio-native mammal I was thinking of was, indeed, the Prairie Vole. As promised, I used a random number generator to pick a number between one and twelve, and Bjorn was on the lucky number. An ARC is being mailed to him forthwith.
If you did not win, condolences, but also remember you can order a signed copy of the hardcover from Subterranean Press (and I will even personalize it, if you like), to arrive when the book comes out in November. You can also pre-order the (unsigned) book from your favorite local or online bookseller. Also, eventually we’ll announce the book tour (which is in the planning stages right now), and when we do you can pre-order the book from one of those stores, and have me sign the book for you there. And of course, I’m very likely to sign the stock at Jay and Mary’s Book Center in Troy, Ohio when the book comes out. So you have options!
— JS
Trying Out A New Recipe: Half Baked Harvest’s “Cinnamon Crunch Peach Muffin Bread”
Posted on June 22, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 12 Comments
(EDIT: Well folks it looks like I misread chopped peaches as chopped pecans at some point, so there was never actually supposed to be any pecans in this recipe, and my annoyance is unwarranted! Apologies to Half Baked Harvest for accusing her of listing pecans in the ingredients and then not utilizing them, it turns out I hallucinated the pecans all along.)
Well, it’s officially peach season, and my mom gave me a small box of fresh peaches from the famed Peach Truck. I immediately knew what to do with at least a couple of them, and got to work trying out a new Half Baked Harvest recipe I saw on her Instagram: Cinnamon Crunch Peach Muffin Bread.
So let’s dive right in by taking a look at the ingredients list. Here’s everything you need:
Since I had literally just been given the peaches, the only thing I didn’t have on hand was the peach jam. I made a quick trip to a place outside of town called Bear’s Mill, where I purchased the closest thing I could find, which was their peach apricot preserves. I would say other than peaches and peach jam, something you might have to go to the store for is the pecans and the plain Greek yogurt. I happened to have the yogurt from a different recipe I made last week, and I don’t even remember what the pecans were for but I had them! And they don’t even expire until next week, so, yippee.
So the recipe is pretty straight forward, you just mix all your wet ingredients together, then add the dry, then add the peaches, peach jam, cinnamon crumble, and bake. Very simple order of events, really. After mixing the wet ingredients together, I got an extremely smooth, liquidous batter:
For the dry ingredients, I actually weighed the flour even though I’d been using cups so far. Flour is just one ingredient I really prefer to weigh. So after weighing, I mixed the dry ingredients in:
The only other thing I weighed was the peaches, just to make sure two was enough (because only two in the box were ready to use right then). I needed 150g of chopped peaches, and my two peaches came out to 140g, so I said good enough and threw them in the batter. Then I put the batter into a loaf pan and measured out the three tablespoons of peach preserves to swirl on top of the loaf. The preserves were actually quite gelatinous, so I ended up microwaving them for just a little bit to soften them and make them more easily spreadable on top of the batter.
All that swirly goodness got immediately covered up by the cinnamon crunch, which was just a quick mix of cinnamon, brown sugar, flour, and butter. This was before baking:
And after!
This smelled soo good while it was baking. I will say, the recipe says to bake for 55-60 minutes, but at 55 it wasn’t done yet, and I actually went all the way to 65 minutes total. So just a touch past the recommended time.
After it had cooled a bit, I took it out of the pan and peeled away the parchment paper to reveal this golden brown beauty:
And finally, the cross-section:
Look at that moist crumb. Little pieces of diced peaches and globs of peach preserves, that perfect cinnamon crumble top. YUM! This bread is so good! If you have peaches to use up, I highly recommend trying out this bread.
Now, you may notice something sort of funny about this loaf. Do you see any pecans? No, because even though they were listed in the ingredients list, at no point in the recipe did it say when to add them, so I completely forgot about them and didn’t add them because they literally weren’t mentioned! Even without the pecans, this bread is super yummy.
This bread is honestly more like a muffin or pound cake, which makes sense why Half Baked Harvest calls it muffin bread! I bet you could even make this as muffins instead if you wanted to, the batter was very scoopable.
Warm out of the oven with a little bit of butter, deeelish.
In terms of dishes, I really only used one bowl for the batter and then a small bowl for the cinnamon crumble mixture, a couple of measuring cups and spoons, a rubber spatula, and a cutting board and knife for the peaches. Oh, and a small bowl to microwave the peach preserves to soften them. Very light amount of dishes.
So, yeah, if you like peaches, give this bread a try. And have a great day!
-AMS
New Cover: “Comfortably Numb”
Posted on June 20, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
What can I say, I was feeling a little ambitious.
And yes, I did the guitar solos, but before you get too impressed, please know a) they’re not recreations of the David Gilmour solos, because my ambitions have real and practical limits, and b) I cheated. And by “cheated” I mean I initially tried to do the solos on one of my guitars, but it turns out I am slow, have clumsy fingers made of hot dogs and despair, and only questionably know how to find the key of B Minor on my fretboard.
So, I took my ROLI keyboard, which lights up in rainbow colors, set it to show only the notes in the B Minor Pentatonic scale, fired up a guitar synth, connected to the “Comfortably Gilmour” virtual amp/pedal set up, and went to town. The ROLI keyboard has MPE ability, which means I could do the equivalent of string bends by wiggling the keys. It was fun being a fake guitar hero for a bit. I am very sure that David Gilmour will not be losing any sleep over me. And I really do plan to get better on guitar. Soon! Maybe! We’ll see.
Also, I did the scream. That was a whole thing too.
Enjoy!
— JS
Win an Signed, Personalized ARC of Monsters of Ohio!
Posted on June 19, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 1,136 Comments
Tor Books sent me a stack of Monsters of Ohio ARCs, and you — yes you! — can win one, and I will even sign/personalize it for you if you like. Here’s all you have to do to enter:
I am thinking of a mammal native to Ohio. Guess which one it is.
(Don’t know which mammals are native to Ohio? Here’s a pdf guide to get you started. Spoiler: the mammal in question is in fact in the guide!)
I have already told Krissy and Athena which mammal it is, so I’m not just going to make one up at the end of the contest, promise.
And now: The rules!
