paperback proofs patio

Welcome to the October 2025 edition of...
What I'm Into, What I'm Up To
#60

If you live in the northern hemisphere, welcome to Fall! If not, welcome to Spring! Or, if you live close to the equator, welcome to the same hot weather as the rest of the year. And finally, if you live close to the north or south pole... well... I'm sorry. Oh, and if you're currently living in space, please send photos. My boys would love to see your spacecraft.

What I'm Up To

I kept putting off last month's email because for a few weeks now I've been 'very close' to publishing paperback versions of the new trilogy. I'm going all out this time around, so I'm using Amazon's publishing tools, of course, but also a company called Ingram, which is the company for printing books in the U.S.

I've learned if you want your books in libraries or bookstores (and I do, especially libraries), you simply must publish through Ingram, even if you also publish through Amazon or other book printers.

Anyway, I still need to finalize things on the Ingram side, but on the Amazon front—which is what will matter to anyone reading this since per book costs to me and to you printing through Amazon are quite a bit cheaper than Ingram—the books are up and ready to buy.

The proofs pictured above (which I got in the mail on Saturday) were not quite up to par, so I made some changes to the covers, but they are symmetrical now and ready for anyone who's been waiting to buy SKYTRAILS until physical books were available. Have at it!

The paperbacks are $9.99 each here in the U.S. on Amazon. I am a lifelong lover of physical books, especially paperbacks, so it means a lot to me to have them available as paperbacks and I'm super happy with how they've turned out.

My friend Chris had the idea we should order a bunch of paperbacks of book one to drop off at little free libraries so hopefully people would check that one out and possibly buy the other two.

Another friend, Darius, came up for a week and helped me a ton with the patio project. Actually he helped me way more than a ton, seeing as how we had 15 tons of sand and crushed rock delivered to our backyard and had to shovel it around and get it fairly level and then tamp it all down, plus finish the retaining wall and drainage pipes. I think it's safe to say it's the biggest DIY project I've ever taken on.

Reminds me of that Nate Bargatze bit about digging a hole. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKLcwTeJ7nk

What I'm Into

I recently watched a movie called A Real Pain about two Jewish American cousins played by Jesse Eisenberg (also wrote and directed) and Kieran Culkin who go to Poland to visit their late grandmother's house and take a Jewish heritage tour. Interesting, thought-provoking, funny, a little sad, very enjoyable.

In a similar vein, I guess, I am reading a giant coffee table graphic novel called The History Of Jerusalem: An Illustrated Story Of 4,000 Years by Vincent Lemire and Christophe Gaultier. I've been to Jerusalem twice and I thought I had a basic grasp of its history but I was wrong. What a place! What a past! It's been so wild and tumultuous, but with huge spans of relative peace and quiet. The shocking thing to me is not the city's history of violence, but for how much of its history Jews, Muslims, and Christians have lived together without feeling the need to kill one another. Also I'm impressed at the bravery of the authors for tackling such a complex and heated subject.

I am also reading a book called Play Nice by Jason Schreier about the video game company, Blizzard, which has been responsible for so many of the games I've loved over the years. I think this is the third book I've read about video game companies (Nintendo and id Software being the other two) and it's fascinating because I spent so much time playing their games in my late teens and twenties but I never really knew or cared much what was happening behind the scenes. Turns out A LOT was happening behind the scenes.

And finally, to wrap things up, congratulations to my brother Jeremy for running and very nearly completing a 100k race a few days ago. I am in awe and inspired. Not enough to, like, try and run farther... or faster... but, you know... in a warm fuzzy kind of way.