Danno's Lair

Five Things on a Friday: Bye Week Blues

2026-11-13T07:10:12.886-05:00

Happy Friday, friends.

There's no Army game this weekend, which is probably just as well because it's been several weeks since the team has looked good. I don't know if it's injuries that are accumulating, or if there's something else going on, but this year's edition of the Black Knights is the most disappointing since probably 2019, when Coach Monken took a pre-season Top 25 team 5-8. Even then, we knew why in hindsight, and the team still managed to take Michigan to overtime in the Big House. By contrast, this year has been an inexplicably confounding rollercoaster.

What can you do?

With the bye, I at least had the chance to work on my own stuff, and that's been nice. I'm now about 45K words into the third book in the Necropolis Saga, i.e. the Unmasked & Unchosen series, and I'm excited to finish it, though it'll probably take me two full months after the season ends.

Let's get into it.

1. Quick Writing Update

I figured out most of the new book's story last summer and built a whole outline for it before we got fully into football season because I didn't want my previous story-planning to go to waste once I turned my attention elsewhere. But that doesn't mean that I've already made every possible decision. In fact, I rarely work with an outline, at least initially, and I never feel bad about changing shit if it just doesn't feel right. All the outline means is that I built a general sense of how the book ends and how to get there before I set it aside. However, I also changed nearly every possible detail in the course of drafting the new chapters this week -- because I finally had time to think about them -- and I felt grateful to finally have the chance to do it.

Bottom line, I think I figured out the new book's title yesterday. If you're curious about it, yesterday's post will tell you everything you need to know.

2. Departing DC Co-Head James Gunn Reflects On “Trying” Four Years, Juggling Being Filmmaker & Exec (Deadline)

So, yes, I will miss the people around me, and I will miss being the co-caretaker of these great characters, but I’m also incredibly relieved and excited to get back to pure filmmaking.

I'm not very excited by the prospect of yet another rebooted DC Universe. I get that James Gunn's vision might not be for everyone, and that especially as the head of specifically DC Studios, he probably should've been making big-budget popcorn crowd-pleasers instead of weirdly unique stories about outcasts and aliens. But I really liked those stories!

Then Bloomberg reported yesterday that the new Skydance just can't afford DC given that the company took on a whopping $87B in debt in order to get the Warner Brothers deal done. Which means that the whole enterprise looks likely to sink under its own weight before too long. Even if they make a billion dollar movie every year, it'll still take them most of a century to service that debt, and friends, billion dollar movies are kinda rare these days. There's even been talk that Skydance might sell all of DC to help pay off some of this debt, which seems to be both a solid idea short-term and completely bonkers in terms of overall assets.

Why are you buying Warner Brothers if you don't want to make Warner Brothers movies?

The whole thing had me a little depressed before I saw ScreenCrush's take on it. This, at least, gave me some hope that we might still see some good stuff from James Gunn, even if DC Studios itself looks headed for even more unfocused permanent redevelopment.

3. Friday Hair Metal: Fortune's Fate (Spotify)

This showed up randomly in my queue yesterday, and I found myself grooving to it. I checked out the band just this morning, discovered they have just 50K followers on Spotify, and now I'm sharing them with you.

MIRADOR

Look at this band photo! My man is dressed like the senior midshipmen aboard the HMS Surprise. We're talking about the bad seed here, the kid gets all the other mids drinking too much tincture of laudanum.

Anyway, enjoy a little indie rock, friends. And again, happy Friday.

4. Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction is making a statement. Just look at his sweatshirts (AP)

But Colom, a 43-year-old Democrat, goes further with what’s printed on his attire. There’s nearly always a message, usually expressing pride in Mississippi and Black America. Colom stumps for Mississippi as a whole, but he also embraces its civil rights history and Black residents — the largest proportion of the population and electorate of any U.S. state.

“I’m just glad that the media is getting the opportunity to see our state,” he told reporters during the post-Election Day extended ballot count. “Go out and talk to our Mississippians. They’re very proud of this moment.”

I noticed the sweatshirts but didn't think anything of them. I just figured that the guy went to Alcorn State, a college I know chiefly because I've seen them play in the Celebration Bowl and because former Titans QB Steve McNair famously went there.

It turns out that's not wrong, it just wasn't the whole story.

5. Stokes has 5 total TDs, Memphis blows 21-point lead before beating South Florida 52-41 (ESPN)

By the time I went to turn this on last night, Memphis was already up 21-0, and I thought the game was all but over. Wound up watching The Gilded Age instead, which I've come to like quite a lot after starting it as low-key research for the short story "The Singlestick." Turns out, though, that the Bulls came back and made this one a barnburner with a 21-point third quarter, and here we are.

Friends, I don't know if Memphis is a great team, per se, but they have great talent, even if they play with the same maddening lack of consistency that currently plagues the Black Knights. They look liable to win the American Conference almost by default this year, too, though I suppose it's a little premature to say that before we see how tomorrow goes with North Texas at UTSA. Still, Memphis undoubtedly has the most complete team.

Playing on the road midweek is never easy, so we gotta give Memphis credit for figuring it out, especially when USF started making their comeback.

I still really wish the Black Knights had figured it out this year, though. They have the right team to win the American. They just don't have the right headspace and timing.

* * *

That's all I've got. Do me a favor and subscribe to the Return of Dr. Necropolis newsletter if you haven't already. It's free, I send you just one email per month, and it'll mean a lot to me.

I've said this a zillion times in this space, but it bears repeating: this book is gonna live or die on the strength of the word-of-mouth of my personal network. That's you!

Seriously. Let me help you find a new book. I promise it won't be like anything you've read previously.

Enjoy the weekend. See you next Friday!

Quick Writing Update

2026-11-12T15:41:14.324-05:00

Army's bye this week was well-timed, at least for me.

I'd have done things differently if the Black Knights had beaten Air Force this past weekend to set up a climactic showdown with the Mids for the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy this December. Since they didn't, though, I went ahead and put the AFF Crew on a bye with the team. Rob and I shot College Football Roundtable on Tuesday, but we skipped the AFF Army Football Show since we didn't think anyone was burning to relive the loss, and we've only run one article this week, Omar's preview of this weekend's American Conference slate.

That's given me a fair amount of time to work on my own stuff in the same week in which I had both the Veterans Day holiday and a previously scheduled rest week in the pool. I've been able to write most of two chapters since last Friday, breaking a logjam in the new story that's been in place since before football season started.

I feel pretty good about that.

I also just started working on maybe the best action set piece of the book so far. That's good because the book has kind of a YA set-up that I've found challenging to work past. But I now finally feel like the beginning is done, and we're well and truly into the middle. I'm a little concerned that the book might balloon to, like, 125K or more words, but whatever. The Return of Dr. Necropolis finally weighed in at just 334 six-by-nine-inch pages, including all the front matter and the Afterword. I suppose it won't kill anyone if this one goes another fifty pages past that.

Anyway, yes, I am working way ahead. We're talking here about the third Necropolis book, and you guys haven't even seen the first one yet. The first one won't even drop until the end of December. Still, I'm kind of a one-man band here, so prior planning remains key. I got the initial proof for Dr. Necropolis just this week and wound up dumping two full days into going back over every aspect of it. In order to have time for that sort of thing, I have to create it from scratch.

Even for a West Point-trained former Army planner, that sort of thing can get tricky.

With all of this in mind, the third book's title has been bothering me since before I started writing it. The first book is and always was called The Return of Dr. Necropolis. The second book started as Necropolis Unchained but became Gun Girl Gracie during the planning phase. I would've called this third book Surf-Girl Keeva but that's way too close to Gun Girl Gracie, and anyway, having two titles like that in a row might give some potential readers the wrong idea. Yeah, both books theoretically have female protagonists, but I'm not some aspiring feminist writer, and if I tried to be, it wouldn't feel authentic. I mean, sure, Tiffany Trujillo is technically a co-protagonist in The Return of Dr. Necropolis, too, but there's NOTHING truly feminist about that book, and perhaps more to the point, Frank McGuinness already has such a tendency to take stories over that even attempting to lean into something like that feels like a lie.

So yeah. I kept Surf-Girl Keeva as a working title but went looking for something else. I thought maybe The Necropolis Legacy, but I don't know. Honestly, that never felt right, either.