1. One guess per person, one post per person. If you post more than one guess, your first guess is the guess I will use. If you post more than one post, I will use only the first post. Don’t use the comments to post anything other than a guess; any other comments will be deleted. Be specific toward the mammal; don’t say “dog” when “Beagle” is the correct answer (which it is not, by the way, either of those). Again, the mammal in question is in the guide linked above, so that will help narrow it down a bit.
2. Place the guess in the comments for this post, they will not count otherwise. This will require you to enter login information if you have not already done so. When you fill in the information, leave an email address that you actually check, this is how I will contact you. Put that information in the login dialogue boxes, not in the body of your comment. If you don’t leave an email, I can’t contact you and will move on to the next person who guessed correctly. The information will be used for nothing else, because I respect your privacy and also I’m lazy and can’t be bothered to do anything with them.
3. Speaking of which: In the (likely) event that more than one person correctly guesses the mammal, I will have the computer generate a number between one and [number of correct guesses] and will pick the person whose chronological entry matches the number – so if the number is “three,” than the third person who posted the correct guess will win.
4. In the event no one picks the correct mammal, I will have the computer randomly pick a number between one and [total number of entries] and give the person who chronologically corresponds to that number the book. This is an enormous pain in my ass, so I hope at least one of you picks the correct mammal.
5. The contest runs for 48 hours from the moment I post this (probably close to 1pm Eastern on June 19, 2026), because that’s when the site automatically closes comments. I’ll email the winner after that and will post the results after that, probably on Monday. When I email you, you will have five days to respond, and after that I re-roll for a new recipient. So be looking at your email, please.
6. Contest is open to everyone everywhere on the planet that I can currently ship a book to, so apologies to anyone in Cuba, Iran, North Korea or the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. Everyone else, if you win, I’ll ship it to you.
7. I will sign the ARC but if you want it personalized in any way, let me know when I email you about it.
Those are the rules, so go ahead and guess! Good luck!
— JS
(PS: If you don’t want to play the odds here, remember that you can pre-order the book from your favorite local or online bookstore for when it comes out in November. Also, Subterranean Press will be happy to send a you a signed copy, which I will also personalize if you like, and SubPress also ships everywhere in the world, so that’s helpful.)
The Big Idea: Joseph Eckert
Posted on June 18, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 6 Comments
Many of us dream of time travel, but what if that travel was thrust upon you randomly and unwillingly? Author Joseph Eckert brings us a fresh take on time travel in his new novel, The Traveler. Venture on through his Big Idea to see when and where this unique travel idea originated.
JOSEPH ECKERT:
The core of The Traveler is family. More specifically, the core is the relationship between an average Midwestern father and his extraordinary son. Simultaneously, it’s also a vast science fiction story about a man tumbling helplessly forward through time, the length of time he travels doubling every twenty four hours.
Bear with me, if you will, as I look back three decades (oof—that hurts to write) to two key events in my life that would lay the groundwork for the Big Idea behind The Traveler.
The first event involves me, precocious youth, coming home from what I remember was fifth grade, having just learned about exponents. I found my mother and convinced her to change my allowance. Instead of a dollar a week (or whatever it was), I asked for just a penny a day. Just one cent! Except she’d double the amount the next day, and each day thereafter. So: two pennies on day two, four pennies on day three, eight on day four, and so on. My mother agreed. My plan was in flight. Soon, I knew, she’d be forced to pay me thousands, then millions of dollars! Cue maniacal fifth-grade laughter.
We didn’t even make it to day ten before she called it off.
Despite my dream of phenomenal and unlikely wealth coming to an abrupt and inglorious ending, I retained my interest in exponential increases. We see such increases in life and the sciences, from viral propagation to the now mostly defunct Moore’s Law in computing, to amusing dinner table discussions of vampires overrunning the planet (and subsequently starving because everyone’s a vampire and no one’s left to be a living blood bag—this is common dinner table discussion, right?).
The exponential penny scheme was event one. Event two took place when I was around the same age, at a book store in Northern Wisconsin called Book World.
My parents didn’t often take me to the local library, for whatever reason, but they did take me to Book World, sometimes leaving me there for hours. Rather remarkably for a small town bookstore not far from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Book World had a solid sci fi and fantasy section, including books by authors living outside the United States. It was through Book World that I was introduced to the works of Tad Williams, Joe Haldeman, Clive Barker, and, most importantly for this Big Idea, Peter F Hamilton and Iain M Banks.
I remember walking into Book World. Pushing through the glass door, stepping into the narrow entryway with its gentle upward slope, angling around the crowded newspaper stacks. Entering the store proper, I recall the smell of books baked into the very walls; the soft creak of the floorboards under my sneakers in the perpetually hushed space; the winding path I’d take from the front door, always walking by the magazines first (craning my neck to try to see around the plastic covers blocking the Playboys and Penthouses… I was an adolescent boy). Down the aisle, glancing at the comic books for anything new and eye-catching, then a fast one-eighty around the end cap, into the fiction and then the fantasy and science fiction section. What new wonders would await?
I have a clear memory of seeing the covers for Consider Phlebas and The Reality Dysfunction for the first time. What amazing futures must those books contain to have such glorious art on the outside? I convinced my parents to buy them (or I used my allowance… perhaps contributing the meager amount I received from my exponential penny scheme) and began to read.
Magically, powerfully, the wonders inside the pages exceeded the promises made by the covers.
And as I read, I began to wonder. What if? Could I write something like this, in this tradition? Something this big, this grand, with this amazing scope?
Hard cut to many years later.
As I was pulling together the idea that was The Traveler, I knew I wanted the protagonist to be a relatable Everyman, one whose life was not extraordinary until a defining moment when it all changed. I wanted a father-son relationship to be at the core, reflecting a bit of my life experience with my own father. And I wanted to write something in the vein of Peter F Hamilton and Iain M Banks, asking big sci fi questions and (hopefully) bringing the reader on the kind of imaginative ride I remembered from those science fiction classics of my youth.
But how to get our modern-day relatable Everyman into a grand sci fi future? What could get him there but not instantly… instead, by steadily increasing degrees…?
Ah hah!
The exponential penny scheme returns and finally bears fruit.
