Goal Post: Court, Cars, and Cacophony

Posted on June 20, 2026 by Charles Yallowitz

I’m going to come right out and say what the court thing is about.  It’s a custody thing and it’s been going on for a while.  To be honest, it’s been an area of contention since December 2018, but it reached a really rough point recently.  I’m not going into details in public, but I feel like saying this will explain to some people why I’m so down and stressed.  Not that I’m unthankful for the advice, but sometimes it misses the mark.  Anyway, court happened Tuesday and went well.  Then other stuff happened throughout the week on top of me getting though the last full week of students.  No wonder I put on some pounds without even stress eating.

I mentioned last week that my 2002 Toyota Camry had to be retired.  Cracked rear suspension with leaking into the tires or something.  I got a new car and cheaper/better insurance, which was all finalized on Thursday.  It’s not a modern car, but it has bluetooth.  I couldn’t switch over my 6-CD changer, so I got Spotify and made a huge playlist, which I run through the car radio.  Since I can’t touch the phone while driving, I had to set up Siri in case I have to switch songs or answer a call.  Had to retire my Garmin GPS as well, so now I have Waze.  A lot of changes that I have to get used to, especially having less space in the car.

Might as well get to the writing side of things even though I didn’t make as much progress as I would have liked.  All I really did was get further in the chapter breakdown for Coven of the Gray.  I usually don’t do an outline like this until I make the characters, but this is coming out different.  I can’t design the coven members until I know what they’re doing and their environment.  While I decided on that already, I’ve found that thinking about the story has forced some changes.  Various terrains didn’t match up and roles of some villains felt flat.  It’s tough because most of them are single encounter challenges, so I want to make them hit hard for their limited time.  If I’m lucky, I can finish the outline stuff during the week.

I was going to say next weekend, but I think I’m going to start writing Darwin & the Deadlands Queen once school is done on Friday.  I’m not 100% certain how much time I’ll have for writing due to the custody situation.  That’s fine though.  It just means I’ll move slower on the 7th book of a series that I haven’t even published the first book of.  I need my mind to get more into Darwin territory anyway.  Too stressed to think like a carefree character.  If I can get the prologue and maybe chapter one done before summer school starts on the 6th then I’m good.

Speaking of Darwin’s series, I still don’t know what I should do about that final book.  It happens after he takes on a global threat and is supposed to be fall out.  Basically, people start appearing with magic similar to his and a ‘war’ happens to see who the true Slumberlord is.  It was supposed to be a trilogy after his big adventure, but I can’t tell if it works as a series finale.  The trilogy was too stretched and a standalone seems odd.  Would it work as a penultimate adventure where I stretch out the final opponent for two books?  I guess I could have it be formless at the start and THEN it takes a solid form after the ‘war’ is complete.  Need to figure this out because it will determine the finale of Darwin & the Deadlands Queen.

Next week is the end of the school year for me.  Students have half-days, but I’m there for the long haul.  My son only has his final regents, so he’s starting on his college paperwork and essay.  That way he’s ready for August/September.  I don’t think I’m going to be doing a ton outside of work and parenting because it’s always stressful this time of year.  I’ll tinker with Coven and Darwin to get ready for the weekend, but only if I can muster the energy.  At least I only have one appointment on Friday.  I think.  To be honest, the custody situation makes the schedule a bit unpredictable.  Guess we’ll see how that plays out over the next few weeks or months.

Goals of the week:

  1. Think about The Slumberlord final volumes.
  2. Spend time with son.
  3. Finish the school year.
  4. Walk when weather isn’t a mess.
  5. Set up an eye doctor appointment?
  6. Take son shopping for a lesson on budgeting.
  7. Puzzle time to relax.
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The Female Badass Comes, Goes, and Returns?

Posted on June 19, 2026 by Charles Yallowitz

Xena

I mentioned on Monday how I have some confusion around the narrative surrounding female protagonists.  I’ve seen pushes to have them be less feminine, Mary Sues, or caricatures of the entire concept.  The reason this confuses me is that I remember growing up with female badass characters who had depth.  They had flaws, made mistakes, failed, and kept standing up to fight again like their male counterparts.  I mean, I remember:

Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Xena, Samus Aran, Princess Leia, Marion (Indiana Jones), Cheetara, She-Ra, Batgirl, Storm, Rogue, Wonder Woman, Dark Angel, Buffy, Sailor Moon (my first anime) . . . The list keeps going.  These and more were some of my favorites in the 80’s and 90’s.