Having had both time and enough free headspace to ponder it this week, here's where my head's at now.

That isn't a cover. It isn't even a final title. It's just a kind of vision board for the story. Font-wise and just in terms of its basic layout, it's loosely based on this:

Anyway. I feel better now, though I make no promises that this is where we will finally land.

5 Things on a Friday: A Good Week of Racing

2026-11-06T05:00:00.000-05:00

I did a lot of racing this week, friends. I wrote about my little bike race on the Hudson Greenway earlier this week, but then yesterday, a guy in his late twenties or early thirties showed up at the YMCA, and well, I suppose you know me well enough to know what happened.

He picked up my set at the fourth of ten 100s on 1:30, and I had to go 1:12 and then 1:10 to stay ahead of him. But by then, friends, I am sorry to say that I thought I might hyperventillate. It's a shame because my mind and muscle memory knew exactly what I needed to do to hold serve, but my body just wasn't gonna let it happen. My man wound up taking reps six through ten, following something like explosive decompression on my part.

Actually, though, I'm proud of myself because I slowed to a strictly mortal 1:20 for rep six, then gradually picked it back up through the last three reps to finish at 1:14. That's solid swimming for a guy in his fifties and was not at all easy to do. It takes quite a bit of skill and experience to work through pacing like that, and I was happy with how it came out.

Anyway, our next and last heavy set was three 200s pull on 2:50, and I won those, which was nice. Pull puts a little less strain on the heart and lungs and a little more on sheer upper-body strength, and it's also more of a mid-distance thing, so at a certain level, I played to my strengths here. More than that, though, it was really nice to swim with somebody who pushed me. That does not happen every day.

So there you have it, friends. Let's get into this week's Five Things.

1. Cover sneak peek, early reviewer copies, and a huge favor!

I sent out a new Stratford City Press mailer yesterday. But I actually need you guys to read this thing, so I'm going to reprint it here.

Do me a favor and read this thing!

Follow the link, or just scroll through to the next article after you finish with this one. If you're wondering, I'm trying to set up the launch for my book, and I happen to know I'm going to need your help. That starts with this week's mailer.

Thanks in advance!

2. New York, I Love You, but You’re Bringing Me Down (The Stranger)

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York opens to the strains of LCD Soundsystem’s plaintive lament “New York, I Love You, but You’re Bringing Me Down” before introducing Turturro’s Harry Lehman, a full-time pickpocket of long standing.

Each day, Harry, whose name appears to be a nod to James Coburn’s thief in yet another crime caper, Harry in Your Pocket, looks after his wife, Rosie (Karina Arroyave), who is largely catatonic, and fills the pockets of his long, tweedy coat with wallets and watches to bring to Ben (Steve Buscemi), a pawn shop owner and former running buddy, with whom he splits the proceeds. They’re analog guys in a digital world who profit off the misfortune of others, but they aren’t dangerous like the mobbed-up Dylan (Will Price), who becomes Harry’s latest mark.

You know how I love a good crime-fiction story. This one looks amazing.

3. Remembering Jaynie

My friend Rob surprised me this week with an entire soundtrack he created using an early version of The Return of Dr. Necropolis. I don't know that I'm going to use any of this, but it was very flattering to receive it. A lot of it is this really moody jazz, at least in the early going. Later, it transitions into this weird techno vibe that reminds me a lot of the 1990s.

Here's a clip from one "chapter," titled "Remembering Jaynie." Take a listen if you dare. Also, peep that crazy cover art.

If that's not enough for you, both the Kings of Leon and Buffalo Traffic Jam dropped new music today. Kings of Leon put out a whole album, but the first half, at least, sounds quite sad, and I've not finished it yet. BTJ just gave us a single, so here. This thing slapped.

4. How Cleta Mitchell Turned Trump’s “Big Lie” Into a Movement (Propublica)

After Joe Biden took office, when others abandoned the fight or scoffed as Trump clung to conspiracy theories, Mitchell doubled down, founding a grassroots organization devoted to rewriting election laws and rules to be more restrictive. Members of her group, the Election Integrity Network, were named to vital election-related positions in swing states and, later, in the second Trump administration.

We're very lucky that this past election was not particularly close, or else these guys would be all up in arms in every state in the union. They had that strategy all ready to go but didn't get the results they needed to make it work.

With so many state houses now in Democratic control, the strategy won't be viable through the next election cycle.

5. Midterm Elections Live Updates: Democrats Eye Mississippi and Alaska in Hopes of Adding to Senate Majority (NY Times)

Control of the U.S. Senate has already been determined, with 33 of the 35 contests being called within hours of polls closing. In Alaska and Mississippi, however, no race calls have been made for the Senate and it could be quite some time until either contest is decided, even as some additional vote totals trickle out in the coming days.

In both cases, the Democratic nominee is clinging to a slim lead...

It's legit shocking to imagine Democrats winning in Mississippi, but that one looks like they might not call it for a few days, at least.

I will say, though, that generally speaking, most people just want to live their lives. They don't give a shit about any of this. They want to do what they do, have enough money to do it, and live with at least some confidence that their kids will be okay. We then argue about what that looks like because, as my father always used to say, "What you see depends on where you sit." But still, that basic reality will almost always hold true.

If one party loses the plot on that, well, you get what we have here.

Have a good weekend, friends!

Week 10 Threads 🏴‍☠️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ The Skull and Crossbones logo, as used on the “Black Flag”, has been synonymous with Army Football for more than a quarter of a century. The logo symbolizes the hallmarks of the program: toughness, tenacity, camaraderie and accountability. #GoArmy https://t.co/YYg1ywBAdj
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) November 5, 2026

Go Army! BEAT AIR FORCE!!!

Cover sneak peek, early reviewer copies, and a huge favor!

2026-11-05T06:13:59.156-05:00

I sent out a new Stratford City Press mailer yesterday. But I actually need you guys to read this thing, so I'm going to reprint it here.

Do me a favor and read this thing!

Friends,

I’d hoped to have a finished cover to show you by now, but although we’re very close, I don’t have the final file just yet. For now, you’re just going to have to make do with this new teaser design! It pulls from elements of the cover, so at least you can get a sense of our general aesthetic.

I just started working with Eugenio, our typesetter and interior designer. I adapted this teaser piece from bits of his work as well as elements from Natalia, our cover designer over at Dawn Book Design.

If you’re curious about the design — or if you haven't caught any of the teaser chapters on my blog — you can check out Eugenio’s layout for the prologue and the first five chapters right here.

That link will take you through to a 12MB preview PDF currently sitting in a Google Drive folder. It’s not the final proof, but it's more than polished enough that I feel great about sharing it. Let me know what you think!

A Quick Secret About BookFunnel

Here’s the real reason to sign up for this newsletter and to get your friends to sign up, too — I plan to use this mailing list to distribute early preview copies of the book sometime in early-to-mid-December.

The simple truth is that independent books like mine succeed or fail on the strength of their online reviews. You guys might know me from around town, from West Point, or from As For Football, but very few of you are familiar enough with my fiction to buy my novel sight-unseen. We hope to overcome that with word-of-mouth and early reviews. Amazon, for example, won’t actively push a book through its algorithm until it hits at least fifteen written reviews. That’s not just star ratings, but actual text reviews.

So, I’ll be sending out early copies to anyone on this list who wants to read the book ahead of time. God willing, you fine folks will read it early and drop your honest reviews on December 29, the moment we launch.

Sound good?

I know I’m asking for a little help here, and for that, I want to say thank you in advance.

Another Great Review in the Books

Speaking of reviews, we picked up another fantastic endorsement since our last email:

“The Return of Dr. Necropolis is a compelling story of sacrifice, second chances, and the self-destructive power of hubris. It sinks its teeth into you and won’t let go until the final page.”

— Alan Evans, creator of Rival Angels

How You Can Help

That’s all I’ve got for today, save for one final note. You can help me out a whole hell of a lot simply by subscribing to my mailing list. It's free! And you'll be in position to get a review copy of the book in early December.

Friends, this book is going to live or die by word of mouth. I can’t stress that enough. If you know someone who’d dig a gritty, super-science noir story with classic superhero dynamics, please pass this along or send them directly to my newsletter sign-up page.