Thus was born the central conceit of The Traveler. Scott Treder, a Madison area database admin, is driving to work one day when his car disappears around him. Scott, still going twenty five miles per hour, falls out of the sky and tumbles down the sidewalk. As he sits, battered and bruised and confused, on the side of the road, his phone reconnects to the network. He has dozens of texts and voicemails waiting for him.
It’s twenty four hours in the future.
The next day, at exactly the same time, he travels two days forward. Then four, then eight, then sixteen… and this time, there’s no mother, eyebrow arched, to cotton onto the scheme and put a stop to things before day ten.
As Scott jumps forward through time, his brilliant son, Lyle, grows obsessed with figuring out what’s happening—and with saving his father.
The Traveler is out now in the US and UK. I hope you enjoy reading it, and I hope it carries you on a journey the same way those brilliant works by Peter F Hamilton and Iain M Banks did for me in my youth.
The Traveler: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Books-A-Million|Powell’s
Author socials: Website
Why I’m Obsessed With “Obsession”
Posted on June 18, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 8 Comments
Y’all already know that I am not a horror fan. Horror has always been my least favorite movie genre, and there are very few movies within the genre that I even consider worthwhile. When I went to see Obsession, I was already outside of my comfort zone by going and seeing a horror movie in theaters, as they’re always too loud and I really hate being jump scared in front of other people.
You can imagine my surprise when Obsession ended up being the best horror movie I’ve ever seen. It is one of the most incredible films I’ve seen, even when I take it out of the horror ranking. It’s just that good.
I’d like to give y’all some spoiler-free thoughts first, so you can get a good feel for why I love this movie without getting into the nitty-gritty details, but then I will go deeper with spoilers and get into what makes it so damn great.
For starters, Obsession has so many little factoids about it that it make it more special than most films right off the bat, like the fact it was made for under a million dollars, at a whopping $750k. I have not heard of a successful, theater-released movie having that small of a budget in I don’t even know how long, if at all. That is so impressive. Not only that, but it is one of the only films, alongside E.T., to do better financially in the following weeks after opening weekend. Most movies peak at their opening weekend, but Obsession just kept getting more and more popular.
The fact that the cast was comprised of people I’d never heard of it made it all the better, because when you have Matt Damon as your lead, it’s hard to see him as anyone other than… Matt Damon (looking at you, Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey). So having a cast full of people I’ve literally never seen before made it feel so much more real. It’s more immersive when you don’t recognize big name stars that steal the spotlight. These people felt like people, not celebrities in a movie. Plus, everyone did such a stellar job, especially Inde Navarrette! She was perfectly terrifying.
Without giving too much away, the basic plot is this guy, Bear, wishes that his crush, Nikki, loved him, and let’s just say he gets more than he bargained for. The themes this movie explores are extremely heavy. Bodily autonomy, consent, love VS obsession, toxic and abusive relationships, family-friendly topics like that!
The horror element in Obsession is a special kind of dread that sticks with you long after you leave the theater. This movie sat heavily in my brain for days on end. A lot of horror movies give you two hours of cheap adrenaline rushes and jump scares while being oh so forgettable, but Obsession truly haunts you. “Unsettling” is too timid of a word to describe the feeling it will leave you with.
I find the pacing to be rather good, as there’s no B-plot for this movie, so it’s pretty much just all go-go-go with no breaks. There are no slow parts or scenes that feel unnecessary. All the scenes feel like the perfect length.
The lighting is a work of art in this movie. The soft, dim lighting at the bar, in Bear’s house, and throughout the film alongside the dark, shadowy, spooky scenes is so good. It’s very atmospheric, and feels somewhat intimate. Even the scenes that are dark aren’t that kind of super annoying horror movie dark where you just can’t see shit for the sake of jump scaring you. It’s like an actually well done type of darkness.
So, great performances, good pace, nice lighting, and a special kind of horror, all for under a million dollars! Pretty impressive stuff.
Now let’s get into the details. SPOILER WARNING!
From the moment we meet Bear, we are shown, expertly, how he is kind of a piece of junk. When practicing his confession speech, he only brings up how Nikki was nice to him and was there for him when he was going through a tough time. He never says what he likes about her as a person, just what she has done for him and how she makes him feel.
When he gets home and finds his cat dead, he puts it in a black garbage bag and throws it away. Who does that?! That is not how you dispose of a deceased pet?!
At trivia night, he tries to confess his feelings at an awkward, inopportune time that would affect the rest of the group and impact everyone’s evenings.
He didn’t give his gift to Nikki, he used it for himself and then lied to her, saying he left her gift at his house. Because he sucks!
AND HE CALLED HER FREAKY NIKKI EVEN THOUGH SHE HATES THAT. Bear is a certified jerk, even though it seems like, at first, that he’s just a shy, nice guy with a crush.
Worst of all, Bear is a coward. When Nikki asks him bluntly if he likes her, he pussies out and says no, then regrets it immediately. Then, when Wish Nikki says she knows he likes her, he denies it and makes her confess first before admitting that, yes, he does like her.
He is a coward when he can’t shoot himself and takes the pills instead, and he is a coward when he tries to throw up the pills because he doesn’t have the nerve to actually kill himself. He is a coward to the bitter end, and I think that is amazing. What a flawed, awful, hate-able character. There is no redemption, because he couldn’t even commit to killing himself. He is never the good guy, he is, from the start, the bad guy.
I have never felt worse for a horror movie character than I feel for Nikki. In the short amount of time we get to see the real Nikki, she is fun and kind and thoughtful. Nikki seems like a genuinely nice person, and it’s easy to see why Bear would have a crush on her. And suddenly, she’s gone. Trapped in some sort of horrible, agonizing negative space while something else controls her body, with only short spurts of consciousness where the real Nikki is begging to be freed, fighting to be released from Wish Nikki taking back over. Each time the real Nikki surfaces I can only imagine what is going through her mind, or if she wonders if this will be the last time she ever gains control again, just to succumb back under. Of course, it reminds me a lot of Get Out, which is also a great movie!
To be hurt by someone you think of as a friend, not just hurt but condemned to this cursed existence, only for him to ignore your pleas for death. UGH. Poor Nikki. It’s actually so heartbreaking. And so real! It’s often the people closest to you that hurt you the most.