Then, these types of characters seemed to disappear in late 90’s or early 2000’s.  They would pop up at times, but you didn’t see them very often.  I kept hearing people talk about wanting to make female versions of male characters.  This would happen and people would be annoyed.  My confusion here was that I felt like you didn’t have to do this.  Why have a female James Bond when you could just make an awesome spy movie with a female lead?  Atomic Blonde, La Femme Nikita, Alias, and even Black Widow were great, but then people act like they never existed.

I’m sure someone is going to say that men don’t want to watch female-led stories.  I hear that a lot, but I think that’s only because guys get told they aren’t supposed to.  Growing up, I was never told that Rainbow Brite, She-Ra, and other female-led stories weren’t for me.  I watched them anyway because they were fun.  Yes, I know girls were told they shouldn’t go near boy shows, which is wrong.  So, I wonder if the opposite was done at some point as a kind of revenge.  This sucks because I like having the option to watch a show with a female badass.  Can’t even remember the last time I watched a good one where the woman was designed to be more like a man.  This is another reason why I gravitate to anime because they have characters like this.

This is all my opinion and perspective, which could be skewed by what I’m exposed to and how I grew up.  Still, I feel like there’s a weird cycle of female badasses appearing, getting praise, disappearing, returning as badly written characters, vanishing, and then coming back as deep ones.  Again, maybe I’m wrong.  Honestly, I just wish they would come to stay.  I mean, I want to see a show like ‘Reacher’ where the main character is a woman who can intimidate and fight while not coming off as a man with shaved legs.

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Poetry Day: The Pandora’s Box Prescription

Posted on June 18, 2026 by Charles Yallowitz

Fry Meme

(We all know how medications have side-effects.  Some are much worse than others.  It can even get silly like anxiety meds that can cause anxiety.  My personal favorite was a medication I took for anxiety long ago gave me insomnia AND vivid nightmares.  So, I had trouble sleeping, but the times I did fall asleep were met with mental horrors.  All I remember is melting baby doll faces coming at me.  No idea why . . . Here’s the poem.)

As I sit here coughing
I contemplate this pill
A harsh Pandora’s Box
Holding hope
And an army of horrors
I am forced to swallow
With a bathtub’s worth of water
My shredded throat
Whimpering against the pill
Until it finds my stomach
Forcing me to wait
My mind wanders
I start to fear the worst
Hours of vomiting if I eat
Muscles popping if I wake
Nightmares if I sleep
Discharges of all manners
A feeling of fire upon my skin
The list of horrors
Is longer than my ills
All to cure a choking cough
And a runny nose
Will I heal without incident
Or will the worst befall me?

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7 Tips to Female Brawlers

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Charles Yallowitz

Morgiana from ‘Magi’

We’ll see if I can actually come up with seven tips.  All of these are going to be opinions because I’m aiming primarily to avoid the ‘mountain of muscle’ woman that many think is the only option.  So, let’s see:

  1. Like with men, women should know how to punch and kick.  Don’t have them flail wildly or slap.  A brawler can throw a punch.  Not only with how to do it without shattering their hands, but where to hit.  It doesn’t have to be formerly trained, but can be learned through years of experience.  This tip stems from seeing many female brawlers written solely to slap, scratch, bite, and latch onto an opponent’s back while shrieking.
  2. There are ways to write a woman as being muscular without having them be bodybuilders.  They can be toned, athletic, and other words that show they aren’t demure sticks.  Having them described as such shows they are in shape enough to throw down even if they aren’t going to hurl dining tables like their male counterparts.
  3. While I am sticking primarily to hand-t0-hand, brawlers are known to use weapons of convenience.  These are objects in the area, which they can throw or bash enemies with in addition to their fists and feet.  Doing so shows their battle intelligence and how they can think in the midst of chaotic action.  This is usually done when it’s ‘one vs many’ like in a Jackie Chan movie.  For some reason, people commonly forget about this tactic with female brawlers, but do remember it for female martial artists.
  4. Groin and throat shots are allowed.  Honestly, I think male brawlers should do these more often.  Women in fiction tend to depend exclusively on these though, which I guess is close to reality.  Anyway, it doesn’t hurt to have these occur, but they are pretty big fight enders.
  5. A female brawler doesn’t have to act aggressive, drunk, belligerent, or rude.  Basically, they don’t have to act like a stereotypical anti-hero male.  They can still be friendly and show emotions while having the ability to beat people into a pulp.  There doesn’t have to be a sacrifice of these things for the sake of combat.  It shouldn’t even be done to men, but it seems to go to extremes when someone wants to show a female is into fighting.
  6. Long hair is a challenge.  People tend to associate it with being feminine, but it’s a liability in a fight.  So, it makes sense for a brawler to have short hair.  That really only matters if that’s their focus though.  If a character isn’t combat-minded, but is able to fight then they might not go for the look.  This could be a weakness if they don’t have a way to tie it up or hide it before battle.  Then again, I have met women who have gotten into fights and grabbing their hair meant you were in hitting range.
  7. A big aspect of being a brawler is taking a hit and continuing to fight.  Now, men are expected to take more physical beatings than women.  There might be some biological truth to this, but that doesn’t mean one hit and a female brawler goes down.  The individual is a big factor here.  There are men who can tank blows and men who will fall to a single slap.  So, there should be women who can rush through a series of blows to get within reach too.
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Teaser Tuesday: Mother and Daughter

