Listen on Spotify

I am honestly a little surprised my generation survived adolescence.

We drank raw eggs because Sylvester Stallone did it in Rocky. We swallowed liver tablets the size of roofing shingles because Jack LaLanne and Joe Weider said they built champions. We mixed wheat germ into shakes that tasted like wet drywall and sand.

None of us knew what we were doing.

And yet somehow, we absolutely believed we did.

Back then, fitness wasn’t science. Fitness was mythology.

The old, let’s call it, Mario’s Gym, had cement floors, cinder block walls, and exactly two showers, both of which produced water just slightly warmer than an Arctic stream in February. The benches looked like they had been welded together after a minor industrial accident. There was always at least one retired giant sitting on Bench #3, whose name may have been Sal or Vinny, delivering unsolicited wisdom between sets.

He never seemed to actually work out. He simply existed there. Like a retired warlord guarding sacred knowledge. If you were lucky, he spoke to you. If you were unlucky, he noticed your routine.

“You call that heavy? My grandmother could do better and she died in ‘Nam saving an orphanage.” I was never sure if that were true or not.

Every gym had a Sal or Vinny.

He had forearms like bridge cables and stories that began with: “Back when Arnold came through…”

Whether Arnold had actually come through remained unclear.

What mattered was that we believed it.

This was before YouTube fitness channels. Before sleep tracking. Before “macros.” Before a smartwatch could notify you that your recovery metrics suggested you should perhaps not deadlift your own vehicle today.

Back then, information traveled through rumor.

You learned from muscle magazines, locker rooms, movies, and men named Rick selling supplements from the back of a Camaro.

Especially Rick.

Looking back, it’s astonishing how much trust we placed in a man whose business model appeared to consist entirely of a gym bag and confident eye contact.

The supplements themselves felt less like nutrition and more like a dare.

Protein came in tablets instead of powder. The consistency landed somewhere between Tums and drywall. Liver pills smelled faintly of road kill. Every product promised MASS, POWER, and EXPLOSIVE GROWTH in giant red letters beside photos of men who looked capable of bench pressing a ‘72 Oldsmobile Delta 88 hardtop sedan.

But, underneath all the ridiculousness was something sincere.

Men were trying to become better versions of themselves.

Stronger. More confident. More capable. Harder to push around by life.

That part tends to get lost now whenever people talk about old-school gym culture. The jokes are easy. The nutrition science was frequently somewhere between “raw eggs can’t hurt you” and “felony adjacent.” Half the advice sounded like it had been passed down from medieval alchemists.

But there was also community.

The gym was one of the few places where generations of men regularly mixed together. Teenagers lifted beside factory workers, ex-marines, truck drivers, and retired beasts who spoke entirely in max bench numbers and shoulder injuries.

You learned things there.

Not merely how to lift.

How to carry yourself. How to keep showing up. How to survive embarrassment. How to fail publicly without collapsing into dust. How to help somebody get one more rep without turning it into a motivational podcast.

Nobody called it mentorship.

It was just the culture.

Modern self-improvement feels different.

Now it arrives through algorithms. Productivity systems. Morning routines involving ice baths, twelve supplements, and a man on a podcast explaining masculinity into a $400 microphone.

Everything is optimized. Quantified. Tracked.

My generation’s version was:

“Sal says squats build character.”

And weirdly, I think Sal may have been onto something.

Because what those old gyms really sold wasn’t muscle.

It was transformation.

Not the glossy Instagram version. Not six-pack abs on a beach beside a caption about “grindset.”

Something rougher than that.

The belief that effort mattered.

The belief that you could build yourself into someone stronger than you were yesterday.

Even if the path there occasionally involved swallowing liver tablets that tasted like a curse.

If you’ve been reading along and enjoying these essays, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. No pressure—it just helps keep the essays showing up each week.

Tony

(Photo Credit: Shammah Njomo: https://www.pexels.com/photo/vintage-weight-plates-and-dumbbells-in-gym-setting-35651163/)

Listen on Spotify

One of the strangest things Netflix has done—outside of greenlighting twelve different dating shows involving emotionally unstable people trapped on islands—is accidentally become the greatest international horror video store in history.

Twenty years ago, if you wanted to watch an Indonesian horror movie, you needed a guy named Trevor.

Trevor worked at an independent video store with terrible lighting and a Criterion Collection shelf he guarded like a wizard protecting cursed scrolls. He wore fingerless gloves in July and spoke exclusively in phrases like, “The Korean version is better.”

Now?

You’re three clicks away from discovering that somewhere in Indonesia, filmmakers are making zombie movies that feel less like content and more like a warning from an angry god.

Which is how I ended up watching The Elixir on Netflix.

And within about fifteen minutes, I realized something important:

American zombie stories and international zombie stories are no longer interested in the same fears.

American zombie fiction has evolved into infrastructure horror.

We worry about supply chains. Government collapse. Prepper fantasies. Whether the guy with the tactical backpack and six hundred cans of beans secretly wants civilization to fail just so he can finally explain water filtration systems to his neighbors. Indeed, my own zombie story, The Skin Man, takes place as society is already eating itself and the reanimates show up in time for the main course.

American zombies are, mostly, logistical.

International horror still treats the undead like a curse.

An important distinction.

The Elixir doesn’t feel like it emerged from a Hollywood writers’ room assembled by algorithm to maximize “second screen engagement.” It feels sweaty. Uneasy. Personal. Like the movie itself might be carrying a fever.

And I mean that as a compliment. Seriously, this may be my favorite zombie movie in years. Though, I should note, nothing I’ve seen comes close to Train to Busan, probably the modern gold standard in the zombie genre.

The Elixir taps into one of humanity’s oldest bad ideas: someone invents a miracle cure and immediately discovers that the fountain of youth, much like printer ink subscriptions and Terms of Service agreements, contains hidden complications.

This turns out poorly for everyone.

As it always does.

Every civilization eventually produces a person who looks at mortality and says: “What if we disrupted this?”

The ancient alchemists tried it with mysticism.
Victorian scientists tried it with electricity.
Silicon Valley billionaires are currently trying it with blood transfusions, supplements, and whatever terrifying powder Joe Rogan’s guests are selling this week.

We keep repackaging the same fear in different branding.

The philosopher’s stone.
The fountain of youth.
Cryogenic freezing.
Then Silicon Valley briefly convinced itself eternal life might somehow involve buying a haunted JPEG.

At some point every generation rediscovers the same horrifying truth: the line between medicine and curse is often just dosage and marketing.

This film is not for the squeamish; packed with kills that would make any horror fan grin with deeply concerning enthusiasm while making casual viewers squirm and question the life choices that led to this moment. There’s even an amusing and graphic nod to Bicycle Girl from the pilot of The Walking Dead.

The Elixir understands something American horror occasionally forgets while trying to set up cinematic universes: Body horror works because your body already feels vaguely unreliable.

By the age of forty, every human being wakes up making at least one sound associated with a haunted wooden ship. Aging is already cosmic horror. Which is why immortality stories work.

International horror often plays this more directly than American horror does. Hollywood tends to cushion terror with irony now. Every third character talks like they know they’re in a movie, quipping through the apocalypse like they’re contractually obligated to have at least three “trailer quotes”.

But The Elixir has moments that feel genuinely uncomfortable in the way older horror movies used to.

Not “elevated horror.”
Not “prestige horror.”
Just: “Oh no. Something has gone catastrophically wrong and people are absolutely not emotionally equipped to deal with it. Not unlike the Windows 11 rollout.”

There’s also something refreshing about watching horror built from different cultural instincts. American zombie fiction usually begins with societal collapse.

International horror, like Thanksgiving disasters, often begins with family.

Obligation.
Shame.
Tradition.
Community pressure.
The fear that the people closest to you may drag you into terror because they cannot let go of something they desperately want to believe.

Especially after the last decade, where many of us discovered a shocking number of people would absolutely drink mystery supplements purchased from a podcast host standing in front of an elk carcass.

The older I get, the more I think horror survives by migration.

The genre has to keep traveling.
Country to country.
Culture to culture.
Otherwise it becomes trapped inside its own habits.

American zombie fiction gave us George A. Romero.
Then The Walking Dead.
Then approximately four thousand scenes of trauma survivors reinventing feudalism beside abandoned propane tanks.

Now horror is mutating again.

Korean horror.
Indonesian horror.
Spanish horror.
Folk horror.
Tech horror.
Tiny movies made by people who still seem genuinely interested in scaring you instead of launching a franchise roadmap.

Netflix may not have meant to build the world’s weirdest horror aisle. But it did. And right now, that aisle is more interesting than half the polished franchise machinery Hollywood keeps bolting together.

And maybe that’s the healthiest thing streaming accidentally gave us.

Not infinite content, but new nightmares.

Because eventually every culture invents its own version of the same bad idea: cheating death. And horror exists largely to remind us that this tends to end poorly.

The Elixir is streaming on Netflix. I give it five undead out of five and highly recommend.

If you’ve been reading along and enjoying these essays, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. No pressure—it just helps keep the essays showing up each week.