People who’ve read the draft have loved it. All I’m asking is that you help put it on the radar of anyone else who might enjoy it.

As a reminder, The Return of Dr. Necropolis launches on December 29, 2026, through Stratford City Press, a division of As For Football LLC.

Thank you for your time and support. BEAT NAVY!

Sincerely,

Danno E. Cabeza

Why Do I Do These Things?

2026-11-03T05:52:37.069-05:00

Channeling my inner Joe Abercrombie today to ask, “Why do I do these things?”

Riding up the Hudson Greenway yesterday, a guy jumps on my wheel and drafts for maybe a mile. I pulled over, so he could come around, but he just sat there, sucking my draft. Eventually, I pulled up and turned to see a guy about my own age, fully kitted out, riding a new-looking racing bike.

“Come on, guy. Really?” I ask. “I’m 53, riding a folding bike, wearing a backpack.”

Dude got immediately defensive. “I’m 54!”

“You’re not wearing a backpack, and you’re on a racing bike. It’s cowardly.”

Dude gives me a hand gesture, and it’s on. Lock S-Foils in Attack Position & start your run. This is happening.

The Hudson Greenway

I gotta say at this point that there was no way I could win this race. I didn’t have the bike or nearly enough gears. It was like racing a corvette in my daughter’s 2017 Subaru Impreza. If this dude had ANY talent, he was gonna take the thing eventually.

But friends, it took him a full mile to drop me, and even then, I thought I had him for a good half-minute there. Got my heart rate all the way up to Ludicrous Speed, and afterwards I started coughing my head off, but that was almost awesome.

So I ask you, Dear Reader:

We do I do these things?

Feeling Sad Today

2026-11-02T10:56:44.966-05:00

While I realize that one should never show weakness, the truth is that I'm feeling sad today. This has led to one of these weeks in which I'm struggling to explain to myself why I do all this shit.

I know I should be excited about this weekend's Air Force game, but after the last two games, I'm low-key expecting Army to lose by fourteen points. That defense is actively terrible, and the Zoomies are gonna shut Army's offense down.

I'm telling you, this has the potential to be really, shockingly ugly. We'll see if Coach Monken can rally the troops, but as of this writing, I'm expecting some sad, shocked faces on the Army sidelines. Worse, I really don't feel like freezing my ass off out there just to watch these guys piss away yet another winnable game. My favorite team has heart and lots of talent, but they don't match that to any discipline or persistence, and even after two months of football, their secondary still looks lost as hell out on the field.

Army's new Defensive Coordinator Daryl Dixon was an elite Safeties Coach, and unfortunately, his promotion has left something like a void in the team's leadership. I don't think it's Dixon. Dixon seems to want to be aggressive, and if he hadn't called some timely blitzes that have gotten home at critical moments, Army wouldn't have won the games they've won. So between you and me, I think Safeties Coach Scot Sloane and Cornerbacks Coach Munir Price are having trouble getting on the same page.

Price is the new guy, so maybe he's the problem, but from here, we have no way of knowing for sure. What's obvious, though, is that the team gets lost in zone coverage. As a result, their red zone defense suddenly sucks shit. This cost them games against USF and La. Tech, and it almost cost them the game against Tulsa.

Let's be clear: they deserved to lose that Tulsa game. They got bailed out on a Tulsa touchdown that would've put the Golden Hurricane up by 14 with about four minutes left to play by a phantom holding call, resulting in a missed field goal, blocked punt, and eventually, a miracle finish.

Absent that bogus call, Tulsa would have won that game.

So. Given that we know Army should be coming into this weekend's game at 4-4 off a two-game losing streak, now how confident do you feel?

Meanwhile, indications are that AFF has maybe lost two of its three sponsors, and we're down year-on-year with Patreon subscriptions, too.

If that happens, I think it might be time to fold up the tents and close down AFF LLC. My wife was arguing against this, saying that it's a business and ups and downs are inevitable, but what else would you do with a business that suddenly and unexpectedly loses half its revenue?

I gotta admit, too, that I'm tired. I feel like this a lot around this time of year just because of the grind of making content. It's made worse this year, though, by watching my favorite team underperform so relentlessly. This should be one of the best Army Teams in recent memory, and instead, they're barely treading water. Meanwhile, with AFF structured the way it is, I have to cheerlead this shit, even when I'm expecting the worst and not really feeling it.

Why am I doing this, seriously?

Speaking personally, I kind of just want to write my book, tell my stories, and move on with my life. At the same time, I'm starting to wonder if maybe this whole AFF-thing has perhaps run its course. Moreover, if I start writing here exclusively -- or maybe even finally level up to a more authentic-style blog at something like DannoECabeza-dot-Com -- whoever sticks around would be there for me and for my work. That might actually help me with my own personal projects, though there's obviously no guarantee there.

Anyway. This is where my head is today. Your thoughts?

***

Breaking News: One of our sponsors *just* re-upped, so I guess we're still in business. As I told my team, now I just need to limp through to the Bye Week and get some sleep.

Maybe the Black Knights will surprise me, too. Who knows?

More News: All of our sponsors have re-upped, so crisis fully averted. This day turned into kind of a rollercoaster, but I’m legitimately grateful for the support I got from people who care about me. Everyone should be that lucky.

Five Things on a Friday: Pics with My Love

2026-10-30T08:47:33.853-04:00

Busy week, friends.

Sally and I had a really great weekend last week, to the point that letting it go this past Monday felt actively difficult. We managed, obviously, but this week quickly became long and perhaps a bit more challenging than was strictly necessary, even if it's been no worse than normal on anything like an objective basis. Nothing has gone wrong this week, and we're both doing well enough if not a little better than that. But we've also both been looking quite forward to this weekend since very early this past Monday morning, and that's a tough way to spend five long days.

Oh, by the way, happy Halloween.

I can't say that I'm super into it, but both my kids are going out tomorrow, even Hannah down in Paraguay. That's good. They both work really hard and deserve to have some fun.

1. Pics with My Love

We celebrated Sally's birthday last Sunday with a hike and dinner at a French bistro out in Eastern Connecticut. I've shared a few of the pics this week both here and on Instagram, but here are a few more... just because.

Like I said, it was hard to let this go this past Monday. Even now, as I'm headed into the office on a fine-looking Friday morning, I'm still a little hung up on how well this day went.

While we're talking about pics here, I'd like to note that Blogger's most annoying feature is its lack of a gallery function. So there's no easy way to share a bunch of pictures with you. This is the best we can do.

I've long needed to move this blog to a WordPress site for exactly these kinds of reasons. I mention it because I want you to know that I know I need to do it. It's just a pain in the ass -- and also not free the way Blogger is.

2. New Story Idea: The Singlestick

In our story, The Singlestick is an upscale backroom lounge located right at the border of the Bowery, Little Italy, and Chinatown. It sits hidden beneath The Brass Lantern, a gritty, working-class Bowery gin joint.

I thought of a new story idea a couple of months ago and then finally spent some time earlier this week outlining it, so it wouldn't get lost. If you're interested, I posted about the concept yesterday before reluctantly deciding that I needed to do some serious period research before tackling the actual draft.

It's probably for the best. I'm already in the middle of the third Necropolis book and really should finish that first. But, y'know, "Oooh, shiny!" is a thing. And I really like this idea, for whatever that's worth.

3. Faith (Live in Paris, 1988)

I haven't even heard this yet, but just the fact that it exists feels like a miracle.

4. I Used AI to Fake a Scientific Paper. Here’s What Happened (IEEE)

Borrowing from the idea of “vibe coding,” in which programmers use natural-language prompts to generate code, I decided to “vibe-research” a made-up paper by prompting LLMs to generate hypotheses, code, and text with minimal human input. Then I asked Jenny Mahoney, managing editor of the multidisciplinary and open-access journal IEEE Access, if we could war-game an attempt to sneak my AI-generated monstrosity past her journal’s defenses. She and IEEE kindly agreed.

The experiment would become a two-part test. First, whether someone with no special AI expertise could use off-the-shelf AI tools to generate a convincing paper describing research that had never been performed, and do it well enough to fool a publisher’s defenses. Then I would raise the stakes: What happens when more advanced AI systems don’t just write the paper but conduct underlying research?

