a brief update

Heya folks,

Just a quick check-in from me this week - apologies! As most of you will know if you've explored the rest of my website, my 'day job' when I'm not trying to squeeze in opportunities to write, is working for my wonderful wife's parents on their family farm. And you know the old saying, 'make hay when the sun shines'? Well the sun sure has been shining this week. It's been positively tropical, in fact. So I've been spending quite a bit of time behind the wheel of a tractor rather than behind a laptop, and as a consequence, haven't made a great deal of progess on Book 2. But that's okay. Peaks and valleys. And being outside in the sun is good for my soul.

The World Migraine Summit was also running this past week, and just finished (it's an annual event) so I have been trying to tune in to as much of the scheduled conferences as possible before they were taken down/moved behind a paywall. Specialists and experts in migraine from around the world came together to offer the latest in research into the condition, and for someone like me, who suffers a near-constant low-level-pain headache and fairly frequent attacks of disabling migraine it was helpful to hear some of the most up-to-date findings. It gave me a little glimmer of hope that there might come a day when I find a way to manage my own pain and prevent the symptoms of migraine from affecting my life as much as it does.

This week's REC. is a movie. It's this little-known, low-budget indie film called... no it isn't. It's THE BATMAN, directed by Matt Reeves and starring Robert Pattinson beneath the cowl and cape. A lifelong comicbook fan, I absolutely loved it. I enjoyed the tone, which was dark without coming off as trying-too-hard or 'edgy', and the atmosphere of Gotham City, which was every bit the miserable dump that it's meant to be and was never really captured in my opinion by any of the other films. The cast are all great, Batman is menacing and formidable while also showing off the skills that earned him the nickname World's Greatest Detective. The pacing is near-perfect, and almost every scene features Bats himself which made me forget I was watching a 3hr long movie. It sets up/introduces no fewer than five of Batman's most notorious rogues gallery in a way that feels completely unforced and promises even better things to come from a sequel. It's AWESOME. Go see it.

Talk at you next week folks. It might be a few days late as I'M GOING TO ICELAND (!!!) to swim in some hot springs and walk on glaciers and look at volcanoes, but I'll have plenty to share then.

-Ross