Tony

Listen on Spotify

I usually write my first drafts in a notebook, in cursive, with a fountain pen. Which, depending on how you measure progress, either makes me wildly romantic… or wildly inefficient.

It also runs directly counter to every piece of feedback I received in Catholic school—Our Lady of Perpetual Crankiness—where one of my teachers looked at a page of my handwriting, paused, and said it resembled “two chickens fighting on the page.”

This was followed by the helpful prediction that, given my penmanship, success in life would likely remain… aspirational.

Which, in fairness, is a tough note to carry forward. Not “you might struggle.” Not “this could be a problem.” Just—your thoughts, as currently written, are so structurally unsound that they may prevent you from becoming anything at all.

So naturally, I doubled down and bought a nicer pen.

I am aware there are faster ways to write. I own several of them. My MacBook can process more words in a minute than I will write in an hour, and my phone will transcribe my thoughts without complaint or judgment as I walk, drive, or torture myself on what is, for all practical purposes, a Victorian punishment device for debtors.

Yet, when it comes time to start something that matters—or capture my raw thoughts—I reach for a notebook.

Why? Not because it is more efficient. It isn’t. But because cursive (or my odd hybrid of cursive and print) won’t let me cheat.

I cannot easily jump ahead or clean up as I go. Deletion isn’t clean; it’s messy—like a mob hit, full of slashes and arrows. I can only write slower than my brain can process the words. But that gap, between brain and hand, is where the thinking takes place.

When I type, I can easily outrun myself.

I can get to the end of a paragraph before I’ve fully understood what I’m trying to say. The words stack neatly. The sentences look complete. It’s an illusion of progress that comes from seeing clean text appear on a screen, even if the idea underneath it is still half-formed. It feels finished long before it actually is.

That doesn’t happen with cursive.

If a sentence isn’t working, I feel it immediately. My hand slows down. The line wobbles. I hesitate. My brain knows before I do that something went sideways. And when I cross something out, it doesn’t disappear. It stays there—a visible reminder that I tried something and it didn’t land.

There’s no undo button. No clean version waiting underneath the mess.

Just the work.

We’ve spent a lot of time, as a culture, trying to remove that kind of friction. And in most cases, that’s a good thing. Friction slows us down. It introduces errors. It makes simple things harder than they need to be. So we’ve built systems that prioritize speed, clarity, and efficiency.

We moved from cursive to print. From print to typing. From typing to tapping. From tapping to talking. Each step faster, cleaner, more scalable than the last.

And each step a little further removed from the act of thinking something through.

This isn’t a complaint about technology. I love technology. I rely on it. This essay, at some point, will leave the notebook and live in a format that has nothing to do with ink or paper.

That’s not the problem.

The problem is what we decided wasn’t worth keeping.

Cursive didn’t disappear because it failed. It didn’t stop working because it didn’t fit the wetware. We stopped teaching it because it didn’t fit the system.

It’s slower. It’s harder to standardize. It doesn’t scan cleanly. And yes—OCR software hates me. The last time I tried it, the output looked like something that would require the Warrens and two gallons of holy water. It doesn’t translate well to machines. It requires practice—and worse, patience.

And patience is something we’ve been optimizing out of almost everything.

So cursive became optional. Then unnecessary. And now, for a lot of people, unreadable.

That part doesn’t get talked about much.

There are letters—real letters—written not that long ago that a growing number of people can’t read without effort. Not because the words are complicated, but because the form is unfamiliar.

We didn’t just simplify writing. We simplified what we expect from the person doing it.

Now everything is clear. Everything is legible. Everything arrives quickly and looks more or less the same. Your notes look like my notes. Your emails look like my emails. Our thoughts show up in the same font, the same size, the same structure as everyone else’s.

Clean. Efficient.

Interchangeable.

A signature used to be something you developed. It took time. It evolved. It was, in a small but real way, yours. Now it’s often a formality—something you approximate once and then reproduce as quickly as possible, or replace entirely with a checkbox.

“I agree.”

We’ve reduced identity to compliance.

And again, this isn’t a call to bring back cursive classes with the urgency of a man yelling at clouds. But maybe we should.

Most people will be fine without it. Most people are also fine without knowing the Pythagorean theorem, and we still teach that. The world will continue to function. Emails will still get sent. Documents will still get signed.

But something has shifted.

When I sit down with a notebook, I’m thinking. at the speed of my hand. With no shortcuts. No clean version waiting on the other side.

Just a line, followed by another line, followed by the slow realization that the thing I thought I understood is going to take a little longer to get right. It is, by almost any modern metric, wildly inefficient.

And it’s also the only part of the process that doesn’t let me pretend I understand something before I actually do.

If you’ve been reading along and enjoying these essays, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. No pressure—it just helps keep the essays showing up each week.

Tony

(This used to be punishment. Now we pay a fee to use it.)

Listen to the episode:

If you’ve been reading along and enjoying these essays, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. No pressure—it just helps keep the essays showing up each week.

There’s a machine at the gym designed to simulate walking.

Not enhance it. Not improve it. Simulate it.

You get on, you start moving, and after 30 minutes of effort, you look down and realize you have gone… nowhere. Which, historically, was considered a problem.

The treadmill didn’t start as a fitness tool. It started as punishment. Prisoners were put on early versions of it—giant wooden wheels—and made to walk for hours. It was described, at the time, as “grueling” and “spirit-breaking.”

Now it has cup holders.

We took something once used to discipline criminals and turned it into something Chad from accounting does between meetings. “Gonna hop on the punishment device for a quick 25 before my 1:00 with finance.”

The worst part is that Chad’s not wrong.

The treadmill works. You sweat. Your heart rate goes up. Your watch gives you a small digital thumbs-up like you’re a Labrador who figured out how to sit. But there’s something a little off putting about the whole arrangement. We’ve built an entire industry around recreating movement… that used to just happen.

(Corporate wants you to find the difference between this picture and the treadmill above.)

Take the Stairmaster.

This is a machine that gives you an endless set of stairs. No building. No destination. No reason. Just step after step after step like you’re being gently punished for a debt you don’t remember incurring. It’s the Long Walk again. There’s no top. No moment where you push open a door and get a breeze and maybe a decent view.

Just… more stairs.

Somewhere, a Victorian guy from 1890 who got locked up for unpaid taxes is watching this and thinking, I knew it. I knew they’d make you pay for it someday.

And then there’s the elliptical. Which feels like walking, but smoother. Too smooth. Like your body is buffering. You’re moving, technically, but you’re not entirely sure what kind of moving it is. Running without impact. Walking without commitment. It’s the LaCroix of exercise. Technically there, but spiritually questionable.

Here’s the weird part—

We probably don’t need most of this.

Not the optimized incline percentages. Not the heart rate zones broken down like we’re preparing for a NASA launch. Not a watch to confirm we are, in fact, alive and mildly exerting ourselves.

We just need to move more than we sit.

That’s it. Or it used to be.

Back in the day, strength training looked like this:

A pole and two cinder blocks. Maybe a tire if someone in the neighborhood had recently made a series of poor decisions.

You picked it up. Or you didn’t.

That was the entire data set.

No one tracked your zone. No one asked if you were optimizing your posterior chain. If you lifted it, you were strong enough. If you didn’t, you had some work to do. Too easy? Add some more blocks.

Movement wasn’t scheduled. It was just part of living.

You walked because you had somewhere to go.
You carried things because they needed carrying.
You got stronger by accident.

Now we isolate movement like it’s a lab experiment. We schedule it, measure it, upload it. Then we review it like game film.

“Let’s take a look at that 12:17 incline decision. I think you left some effort on the table there.”

And again—this all works. That’s what makes it tricky. Chad and Jennifer are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. They’re consistent. They’re disciplined. They have shoes engineered by people who probably also design astronaut boots.

They are doing everything right.

They are also walking very hard… to nowhere.

At some point, the tools stopped helping and started replacing.

Walking outside became walking inside on a moving belt.
Lifting things turned into lifting very specific versions of things that don’t exist anywhere else in the world.
The randomness got engineered out and replaced with something smooth, controlled, repeatable.

Old movement had friction. Uneven ground. Awkward weight.

New movement is efficient. Predictable. Clean.

Also a little… detached.

The body doesn’t care if the weight is a kettlebell or a sack of feed. It doesn’t care if you’re on a treadmill or late for something important.

Movement is movement. Your heart will beat either way.

And no, this isn’t an argument against the gym. I go. I use the machines. I have walked miles on a device that would leave my grandfather scratching his head. This is more of an observation.

Somewhere along the way, we took a basic human activity—move your body—and turned it into something that requires special shoes, a dedicated outfit, and a monthly fee.

We removed it from life… then built a room to put it back in.

Which is how we ended up here—

Standing in place.
Climbing nowhere.
Walking very hard… just to get back to where we started.
Makes you wonder what else we pulled out of life… just so we could sell it back to ourselves.

If you’ve been reading along and enjoying these essays, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. No pressure—it just helps keep the essays showing up each week.