Posted on June 16, 2026 by Charles Yallowitz

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

Here’s a teaser from Warlord of the Forgotten Age and I think it might be the only time Dariana and Zaria interact.  At least, this was the most memorable encounter between the mother and daughter.

Continue reading →

Posted in Legends of Windemere, Teaser Tuesday, Warlord of the Forgotten Age | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Shadow Self Part II: Benefits

Posted on June 16, 2026 by Charles Yallowitz

If you missed Part I of this series, you can find it here. Our Shadow Self—the repressed, unacknowledged, or darker parts of our subconscious mind—…

Shadow Self Part II: Benefits
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

The Brawling Heroine

Posted on June 15, 2026 by Charles Yallowitz

So, the scene above is from the anime ‘May I Ask For One Final Thing?’ and the protagonist is the woman in red.  Basically, Scarlet’s abusive arranged fiancée announced he was calling it off to be with the pink-haired girl who joins in the mocking.  In response, Scarlet does what she does for the entire series.  Beats the living crap out of those who piss her off.  It was a fun series that got me thinking about female brawlers and how they might be harder to write than we think.

I think part of the challenge is that we typically associate throwdown, bare-knuckle brawling with men.  Big, beefy, testosterone-oozing bruisers start wailing on each other without holding back.  It doesn’t bring to make anyone with a lighter frame, which makes women, especially those with Scarlet’s build, not come to mind.  You can start adding agility and speed to the mix, but you lose part of the fighter type as you turn away from brute force.  Hence, a big challenge with a female brawler.

Authors have found ways around it though.  Magical enhancement is an easy way if you don’t want to give the characters muscles.  That’s kind of a cop out unless you add it to training in hand-to-hand combat.  More often, a female brawler is made to be more muscular and less feminine.  Unfortunately, this can go to the extreme and erase nearly all traces of them being women.  It works if that’s what the character wants, but it creates the idea that brawling is truly only for men.  Personally, I feel like there has to be a way to have a feminine brawler.

Then again, there is the issue of brawlers needing more than strength.  Another aspect of their style and persona is durability.  They hit hard without shattering their knuckles and can take blows without slowing down.  One could say that’s what a fistfight is about.  It’s about whoever can stay standing after getting hit.  Most people feel that a woman would fall before a man due to muscle density and other biological differences.  I do feel like each gender is designed to handle different types and sources of pain, but there should be a way to avoid this issue.  It really might come down to adding dodging to the mix.  My brain keeps going to a barfight though, which tends to be a slugfest.

Even with all of these challenges, I think the female brawler should be used more often in fiction.  Mostly because I remember there being a lot of tough, female protagonists that would hit as hard as they received.  I’ll touch on this later, but growing up with Ripley, Sarah Connor, Xena, Samus, Wonder Woman . . . My point is that I’m so used to seeing badass women throwing down with people that I have trouble imagining it being very hard to create.  In my own series, I had Nyx (a caster) be a brawler without making her big and burly.  She was scrappy and willing to take a punch to get in close enough to wail on a person.  So, I know it’s possible without making the female character simply be a woman’s head on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body.

Now, I’m not saying go skinny and lean.  Some muscle is needed even with men.  There’s just a limit if you want to retain specific feminine traits.  Again, if you want to go with a female bruiser then you can.  My point, that I’m sure many will miss, is that it shouldn’t be the ONLY option for a female brawler.  There has to be a way to have them be both.  I feel like they did that with Scarlet since she retains her poise and femineity, but can shift into a cruder state.  For example:

Oh, that’s her brother screaming because he doesn’t like that she has a violent streak when angered.  Anyway, it’s really this character that made me feel like I don’t see enough female brawlers who can also put on a dress and act like a ‘lady’.  We see male characters who beat up the bad guys and then walk into a party to be charming.  Heck, that’s every male spy outside of a comedy.  I mean, they don’t sacrifice any of their masculinity with either persona.  So, why can’t we write more women who can do the same and not sacrifice all of their femininity?