I'm sharing this because his experiment, conducted with the approval of IEEE's editorial staff, failed spectacularly. The editorial board caught both of his AI-generated efforts -- easily -- because of their hallucinated references and nonsense mathematics.

So who knows? Maybe there's hope for us yet.

If you're curious about the way AI works, is evolving, and remains limited in scope, this is a pretty good piece. For context, IEEE is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. I've published there on the subject of electric reliability in bulk power operations, and I read their stuff a decent amount, too.

5. Marvel Studios Unveils Phase 7's First 8 Movies & Disney+ Shows for the Mutant Saga (The Direct)

Marvel Studios is in the final stages of Phase 6 and the Multiverse Saga, with Avengers: Doomsday coming in December and Secret Wars wrapping up the 7-year-long saga in December 2027. After that, the MCU will launch its next three-phase saga in 2028, as Phase 7 kicks off what is widely rumored and theorized to be the Mutant Saga, finally bringing the X-Men and other X-gene-infused heroes and villains to Earth-616.

Bottom line, they've got the X-Men starting again on May 5, 2028, and friends, that feels like a very long time from now. I mean, I realize that it takes a long time to make a modern blockbuster, and that's fine. However, I also think a lot of this remains speculative, no matter how confidently they're talking about it right now, because they don't yet know how well the next (last?) two Avengers films will perform.

If either of those movies flop, I'd imagine all bets are off.

Moondragon's costume is not screen-ready.

A guy on Bluesky the other day asked who the highest profile character is that we've not seen adapted in any form in the MCU. I replied that it was either Spider-Woman or the Black Cat, but those didn't count in his mind because the rights to those characters are tied up at Sony. From there, we decided that it was either Moonstone or Moondragon, and friends, those are two super deep cuts.

All of which tells me that they could maybe afford to turn this thing off for a minute and maybe work on something else. Unfortunately, though, no one thinks like that in the world of big business or finance.

I love comics, but if I was running these companies, I'd be using the actual comics themselves as loss leaders to try crazy fucking ideas that could maybe become more if they catch on. Instead, it feels like everyone at every level is just trying to make the most money possible right now with the predictable result that truly long-term thinking isn't much of a thing. And so here we are, recycling the same ideas endlessly.

Sigh. I mean, sure, there is a LOT of X-Men source material that no one has tried yet in live action. However, diving into, like, years worth of that stuff would be much easier to do in a TV show. Note, we're getting that right now in the X-Men '97 continuation. In live action, the costs are prohibitive, and anyway, why is live action better than animation?

I don't know. I mean, if I'm not the target audience for this, then who is? But even with that in mind, I don't understand why people freak out about live action adaptations when the original issues are right there. And anyway, animation almost always looks good.

What can you do?

* * *

The Black Knights have a monster game tomorrow night down in Memphis, and all I've been thinking about all week is sitting out on our back deck and watching that thing with my beautiful wife.

Suburban marriage gets an unrelentingly bad rap in popular culture, and it has since the dawn of modern publishing. But I actually really love my wife, and I'm looking forward to spending some time with her this weekend. If that's not you, then I'm sorry, but it's still true for some of us.

Sometimes, I think the key to real happiness is to not let the world's cynicism get too close to your heart.

Happy Friday, friends.

New Story Idea: The Singlestick (Working Title)

2026-10-29T09:46:08.787-04:00

I wrote about this a little on Twitter yesterday.

Had an idea for a story yesterday based loosely on the Catskills Stone Bridge Murders. Set in 1892 NY, it stars Thaddeus Winters, Blaine’s ancestor who will go on to lay the Diogenes Building’s cornerstone. Planned as a short story or novella. (1/3) https://t.co/8vfO6rNoa1
— Danno E. Cabeza (@DannoECabeza) October 28, 2026

In our story, The Singlestick is an upscale backroom lounge located right at the border of the Bowery, Little Italy, and Chinatown. It sits hidden beneath The Brass Lantern, a gritty, working-class Bowery gin joint.

The Backroom Bar in New York City

Ultrahuman empath Sadie Silver serves as The Singlestick’s owner-operator, fronting for her silent business (and romantic) partner, Thaddeus Winters. While The Brass Lantern is just another neighborhood watering hole, The Singlestick is a swanky, high-class institution catering to the intersection of New York City’s gilded business elites and its top-tier criminal underworld. This makes it something like a precursor to the speakeasies of the 1920s.

Winters, of course, is the great-great-great-grandfather of Blaine Winters. We mention Thaddeus briefly, though not by name, in The Return of Dr. Necropolis, Chapter 5. He is a prominent New York City real estate magnate, heavily involved in Manhattan’s rapid late-century urbanization. When our story opens, he’s just survived a targeted explosion at one of his Harlem construction sites.

Thaddeus believes Alderman Flaherty, a local Tammany Hall ward boss, is most likely behind the explosion. Thaddeus has stubbornly refused to bow to Tammany Hall's corrupt protection rackets, and the feud has since escalated to the point that they've now tried to kill him with dynamite.

The attempt would've worked, too, were he not Thaddeus Winters.

Meanwhile, Thaddeus wants to marry Sadie even though he is already engaged to wealthy mundie socialite Charlotte Vance. But Sadie won't have him. First, because she's an independent business person and thoroughly modern "New Woman" who refuses to kowtow to the Victorian idea of marriage. In a more immediate sense, though, Sadie realizes that while Charlotte might tolerate Thaddeus's infidelity as a byproduct of their shared culture, were Thaddeus to actually throw her over for some Bowery saloon keeper, that would trigger real repercussions. Not only would it cause the social scandal of the year, Charlotte might actually try to have Sadie killed.

Given this series's super-science noir roots, I gave Thaddeus some specialized ultrahuman equipment. He carries a heavy cane with a brass-plated head covering a solid lead core. He also wears a gentleman's cape similarly lined with a specialized lead weave, making it resistant to knives and bullets and giving it a solid 100-pound weight. Finally, when Thaddeus thinks he might actually have to brawl, he exchanges his normal platinum cuff links for simple steel studs that won't break or bend on impact.

All of this serves as the social backdrop to our trip to Upstate New York's rural Sullivan County to investigate the Catskills Stone Bridge Murders.

Via "Exploring Stone Arch Bridge Historical Park in the Catskills," UncoveringNewYork.Com

If you're wondering, yes, this stone bridge is a real place. Sally and I visited it earlier this year during our summer vacation and discovered the story of these murders quite by accident. The actual 1892 crime was so strangely salacious, complete with accusations of witchcraft and weird local lore, that it survives as a local legend to this day. The tale lends itself perfectly to a super-science noir set in the Unmasked & Unchosen universe.

Anyway. I spent a good bit of yesterday wondering if I should write this story next or finish the third Unmasked and Unchosen book first. But in thinking about the mechanics of the story itself, I finally realized that I don't quite know enough Gilded Age history yet to make this work. So I'm gonna finish The Necropolis Legacy first and read up on late 19th Century New York in the meantime. I did, however, spend some time outlining the story, so that I could at least get my thoughts organized and written out in one place before setting it aside.

Friends, if you learn one thing from me, learn this -- always write your ideas down. Otherwise, you'll forget them, and they'll be lost forever.

Gun Girl Gracie

2026-10-28T05:00:00.000-04:00

I printed the manuscript out for Sally. She doesn't mind reading my stuff -- and, in fact, she seems to really like this particular book -- but she won't read it on the screen. So here's what $75 will buy you at the local Staples, if you're wondering.

That's about an inch and a half thick

247 pages in 11 pt Georgia font with 1/2-inch margins

At almost exactly 100K words, this thing turned into a BEAST when printed on regular computer paper.

This and The Return of Dr. Necropolis are both about exactly the same length. I'm betting both books weigh in between 350 and 400 pages by the time all is said and done. I'm printing both in the 6" x 9" trade format.

Hiking Pic with Sally

2026-10-27T11:41:52.219-04:00

I put this up on Instagram, a fact I'm mentioning because I recently (reluctantly) switched my IG profile back to public. What can you do? We've got some books to sell.

That said, I like this pic, and I think it captures our personalities pretty well.