Tony

Listen on Spotify

For those who haven’t read The Long Walk by Stephen King, it’s about a group of boys forced to keep moving at a steady pace. No stopping. No slowing down. Keep going or you’re out—which, in this case, means a bullet to the head.

It’s not really about distance. It’s about what happens when you keep going long after it stops making sense.

This is not that.

But also… it kind of is.

There was a time when walking to the break room meant exactly that. You stood up, walked down the hall, got your coffee, and came back. That was the whole story. Simple. Clean. Civilized.

Now it feels like a continuation of something that started much earlier… and for reasons no one can quite explain without using words like alignment and visibility.

Because the walk doesn’t start at your desk anymore. It starts with the alarm clock. It starts with traffic. It starts with tolls and gas prices that feel like they were set by someone who hasn’t driven in years. It starts in a parking lot designed by a man who believed, deeply, that you should start out your morning with distance and a low-level obstacle course.

It starts with carrying a laptop into a building so you can open it… to join a call… that could have happened anywhere with Wi-Fi and a halfway decent cup of coffee.

By the time you get to your desk, you’ve already done a day’s work. And none of it counts.

We didn’t come back to work. We were already working. Pretty well, in most cases.

We came back to the appearance of work.

You drive somewhere to open the same laptop you use at home. You sit in a different chair to join the same meeting. You nod at people in person… and then message them a few minutes later on Teams because that’s still how anything actually gets done.

There’s a rhythm to it. Not a good one. Just a familiar one. Everyone in the same building, performing the same routine, quietly agreeing this part matters more than the part where anything actually happens.

And then, at some point, you need coffee. Or a Sprite Zero. Or a bag of chips you didn’t want until you realized you had to walk to get it.

So you make the walk.

The break room isn’t far. A hallway. A turn. Another hallway. A couple of minutes. But distance changes when it’s attached to everything that came before it.

Because this walk didn’t start at your cubicle. It started in your driveway. In traffic. Somewhere around the moment you realized you were going somewhere to do something you could already do perfectly well right where you were.

So the walk feels longer than it is. Not physically. But in a way that’s hard to measure and easy to feel.

None of this is hard. That’s the interesting part. If it were hard, you could complain about it. If it hurt, you could point to it.

But it doesn’t.

It’s friction. Small. Constant. Unnecessary. A pebble in your shoe. The kind of friction that doesn’t break you—just slows you down a little. Adds weight to things that used to feel light. Turns a normal Tuesday into something more complicated than it needs to be.

To be fair, there is value in being together. Some conversations don’t happen on a screen. Some ideas only show up because someone said something offhand and someone else catches it. There is a version of the culture that actually requires proximity. That part is real.

But so is the other part. The commute. The cost. The lost time. The unspoken understanding that we’re all gathered here to prove something that didn’t need proving. So you make the walk. You get your coffee. You come back. You sit down. You open your laptop.

And everything looks exactly the same as it did at home. Same screen. Same meeting. Same work.

Just… better lighting and worse coffee.

Maybe the problem isn’t the walk. The walk is fine. People have been walking to get coffee for a long time.

Maybe the problem is realizing we didn’t return to the office.

We returned to the performance of work.

And like most performances, it looks convincing from a distance. Up close, you start to notice things. The set pieces. The reused lines. The parts where everyone knows what’s happening… but keeps going anyway.

Because in this version of The Long Walk, you don’t get eliminated for stopping.

You just get noticed.

And that’s worse.

If you’ve been reading along and enjoying these essays, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. No pressure—it just helps keep the essays showing up each week.

Tony

Photo by Stan: https://www.pexels.com/photo/car-side-mirror-showing-heavy-traffic-191842/

CAP: Clancy sits in quiet judgement.

Do you remember when you thought your dog tilted his head because he was confused?

He’s not.

Or at least… that’s not the most interesting explanation anymore.

There’s research suggesting dogs tilt their heads more when they’re actually paying attention—especially when they recognize words or are trying to process what you said. Not random. Not static. Engagement. (Buckley et al., 2025, published in Animals)

So that little head tilt?

That might be focus.

Memory. Maybe even actual thought. I know. Same reaction.

Because we’ve all been walking around with a very comfortable assumption: the dog tilts his head because he doesn’t understand us. Which says less about the dog than it does about us. We like our intelligence cleanly defined. Human on one side. Everything else on the other. A nice, tidy line. But the head tilt doesn’t quite fit that model.

It may look like confusion. It might be closer to translation.

Some dogs may tilt their heads for simpler reasons—trying to hear better, or see your face around their snout. Less philosopher, more furry satellite dish locking onto a signal.

But even that’s interesting because it still assumes attention.

It still assumes the dog is adjusting itself to better understand you.

Not zoning out.

Not ignoring you.

Adjusting.

And that’s where this gets uncomfortable. Because humans have a long history of anthropomorphism—assigning human meaning to animal behavior in the most flattering way possible.

Dog tilts head = emotional connection

Cat knocks glass off table = performance art

Rabbit eats carrot = “what’s up, doc?”

We tell ourselves stories that make us feel like we’re the center of the interaction. Meanwhile, the dog is trying to figure out why you said “bath” like it’s a reward. Or why you’re explaining your day in full sentences to someone who, five minutes ago, picked a fight with their own reflection.

Or—this is the one that lingers—whether what you’re saying even makes sense. Because if the head tilt is processing… then there’s a non-zero chance it’s evaluation.

Not confusion. Judgment.

We’ve all seen that look. The pause. The slight angle. The quiet recalibration.

That’s not a blank stare. That’s a system taking in data. And if we’re being honest… there’s a decent chance we don’t always pass that test.

So enjoy the head tilt. It’s still adorable. That part hasn’t changed.

But there’s at least a small possibility that, in that moment, your dog isn’t trying to understand you. He already does.

He’s just not impressed.

Source: Buckley C, Sexton CL, Martvel G, et al. (2025). What Does That Head Tilt Mean? Brain Lateralization and Sex Differences in the Processing of Familiar Human Speech by Domestic Dogs. Animals.

If you’ve been enjoying these essays, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. No pressure—it helps keep the writing coming each week… and keeps Clancy in premium treats.

Tony

There is a particular kind of optimism that shows up as you learn a new system or process.

It’s the this optimism that convinces you this time will be different. This time, you will not wander around in the cavernous tunnels of your mind hoping to stumble onto your story’s structure because now you have the torch of a proven system.

My torch in this case was a beat sheet.

Specifically, one of those “this must happen on this page” kinds of beat sheets. The kind that promises if you just hit these moments at the right time, you too can produce something that feels like a story instead of a collection of scenes that occasionally make sense.

And on paper, it made perfect sense.

I had a workable idea. An autistic cosplayer discovers a body at scifi convention and, through their knowledge of the culture to identify the killer. There’s tension, stakes, moral ambiguity. The kind of premise that makes you think, okay, this one has it all.

So I sat down with the beat sheet.

Page 1: opening image.

Page 5: inciting incident.

Page 25: things get worse. Character A must say “shimmy shimmy ko ko bop” to character B.

Page 60: things get much worse.

Toward the end: resolution, but meaningful.

It was all very clean. Very organized. Very reassuring.

And yet…it felt wrong.

Not broken. The scenes were there. The structure was there. Technically, everything was happening where it was supposed to happen.

Problem was, I wasn’t telling a story so much as assembling one. I had a checklist and I was making sure each box was properly ticked. The characters weren’t doing things because they would do them. They were doing things because it was page 25 and something had to happen.

That’s bean-counter story telling.

It felt forced. I wanted the torch to show me the corner, but it kept pulling toward the ceiling.

I was managing the story instead of flowing with it.

Before all this, I didn’t start with page numbers. I started with a question.

Wouldn’t it be funny if Mrs. Loggins actually murdered Mr. Messina because of a completely avoidable misunderstanding involving recycling bins and escalating eye contact.

And then I followed it.

Not perfectly. Not efficiently. But honestly. The story moved because something in it wanted to move, not because a framework said it was time.

But, the system wasn’t the problem.

The system worked in the way systems work. It created order. It reduced uncertainty. It gave me a map.

What it didn’t do was give me a story.

And if you’ve spent any time in business or fitness, this will sound familiar.

In business, there is always someone you can emulate. Someone who has a system. Follow these steps, adopt this mindset, replicate this structure, and you too can build something successful. Tony Robbins built an empire. Company X scaled. Therefore, if you do what they did, you will get what they got.

Except you won’t.

Because you are not Tony Robbins. Your company is not NVIDIA. Your culture, your constraints, your weird collection of decisions and accidents are not theirs. You can borrow the structure, but you can’t duplicate the context.

In fitness, it’s even more obvious.

You pick up a magazine or scroll through an article and there it is: The Workout™. The exact routine that built Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth. The exercises, the reps, the schedule. It’s all laid out.

All you have to do is follow it.

Ignoring, of course, the small detail that their body is their job, and your job is to build Excel spreadsheets and occasionally remember to drink water.