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Time Is Faster in the Past

Posted on June 14, 2026 by Charles Yallowitz

This is going to be a rant, but I don’t know how long how it will be.  It comes from hearing so many people talk about the passage of time.  Specifically, in relation to teenagers while the speakers are adults.  I’ll admit that I’m guilty of thinking this way in the past, but I’m trying to change my perspective.

So, the statements that triggers this thought revolve around teenagers dealing with hard situations.  It can range from minor to major, but I’ve found most adults talk about how their teen years will go faster.  When you look back, it does feel like they were gone in the blink of an eye.  Maybe this is to say that there are greater challenges when you become an adult, which could be true.  Yet, this really minimizes whatever a teenager is handling at the time.  I’m sure all of us didn’t ace those years and ran into situations that stressed us out.

The sense of time passing caught my attention more than anything else.  I decided to ask my son if it felt like his teen years were going quickly.  He said that was crazy because all of the stuff he’s been facing make it feel like every day takes forever.  Even if he wasn’t dealing with hardships, the time he exists in isn’t going by as quick as us adults seem to think it does.  A blink to him is just a second and not 4-6 years.  This makes the suggestion that things will be done and over before you know it rather cruel.  It may even come off as telling teenagers that they have to grow up quickly, which I know some people will support because they have an issue with childhood.

In some situations, I feel like this is used to be dismissive towards the feelings and stress of teenagers.  By believing they are living through a time that goes fast, you think their trials and hardships are minor.  It can’t be major if it’s happening in such a short, simple period of their lives.  Why take them seriously if that’s the case?  This can lead to people ignoring pleas for help until the teenager is at a dangerous point, which can include drugs, alcohol, unprotected sex, criminal activity, and suicide.  When a teen comes to you for help, the suggestion that they have to bear it for a few years is a massive slap in the face to them.

Part of me wonders if this is because so many adults hit a point in their lives when they don’t feel like they can change their situations.  Bad job, bad marriage, bad health, or whatever is taken as things one can no longer escape.  Not without major sacrifice and risk, which many adults won’t attempt.  The only option is to push on and hope an outside force, like time, changes things.  So, they handle the hardships of teenagers with the same fatalistic mentality.  Unfortunately, teenagers don’t realize this and it comes off as minimizing or dismissing their pain.

My suggestion for anyone faced with a teenager asking for help is to listen.  Don’t try to tell them to grin and bear it.  Try to help them find an action they can take to ease their stress, which doesn’t depend on waiting.  While you feel that their teen years will go quickly, they are living them at this moment.  Every day is an actual day to them and not part of a fractured memory that doesn’t contain every minute of activity.  Understand that they have a sense of urgency because they are in whatever situation has them stressed.  You may have been in the same one, which took years to get out of since nobody helped you when you needed it.  Be the person your teenage self needed to get them through the rough patches.

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Goal Post: I Should Have Kept My Mouth Shut

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Charles Yallowitz

Last weekend, I told a friend that I had a rough school year.  There’s been the health issues due what put me in the hospital and a few other maladies.  I’m dealing with legal stuff, which will be in the spotlight next week.  Been trying to help my son navigate some rough emotional and mental waters.  Still, I said at least nothing was going wrong with my car . . . You think I’d know better.

I brought my car in because it was making ‘ufo’ noises when it accelerated.  Joke was on me because the real problem was in the rear suspension.  Not enough to make the car undrivable, but it’s too expensive to repair on such an old machine.  It won’t make it for long distance trips or out of the month, so I had to spend the last few days of the week dealing with this crisis.  Getting a new used car next week after I do the DMV shuffle and I’m getting cheaper, better insurance too.  So, I’m kind of coming out ahead on this fiasco in that respect.

Unfortunately, I can’t take the 6-CD changer with me, which makes my collection moot.  I can only find external machines that hold a single CD and it’s too expensive to install a new one.  So, I’m going to turn my phone into the sound system.  Already set up Spotify and got the premium to make a huge playlist.  So far, I’ve added rock, hip hop, metal, cartoon themes, movie themes, anime music, instrumental, and video game music.  I can add 10,000 songs, so I’m going to put my entire CD collection on it and more.  Hard to remember all of the songs I want on there though.  It’s a small project for the weekend that I’ll do when I’m not walking or writing.

Speaking of Coven of the Gray, I didn’t get to touch it like I had hoped.  Two half-days at work were taken up with talking about work or just chilling.  There’s no place at the school I can go to for solitude, so I doubt I’ll get any done with half-days start up next week.  My hope is to finish the chapter ‘outline’ this weekend when I’m not walking or running errands.  My mind hasn’t been on point lately and several ideas have been ephemeral.  Part of it is trouble sleeping due to my cortisol levels being high.  Thank you, stress.

