Direct Current Friday (#529)

Here's the kind of week I've had:

• I tend to agree with Arturo Bandini about buttermilk, or so I discovered.  It's horrible!  Why is this even a thing???
• Rise of the Guardians may be the best animated movie released last year.  
• The Last Starfighter is an excellent sci-fi adventure.  I'm sorry I didn't discover it sooner.
• Dune may after all be a story about a member of the elite discovering that the common folk aren't so bad.
• Dead Man Down is an excellent movie, and ranks well in the canon of Colin Farrell movies.
• In addition to some blogfests I participated in this week, I also began a new series of themed blogs I hope to maintain.  This one's a version of something I was doing at the start of the year.
• I released a new book!  Yoshimi and the Shadow Clan (in paperback and ebook).  This would of course be the biggest personal bit of news.  It's the first in a trilogy about a teenage girl who has bounced around the foster care system for most of her life, only to discover that the man she thought was just a social worker and her de facto best friend has been hiding the truth about the death of her parents.  She then sets out to learn the way of the warrior, earning the Scimitar blade and hurtling toward Bill, who may be the pupil of the man who killed her parents, her lover, or both!  It's my best shot at writing a young adult adventure, and is the first time I've released a novel since 2007's The Cloak of Shrouded Men, which was also a trilogy.  (In fact, basically all my books are written in three acts.)  If you don't follow my writer's blog, now would be a good time, because I'll still be talking about the book there, as the series will hopefully be released on a monthly basis through May, so there'll be plenty to say.  Anyone who wants a PDF preview edition can request one in the comments, on condition that you provide me a review on Amazon, listed in both versions of the book.
• I finished writing Seven Thunders, meanwhile, which is why I've started blogging a little more regularly.  This is the first in the Space Corps series, and a book I've been planning since 1998.  
• Part of the blogging blitzkrieg was definitely felt at Comics Reader, where I unleashed a torrent of "quick hits" on new comics, some from as far back as last December.
• The new season of Survivor, Caramoan, which is also known as Fans vs. Favorites II, got some love at Your Torch Will Be Snuffed, in which I caught up on a bunch of episodes, including Brandon's recent flame-out.  If you don't know who Brandon is, consider yourself lucky.  But he's been one of the personalities who've definitely kept this season interesting.