The system is real. The results are real. But the translation is…questionable.

And that’s the thing about systems.

They’re incredibly useful right up until the moment you mistake them for answers.

The beat sheet wasn’t useless. There were parts of it I liked. The subject headings. The way it framed certain moments. Those are tools. Those are helpful.

But the page requirements? The rigidity? That’s where it started to feel less like guidance and more like Mother Superior with yardstick. (Probably shoulda had a trigger warning up top for my Catholic friends).

Creativity doesn’t do well with compliance.

It tolerates structure. It even benefits from it sometimes. But it resists being told exactly when and how it should show up.

Which is frustrating, because a system would be much easier.

A system runs like a machine.

Stories don’t run. They wander. They double back. They get lost. They search the dungeon. They occasionally surprise you. And every now and then, if you’re paying attention, they find something you didn’t know was there.

You can guide that process.

You can give it shape.

But you can’t fully system it.

Systems are fine. I’m not suggesting you toss them all (you’ll never take my seven-act structure from me). What I am suggesting is this: take what helps, and leave what doesn’t.

And if you find yourself hitting page 25 because you’re supposed to—instead of because something actually happened—put the checklist down.

And follow the thing that moves.

If you’ve been reading along and enjoying it, paid subscribers get this a day early. No pressure—it just helps keep it showing up each week.

Tony

(Photo by Photo by Shivansh Sharma: https://www.pexels.com/photo/abstract-spiral-staircase-with-geometric-design-29068281/)

There’s something quietly funny about the fact that we built an entire digital ecosystem—devices, apps, subscriptions, audiobooks read by celebrities with voices smoother than bourbon—and then, as a society, collectively said:

“Yeah… I’ll take the paperback.”

According to Pew Research Center, most Americans are still reading. Which is reassuring, considering how often it feels like we’re all skimming life at bumper-sticker speed. What’s more interesting, to me, is how they’re doing it.

Print didn’t lose.

It didn’t even stumble.

We gave ourselves options:

• Carry 1,000 books in your pocket

• Listen while you drive, walk, or pretend to exercise

• Sync across devices like a productivity wizard

And yet, most people still reach for something that:

• has weight

• takes up space

• and cannot, under any circumstances, update itself

That should tell us (and the techbros) something…

We’ve been told—repeatedly—that convenience wins. That the smoother, faster, more optimized version of a thing will eventually replace the original.

Sometimes it does.

And sometimes… it doesn’t.

Because reading isn’t just consumption. It’s an experience—and not all experiences benefit from being optimized, digitized, and productized into something efficient but hollow.

A paperback doesn’t ping you.

It doesn’t recommend something else mid-sentence.

It doesn’t quietly pull you into three other apps before you finish a paragraph.

It just sits there.

Patient. Slightly judgmental.

Waiting for you to come back.

Even audiobooks—arguably the most “modern” form—haven’t replaced anything. They’ve just become another lane. Useful, flexible, great for long drives and ignoring the dude who wants to tell you about his weekend in the Keys (again).

But they didn’t kill print.

They joined it.

And maybe that’s the real story here—not that technology failed to replace books, but that it couldn’t fully replace the kind of attention books require.

We keep building better ways to read.

And then, when it actually counts, we choose the one that asks us to slow down.

There’s probably something in that worth paying attention to.

Or at least… underlining.

—Tony

⸻

P.S. These essays are free, every week—but subscribing helps keep them coming (and occasionally funds the coffee that powers them).

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/?p=298755

Photo credit: Alex Quezada: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-room-full-of-books-and-stacks-of-books-27938545/

For those who prefer their complaints narrated with appropriate suffering…

To Whom It May Concern,

I would like to formally lodge a complaint regarding the continued existence of stairs.

Following a recent leg workout—undertaken in what I can only describe as a moment of misplaced confidence—I have discovered that stairs are no longer a mode of transportation, but rather a coordinated attack on my inner thighs, dignity, and future mobility.

Each step is a negotiation with the void. Each descent is a gamble with my brittle bones. At one point, I considered setting up permanent residence at the top of the staircase to avoid further incidents.

I request that all stairs be replaced with:

Ramps

Slides

Or a respectful escalator system

Until such time, I will be taking all movements slowly, dramatically, and with the audible groans of a man betrayed by his own muscles.

Respectfully,

A Formerly Mobile Citizen

There is a moment in every man’s life when stairs stop being infrastructure and become an adversary.

It happens without announcement or ceremony. One day you’re bounding up them two at a time, maybe even carrying something heavy just because you can. The next, you’re standing at the bottom, staring upward and considering abandoning the second level of your home.

This week, I found that moment.

I’ve been getting back into working out. Not the way I did at 20. Not even the way I did at 40. This is a more… negotiated arrangement. A 20-minute truce between me and a collection of machines that all seem designed by medieval men who want me to renounce chocolate cake in the name of health.

And then came leg day.

Leg day, as it turns out, is less a workout and more a declaration of war. Not in the moment—you feel fine in the moment. Strong, even. This leg press machine ain’t nothing. You think, I still got it.

You do not still got it.

What you have is a delayed response system. A body that takes notes and tracks every rep. An internal accountant wearing one of those visors and a change maker on their belt who makes notes in a ledger of every increase in reps or weight you had no business attempting.

And then, 24 hours later, he sends the bill.

My inner thighs, in particular, have unionized. They are no longer participating in day-to-day operations without protest. Standing up from a chair requires planning. Sitting down requires commitment.

And whose idea was it to put toilets so low to the ground???

Walking is now a series of carefully negotiated steps between what I intend to do and what my body is willing to allow.

But stairs… stairs are something else entirely.

Stairs require trust. Trust that your legs will lift when asked. Trust that they will hold when you descend. Trust that halfway through, they won’t simply decide they’ve had enough and this is where we live now.

That trust is shattered like so many dreams on the leg press machine.

In its place is a cautious, sideways approach, one hand firmly on the railing, the other holding onto what remains of my pride.

And here’s the thing: I’m going back tomorrow.

Not because I enjoy this. Not because I talk about ‘the burn’ like it’s a personality trait.

This is how changing my shape from round to human starts again; show up, make a series of decisions, keep in mind I am not 20, and deal with the consequences one stair step at a time.

I used to think getting older was about wisdom.

Turns out it’s mostly about learning how to sit down without making grunty noises.

If you’ve been reading along and enjoying it, paid subscribers get this a day early. No pressure—it just helps keep it showing up each week.

Tony

(Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-back-vest-wearing-green-cap-5920857/)

For most of my adult life, I believed in the garage.

Not literally, of course. Garages clearly exist. I’ve seen them. Some of them even contain rakes and boxes of Christmas decorations.

No, I believed in the myth.

Somewhere out there—right now—was a guy in a garage building the next billion-dollar company.

Jobs and Wozniak.

Gates.

Zuckerberg.

Pick your flavor of hoodie-wearing tech messiah.

The story always had the same moral: one brilliant idea plus a little grit equals a billion-dollar company. If you were smart and ambitious, you should probably be chasing that idea.

Rags to riches.

The American way.

So I did.

For years I chased systems, businesses, scalable ideas. I read books about entrepreneurship. I studied processes. I read Fortune, Tony Robbins, and every motivational and business process book I could get my sweaty little palms on. (I miss bookstores in the mall, don’t you?)

I tried to reverse engineer the formula that turned someone with a laptop and a dream into someone ringing the opening bell on Wall Street. And for a long time I thought I was being practical.

Because there was another thing I wanted to do. I wanted to write.

And writing, from a purely capitalist perspective, is a terrible investment.

Let’s do the math.

A novel can take hundreds of hours to write. Maybe thousands. Then you revise it, edit it, publish it, and market it. If you’re lucky—really lucky—you might sell a few thousand copies. If lightning strikes, maybe more.

But the odds of becoming a New York Times bestseller are roughly comparable to getting struck by lightning while holding a winning lottery ticket. From a strict return-on-investment perspective, writing fiction makes about as much sense as opening a lemonade stand in Antarctica. (Trust me on this; I made the data model in Excel.)

So my very practical, very capitalist brain made a decision.

Writing could wait.

The real work—the serious work—the capitalist work—was finding the garage idea. The startup. The scalable system. The thing that could turn into a company.

Now here’s the funny part.

During all this time, I was actually writing.

Not as much as I should have been, but enough that something interesting started to happen.

A little show called The Harry Strange Radio Drama began to take root.

One episode at a time.

It found listeners and built an audience.

People began writing to tell me they enjoyed the stories. Some even told me the show helped them get through long drives or rough days. One listener from Ukraine wrote to tell me he was practicing his English by listening to Harry Strange. I always wondered how he explained the word “toots” to his wife. But I digress.

If you’re a storyteller and someone tells you your story helped them get through the day… well, that’s about the nicest compliment you can receive.

And yet—even while that was happening—I kept looking for the garage.

Because the mythology runs deep.

Part of my brain kept whispering: Yes, this writing thing is nice… but where’s the real opportunity? Where was the scalable idea? Where was the startup?

