Kill the Rich audiobook and the start of a newsletter
See you in your inbox once a month, people who still stay subscribed after reading this.
I’m going to start using Substack because I saw in a PowerPoint that authors have to use social media to build a readership. In that vein of digital marketing (kill me), I will be updating this once a month with what I’m reading, watching, playing, Ukraine infodumps, and any writerly announcements.
Announcements! The KILL THE RICH audiobook comes out on April 16! You can order it today on Audible. It’s also available for preorder at other places (Google, Chirp, Apple probably, etc.) if you don’t want to support Amazon. It’s read by me, co-author
, comedian Alana Johnston, and podcaster (who produced it as well!).My poem “googles: elvis wedding miami” is featured on the
journal edited by .I have many other projects in the works (including a KTR sequel with Jack likely coming in 2026). Stay tuned for more exciting announcements.
Here’s what I’m doing:
Bad Book: Powerless - Lauren Roberts. I listened to my first, I’m pretty sure, AI generated book (you’re telling me “Lauren Roberts” is a real person?). I won’t say anything other than what I suspect the prompt to be. “Write a novel that’s The Hunger Games except everybody has Marvel super powers except for the protagonist. Add a genocide of everybody who doesn’t have superpowers for eugenics reasons. The protagonist is hot, something everybody in the book must comment on, has silver hair and a gritty backstory about watching her father’s murder and then learning to live on the streets as a thief. Add love triangle between two brothers who are also princes. One is blonde and kind (think: Peeta from The Hunger Games). The other is a trained brunette cop with tattoos who loves killing people but has a tender heart underneath it all (think: Rhysand from A Court of Thrones and Roses).
Okay. I will say something else. This was on the bestseller list because of BookTok and boy, BookTok fucking sucks. I have a conspiracy theory it’s just to see if AI-written books are popular. I guess they are because according to Goodreads people LOVE this book. They positively review it because they can tell “she worked really hard on it from her TikToks.” Yeah, she worked really hard creating the AI prompt I wrote in five minutes.
Good Book: Wellness - Nathan Hill. I love a good story about a married couple slowly inching towards murder-suicide because of the hellish wasteland of suburban life. This has a twist on it by laying a theme of bogus wellness products over it. The characters want the wellness products to work so they won’t kill themselves! It was well written and interesting. I wouldn’t give it a 10/10 but definitely an 8/10.
I do miss straight-forward narratives. Every popular literary book these days goes back in time or has a “novel within a novel” and it’s like—can someone just tell me a story without putting a bottle episode about the main character’s grandfather’s origin story geocoding native americans in the American west.
TV: Constellation on Apple+ is very good if it a bit unsettling. The pacing is incredible which is hard to do considering every season of television is down to 6 - 8 episodes that they’re trying to cram 12 episodes worth of material into. I like that they reveal the big mystery early and the rest of the show is the characters reckoning with the eerie sci-fi shit. I’m sick of guessing at what’s really going on in a show. I just want to be told. The problem with guessing at mysteries is usually the guesses of the subreddit are way better than what actually ends up happening. I don’t know. When people ask me who I think really did it in Anatomy of a Fall I tell them to go fuck themselves.
Film: I don’t watch many movies. I should watch more. I did see Drive Away Dolls and Margaret Qualley gives an awful performance with a over-the-top deep south accent that is supposed to be a Dallas accent (I’m from there and can affirm that we all talk without an accent). The movie of the decade is The Zone of Interest. The acting and camerawork is superb. I read that Glazer didn’t even have a crew inside the house, he just filmed it all on cameras set up in the house to give it a more domestic and natural feel. It’s just a great piece of art. Here is an AI-generated review of what I’m supposed to say about it:
"The Zone of Interest" brilliantly captures the complexity of human nature amidst the backdrop of the Holocaust, offering a poignant exploration of the banality of evil. With powerful performances and masterful storytelling, it confronts the darkest aspects of history while illuminating the resilience of the human spirit, leaving viewers profoundly moved and inspired.
What I’m going to say: would bang the commandant of Auschwitz actor.