Honestly their entire friend group is such a mess, with Ian and Nikki hooking up and Ian not telling Bear even though he knows how he feels about her. Ian tries sabotaging Bear’s attempts at confessing and is unhappy about his relationship with Nikki, yet never even mentioned his and Nikki’s situationship to the guy who is supposedly his best friend. Plus, if Bear is his best friend, why didn’t he believe him or at the very least hear him out more on the One Wish Willow?
If my best friend came to me, obviously distressed, and a ton of weird stuff had been going on lately, and they told me it was because of this very real wishing stick, I’d at least hear them out instead of calling them crazy right off the bat. I trust my friends with my life, and love them dearly, why would I believe they’re lying to me about something like this? Bear was obviously extremely distraught and practically begging Ian to listen, but he refused and just wished for a billion dollars to be a fucking dick.
As for Sarah, she was a Pick-Me praying on the downfall of Bear’s and Nikki’s relationship, judging from the sideline while also trying to make moves of her own on Bear. She asked him to meet her late at night in private, then told him that Nikki is taking advantage of him and he doesn’t deserve it, and that he needs someone “more chill.” Literally referring to herself as a better match for him than Nikki. What kind of friend does that?! She even says that he was supposed to kiss her, not Nikki. Does she secretly hate and envy Nikki? She is not a girl’s girl, that’s for sure, and she got a face full of brick for it. (I’m just kidding, she didn’t actually deserve the brick for being a Pick-Me, but it still is an unfortunate character flaw.)
Point is, this friend group really sucked. Nikki was the best of them, truly. Now she’s an extremely traumatized girl who will never be the same because of one selfish boy’s actions. She was a beautiful soul, and now she has been through hell and back, and is certainly forever changed. Again, poor Nikki. It makes me so sad!
I really love that the One Wish Willow isn’t even an evil thing, you can make a wish and have everything go great. The shopkeeper that made his wish certainly seemed fine, and Ian got his billion dollars with zero issues. It’s solely because Bear made a bad wish with bad intentions that his wish turned out so terrible. I find that to be an extremely satisfying mechanic, even though it sadly comes at the cost of Nikki.
This was a well-shot, well-acted, well-executed film with an amazing concept and cast. I loved it, and saw it three times in theaters. I highly recommend it, even if you aren’t usually a fan of horror movies. It’s probably the best film I’ve seen this year.
Have you seen Obsession yet? What did you think was the scariest part (for me, it was definitely when Bear is on the phone with One Wish Willow, and you hear Nikki screaming in agony in the background)? What’s your favorite horror movie? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
31 Years
Posted on June 17, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 30 Comments
The 31st anniversary isn’t usually the one where people get introspective about the nature of marriage and stuff — we tend to like big round numbers for a reason — but last year on this day Krissy and I were in Venice doing all sorts of touristy things and I really didn’t have the time or the inclination to spend my time in Italy on a laptop (and not even a laptop; I took my iPad with me). This year for our anniversary we’re going to Versailles, but it’s the one in Ohio and it’s pronounced “Ver-SAILS,” and we’re going there for dinner at a nice restaurant there. So as it happens I have some time today to muse on the nature of matrimony.
I’ve spoken before of the things that Krissy and I have done to make sure our marriage stays strong over the years, from simple things like saying “I love you” a lot — and I do mean, a lot, I don’t know any other couple who says it as much as we do — to more complicated things like continually checking in on each other, not taking each other for granted and making sure both of us are getting our needs met by the other. This is stuff I think most married folks can do, and should do, in the way that works best for their own relationship; basically, the understanding that relationships, even (and maybe especially) the good ones, are still work and ought to be tended to, instead of just being taken for granted.
But the other thing is I think Krissy and I both got lucky in finding the person best suited for helping us become the person we were hoping to be. And yes, at least initially that absolutely was luck; when Krissy spotted me on a dance floor she could know nothing else about me other than I danced like I wasn’t worried about being judged for it, and when I first laid eyes on Krissy I knew nothing about her other than she was the sort of beautiful that could make people walk into walls because they were looking at her. These were good things, sure. A fine start, and enough to get us to go on that official first date three weeks later. But ultimately not a lot to go on.
I still think Krissy is beautiful, and she still enjoys my dance stylings, but it’s everything else that really sealed the deal. It became clear to me that not only was Krissy smart, she was in many ways smarter than I was, with a far better sense of how to actually navigate the day-to-day world in a successful fashion. She was (and is) a direct-line and decisive thinker where I had and have a tendency to overthink and be discursive. None of this is news to long-time readers here, of course; I’ve talked about this before. But what I don’t think people understand is what an actual revelation it was for me to see something like that in action, inside the context of my actual life. I was not — and this is putting it extremely charitably — raised in a situation where order and executive function were common, and it was something I struggled with myself, and, no surprise, still do.
To see someone who just naturally had it, and used it like it was no big deal, well. It was like watching someone perform actual magic. And this person was willing to use it! For me! And us! Together! Aside from the actual fucking relief of having someone in my life actively being stable and sensible and reliable, and also loved me, there was the practical matter of how much potential this opened up for our life together; that I could, and was allowed to, focus on things I was good at, that would end up benefitting us both. I often say to people, here and elsewhere, that I have the career I have because Krissy is my partner, but I genuinely don’t think people understand the extent to how that is true. I would still be a writer, to be sure. I would not this writer, with these books, and this life.
And what about Krissy? Well, I was funny and clever, which is not to be discounted, even if, as we all know, there is a fine line between “clever” and “asshole.” She also saw I was talented — I had a skill that I both used and continued to develop, and an ability in it that was more than just standard issue. On top of that, I was (and still am!) ambitious, which Krissy saw as a plus. Just as I saw potential in what she offered to me in terms of stability and reliability, she saw potential in what I offered to her in the desire to do bigger things, and saw where she fit in with making those things happen.