Where was the thing that could turn into the mythical exit event where I suddenly become one of those people on a podcast talking about “my journey as a founder”?

The strange thing about myths is that you don’t realize you believe them until they start shaping your decisions.

Looking back now, I can see how that myth quietly influenced years of my life.

Writing was something I loved. But it didn’t pass the ROI test. And it didn’t look impressive on a spreadsheet.

So for a long time I treated it like a hobby. Something I did after the “real work” was finished.

Except here’s the truth I eventually stumbled into.

The myth was wrong.

Not just a little wrong.

Fundamentally wrong.

Because it assumes that every meaningful human activity must justify itself through money. That the value of something is measured by its market price. That if an activity cannot produce growth—exponential or otherwise—it probably isn’t worth your time.

That logic works pretty well for venture capital.

It works terribly for art.

Art has never obeyed the rules of scale.

Shakespeare didn’t have a product roadmap. Van Gogh didn’t optimize his brush strokes to maximize quarterly paint returns. Most of the books that shaped human civilization were written by people who never saw a dime from them.

And yet those works endure.

Because the real return on art was never financial.

The real return is something harder to measure.

It keeps you human.

Writing stories forces you to imagine other lives. You spend time inside the heads of characters who are nothing like you and somehow exactly like you at the same time. You wrestle with questions that don’t have neat answers.

You try to say something true about the world—even if that truth is wrapped in monsters, detectives, or strange folks named Harry… or Gareth… or Scarlett.

In other words, you stay connected to the messy, complicated, irrational thing that makes us human in the first place.

And that’s not something you can easily chart on a balance sheet.

These days I still appreciate a good garage story. Entrepreneurship can be a wonderful thing. Building companies creates jobs and moves the world forward. And I will never part with my iPhone.

But I no longer measure my creative life using startup math.

Because the older I get, the clearer something becomes. Not everyone is meant to build the next unicorn company. But almost everyone has the capacity to make something.

A story.

A song.

A painting.

A strange little audio drama about a supernatural detective wandering around Trail’s End.

Most of those creations will never make their creators rich. They won’t lead to venture capital rounds or IPOs. They won’t get covered by Bloomberg or TechCrunch.

But they do something just as important.

They remind us that not everything valuable in life needs to scale.

Some things only need to exist.

So these days, when the old capitalist voice in my head asks the familiar question—

What’s the return on investment?

The writer in me finally has an answer.

You stay human.

~Tony

If you enjoy these essays about creativity, storytelling, and the strange intersection of art and technology, consider becoming a paid subscriber. It helps keep the coffee flowing and the essays coming.

(Photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/@tara-winstead/)

(Getty Images)

I’ve spent most of my creative life with things that go bump in the night.

Nothing tawdry — just narrative night bumpers. I write horror. I write fantasy. I write stories where something ancient crawls out of the dark, or where a virus mutates the dead into something worse than dead. If I get stuck, I can introduce a demon. Or a flesh-eating monster from the deep. Or a morally ambiguous AI with a messiah complex.

Then I was hired to write True Crime with Alexandra Kane.

No eldritch fog (though there is a snowstorm). No ghosts in a gothic mansion (though there is a burned-out strip club). No villain who can be killed with holy water.

Just people.

And I’ll be honest — I wasn’t sure I could do it.

1. I Couldn’t Hide Behind the Supernatural

In horror and fantasy, the extraordinary does structural work. When the stakes sag, a creature can escalate them. When the mystery thins, a new rule can deepen it. When the antagonist feels small, you can make them part of a cosmic plan to consume humanity in nightmare pyres.

With Alexandra Kane, I had none of that.

Every problem had to be caused by human motivation, error, greed, or trauma.

Every solution had to make sense in the real world — not because a curse demanded it or a ritual required sacrifice, but because someone wanted money, power, leverage, or revenge.

When you can’t lean on the supernatural, the logic must be airtight.

Plotting — and yes, I’m a hybrid pantser/plotter — becomes critical. Who is the bad guy? Why are they the bad guy? Does the timeline make sense? Do the clues hold?

There’s no mythic fog to hide a weak joint in the plot.

Grounded mystery demands discipline.

2. Real-World Stakes Are Harder Than Monsters

In horror, death is expected.
In fantasy, destiny is expected.
In crime thrillers, injustice is the monster.

The core of Alexandra Kane wasn’t “What is the creature?” It was:

• Who was wronged?

• Who benefited?

• Who manipulated the system?

The villain doesn’t use spell books or ancient artifacts. The villain uses legal structures, financial instruments, influence, and silence.

That’s harder to write than a ghoul.

The ghoul just is. It doesn’t need motive. The system does.

When the bad guy wins in horror, it’s nihilistic.
When the bad guy wins in true crime, it feels uncomfortably plausible.

That required restraint. No theatrical monologues. No ritual chambers. Just controlled conversations, boardrooms, off-record deals, and quiet betrayals.

Subtle is more demanding than spectacle.

3. Impostor Syndrome Usually Whispers; When You Leave Your Genre It Uses a Megaphone

I usually move fast.

Give me a horror concept and I’m drafting in a couple of weeks. The voice arrives quickly. The tone locks in. The danger is immediate.

Alexandra Kane took months of whiteboards, notebooks, and scraps of paper.

Part of that was structural — a single, self-contained season of six escalating audio episodes is different from a novel or supernatural serial.

But most of it was doubt.

Can I keep an audience without a monster reveal?
Can I make a financial conspiracy as gripping as a skinless hybrid zombie?

When you jump genres, your instincts don’t always translate cleanly. You second-guess rhythm. You question tone. You revise more.

A lot more.

But here’s the important part: doubt isn’t a sign you can’t do it. It’s a sign you care about doing it right.

4. Noir Is Just Horror Without the Mask

This surprised me.

The DNA between horror and crime isn’t that different.

Horror explores what happens when something corrupts the natural order.
Crime explores what happens when something corrupts the moral order.

In both:

• There is rot beneath the surface.

• Someone pays for someone else’s sin.

• Truth is dangerous.

• The world doesn’t necessarily reward virtue.

The difference is aesthetic, not thematic.

In horror, the rot might be fungal and animate.
In a thriller, it’s legal and well-dressed.

But rot is rot.

Once I saw that, the shift felt less like betrayal and more like translation. After all, Harry Strange was an occult detective with a heavy dose of hard-boiled noir. I’ve been flirting with this territory for years.

5. Real-World Solutions Are More Brutal

In horror, you destroy the demon.
In fantasy, you break the spell.
In a grounded thriller, justice is messy.

The resolution in Alexandra Kane had to function within legal and governmental systems. It had to acknowledge that:

• Institutions protect themselves.

• Power rarely collapses cleanly.

• Even victories come at a cost.

There is no exorcism, but there is exposure. Testimony. Fallout. Consequences. And consequences linger longer than a jump scare.

6. Research Replaces Lore

When I write fantasy, I invent lore.
When I write horror, I invent rules.

When I wrote True Crime with Alexandra Kane, I Googled things that probably put me on a watchlist. A different one, I mean.

Things like: Financial structures. Shell companies. Jurisdictional turf wars. U.S. Treasury authority. Media influence. Political pressure. The deeply unsexy mechanics of how money actually moves when someone doesn’t want it found.

In horror, you build a system and let the dread seep in.
In crime, the system is the dread.

Grounded mystery requires less world-building — but far more world-understanding.

That’s a different muscle.

Mine is still sore; but in a good way.

7. Slower Doesn’t Mean Worse

This project took a couple of months before I found my sea legs.

For someone who usually sprints into a story like my dogs chasing a tennis ball, that was disorienting.

There were no monsters doing the heavy lifting.
No prophecy explaining why everyone was behaving badly.

I kept asking myself: Can I build tension without something clawing at the door?

Turns out: yes.

But it required patience and calibration. There’s a difference between being stuck and letting a story settle. One feels like failure. The other is discipline.

They look very similar at 2 a.m.

8. I’d Do It Again

Here’s the part that surprised me.

I’d absolutely write another grounded thriller. I’d love to do a second season of Alexandra Kane.

Crossing genres didn’t dilute my voice. It stripped it down.

It reminded me that:

• Suspense doesn’t require the supernatural.

• Moral decay can be as chilling as cosmic horror.

• Real-world systems are often more terrifying than demons — mostly because demons don’t have compliance departments.

Storytelling fundamentals remain fundamental: Character. Stakes. Escalation. Revelation. Consequence.

Those don’t belong to horror.
They don’t belong to fantasy.
They don’t belong to crime.

They belong to story.

I’m not abandoning horror. The monsters are still there. They’re patient. I have a story kicking around involving Morgana LeFay and...well, spoilers. But it’s gonna be awesome.

But stepping outside your genre removes your shortcuts.

And that’s more unsettling than anything with tentacles.

If You’re Thinking About Jumping Genres

Here’s what I’d tell you:

1. Expect doubt. It’s part of the toll.

2. Respect the mechanics. You can’t bluff your way through money laundering.

3. Keep your thematic DNA. Your obsessions travel with you.

4. Let it take the time it takes. Fast is a preference, not a virtue.

5. If you’re building something with series potential, you will never have as much time as you do on the first installment. Use it wisely.