My summer plan is still to start writing Darwin & the Deadlands Queen.  I’ve gone over the outline a few times, but I’m worried about my mental state.  Keep thinking I screwed up Darwin & the Joy Path.  Don’t know how, but a voice is telling me I made some mistakes.  I feel like I forgot some of Darwin’s habits like toe-walking and arm flapping.  At the very least, they weren’t as common.  I can fix that in edits though.  It could also be the usual ‘imposter syndrome’ that has gotten worse over the last few years for some reason.  I’ll get to editing once I write the last half of the series though.  There are two more after Deadlands Queen.  I don’t know exactly about the final one, which was originally a spin-off trilogy.  Don’t want to give spoilers, but it revolves around a problem that comes from facing off with the Big Bad in the penultimate.  It almost feels like an epilogue.  Maybe I’ll check out the outlines and see if I can combine them into one story, but I doubt it will work due to the timeline

Aside from car and court stuff, my son had the SAT last Saturday and two regents tests (English and Algebra 2) this week.  So, a lot of studying and resting were required.  We went to see ‘He-Man’ after the SAT, which I loved.  My son never saw He-Man before and wasn’t sure about the campiness.  The fight scenes were cool, which he begrudgingly admitted to me.  I think he was mentally burnt out from the test too.  At least, that and the other tests are over.  He only has a history regents and a few extra helps for that left of 11th grade.  Then, it’s a summer of . . . Not sure yet.

With so much going on next week, I don’t really know if I should get my hopes up.  Every day has a major event either at work or home.  The court situation has me stressed the most because I don’t know how things will go.  Can’t talk about it in public in any detail beyond that.  Be nice to make some progress and gain some closure.  Don’t mean for myself, but for others involved.  The car situation isn’t any better, but I think that’s getting fixed enough.  Need to find a phone holder for my car too.

Goals of the week?

  1. Get a new car and insurance.
  2. Get through court.
  3. Help son study if he lets me.
  4. Set up Spotify playlist.
  5. Try to rest.
  6. Stay cool and hydrate.
  7. Finish watching ‘Resident Alien’ Season 4.
  8. Work on Coven of the Gray, which really should be higher on the list.
  9. Figure out where I can put Lego Minas Tirith.  No space in my room and it’s basically 2 foot x 2 foot x 1 foot.  It’s the width and depth that gives me trouble.
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Individual or Personal Setting

Posted on June 12, 2026 by Charles Yallowitz

The final layer of setting is smaller and personal.  It is about the individual as well as the aspects of the world that are neither physical nor temporal.  I really found two explanations for this layer, which makes it a bit confusing.

Personal Setting

This version of the layer involves the direct vicinity of the character.  It’s the room, house, and anything short of the a large city.  It is where they would have intimate knowledge and interactions with objects.  It is where action happens instead of the when and general world.  One could say this is the more specific aspects of setting instead of the overall environment.  For example, a city would be environmental while the inside of a bar where the characters meet would be personal.

It is important to pay attention to this layer because it is where most of your descriptions would be found after starting.  As the action happens, the personal setting will change and shift.  This is either due to objects and people being moved around or a new location being introduced.  It can be as minor as a chair being broken or major like a wrecking ball taking out a wall.  Maybe it can help to consider each personal setting a tree and the environment is the forest.

Cultural Setting

While this isn’t the term, I couldn’t think of another way to explain the variation.  You can probably tell what this means too.  An aspect of setting is the morals, rules, and laws of the overall society the story takes place in.  So, a character’s culture would be a factor into their personal setting.  This could determine decor of their dwelling and how they interact with others.  It really does sound like more character than setting, which is true.  Yet, it does have an influence over the latter.

I feel the cultural aspect also makes this layer bleed into environmental.  While it isn’t a physical aspect of the world, it does determine such things.  The types of food, religious centers, clothing, and social group interactions are bound to cultures as well as the environment.  Think about how our own world works.  Many cultural groups will gather amongst themselves with minimal interactions with outsiders.  This is how countries and certain neighborhoods are born.

The odd thing is that this can be global, which puts it on the level of environmental setting.  Yet, it’s not entirely physical and can be in a limited area.  That makes me feel like it’s closer to individual, especially with cultures typically only being introduced through characters.  In other words, this layer might be a half one that sits between the two bigger ones.  That or the allergy medication I’m taking as I write this is making me more confused than usual.  You know, my point still stands because cultural setting can be both localized and global.

So, how do you add individual setting to your stories?  As a reader, what would you put under these categories?

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