Posing mid-hike

Sally and I went to Devil's Hopyard State Park here in Connecticut as part of her birthday celebration. We had a good time. She shot tons of stuff to support her own IG profile while we were out there, and then we shot this, kind of spoofing the work she'd spent most of the day doing.

If you're wondering, here's me at the same spot doing the same activities three years ago. I've lost maybe five or so pounds since then, and incredibly, you can really see that in these pics.

I wouldn't say I'm swimming better now, but I definitely look a little better.

Pretty Good Weekend of College Football

2026-10-25T08:41:15.378-04:00

Army absolutely stole a win on the road at Tulsa, and it was totally incredible. I mean, don't get me wrong. All three phases matter, and you can absolutely lose a game on special teams if you boot it bad enough, but that's still a tough way to lose if you're the Golden Hurricane.

Meanwhile, Wyoming unexpectedly beat the brakes off of Air Force, and Navy lost at home to North Texas on Homecoming. You hate to see it, but also, man, that North Texas team looks absolutely incredible right now.

UTSA also beat the crap out of a mediocre Tulane team last night, giving us the following American Conference standings:

Screenshot via ESPN

Bottom line, if Army can win this week at Memphis -- a tall task, to be sure -- they have a truly excellent shot at playing in the Conference Championship Game on December 5th. Unfortunately, they'll almost certainly wind up on the road for that game. North Texas visits UTSA on Thursday, November 14, with the winner looking all-but-certain to host the Championship. Those are the conference's two best teams, and UTSA in particular probably doesn't have another loss on its schedule aside from their showdown with North Texas.

Spoiler Alert: UTSA is gonna win that game. Neither team has a particularly good defense, but UTSA has the more well-balanced offense as well as arguably the strongest home field advantage in the American.

All other factors aside, the Alamodome is where American Conference Championship hopes go to die. The only team in college football with a winning record at the Alamodome is...

Jeff Monken's Army Team.

Monken and company are 5-1 against UTSA since the series started in 2020. Their only loss came at home in 2022 when half the team was sick with the flu.

So if Army can win this week, they'll have a very real shot at winning their second conference championship in three years, and interestingly, if college football actually moves to a twenty-four team playoff, that might make it the last American Conference Championship Game that ever gets played. Friends, incredibly, the Black Knights could be your forever American Conference Champions!

The problem with this is that it sets up a night road game a week before Army-Navy, and as we've seen in both 2016 and 2024, that puts the better team at a severe disadvantage ahead of America's Game. That was bad enough in 2024 when Army hosted Tulane and got the win. This time would be even worse because they'd have to travel all the way to Texas and then get home at maybe 6 am, creating a short week against the Mids.

Honestly, friends, I'm ambivalent about this thing. The Mids have a good team this year, but they've played a tough schedule and dropped a few games early that they maybe could've won. FAU got fraud-checked yesterday against Rice, so that loss now looks pretty bad, and UAB is good but a long way from great, so that loss also looks pretty bad. Hell, even the Air Force loss isn't great the way their season is shaking out. Notably, though, all three of those losses came on the road, and Army, too, hasn't looked remotely as good on the road as they have at home. So...

For better or worse, Army's gonna need its best stuff to beat Navy and potentially win the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy, and I don't know that playing in the American Conference Championship is conducive to our seeing their best stuff when it really counts. I said after 2024 that you can't throw out the entire season just to win one game, and I still think that, but this team isn't the 2024 team, especially on defense. From where we're standing right now, winning the conference looks like one hell of an uphill climb while winning the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy looks like a challenging but attainable goal. Plus, Army hasn't beaten the Mids in two years, and you don't want to let them get another streak going, especially the year before 90% of the Black Knights' offense graduates.

I would never root against my beloved Black Knights, but the truth is, they bought themselves quite a bit of breathing room with Friday night's win down at Tulsa. They can now afford a tough loss at Memphis, come back to beat Air Force the following Saturday at home, and if they can go on and beat Navy, everyone will be at least as happy as if they win out and somehow make it to the conference championship.

Oh, by the way, Army also has East Carolina coming to town two weeks after Air Force, and if the Pirates currently stand 3-4, 1-2 in the conference, they also match up really, really well against this particular edition of the Black Knights. That game is not remotely a gimme, but the team will be fortunate to play it at home in freaking November, when the squad from ECU is liable to freeze its nuts off.

Anyway. Army needs one more win for bowl eligibility, and I'd be happy to get that against Air Force. That's all I'm saying here. But if they beat Memphis... holy shit!

As of this writing, there's no betting line on this week's game. Massey thinks Memphis wins a close one, 31-27. I guess we'll see.

Go Army! Beat Memphis!!!

Five Things on a Friday: We're Using BookFunnel, Friends

2026-10-23T07:03:27.323-04:00

Good morning and happy Friday, everyone. I hope you all had a decent week, but even if you didn't, it's Friday now. Wahoo!

The Black Knights have a monster game this week down in Tulsa, Oklahoma, tonight. I mention it because I'm super-excited about it, obviously, but also because I was really happy with the work I did over at As For Football this week as well. With James out learning to fly a new airplane, I've had to do both the Preview and the Keys to Victory for the last two weeks, and I felt like this week's Preview in particular came out really well. Go check that out if you want to see the kind of writing that earned us a following back in the day.

With that out of the way, let's get into it.

1. Dr. Necropolis Preview Plans

Friends, there's a reason you need to sign up for the Dr. Necropolis mailing list, and it's because I'm planning to use the mailing list to send out early review copies of the book electronically to interested friends and classmates as a way of generating early reviews and buzz for the book. Those early reviews are critical! Amazon's algorithm won't push a book until it receives fifteen written reviews.

So. My plan right now is to use a service called Book Funnel to send out review copies starting in early December to members of my mailing list. Because honestly, I don't really want to charge my friends for the book, but I do really need your help telling people about it. You will then have a month to read The Return of Dr. Necropolis, and if you like it, leave a review on launch day, December 29, 2026.

That's it!

As of this writing, my plan is to launch the ebook for $.99 for the first week, so if you REALLY like it and you want to be SUPER HELPFUL, you can then buy a copy for just under a buck and leave me a Verified Purchase review. But honestly, the ask here is just that you leave me a review and tell people what you thought of the book.

In other news, we're almost done working out the final details on the book's cover. I sincerely hope to show that to you before the end of the month. But again, the cover will debut in my newsletter.

Seriously, friends, social media has become an absolutely shit way to get the word out about stuff. If you want to know about the book, get on the newsletter.

Thanks.

2. Corporate sponsorships to cover JMU's record American entrance fee (The Northern Virginia Daily)

JMU, however, appears to be the first to finance its move by delivering new sponsorship agreements at the conference level.

Athletic director Matt Roan somewhat reluctantly acknowledged that the concept was inspired, at least in part, by one of JMU's future conference mates.

Memphis, an American member since 2013, made an overture to the Big 12 last year that reportedly included a financial package worth between $200 million and $250 million, with sponsorship commitments from FedEx forming a significant component.

The Big 12 rejected the proposal, but the concept offered an example of how corporate partnerships could potentially be leveraged during conference realignment.

As much as I welcome JMU's entrance into the American Conference, this development overall does not look good for college football as an institution. The powers seem hellbent on turning what was once the greatest sport on Earth into just another pro league, and I couldn't love it less.

As I've said many times, I feel like I learned more from college swimming than I learned from college classes, and I use it more. College swimming taught me to work my ass off and compete for what I want. College classes, by comparison, often focused on niche subject-matter that I often liked but which rarely intersect with my actual reality. So to the extent that the current changes in the college football landscape are taking sports opportunities away from non-NFL caliber players -- in all sports -- I hate it.

These changes are helping a tiny handful of people at the expense of the other 99% of collegiate athletes, just like every other thing everywhere else on the planet.

Former Army O-Line Coach & current CMU Head Coach Matt Drinkall on CFB's changes.

3. The Return of Dr. Necropolis Playlist (Spotify)

This playlist has been through several iterations. In looking for some music for today's write up, I decided to cut it down to something that you might actually listen to on a single CD.

I really want to talk about all the choices on this list, but that's a project for some kind of spoilerific podcast interview. No idea when the hell we'll actually get around to that.