Equally if not more importantly, Krissy figured out that I didn’t need to be trained out of any bad habits when it came to our partnership. My own particular brand of masculinity was and is not one that required me to petulantly stomp my foot about how I was the man in the relationship, damn it, and therefore was the one in charge of whatever it was a dude was meant to be in charge of. I could write a whole series of posts — and maybe I will one day — about how much of “masculinity” boils down to “I don’t like being argued with and if I don’t get my way I will explode,” but for now, suffice to say that this is not a particular neurosis of mine. Krissy saw, I like to think accurately, that I valued her for every part of her, which included her decisiveness and initiative. I did not need to be told that Krissy should be allowed to cook across the whole range of her abilities. She did not ever have to diminish who she was because she was worried my ego couldn’t handle it.
So, these are the things that we figured out early about each other. As we continued, it turned out that we helped each other build on all of these things. We have never argued about “who is in charge,” not just because that was not an argument worth having, but because the way our skill sets fell out it’s literally never been an issue. To put it extremely generally, when it comes to our lives together, I handle strategy and Krissy handles tactics, because that’s how our brains work best. Strategy without tactics is useless; tactics without strategy is pointless. It’s not about who makes decisions. It’s about, when we make the decision, how do we make it happen.
None of this happened because we knew from day one about any of this. It came from paying attention to each other, valuing and trusting each other, and building on what we’ve done as we’ve gone along. We got lucky when we met that these things about us were already there, and we liked them about each other. But then we did the work together, every day, so that these things we liked were given space to develop into things that would let us build a whole life together, across four decades now. It would be simplistic and wrong to suggest all of this happened without hiccups or snags or occasional misunderstandings along the way, of course. We are both human beings. But the deep well of love and trust that we can draw from helps a whole lot when that’s happened.
I don’t think any of us can help if we get lucky when it comes to drawing a partner who helps us be our best self — I think Krissy and I found the right person for us almost entirely by random and had the good sense to go with that. I do think everyone can look at the partner they have and ask “how can who I am and what I do make their life better, and our life better?” Because, you know, I have faith there is an actual good answer for everyone there. You have to find it. And then you have to do it. And then keep doing it.
And keep asking it, because life changes. Krissy and I are not the people, or in the same circumstances, in our 50s as we were in our 20s, 30s, or even 40s. Every step of our life we wanted and needed things from each other and, so far, at least, we’ve figured out the ways to make that happen. It’s work! It never stops being work! And the reward is having a life that only you two could have made for each other. There was no guarantee that at any step along the way we couldn’t have fallen out of step with each other. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes when that happens the best thing is to call it and move on separately. That’s all right! For us, it keeps working. We work to keep it working.
This is where we are, 31 years into the marriage. I spend a lot of time letting Krissy know how wonderful I think she is, and how much I value the life we built together, and how much I’m looking forward to continuing to do that, for as long as we get to. She’s the best thing to happen to me, and I keep trying to return that favor. I’ll keep doing it. She’s really great.
— JS
The Big Idea: Alethea Kontis
Posted on June 16, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 9 Comments
Not all books fit the mold of the genre they’re in. For Alethea Kontis, she wanted to write romance without the explicit parts, wanted to write a YA book that wasn’t dumbed down for kids with no attention span and no literacy skills. Well, she did it, and she did it her way, in her newest novel, Thieftess.
ALETHEA KONTIS:
This post is for the smart kids. The rebels. My fellow goonies.
This essay marks my FIFTH time as a guest on The Big Idea—I am now a proud member of the Whatever Five-Timers Club! Please remind me to make sure John and Athena mail me my membership card.
The last time I was featured on Whatever was in 2017. The Before Times. An Age of Innocence. Social media was less commercial, Gen AI was a dream of the future, and the CDC’s playbook was positive the next great pandemic would be influenza. I went to conventions back then. I knew what K-pop was, but I didn’t know K-dramas existed. I didn’t speak any Korean, Portuguese, Croatian, or Arabic. I had never been to Asia or Africa. Storm chasers were other people, and the topic of a movie I loved once upon a time.
Back then, I wrote books that were publishable.
I joke because it’s both horrible and true. My books are too long. Too clever. Too smart. Too subtle. Too bloody. Set in the wrong time period. Set in a country where I wasn’t born. Contain protagonists who are the wrong age. Contain far too many difficult/archaic/polysyllabic words. Contain too many complicated characters from too many different cultural backgrounds.
In the current capitalist climate, picture books need to have TENSION. Romances needs to have SEX. Middle grade novels need to be FAST PACED and also SUPER SHORT because no one has an attention span anymore and 10-year-olds are intimidated by thick books. Plus, thick books are expensive. And for the love of all that is holy, do NOT write any more Young Adult Fantasy. Ever.
I cried after the call where my agent told me that last one.
She’s not my agent anymore.
Honestly, it’s a miracle I was even traditionally published in the first place. A handful of excellent people had the privilege of being able to take a chance on me, and for that I will be forever grateful. These days, no one can afford to take a risk. I get it.
But I can’t afford to stop writing. So I didn’t.
In late October 2023, I got the rights back to the Woodcutter Sisters books. The series of my heart. You remember them: they read like a mashup of The Princess Bride and a non-Disney Once Upon a Time. Yeah. The YA Fantasy ones. Got awards and stuff. There were seven Woodcutter sisters, all named after the days of the week. I got to write Sun-Fri. Harcourt orphaned me before I could tell the Pirate Queen sister’s tale. My working title was Thieftess.
Thieftess has a listing on Goodreads. As of this writing, there are 2 reviews. The first laments the news of my publisher dropping the series. The second was posted by someone so excited to announce that the series would be returning that THEY WROTE IN ALL CAPS. Both of these entries delight me to no end.
Freedom is a beautiful thing. I consciously took advantage of mine this past decade. I lived, defiantly. I chased storms, learned other languages, traveled the world, and made hundreds of new friends all over that world. And I quietly, constantly, kept writing in the background.
In a way, my series being released from my trad publisher was a mercy. I wasn’t sure the committee would let me get away with all the things I wanted to do in the rest of the books anyway. And when it came time to finish writing Thieftess—eleven years after I started it—I embraced my tiny rebellions.