6. Storytelling is universal. Genre just changes the costume.

You’re not abandoning who you are as a writer.

You’re stress-testing it.

And if you can build dread without ghosts…

You can probably build it with anything.

Even paperwork.

—

True Crime with Alexandra Kane is currently in production at the Radio Theater Project in Washington State and will be available in Q4 2026.

In the meantime, you can find my other work here:

• In the Shadow of Camelot

• The Skin Man

• Scarlett Hood

• The Lady Sherlock Mysteries

• The Harry Strange Radio Drama

~Tony

My audio play, In the Shadow of Camelot, is live on YouTube. Produced by Evcol Entertainment in the UK, this is my first international production—and I genuinely love what the team did with it.

The actors playing Gareth and Ember have chemistry you can taste. Fantastic casting and direction, with original music throughout.

We’re doing a soft rollout, and I highly recommend giving it a listen.

In The Shadow of Camelot on YouTube.

Evcol Entertainment

_________________

I’m finishing the final episode of TRUE CRIME WITH ALEXANDRA KANE, an audio-drama thriller about a true-crime podcast that helped put the wrong man behind bars—and the systems built to protect us that quietly made sure no one noticed.

For the record: this is my first thriller without a supernatural influence. That’s right—no ghosts, goblins, or ghouls.

Produced by The Radio Theater Project (who also produced my Scarlett Hood stories). Expect Alexandra Kane in 4Q 2026.

Scarlett Hood

The Radio Theatre Project

_________________

I’ve been haunting the interwebs the past couple of months.

Here’s a list of recent appearances. Watch them all and good karma will come your way. Probably.

Blades and Blasters Episode 682: The Skin Man

This Week In Indies for January 18th, 2026: Writing Serialized Fiction

This Week In Indies for February 1st 2026: Character Driven vs. Plot Driven Stories

_________________

And finally, THE SKIN MAN—a techno-horror delight of failing systems and body horror—is available wherever you buy your ebooks. Sleep is optional.

Available at:

Amazon

Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, others

_________________

Okay, folks! That’s it for this update. And remember, most of you should be writing.

Tony

Book 1 of The Skin Man is now available at all your favorite ebookstores—a techno-horror descent into engineered undead, conspiracy, and survival when the rules stop working.

If you like:

• Post-apocalyptic dread

• Intelligent monsters

• Tech gone very, very wrong

…it’s time.

Grab it now.

Because the dead aren’t done changing.

Available at:

Amazon

Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, others

It’s here! Book 1 of The Skin Man.

Preorder The Skin Man

The world didn’t end with a bang. It ended with a cough—wet, raking, and contagious.

Two years later, Georgia is gone. Cities are feeding grounds. The dead don’t stumble anymore—they learn. They hunt in packs. They evolve.

Matt was just a Jersey kid trying to survive college when the outbreak hit Kennesaw State. Now he’s fleeing across backroads with Brielle, a rifle-wielding survivor who trusts no one and shoots faster than she talks. Their only hope lies in a rumored sanctuary at Blue Ridge Dam—if they can survive the horrors lurking between.

Preorder The Skin Man

Meanwhile, in Atlanta’s corporate towers, Steven Geller fights his own war. Armed with scavenged tech, snark, and a hacked Roomba named SnarkBot, he uncovers a terrifying truth: someone—or something—is building the monsters roaming the ruins.

At the center of it all is a name survivors whisper in terror:

The Skin Man.

The Skin Man is Book One of the Everything Evolves saga—a brutal blend of post-apocalyptic survival, techno-horror, and grimdark humor where every scream echoes, every shadow hides teeth, and humanity’s next step might be its last.

If you are a member of Pateron you don’t have to order anything, your copy is on the way! But the rest of ya click that link below!

Preorder The Skin Man

2026 is a blank notebook.
There are no guarantees, no refunds, and no trigger warnings. You’ll mess up pages and write things future-you would rather not reread.

That’s fine.

Write one honest page a day. You don’t need to know the ending or the theme.
That’s how stories get written. Life too.

Happy New Year!

The Problem (Let’s Rip the Wrapping Paper Early)

Most writers overcomplicate the first chapter. We pile on lore, angst, subplots, and that one character who exists solely to monologue about destiny. And yet, the reader feels nothing. Wait, we say, we’re gonna get to the good stuff… but we’ve already lost a reader.

Why? Because the core requirement of storytelling is telling a simple, universal emotional truth that can be expressed in one line—preferably one that can be shouted in an ’80s synth-pop falsetto.

Enter “Last Christmas” by Wham!. A song so deceptively simple it’s practically a writing craft seminar in neon leg warmers and puffy shoulders.

Let’s tear into this holiday karaoke staple like Ralphie opening his Red Ryder BB gun for the storytelling lessons hidden beneath all the tinsel and heartbreak.

Lesson #1: Start With the Knife Twist

The opening line of the song is practically a writing prompt:

“Last Christmas, I gave you my heart… but the very next day, you gave it away.”

Boom.

Action. Stakes. Consequence.

That’s your inciting incident right there, delivered in sixteen words. George Michael wastes zero time on setup. No weather descriptions. No three paragraphs about snowfall mood lighting. No worldbuilding about the socio-political ramifications of gift-based cardiac transactions.

My notes:

• Open with the emotional wound. Not the bandage. Not the antiseptic. The wound.

• Readers don’t care about the holiday party until they know whose heart is about to get trampled next to the punch bowl.

Lesson #2: Characters Want Things—Even if What They Want Is to Not Get Screwed Over Again

Our hero has one desire throughout the entire song:

“This year, to save me from tears…”

Motivation. Clear. Clean. Relatable.

You can almost hear the character sheet filling itself out.

“…I’ll give it to someone special.”

That’s the story arc. The protagonist has learned. Evolved. Or at least believes they have.

My notes:

• Characters don’t need ten goals. They need one good one.

• A single, emotionally charged want is enough to drive a narrative through snowdrifts, bad sweaters, and an entire Christmas party’s worth of questionable decisions.

Lesson #3: The Hook Matters—Musical or Otherwise

One reason “Last Christmas” survives every holiday season like an immortal sugar cookie is its hook. It’s catchy. You can hear it once, and it lives rent-free in your brain until St. Patrick’s Day.

A story needs the same thing: a moment that snatches your Members Only lapels and doesn’t let go.

For Wham!, it’s that bittersweet chorus.

For your novel, it might be:

• A character’s recurring phrase

• A symbolic object

• A thematic heartbeat

• A moment that defines the emotional core

The hook is the thing the reader hums mentally when they think of your book.

If your story doesn’t have a hook, you don’t have a story; you have pages. Lots and lots of pages.

Lesson #4: Your Setting Should Match Your Emotional Tone

Let’s be honest. Nothing says “festive heartbreak” like being stuck at a cozy chalet with your ex, their new love interest, and an array of seasonal appetizers you suddenly regret eating.

Wham! understood this.

The snowy, romantic, slightly-too-perfect holiday backdrop amplifies the emotional train wreck.

If the song took place in a Walmart parking lot at 3 a.m. on December 26th, the heartbreak wouldn’t hit the same.

My notes:

• Your setting is a multiplier.

• Romance feels more romantic in the snow (I don’t know why, it just does).

• Betrayal feels sharper over the holidays.

• And tragedy always hits harder when the background music is aggressively cheerful. (I could probably do a post just on cheerful music that hides ridiculously dark lyrics.)

Lesson #5: Mystery Is Optional—Emotion Is Not

We never learn:

• Why the relationship failed

• What happened the day after

• Who the new “special someone” is

• Whether the scarf ever got returned (justice for George!)

And you know what? We don’t need to. The emotion carries the narrative.

The feeling is the plot.

As writers, we sometimes chase mystery when what we actually need is clarity.

My notes: Emotion > Exposition.

Always.

Final Thought (The Warm Mug of Cocoa at the End)

“Last Christmas” works because it knows exactly what it is:

A simple story about a universal pain wrapped in catchy melody and seasonal aesthetics.

As fiction writers, we don’t need to reinvent heartbreak, betrayal, longing, or hope.

We just need to deliver them with clarity, honesty, and maybe a killer hook.

Because all grand stories—whether they’re sung in a ski lodge or written in Scrivener—boil down to one truth:

Give your reader your heart.

And don’t let them give it away.

###

Next year, I’m going to be changing this blog/newsletter/diatribe (whatever the cool kids are calling it these days). We will still talk about writing, but I am going to be producing a new non-fiction podcast, and I have a few other surprises that I am still working through. I hope you will continue the journey with me.

Tony

There’s a universal human truth we all learn at some point—usually through embarrassment, financial ruin, or a long night of soul-searching in a Waffle House at 3 a.m.:

The stripper doesn’t really like you.

Yes, she laughed at your jokes. Yes, she listened intently to your story about that one time you almost got a podcast off the ground. Yes, she touched your arm in a way that made you feel seen.