4. Why Do We Root for Villains? (Page Chewing)

Speaking of podcasts, I was on the Page Chewing's Beyond the Page podcast a couple of week ago, and the interview dropped publicly earlier this week. This was my favorite of the recent interviews I've done to support The Return of Dr. Necropolis because we spent the most time talking about the actual book and about the writing process generally.

The piece is up on YouTube, but I don't think it's particularly interesting visually, so much like my own show, I'm going to give you the Spotify embed below. It's also on Apple Podcasts and wherever else. Listen however you want.

5. Army Football Night Games

As noted in the intro, Army Football plays tonight, and it's the first of a three-game set. They also play on Halloween Night down in Memphis next week, and they'll host Air Force for a crucial Commander-in-Chief's Trophy game on Saturday night in primetime on CBS the first week in November.

I mention this because Army doesn't generally play a lot at night, and institutionally, I don't know that they're good at it as an organization. Granted, they beat K-State for a signature win last season at night, and they took them #4-Oklahoma to overtime at night way back in 2018. Still, playing at night is tough.

It's probably good that they'll get a couple of cracks at it before they host Air Force, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about tonight's game. They'd probably be favored by a touchdown if they were playing at noon at Michie Stadium. As things stand, however, they're 1.5-point underdogs.

* * *

That's all I've got this week. As I said, you can do us both a favor by signing up for my book's mailing list, and if you haven't, definitely check out some of my work this week over on AFF. We're in for a great game tonight, and I tried really hard to make sure you'd be ready and psyched for it.

Go Army! BEAT TULSA!!!

Page-Chewing: "Why Do We Root for Villains?" with Danno E. Cabeza

2026-10-20T12:32:01.262-04:00

Of the interviews I've done recently to support The Return of Dr. Necropolis, this was probably my favorite just because we spent so much time actually talking about writing and the writing process. Normally, everybody wants to treat me like a straight-up sports guy.

That's mostly fine, but it's hardly all that I am, nor is it necessarily the way that I think about myself. This interview offered a chance to show a different side of my personality and my life, and I felt really grateful for that.

If you're interested, I've embedded versions of the show from YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, depending on your platform of preference.

Show Notes:

In this episode of Beyond the Page, Steve welcomes author, Army veteran, and podcast host Danno E. Cabeza to discuss his upcoming novel, The Return of Doctor Necropolis, a superhero crime-noir story about a brilliant but deeply flawed supervillain.

Danno shares how an experimental writing project unexpectedly became a novel that took nearly ten years to complete. We explore what makes morally questionable protagonists compelling, the relationship between identity and personal responsibility, and why readers can sympathize with characters who repeatedly make terrible decisions.

We also discuss the challenges of returning to a manuscript after a decade, incorporating military experience into superhero fiction, writing believable relationships, and creating a world where the government has nationalized superheroes.

Danno talks about his love of X-Men comics, the influence of crime fiction, his experiences reviewing comics professionally, and why he ultimately chose prose rather than a graphic novel for this story.

We also get into independent publishing, the realities of running a successful Army football podcast, his terrifying experience at airborne school, unusual food combinations, and the lessons he's learned from teaching people to swim.

Join us for a conversation about supervillains, storytelling, comics, creativity, and why the most interesting fictional characters aren't always the good guys.

Find Danno: https://www.asforfootball.com/

Five Things on a Friday: The Case of the Ad Hoc Rebuild

2026-10-16T05:00:00.000-04:00

What a week, friends. I've been up in Albany all week, and it's been busy as all hell. You wouldn't think missing my thrice-weekly train commute would make that much difference, but it threw off my whole production schedule, and alongside some other incidental nonsense, made this kind of a Thayer Week for yours truly.

My dog is sick, too, so it's been a really tough week to be away.

But what can you do?

1. Inadvertent Website Redesign (AFF)

Aside from all the usual nonsense, we also had our primary editing plug-in crash over on the As For Football website, necessitating a change of theme and therefore something close to a total redesign. Needless to say, this kept me pretty busy. I feel like I did a decent job with it on short notice, but I also know that I'll be picking away at little things all over the site for the next six months.

Screenshot of the redesign

The good news is that the site now runs way, WAY faster. That's actually important. But that comes at the expense of quite a few cool-looking modifications we'd made over the last few years. We may never get some of that back, even if nobody but me will probably ever miss them.

What do you think? How'd we do here?

2. ISBN Number

I wrote about this earlier this week, but I -- finally -- assigned an ISBN number to The Return of Dr. Necropolis and started trying to figure out how to get it out in stores.

At some point during this process, I realized that the difference between publishing this thing through some extant independent press and through the nascent Stratford City Press, a division of As For Football LLC, looks strictly nominal.

No matter what else happens, the basic problem is that no one outside of the extremely online Army Football fanbase knows who the hell I am, and half those people won't care, either. So we're gonna print some hard copies of this thing, sell signed copies all over the place, and basically spend a lot of time essentially touring locally around Connecticut to hopefully give people a chance to find this book. If you really want to help me, the best way to do it might just be to buy a copy off me in person.

We'll see how that goes.

If you missed it, I've got a new description of the book and a new personal biography in the original ISBN Number post.

3. Palace for the People

Greta Van Fleet dropped their new album last week, and I really like it. I can't decide which track is my favorite, but we'll spotlight the first one after the introduction. That's definitely one of the better tracks.

4. Discussion with Paul

My friend Paul Horne came back onto the AFF Army Football Show this week, and then we had a follow-on converation Wednesday night to discuss his Offensive Line grading and modeling tool.

He's got an amazing idea. With apologies for the engineering metaphore, it reminds me conceptually of the SCADA system we use to monitor real-time conditions on the bulk electric system, save that he's using a quality control assistant coach to input data into the system in lieu of a Remote Terminal Unit (RTU). With this kind of objective, real-time feedback, coaches can call plays according to who's playing well and what's actually working as opposed to what their gut is telling them. In theory, this should allow for a much more objective, targeted approach as games develop.

It's an exciting idea. He's got some work to do to get it out to people for beta testing, and who knows what the user-base will say. But I think he's really got something here.

5. Scientists are finding AI may make us remember things that never happened (WaPo)

The experiment began with 24 ordinary photographs: a wedding, a city street, a race. Pattie Maes, a professor at the MIT Media Lab, and her colleagues showed them to 200 people.

After a break, some saw the same photos again. Others saw AI-altered versions — with facial expressions changed, military personnel inserted or signs of climate change added.

Then came a memory test.

Maes winced at the results. Those viewing the AI-altered images had a large increase in false recollections. Even worse, she said, their confidence in the false memories was higher...

New research that involves perception of political events, crimes and even new movies suggests AI-generated images and conversations can implant false details into our brains, even leaving us confident things happened when they did not.

If not proof positive, here at least is real evidence that AI slop melts people's brains. I'm guessing that people remembered more shocking, unusual, or just generally more notable images that the AI "punched up" to make them more interesting or attention-grabbing overall.

Sigh.

I'm not arguing that AI doesn't have its uses because I used it a lot this week during the emergency website redesign. However, this kind of thing is non-productive at a societal level for reasons that have nothing to do with the technology itself and everything to do with the way it's being used.

I don't love it, friends. We're doing this to ourselves. It's not some kind of organic outgrowth of some strange new technology.

* * *

That's all I've got this week, friends.

If you haven't already, sign up for my mailing list and prepare yourself emotionally to have your mind blown when the book finally drops. And if you're going to the game tomorrow, cheer hard.

Enjoy the weekend!

Go Army! Beat FAU!!!

Stop-Motion: Cale Hellums Scoring Run

2026-10-13T14:19:18.823-04:00

Mike K. Heit posted this to Instagram, and it's awesome. Since I've spent some time today writing about Army Football, I'm now super-ready for Saturday's game. Enjoy!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael K. Heit (@mike_k_heit)

ISBN: 979-8-9982084-0-9

2026-10-12T08:06:26.618-04:00

I finally sent the barcode out to the cover artist this morning. Had been putting this off for the longest time because it involves locking some stuff in with Bowker, the folks who sell ISBN numbers to Americans. But we had to do it, so here's what I gave them.