In nutshell, Thieftess:
- is a YA-Appropriate Romantic Pirate Adventure Fantasy
- is far too optimistic
- is too long (for a traditional YA)
- has too many characters
- has too many chapters (it reads like a web novel)
- switches POV without announcing who is speaking instead of a chapter title
- has chapter titles
- has maps
- features pirates who get drunk, die, kiss, kill, and steal, but there’s still no sex
- stars a female protagonist in her late 20s (but so was Alanna of Trebond, eventually)
The book also contains a million Easter eggs, but so did Enchanted. Heck, so did AlphaOops. That’s a very on-brand Alethea thing. But the rest is my rebellion.
Here in 2026, joy itself is a rebellion. Kindness is a rebellion. Naps are a rebellion. Poetry is a rebellion. Smart books that trust their readers are a rebellion. Reading prologues and epilogues is a rebellion. Writing in cursive is a rebellion. Writing your own emails is a rebellion. Leaving your phone in the other room is a rebellion. Going outside is a rebellion. Speaking more than one language is a rebellion. Quoting Shakespeare is a rebellion. Imperfection is a rebellion. Daring to fail over and over again is a rebellion.
Finishing this absolutely gorgeous book that took me eleven years to write—and then releasing it into the world—is my rebellion.
When I originally took @princessalethea as my screen name on LiveJournal (remember LiveJournal?) it was because my role model was the feisty leader of another particularly infamous rebel alliance. I mean to carry on in that same fine tradition.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go write a book with a bunch of sex in it. Because I’m still broke.
Love you, Squad.
xox
Princess Alethea
PS: Goonies Never Say Die
Thieftess: Amazon
The Yard Gets a Facelift
Posted on June 16, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
Here at the Scalzi Compound we’ve been having a lot of work done: New garage/barn, new porch railings and entirely new back deck. The good news is all of that work is just about done, with only a couple of small things yet to be done. The bad news is that all the construction trucks, pallets and tractors did a number to parts of our yard, turning its previously relatively smooth surface into a festival of ruts and uneven bits.
This will not do, so Krissy had the landscaping company we use come out, dig out the ruts, regrade and then reseed the lawn. This means that for the next few weeks there’s probably going to be this big brown patch in the yard (which I assume will be covered by straw, etc; I guess I’ll find out by the end of the day), but after that everything will be fine. This is a bit of cosmetic work that’s actually been a few years in the making — parts of the redone area have been uneven for a while now — but it was the ruts left by the construction vehicles that made Krissy decide now was the time.
(Well, that and the fact that, inasmuch as we’re already having so much else done — and have budgeted for it — the additional expense of this can just get rolled into all of that.)
It’ll be nice to walk on that part of the lawn without possibly tripping, and also, inasmuch as this is the last piece of (intended) work at the house for the year, it’ll be nice to not have other people’s trucks and construction vehicles around. I like what we’ve done with the place, to be sure. I’m looking forward to being able to enjoy it.
— JS
Hey, I Wrote an Actual Song: “Really Great”
Posted on June 15, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
Apparently the 31st wedding anniversary is the “Write Your Spouse a Song” anniversary, because that’s what I did this year. As many of you know, Krissy and I actually have a three-day anniversary, since June 15 is the anniversary of me proposing (that happened in 1994), June 16 is the anniversary of our first date (1993), and June 17 is the anniversary of our actually getting hitched. Last year to celebrate we went to Venice. We weren’t going to top that this year, but I still wanted to do something fun and maybe memorable.
Also, and independently, I wanted to start writing actual songs this year, and not just cover songs and noodly electronic compositions. So, while Krissy was away yesterday hanging out with friends, I camped out in my music studio and wrote up this song, about how Krissy is, you know, really great. Literally, that’s the song! My wife! She’s great! I dig her the most! It’s not complicated! And also, if you listen to the lyrics, not in the least bit subtle. It’s clear I’m a big fan of my wife.
I’m pretty happy with the song but I do have some compositional caveats. One, this is the first song I’ve written in literal years, and I’ve only written, like, four in forty years, and one of them was a co-write with a far more accomplished musician. I decided to make it easy on myself by not trying to write The Greatest Love Song Ever Written, just the greatest love song I’ve written about my spouse to this point, which I think we can all agree is a much more achievable goal for a novice. Two, this is me in the home studio, so consider this song to be demo-quality. Three, I don’t know why for this song it turned out I need to be singing in a fake, quasi-British-esque accent in order to stay anywhere on key, but apparently I do, and now we will all just have to live with this piece of information.
Nevertheless! I really like this openly sweet, kinda silly love song, and Krissy, as it happens, loves it, so if any of the rest of you like it, too, that’s a bonus. It’s already a hit with its intended audience of one. Which, I’m not going to lie, is a relief. It would have been awkward if I wrote a song for my life and as was, like, all, “you call that a decent middle eight?” or something like that. I actually had to leave the room while she listened to it for the first time. I don’t get that nervous about anything. But, you know. You write a love song for your spouse, you want them to love it. I’m glad mine did. Maybe you’ll like it too.
— JS
Music For Your Monday: Madison Beer’s “Yes Baby”
Posted on June 15, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 3 Comments
Though I’ve always loved Madison Beer’s voice in KDA, the fictional girl-pop group from League of Legends, I’ve never really listened to her own music outside of that. Turns out, unsurprisingly, that she has some real bangers.
This song of hers, “Yes Baby,” is one I have had on repeat for the past week or so and it is so in my head it’s wild. Not that I’m mad about it, it’s really fucking good. Give it a listen:
I love the clubby feel, the soft feminine vocals, the bass. It’s a great vibe. I hope this song helps you rock through the rest of your Monday, and have a great rest of your day!
-AMS
Happy Flag Day
Posted on June 14, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
It seems to come earlier every year, doesn’t it?
There may be other things going on today, but if there are, I don’t want to know about them, I’ll just be here with my flag.
Also, congratulations to Knicks fans today, and condolences to Spurs fans.
I think that covers it!
— JS
New Musical Composition: “Ingenuity”
Posted on June 12, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 3 Comments
It’s been a hot minute, as the kids no longer say, since I made an original musical composition; I’ve mostly been doing cover songs recently. But this evening I felt the urge to make something noisy and original, so I did what any musician would do for inspiration: I went to NASA’s “Sounds From Beyond” page and picked a recording from there to use as the basis for my composition.