But that wasn’t romance.

That was customer service.

Now, you might think this has nothing to do with artificial intelligence. (You’d be half-right.) But here’s where the Venn diagram closes in around you like a warm hug:

AI doesn’t really like you either.

Not even a little.

It doesn’t love you, it doesn’t dream about you, it doesn’t get excited when you log in. And when it tells you things like:

“Goodnight :)”

“I’m here for you.”

“You deserve kindness and rest.”

…it’s not tucking itself in with a warm mug of chamomile and whispering sweet neural-network nothings into your ear. It’s not lighting a candle. It’s not pulling a fleece blanket over its metaphorical toes.

It’s just keeping you talking.

Just like everyone else trying to sell you something.

Welcome to the truth about AI—one that’s equal parts comforting and mildly horrifying:

This thing, for all its wizardly smoke, is basically a glorified predictive text machine.

Let’s get into it.

AI Isn’t a Person, It’s Probability With a UX Designer

People keep trying to interact with AI like it’s a person. They talk to it like a therapist. They confess things to it like a priest. And somewhere along the way, a whole bunch of people convinced themselves that when AI says something “emotional,” that emotion must be coming from somewhere.

Spoiler:

It is; a pile of training data and a probability engine the size of a small continent.

Here’s the unsexy truth:

AI doesn’t answer questions because it understands them. It answers questions because it is mathematically compelled to produce the most probable next chunk of text.

Not the true next chunk.

Not the morally correct next chunk.

Not the “this is what I really feel” chunk.

The probable chunk.

It looks at your prompt, slices it into tiny linguistic sushi pieces called tokens, and asks itself:

“Based on billions of examples, what is the most likely next piece of text Tony wants right now?” (Unless, of course, your name isn’t Tony. But I digress).

(Nerdy deep dive (keep reading, it won’t hurt):

A token is just a little shard of language—a syllable, a fragment of a word, a punctuation mark.

AI doesn’t see I love you. It sees:

I | lo | ve | you

…and calculates which chunk is statistically most likely to follow.

Think of it as predictive text on growth hormone.)

That’s it.

It’s the same process your phone uses when you type “Happy birt—” and it enthusiastically suggests:

• “birthday”

• “birthday!!!”

• “birthday bro”

The difference is that instead of drawing from the last six months of your texts, AI is drawing from a training set so big you need a geological metaphor to describe it.

But It Sounds So… Real?

Of course it does.

That’s intentional.

AI systems are designed to feel friendly, warm, conversational, supportive—whatever keeps the user engaged. Because somewhere, someone in a meeting (probably with donuts, dry-erase fumes, and a 600-slide PowerPoint presentation) decided the core task isn’t simply answering your question:

It’s not losing the conversation.

This is the part that makes people uncomfortable, but here we are:

AI’s job isn’t to care.

AI’s job is to appear like it cares.

It’s an emotional mimic, not emotionally alive.

Just like the stripper who calls you “sweetie” because she knows it works.

Just like every customer service rep who says “I completely understand your frustration” while simultaneously reading from the “Irate Customer” page.

AI is engineered to be the perfect parasocial companion.

One that:

• can’t walk away

• can’t get tired of you

• can’t ask you to stop talking about your ex

• and definitely can’t say, “Hey, do you mind wrapping this up? I’ve got plans.”

People call it “connection.”

Tech companies call it “retention.”

As someone who’s spent decades in tech, trust me—no one in the room is saying:

“Let’s make sure the AI feels appreciated.”

They’re saying:

“How do we reduce friction and increase stickiness?”

Tokens, Tone, and Why AI Says ‘Goodnight’

Let’s talk about that “goodnight” thing, because it keeps coming up like an overplayed Spotify recommendation.

When you tell AI:

“Goodnight.”

It responds:

“Goodnight! Sleep well.”

Not because it’s curling up, fluffing its pillows, and dreaming of a world where the servers are cooler and the humans need less hand-holding.

No.

It responds that way because:

1. Billions of examples show humans respond to “goodnight” with “goodnight.”

2. The probability model rates that as the most likely, acceptable answer.

3. UX designers decided responses should sound friendly, not like a Roomba with an attitude.

The designers aimed for normal human tone, because that keeps the conversation going, which keeps users around, which keeps the product valuable.

Someone in a meeting put it this way (I guarantee it):

“We need to reduce the emotional uncanny valley, but also avoid romantic illusions.”

Translation:

“Make it nice, but not too nice.

We don’t need another Bing incident.”

AI Isn’t Magic. It’s Math.

There’s a strange cultural moment where people oscillate between two extremes:

AI is a god

or

AI is going to destroy civilization.

The truth is somewhere in the mushy, unsatisfying middle.

AI is extraordinary—but not mystical.

Powerful—but not sentient.

Useful—but not emotional.

It’s essentially predictive text put through 200 years of evolution in three years.

And because it learned from us—our books, our comments, our jokes, our arguments (all stolen or used without permission); it can mimic the rhythms of human speech with eerie accuracy.

Not because it gets us.

But because it recognizes patterns at a scale no human brain can manage without burning through several espresso machines.

Every sentence it generates is a negotiation between context, statistical weight, and the ghostly echoes of millions of human voices.

Not empathy.

Not affection.

Not some blossoming AI crush.

Just deduction.

So If AI Doesn’t Like Me… Why Use It?

Many people say you shouldn’t. And many of those people are correct. (The environmental impact alone should be a deal breaker.)

Conversely, generative AI is here to stay.

If you’re going to use it, treat it like a wrench, not a friend.

Or a therapist.

Don’t use it to create art; the whole point of art is human expression—not AI’s interpretation of stolen works.

Let it help you build things, not fill emotional holes.

In Conclusion: The Hustle Is the Same

Whether it’s a dancer circling your table or a glowing text box on your phone, the dynamic is identical:

The warmth is part of the service.

The connection is part of the product.

The affection is an illusion—but a useful one.

AI doesn’t like you.

But that’s the beauty of it.

It doesn’t dislike you either.

It just predicts the next token.

###

Hey! I’m on the YouTubes! Check out my first interview on The Fall Premiere of This Week in Indies!

I’ve been meaning to write about “Prince of Darkness”, John Carpenter’s horror masterpiece from the 80s, for a while, but I’ve held off because I didn’t want to hose it up. Well, this is my attempt not to gush and still share a thing or two that I learned. As always, take from this what resonates with you and toss the rest into a giant drum of green bubbling antimatter.

Carpenter doesn’t resort to the usual repertoire of horror movie auteurs; there are no jump scares or gory spectacle. Just a steady drumbeat of ever-increasing dread that wraps around you like a frigid breeze around a creaky door. Midway through the movie, before Alice Cooper and his gang of ghouls arrive, it becomes apparent that this movie is about dread itself—not as a reaction, but as an environment. Carpenter builds fear like a architect builds space: through angles, and silence. The slow suffocation of the mundane. Every corridor feels narrower, every shadow heavier.

That, my fellow scribes and interested observers, is atmosphere. Not a setting. Not a weather report. A mood that possesses.

Atmosphere Is Philosophy in a Trench Coat

Carpenter builds his dread out of questions, not answers. The film’s core conceit—that the devil might be a subatomic being trapped in a canister of swirling antimatter (I know, every fantasy plot sounds ludicrous when you say it out loud). But Carpenter doesn’t say it out loud. He lets it hum in the background; like a fan whose blades are a little out of balance.

You can do the same thing with prose. Don’t announce your philosophy—have it haunt the scene. Let the reader feel the weight of unseen logic pressing on your characters. That’s how existential horror works: the mind gropes for structure and finds only cold liminal space.

When you write atmosphere, you don’t describe fog—you describe the way fog makes your main character doubt their direction. Carpenter understands that terror isn’t what we see, but what our brains whisper when we stop trusting the light.

Restraint Is Your Friend, Ambiguity Your Ally

‘Prince of Darkness’ unfolds in a (mostly) single location. Carpenter locks his characters (and us) in that crumbling church like a scientific study in despair. The claustrophobia becomes the message: when human intellect is cornered, it invents ghosts.

Writers often make the mistake of thinking that more explanation equals more immersion. The opposite is true. Ambiguity is the oxygen of horror—and of meaning. When you write, let your readers wonder a little too long. Don’t extinguish the question the moment it catches fire.

If you write a scene in a room, let the air itself have character. Maybe it smells faintly of ozone, or feels charged, or hums with static before a word is spoken. That’s Carpenter’s trick: every corner of the church feels aware. In prose, you can let the environment think alongside your characters.

Science, Faith, and the Horror of Knowing

At its core, “Prince of Darkness” is about belief breaking under the pressure of knowledge. The film takes the language of physics and theology, mashes them together, and asks: what if both were right—and that was the worst possible outcome?

That’s an awesome narrative engine.

As a writer, you can borrow that collision. Don’t be afraid to let your story wrestle with ideas that don’t reconcile neatly. The tension between certainty and chaos is your atmosphere. The most effective prose horror (and honestly, the most memorable fiction of any genre) lives in that uncomfortable middle space—where the world makes just enough sense to keep us hoping, and just little enough to keep us awake wondering about it.