Describe your book (350 words max):

Ten years after his dramatic fall from grace at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Frank McGuinness—once the world’s foremost expert on ultrahuman biology before reinventing himself as the infamous Dr. Necropolis—breaks out of prison. His target: his recently returned ex-wife, Gun Girl Gracie, and his former partner, the Siberian Tiger. Frank took the fall so Gracie and the Tiger could vanish with one hundred million dollars in gold bricks.

If they’re back, there’s a reason. Frank needs to know why.

FBI Special Agent Tiffany Trujillo, formerly the superhero Titania, and First Lieutenant Blaine Winters, poster-boy for the U.S. Army’s new Enhanced Forces Division, are assigned to hunt Frank down. Their high-stakes pursuit takes them from the confines of Sing Sing Correctional Facility to a chaotic Brooklyn bank robbery and onward into ever escalating ultrahuman chaos.

With a global genetic arms race looming, Tiffany and Blaine must find Frank and capture Gun Girl Gracie and the Siberian Tiger before an ultrahuman gang war starts—or worse!

Blending high-octane superhuman action, sharp syndicate intrigue, and complex character dynamics, The Return of Dr. Necropolis delivers a thrilling post-superhero exploration of identity, coercion, and control in a world where yesterday's villains might just be today's necessary force.

I'm not totally sure who can see this book description. Book retailers, obviously, but I'm not sure who else. Anyway, I tried to let folks know what the book is without giving away too much spoilery stuff. Here's hoping.

Biography (350 words max):

Danno Cabeza is an engineer, adventurer, sportswriter, memoirist, and novelist. A 1995 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, he was a two-time Patriot League champion swimmer before he commissioned into the U.S. Army as an Armor Officer. Following his military service, he has spent more than twenty-five years working as an electrical engineer in New York City. Cabeza is the Managing Partner and Editor of As For Football LLC, covering Army West Point sports and American Conference college football. He is the author of a critically acclaimed memoir about his military upbringing and collegiate athletics, as well as The Return of Dr. Necropolis, a gritty post-superhero crime novel. When he isn't writing, engineering, or swimming four days a week, he can often be found snowboarding in Vermont.

This is a variation of the biography I use on PodMatch. Folks have gotten really interested in my life story based on that PodMatch bio, so here's hoping...

What do you think, friends? Anybody gonna care about this thing?

I'm just gonna drop this here....

2026-10-11T09:10:51.329-04:00

This thing went out to test-readers just this morning. Fingers crossed, friends.

Five Things on a Friday: Lex Luthor, Green Lantern

2026-10-09T08:57:01.245-04:00

Happy Friday, friends!

If you're wondering, I didn't mean to be gone all week. I want to build a better following on the blog with my book coming out, and writing nothing for a full week is not the way to get that done.

What can you do? I got busy this week. Not just with AFF but rewriting Dr. Necropolis's sequel, Gun Girl Gracie. I really want to get that thing out to test-readers soon, but I want to make sure that it's as good as it can be before I send it off, so I wound up kind of falling down the rabbit hole with it.

Anyway. We're back now. Let's get into it.

**1. Dr. Necropolis Update**

I sent the manuscript off to the typesetter, and honestly, sending that thing away was maybe the most nerve-wracking part of the entire writing process. They say that authors never really finish books, they just sort of abandon them, and I feel that. This one has been a part of my life for so long that actually letting it go has made me kind of crazy.

I really hope you guys like the book. I mean, I already know that it's not for everyone, and that's okay. But for folks who like science fiction, crime noir, and/or crazy superhero stories, I really hope you find something in here that speaks to you.

I also got another sample cover from Natalia over at Dawn Book Design this week. I still don't think we're quite ready to show you anything just yet, but it was cool. I'm excited about it.

Finally, I mentioned last week that I'd asked my friend Alan Evans, creator of the webcomic Rival Angels, for a quote for the book. He got back to me maybe three hours after I published last week's column.

“The Return of Dr. Necropolis is a compelling story of sacrifice, second chances, and the self-destructive power of hubris. It sinks its teeth into you and won’t let go until the final page.”

— Alan Evans, creator of Rival Angels

If you've never heard of it, Rival Angels was a long-running webcomic about a women's professional wrestling league. It was a really interesting project that found a lot of fans. Alan's now got something like seven volumes of the collected story up on Amazon. He and I collaborated on a 10-page Halloween Special way back in 2007 or 2008, so if you've ever wanted to know what I'd do as a pro-wrestling booker, now you can find out.

2. Lex Luthor: Green Lantern

Turns out, they've done this one before.

We all watched Lanterns, right? I mean, ten million people watched the finale, so I'm gonna assume you've seen it. I liked the show quite a bit.

I was wondering if/how one might adapt Green Lantern-style ideas into the Necropolis Universe and slowly came around to the idea of Lex Luthor becoming a Lantern. Because let's be honest. Lex Luthor would be the best Green Lantern. Dude has willpower for days, can do everything Jon Stewart can do, and is totally committed to keeping the Earth safe from aliens.

So I got this idea of Luthor getting the ring maybe shortly after getting out of prison. And he sees the ring as an opportunity to go straight. Here he has a chance to do something that he basically believes is right, and with the ring, he can do it above board with the support of the Guardians of the Universe. Lex is a business-guy, so he knows a win-win when he sees one.

But he's Lex Luthor, right? At the end of the day, he can't help himself. Dude is Lawful Evil, with a capital "E", and that lawful nature only goes so far. So we'd do maybe three or four story arcs where he's trying to be a good Lantern, to do the job right, but we'll see him make increasingly questionable choices until things finally spin completely out of control.

I feel like this story could work. I now want to see this thing.

3. Don't Say It - Live

This week's music comes from Samantha Fish's new concert album, Paper Doll (Live). I found myself listening to this album several times during the week, mostly on my way to or from the pool.

4. Four Quarter Thriller: UTSA 31, USF 24 (ESPN)

This game played out more-or-less the way we might've expected. The Bulls got out to an early lead, but they finished with just 288 yards of total offense and UTSA wound up coming back to win with about :15 left on the clock.

Is this the year UTSA Coach Jeff Traylor finally wins the American?

It might be. I think he's a good coach, and I also think he's got the league's best team. I guess we'll see. It'll help a lot if they can play the American Conference Championship Game in the Alamodome. Nobody but Jeff Monken ever beats Traylor's team when they're at home.

The only thing that annoys me about this is that I took Under 50.5 points in this game in AFF's picks league -- because USF's offense is shit -- and the game totalled 55.

Sigh.

5. Page Chewing: Beyond the Page

I did Page Chewing's Beyond the Page podcast last night to promote The Return of Dr. Necropolis. This was -- easily -- the most literary podcast I've ever done. We talked about the writing process for forty-five minutes. That was also really cool. I don't get to stay in that mode all the time. Normally everyone wants to talk swimming or West Point or Army-Navy or whatever. The way this show played out felt almost shocking.

Look for the interview next week. I'll let you know when it drops.

One thing I've realized doing these shows is that I should've put up the pre-order page for my book before starting this little media tour. At the time, I thought I'd promote AFF and then let people get interested in my other work that way, but folks have seemed to want to talk about Dr. Necropolis lately, and while that's great, I'm not totally in position to take advantage of this opportunity.

It seems like a stupid mistake in retrospect, but we are where we are. That said, as soon as I have a final cover for the book, that pre-order link is going up.

* * *

That's all we've got this week. Not much news this time around, but the world is on fire, and I just can't bring myself to dwell on it. Thanks for your time, regardless. God willing, we'll do more than just one column in this space next week.

For now, please go check out my appearance on the FAFO Podcast, and if you haven't already, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE sign up for the Dr. Necropolis mailing list. That is by far the best way to stay up to date with the book and with my future work.

See you next week. Or at Michie Stadium if you're going to tomorrow's game.

Cheer loud, friends!

Five Things on a Friday: Bimbo Boost & Other Stories

2026-10-02T08:47:36.085-04:00

Happy Friday, friends.

We've had a busy week. I spent a little time rewriting Gun Girl Gracie around midweek, and as much as I enjoyed it, that little indulgence put me behind the chains with As For Football as the week developed. We somehow managed to get everything together on deadline this week, but I'm telling you, yesterday got kind of frantic.