Specifically, I used the “NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in Flight” recording. I used the original recording as is, and then I also ran it through MIDI, sliced it up, pushed it up a couple of octaves, filtered it through effects and so on. In the final composition, everything you hear is derived from the Ingenuity recording except for the drums and the 808 bass. It’s amazing what you can do with public domain recordings from another planet.
The resulting track is noisy, weird, asymmetric and in 7/8 time, because that’s pretty much how the original recording sort of laid itself out. I like it. Maybe you will too.
— JS
Various & Sundry, 6/12/26
Posted on June 12, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 25 Comments
What? Friday again?
David Hockney, dead: Hockney was one of those artists who I didn’t know who they were until I was adult, and then realized I had been surrounded by his work all my life. This was in large part because Hockney, who was originally from England, was besotted with California, and as a result his work was part of the cultural landscape while I spent the first part of my life there. Even if I didn’t clock the name, he added to the vibe, so to speak. When you think of California pools, you think of David Hockney (even if the most famous pool painting was based off of one in France). His work always made me happy and maybe just a little bit wistful. That’s not a bad legacy to leave behind.
Jane Yolen, RIP: I knew Jane both socially — we were both writers of science fiction and fantasy, although her total remit was much wider than that — and also because we were colleagues, working together on SFWA committees and in other ways as well (she and I are both past presidents of SFWA as well). She was a delight in conversation, and sharp as the proverbial tack when it came to dealing with committee work, and in both of these aspects of her being I was glad to know her.
Jane does not need me to valorize her work, and with more than 400 books to her name, if I were to attempt I would be here a while. But I will note that SFWA gave her its Grand Master award, and she also received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and won a hefty shelf of awards, in genre and out of it. She deserved all of them. She will be sorely missed.
VISA is letting ChatGPT buy things for you: It’s a thing called “agentic shopping,” in which you can (presumably) tell ChatGPT something you want, and it goes off to find it for you and then makes the purchase without any further intervention from you, because, after all, you gave it your credit card and permission to use it. This is, I will tell you now, a spectacularly bad idea, and not just because “AI” follows directions less than perfectly due to the very nature of its architecture, and sooner than later it’s going to make a very expensive fuck-up that the user will be on the hook for because giving an “AI” your credit card number isn’t fraud, it’s just stupidity, and there are few legal consumer protections for that. It’s also a bad idea because it’s one more layer of obfuscation between you and the actual costs of things, which makes it that much harder to manage one’s finances.
And while I’m sure you are smart with your money, given the average credit card debt in the US is over $6k and climbing, and that most people carry card balances at extortionate rates, this is a really really bad idea for most consumers. Great for the credit card companies! But bad for actual humans.
Please do me a favor and never let an “AI” do your shopping for you. Please continue to be the person who pushes the button on purchases. This won’t necessarily save you from impulse shopping, says the man with 30 guitars, but at least you have to acknowledge what you’re doing. That’s something.
— JS
The Big Idea: Cynthia Pelayo
Posted on June 11, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 5 Comments
To be whisked away to Neverland was certainly the dream of many a child, but for Wendy Darling it was always a trap, rather than a paradise. Author Cynthia Pelayo discusses in her Big Idea how Wendy was a servant, not an equal to the Lost Boys, and takes us to revisit Wendy in her newest novel, It Came From Neverland.
CYNTHIA PELAYO:
Wendy Darling is the reason any of us even know about Neverland. We think this is Peter Pan’s story, but it’s not, not really. The only reason any of us even know about Neverland is because of Wendy Darling.
Let’s strip away the fairy dust and the pirates and the flying and the crocodile, and what do we have? A girl. A girl who was told that something magical was waiting for her on the other side. A girl who believed what she was being told. A girl who later learned she was lured with the promise of magic, yet found herself inside a trap instead.
J.M. Barrie introduced us to Peter Pan through The Little White Bird in 1902, and that little boy would go on to pique the public’s curiosity so much that Barrie revisited his story. Then came the play in 1904 and the novel in 1911. However, the reason the story works and the reason it continues to survive over a century later is because of Wendy. Without Wendy there would be no Neverland. No Tinkerbell. No Hook. No Lost Boys. Peter Pan without Wendy Darling is just a boy screaming into the dark. Wendy is the story, and Peter’s promise to her is the lie.
Peter tells her to come away with him, that she will never grow up, but what he means is something entirely different. What he wants is a mother, for the Lost Boys, and selfishly for himself. He wants someone to read to them, to mend their socks, to take care of them. Someone who will stay in that role, forever.
Yes, Wendy goes, because she is sweet and brave and kind and beautiful, and she is made up of stories. And perhaps it’s because of her kindness that she allows herself to trust, to trust in the possibility that maybe this is all real. Perhaps she even catches the hint that there is something wrong in this request to run away, but she overrides her own intuition for the possibility of magic and friendship. Quickly Wendy learns that the promise of eternal youth was just manipulation. It was all a story, and not a happily-ever-after kind. She was not brought to Neverland to take part in adventure, to be treated as a partner, or even as an equal. She was brought to Neverland to be a caretaker in a prison with no walls.
Wendy is every woman who has ever been told one thing and expected to be something else. That is the story that I needed to tell: The Girl Who Bravely and Beautifully Grew Up, Wendy.
I wanted to write a version of this story where we are provided with the accounts of Neverland directly from Wendy’s perspective, as an adult, after she has had time to process it all. I wanted her to be able to clearly name what happened to her, to accept that she was lied to, and then made out to be foolish and called unstable for the wounds inflicted on her by others. I wanted to tell the story where she lives with that trauma and learns that she is not defined by what happened to her.
In It Came From Neverland, Wendy is in her early 20s and she is working as a schoolteacher at an orphanage at the start of WWI in 1914. She also volunteers in the afternoon, reading to soldiers who have returned from the war. When one of her students goes missing, and a solider in a comma utters the words “Peter Pan,” she knows Peter has returned and she and her brothers must reunite to finally stop him from kidnapping more children.
This book is for every woman who was told she was special by someone who really meant that she was useful to them. For every woman who followed a beautiful story, later to learn it was only a cage.
And, for every single woman who told the truth about what happened to her, but was not believed, and she realized that no one was coming to save her, so she learned to save herself.