Game: I’ve logged maybe 200 hours in sleepless addiction playing Against the Storm. Holy shit. I’m beginning to think as a Against the Storm city builder. I was reading about aid to Ukraine for the reconstruction and I thought about it in producing packs of trade goods and generating one-star planks, bricks, and fabric from a crude workstation. I wonder how much oil Ukraine will have to sacrifice in the Sacred Hearth to up villager resolve during the storm so their citizens don’t leave? I still can’t get past P5 (there are 25 levels of difficulty in this game because of course) but my week goal is to go to P6. It’s good to set achievable goals.
Ukraine: Besides reading, writing, and viewing CONTENT, those who know me know that I love to view a lot of content about the war in Ukraine. So, I’ll add a section about what’s going on with the war.
Russia is making modest gains, but their strategy is to dig in and wage a defensive war in the Donbass until the West gets sick of giving Ukraine money and the sanctions/globalism disruption destroys all the economies of those supporting this war (besides America I guess). Germany will definitely hit the wall first. They’re fucked without Russian gas. Ukraine is also building a bunch of defensive lines, trenches, and anti-tank measures so this could be a looooooooong war. Weirdly reminiscent of World War I on the ground. The most effective weapons are drones from Alibaba that some Slavs retrofitted with a Kalashnikov.
Ukraine is mainly focusing on attacking Russian border towns with the idea that it will grind down Russian public support for the war. That seems to be actually the West’s ENTIRE strategy. Experts desperately hoping the Russian public will turn on Putin and literally kill him. Like. First off, if you know anything about the Russian public, they’re apathetic and do not care about politics like the West does. They already did a failed revolution a hundred years ago and all it brought was abject misery and death. Secondly, this isn’t just Putin’s war. He is a mouthpiece for the oligarchy. If he goes, it’s likely the war will continue because the oligarchs support it too. Nearly every candidate in the fake Russian election was pro-war. Third, because of sanctions the entire Russian economy runs on the fucking war so the people know that if they regime change Putin they’re fucked. America would love that so they can loot the country again like the 90s but would actually suck for the Russian people.
How are we not at peace negotiations? Ukraine is not going to win and if this goes on for much longer without a peace both sides can somehow call a victory entire European economies are going to fail (maybe America would love that?). Russia says that Ukraine was involved with the concert hall mass shooting which… it’s definitely in Ukraine’s wheelhouse to do hybrid warfare but I don’t see how a terrorist attack would help them. If anything it would galvanize the Russian public against them and strengthen the war effort. So, that’s Russian bullshit to legitimize pummeling the shit out of Ukranian infrastructure which Russia has been doing with much more accuracy and effectiveness in the past year. It helps that Ukraine’s grid is just the old Soviet grid (it helps Ukraine, it’s a good grid). I also heard a conspiracy theory that Russia has some new insanely good satellite which is why their missiles are hitting much better targets now. I don’t know. I just don’t believe that high-tech war material is actually any good. Defense contractors are 90% stock buybacks and 10% shoddy air defense systems that require a 16 volume operating manual that nobody knows how to use and don’t work anyway. That’s both sides. The only effective weapon besides the duct-taped machine gun drones are literally one-way attack drones that crash randomly into… something within 10 miles of its target.
Oh, also, Russia now produces more ammunition per day than maybe the entire West combined so it’s great we now have a battle tested highly-armed Russian army against the entire West with no production capacity. Whatever. I think America is gearing up to fuck with China so they don’t care as long as all of Europe is dependent on them because they convinced everyone Putin is Hitler. I guess Congress will finally pass a Ukraine aid bill that they call a “loan” but one they know Ukraine will never pay back so they put “loan” in quotes when reporting on it. It just prolongs the stalemate which, like I said, is Russia’s aim because the Ruble CRASHES once they don’t need to produce 1,000 Kinzhal missiles a day. There are no winners in this war except Ukrainian oligarchs who are definitely stealing the aid to live in Paris and arms dealers who are definitely stealing the weapons to sell in the Middle East.
That’s all! It’s telling that me, an author, has more to say about Ukraine than actual, like, books.