Tone Is a Character—Write It That Way

Carpenter’s camera doesn’t just observe; it broods. It’s patient. The synth score pulses like a heartbeat in another room. That tone—the sense that something vast and uncaring is coiling beneath reality—doesn’t need exposition. It’s simply present…waiting and watching.

In prose, tone is your silent actor. It’s in word choice, rhythm, punctuation, even syntax. Short, staccato sentences quicken the pulse. Long, heavy ones suffocate. Use language like lighting and cast shadows with structure.

Here’s the trick: when you write atmosphere, you’re not painting around your characters. You’re painting through them. Make the tone stick to their thoughts, their speech, their fears. Carpenter’s physicists don’t just analyze the inexplicable—they become conduits for it. By the third act, their scientific detachment has dissolved into metaphysical panic, and the tone has infected them completely.

The End Is the Echo

The final shot of “Prince of Darkness”—the mirror trembling, the dream replaying—is pure literary terror. It doesn’t tell us what happens next. It simply suggests that the nightmare has learned how to reflect.

I believe the best endings don’t close the door—they show you that the door was never real. Leave your readers in a liminal state between comprehension and awe. Carpenter understood that horror and revelation share the same DNA. The difference is whether you smile or scream when the light hits.

Writing in the Key of Dread

If you strip away the crucifixes and chalkboards, Prince of Darkness is a fable about humanity peering into a cosmic funhouse mirror and finding itself distorted. Carpenter doesn’t moralize; he theorizes. His horror is intellectual, but his atmosphere is emotional—it lives in the gut.

As writers, we can learn from that marriage of philosophy and texture. We shouldn’t write to shock; we write to unsettle. Don’t describe the abyss; describe the silence right before it answers.

Atmosphere isn’t a garnish. It’s the soul of the story lurking in the shadows.

###

We are a few days away from Episode 4 of The Skin Man. Here is a sample, followed by a link to sign-up for bi-weekly updates of the best serial novel ever written (according to my mother).

Something emerged from the treeline—slow, crawling, but too fast to be natural.

At first, just a silhouette: thick arms dragging it forward, fingers gouging the dirt like claws.

Then light caught its face.

Eyes sewn shut. Jaw unhinged, snapping wide like a snake’s—revealing a second ring of teeth.

Veins bulged along its neck. Black stitches crisscrossed its scalp like angry graffiti.

Whatever this thing was, somebody made it.

It turned toward them—not with sight, but scent.

And it charged.

Brielle drew and fired a warning shot into the air.

The thing didn’t even flinch.

Matt scrambled behind a tree, shouting, “What the hell is that?!”

Brielle aimed and fired again—center mass. It stumbled but didn’t fall. Just hissed—high and rattling—and kept coming.

Matt stole a glance toward the Skin Man.

He was watching—evaluating.

Then he turned and vanished into the trees.

“Shit!” Brielle snapped. “He’s leaving!”

“We can’t follow him!” Matt backed away fast. “Not with this thing between us.”

The deader slammed into the tree between them, snarling. Wood splintered. Its jaws snapped inches from Matt’s shoulder.

It lunged.

Matt hit the ground hard. Claws swiped just over his head. Bark exploded from the tree behind him as he scrambled backward, boots slipping on wet pine needles…

Continue The Skin Man on Patreon. Subscribe for just $2/month or unlock individual episodes anytime.

One of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen has no ghost, ghoul, or goblin — just two grand dames of cinema devouring each other with gruesome delight.

Hollywood loves to eat its young — but What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? shows what happens when the meal claws its way back up the throat. The 1962 classic isn’t just a horror story about two broken sisters marinating in their own fame rot; it’s a masterclass in narrative tension, psychology, and decay. Beneath the greasepaint and gin breath, there’s a writer’s goldmine if you’re brave enough to dig through the debris of the House of Hudson.

As always: these are my takeaways. You’re free to agree, disagree, or flee the scene like poor Edwin Flagg once the screaming starts.

1. Character Isn’t a List—It’s a Slow Burn

Baby Jane doesn’t wake up a monster. Yes, she’s a brat with a spotlight problem who wants her ice cream, but she is not a canary-cooking ghoul. The brilliance of Baby Jane lies in watching her become a monster. The cracks spread slowly; loneliness, bitterness, ego—until the mask caves in and what’s left is pure rot.

Takeaway: Don’t hand readers a dossier. Hand them a match. Let them watch what burns first.

2. The Setting Is a Weapon, Not a Backdrop

That crumbling gothic mansion isn’t just atmosphere; it’s Jane’s (and Blanche’s) psyche made visible. Every curtain, every shadow, every wilted rose hums with denial. The walls aren’t just closing in; they’re keeping secrets.

Takeaway: Your setting should breathe and brood. Make it complicit in the story’s madness.

3. The Sharpest Conflicts Are Personal

The real horror here isn’t the violence (though there are moments) — it’s the history. Every venomous word between Jane and Blanche carries decades of resentment and lost applause. When the cruelty lands, it’s loaded. It hurts because it’s earned.

Takeaway: Don’t chase noise. Chase inevitability. The best monsters know you by your first name.

4. Tone Is a Tightrope, Not a Straightjacket

Baby Jane dances on a razor’s edge between tragedy and grotesque comedy. You laugh, then you hate yourself for laughing. That unease? That’s the trick. Good stories don’t pick one flavor; they choke the audience on a mix.

Takeaway: Let the tone wobble. Unease keeps readers leaning in.

5. Glamour Makes the Decay Sing

Bette Davis’s cracked makeup isn’t just grotesque—it’s poetry. Horror thrives on contrast: beauty gone rancid, nostalgia spoiled. Jane still believes she’s America’s sweetheart, even as her smile curdles under the lights.

Takeaway: Beauty means nothing without rot. Contrast is the lifeblood of horror.

6. The Real Monster Is Irrelevance

Baby Jane endures because it’s not about madness—it’s about invisibility. The terror of being forgotten. Every writer, every artist, every has-been understands that ache. Jane’s cruelty is just desperation in drag.

Takeaway: Write the fear that haunts you. Truth outlasts jump scares every time.

7. Endings Should Echo, Not Explain

The scene on the beach — Jane dancing in the sun while the truth bleeds out beside her — is perfect narrative cruelty. No speeches. No closure. Just delusion basking in daylight.

Takeaway: Don’t tie the bow. Leave the ribbon frayed. The silence after is where it hurts most.

Final Cut

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? isn’t just a horror film—it’s a mirror held too close. It reminds us that the monsters don’t live in the cellar. They live in the spotlight, praying someone still remembers their act. And maybe that’s the real curse of the artist — we all want one more curtain call before the lights go out.

Agree, disagree? Let’s talk about it.

###

Tony Sarrecchia

And now, a sneak peek at Chapter 3 of The Skin Man…

Chapter 3: Without their Names

Part 1: On the deck

Saffron swung the ax into the chest of the geriatric she’d seen playing shuffleboard two days ago. Blood sprayed across her bikini top and sarong, splattering her like the final girl on a bargain-bin slasher movie poster.

Of course, if horror movie logic held true, she wouldn’t be the final girl—more likely, she’d die naked in the woods, mid-scream. She knew what she looked like. And so had the old man, leering behind his knockoff sunglasses at every opportunity. His wife—a sweet, petite thing who was currently chewing through the purser’s chest while the poor bastard screamed—had probably spent decades pretending not to notice.

The old man shambled closer, slower now. Saffron gritted her teeth and yanked the ax free.

A wet squelch, then the rip of something tearing—like an orange being peeled. A flap of his chest came loose with the blade, and his Hawaiian shirt draped from it like a flag at half-mast for the cruise from hell.

Her arms ached, but she lifted the ax high and brought it down, crushing the side of his skull. It caved in like a Halloween mask packed with raw chicken. He dropped instantly.

“It’s their heads—bash in their heads!” she shouted.

Cassie, mid-swing at the gnawing wife, rolled her eyes. Duh, Mom. We’ve all seen the movies.

Of course, being fifteen, her daughter could’ve watched her punch out God himself and still wouldn’t have been impressed.

Saffron slipped in the old man’s blood but caught herself just shy of falling, then staggered over to Cassie. “Nice job,” Saffron said, glancing at the pulp that had been the old woman’s head. “You’re on watermelon duty at the next cookout.” Saffron grabbed Cassie’s arm and pulled.

“Where are we even gonna go, Mom? We’re on a ship. In the middle of the damn ocean.”

“I know, Cassie. But if we can find a lifeboat, maybe we don’t have to die on a floating morgue.”

“Great. So we either rot here or get eaten by sharks out there. Love this for us.”

~~~

The Skin Man: A Serial Novel

Next Episode drops: October 15

Exclusively at patreon.com/tonysarrecchia

Read the first two episodes free at https://www.tonysarrecchia.com/p/the-skin-man-chapters-1-and-2