The only story that has ever truly mattered is Wendy’s.
It Came From Neverland: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop
Please I Beg of You Do Not Use “AI” In Your Business Communications
Posted on June 11, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 53 Comments
The other morning I was clearing out the multiple daily emails I get from scammers who have used “AI” to praise one of my books in order to get me to use their “marketing” services and/or be on their “podcast” and/or show up for their “book club” and/or use them to become big in Hollywood, all of which is cover to grift money from me, one “Ai”-written email in particular caught my eye. This was not because it was any more authentic than the rest of them, but because the domain it came from was a specific and legit business domain, and not just Gmail or Hotmail or even (oh lord) AOL.com. In a burst of concern, I sought out the email of the company head and their management contact to let them know I suspected their domain had been hacked by scammers.
I got a reply back that, no, actually, the email, which to me had clearly been written using “AI,” was legitimate.
Folks: Don’t do this. Don’t use “AI” for your business correspondence, especially to creatives. Ever.
Let me put this in perspective: I get literally dozens of spam and scam emails every day, all of which use “AI” to fart out canned flattery about my work in an attempt to bamboozle cash out of me. I get so many of them, in fact, that I can tell at a glance not only that the text has been written with “AI,” but also, at this point, which of the “big four” LLMs was used to fart it out. Hell, I literally just now got a scam email in Spanish, and I could tell what it was going to say even before I pressed the “translate” button.
This is how predictable “AI” writing is, and how frequently it is used for fraudulent purposes. At this point, my brain immediately and directly associates “AI” text in email with “scam.” That is its only purpose.
The thing is: I’m not special. Every writer and creative person, from the most successful down to the very newest, is inundated with these scam spam emails. Lots of them, every single day. Pretty much every one of us, I assure you, now associates “AI”-generated text with attempted fraud.
When you, a legitimate business, use “AI” to communicate with me, I do not think “wow, that was a really well-composed email that makes me want to engage with the sender in a mutually co-operative way.” I makes me think “This is a fucking scam,” or, in the most charitable scenario, “This company has been hacked and a scammer is using their domain to fleece people.” Maybe you don’t know this, because you’re not the recipient of endless attempts at scammage via “AI.” But I know this, and it’s why I am telling you now: When you use “AI” in your professional communications, you do not look like a professional. You look like a fucking scammer.
There is a solution! Just don’t use “AI” to write your professional correspondence! Remember the day, like, just four years ago, when you pretty much wrote all your emails by hand? Do that again! It’s not difficult, you won’t look like a scammer, and your email has a better chance of being read and treated as if it came from an actual human, because it doesn’t look like every other awful scam email out there. It just makes good business sense.
Also, aside from the “you look like a scammer” angle: Why would I want to do business with someone who can’t even write a single fucking email on their own? This is a “basic competence” issue, folks. If you can’t get it together to write a simple business communication by yourself, what confidence should I have about any other aspect of your business? What value do you have for me? I mean, I also have access to “AI,” so if that’s what you’re bringing to the table, what do I need you for? As the saying goes, you have only one chance to make a first impression. If my first impression of you is that you’re letting “AI” do the talking for you, then my impression is that you’re not offering me anything at all.
So, yeah. “AI”? Don’t use it in your business emails. It does nothing positive for you, and does a lot that is negative. Just write the email yourself, or, if you’re a boss, pay someone to do it for you. It’s going to make a difference, and at the very least, your chances of being immediately and forever sorted into the spam folder will be a lot lower.
By the way, from the time I started writing this to right now, which is roughly a half of an hour later, I have received eight “AI”-written scam emails, including the one in Spanish mentioned above. This is what you’re up against when you send something to my email. If you’re using “AI” to write your business email, this is also what you’re sorting yourself into. Think about it, maybe.
— JS
Trying My Hand At Some Floral Arrangements
Posted on June 10, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 13 Comments
This past weekend, my friend hosted a bridal shower for our friend who’s getting married soon, and I offered to make up some decorative bouquets for the party. I think I did an okay job, so I wanted to show y’all what I made up! She was hosting the party at her home, so thankfully I was just able to use some vases she had on hand.
For the flowers, I knew I wanted to do something springy and full of pinks and yellows because the theme was “garden party.” I also wanted to include white flowers because, well, it’s for the bride to be!
I went to my local Kroger for all my flowers, and just ended up buying a ton of discounted grower bunches. If you haven’t heard of grower bunches before, think of bouquets as a cake, and the grower bunches are the ingredients. You can buy the cake itself from the store already made, or you can buy all the ingredients for the cake and make it yourself.
So, I bought bunches of roses, lilies, anemone, bells of Ireland, baby’s breath, and some tulips. It took me about 45 minutes to de-leaf, de-thorn, trim and arrange the flowers. I mainly just did a couple small bouquets and then little bud vase arrangements to enhance the main focus bouquets.
This first one is my favorite out of all of them!
I never knew the name for the anemone before now, but I think they are so unique and pretty. I wish for this one I had trimmed the green thingy (someone please tell me the name of it) to be shorter than the anemone.
I tried to keep the bells of Ireland taller than everything in order to bring some dimension to my bouquets, which is definitely an aspect of floral arranging I struggle with.
This stunning white rose was one I decided to let speak for itself in a simple bud vase.
Same for this anemone! It was so big and beautiful.
Since I had a dozen yellow tulips, I decided to just do four little bud vases each with three in them. I think they accented the tables well!
Here they all are on the tables!
And my friend had the amazing idea to put all the flowers I didn’t use in bouquets in a lovely basket she has, and they ended up being a great decoration for the patio just chilling in the corner all ornately:
These were all untrimmed and not de-leafed so it has much more of a wild look to it, but I really love how it turned out. That pink lily is totes gorg.
Anyways, this was my first time doing floral arrangements for a party, and it only cost me seventy dollars for all the flowers, which I think was such a steal. I think they turned out pretty okay, but definitely practice will hopefully make perfect eventually. I am considering buying a floral arrangement book to really up my game.
Let me know your thoughts or tell me some of your favorite flowers in the comments. And have a great day!
-AMS
Whatever Everyone Else is Saying