Whew!

Thankfully, it's now Friday, and with our weekly mailer out, my work here is done... at least for the next forty-eight or so hours. That gives us a bit of time to ponder the week that was.

It feels like a lot happened.

1. Praise for The Return of Dr. Necropolis

Speaking of mailers, we sent out our second Stratford City Press mailer this week, and I realized at some point during the writing process that I probably ought to send these out bi-weekly instead of monthly. I also need to build a Stratford City Press webpage somewhere, probably as a tab over at AFF, but honestly, I don't have the first clue when the fuck I'm going to get around to it.

I sent out the mailer this week because Cons got back to me with his quote for the book's cover, and I was not only really happy with what he said, I also thought it was interesting to see which parts of the book spoke to him.

“I signed up for chaos mixed with a good, old-fashioned action hero story and got hit with something I didn't expect: a book about carrying a name heavier than your own choices. Blaine Winters is carrying a burden of service that’s all too familiar to many.

“This book is violent, it's unhinged, it's got a submarine fight in it, and somehow, it still nails the part about legacy that actually matters. You don't get to pick the shadow you're born into, but you get to decide what you do standing in it. Heavy.

“Plus, the book ends with 'BEAT NAVY,' so obviously 5 stars, no notes.”

— Connor Crehan (Captain Cons), Host of Barstool Sports' Bold American Podcast

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Cons liked Blaine. My good friend and classmate Ray Kimball also really liked Blaine, saying that Blaine reminded him of himself when he was younger. This was doubly true in the second book. Even so, I still think it's interesting that this is where most of the West Pointers see themselves in this story.

There's more in the mailer if you're interested. And even if you're not, do me a favor and sign up for it anyway. Friends, I need you to remember to buy the book when it finally comes out. Having commissioned a cover for this thing from an actual professional, I now need to sell a few copies to pay for that work.

Thanks in advance.

I've now got three quotes for the cover, and for better or worse, I only just remembered to ask my friend Alan Evans, creator of the highly successful webcomic Rival Angels, for a quote earlier this week. He was one of my earliest test-readers -- and quite a good sounding board on story design. Once I get his quote, I think we'll be done with this project.

2. Office Selfie

I had to move offices at work last week, and for as much as this was a pain in the ass, I now have my own private office, not a cubicle, for the first time since way back in 1997! The last time I had my own private office, I was a first lieutenant and company XO for Headquarters Company, 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division.

That was almost thirty years ago!

The office itself remains kind of spartan for now, but people seemed to like this pic when I shared it on Instagram. Go figure.

3. Friday Hair Metal: Bimbo Boost (Thundermother)

Not only is that song a banger, it's hilarious. Plus, they played the Deep Purple riff backwards! Honestly, it's the coolest thing I've heard in weeks.

4. "We are professionals who give a sh*t!" (AEW)

Pro-wrestler PAC died this past week. AEW did a tribute show, of course, and it was amazing. I want to call this part of it out, though, because in a show full of moving moments, this particular bit spoke to me.

"We are professionals who give a sh*t!"

EXCLUSIVE: After an emotional night in honor of @BastardPAC, AEW Continental Champion @JonMoxley thanked the Pittsburgh crowd, reflected on our fallen friend, Ben, and shared one of his favorite lines from our Bastard. We love you, Ben. 🖤 pic.twitter.com/qgvoEl5Qei
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) October 1, 2026

5. Beat La. Tech: 5 Key to Victory Against the Bulldogs (AFF)

Friends, I want you to appreciate the amount of technical bullshit that went into this week's Keys to Victory over at AFF. Photographer Mike K. Heit sent us a bunch of practice photos either late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning along with interviews from SBs Zach Mundell and Samari Howard, both of whom have started their season blazing hot.

I knew I wanted to share both interviews on social media and then embed them in the Keys article but only realized late in the process that Mike had sent me the videos as .MOV files -- in 4K, no less -- and most social media sites can't process .MOVs. Thankfully, YouTube allowed me to upload them as they were. I then re-downloaded them as .MP4s, so we got them up on the other socials. From there, the embeds should've been easy, but...

The Mundell interview came out as a Short, meaning that by default, YouTube formatted it vertically, 9x16. When I embedded it into the article, WordPress automatically set it to full-width, and suddenly, we had a poster-sized interview in the middle of an otherwise normal-looking article. I wound up building a bespoke HTML player from scratch, and I know you guys hate AI, but Google's Gemini model did this for me in two seconds, and if I'd had to do it myself, it might've taken two hours. I knew how to do it in theory, but figuring out the actual execution would've been a serious pain in the ass.

The final product looks great, but it felt like getting to that point took some doing. So appreciate that, my friends.

* * *

That's all we've got this week.

Folks have started asking me where they can buy my book, which means that I need to get a pre-order page up ASAP. That's not a thing yet, but you CAN help me right here, right now, by signing up for our bi-weekly mailer and by telling your friends who like science fiction and/or crime noir stories about it.

I'm telling you, friends, social media sucks for telling people anything. That means the mailer is really the only good way to get the word out there, so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE sign up for that thing and send it around to whoever might care.

Again, thanks in advance. I love you all. Have a great weekend.

Podcast Widget

2026-09-29T08:46:11.107-04:00

I don't know if you guys are interested in this, but I added a new widget to the blog's sidebar today. Have me on your podcast!

Danno Cabeza Book me on your podcast 5.00 (3 Reviews)

I honestly don't know how much these podcast appearances are helping. I get the sense that I've been driving more traffic their way than they've been driving new people to me. But we are trying to get the word out, and I'm not totally sure how else to break out of my little bubble.

What can you do?

If you look at the blog's sidebar, you can see that I modified the basic bitch widget PodMatch gave me. They say it can fit any width between 160px to 350px, but my sidebar is 280px, and it still looked like shit before I fixed it. My way makes better use of the sidebar's potential verticality, and here we are.

Y'know, it was kind of a random decision to do my West Point Engineering Track in Computer Science based on the fact that I'd coded a little in high school. However, I use the basic concepts I learned there all the time. HTML isn't super-difficult or anything, but I'm not sure I'd have ever considered trying to unpack it had I not already had training with BASIC and C. Hell, I had to program in FORTRAN -- a lot! -- in my last job. Even here, we had to recode parts of this basic bitch widget to get it to display correctly given all the CSS bullshit associated with the blog's overall Theme.

Anyway. I can get an affiliate link and perhaps make a little money through PodMatch, but I think this experiment has about run its course. I've got two appearances booked for later this month, and then I think I'm leaving. Certainly, we haven't seen any uptick in traffic either here or at AFF to make me think this experiment has been worthwhile. But I've still got a few weeks before I can leave, so I guess we'll see.

Any thoughts?

Chapter 7

2026-09-28T05:00:00.000-04:00

July 8. Manhattan — Fifteen Years Ago.

“N-Doxy Test Results (trial 2): dosage upped to 20mg. Subjects show elevated mating‑behavior markers compared to placebo group. Increased physical contact (i.e. touching, grinding), synchronized movement, and increased signs of overt desire (i.e. kissing, groping).”

“Or maybe that’s just the way these kids dance,” Frank muttered.

He lowered his notebook and leaned forward, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead so he could rub the bridge of his nose. Down in the pit, bodies writhed and melded together, hands high in the air, hair flying, skin flashing under the lights. The thrumming beat drove them onward into a frenzy. Overhead, a strobe pulsed, and for a moment, the kids appeared to dance in stop-motion. Frank sat well above it, observing from a small, round table that overlooked the club’s pit-like floor.

He’d never heard whatever song the DJ was spinning. It sounded like something about spirits and shadows. Not that it mattered. He needed the rush of the beat, the bodies twisting and grinding, the gestalt fueled by alcohol and the N-Doxy he’d given out in 20mg doses alongside who knew what other drugs.

Frank reset his glasses and pulled his pen back out of his pocket. A part of him envied those kids. Not their youth, but their ease. Their ability to exist without permission. They could be stupid and loud and alive without anyone demanding a grant proposal first. But for better or worse, Frank had never been that guy. He’d never been cool. Besides, whatever else happened, the work wouldn’t do itself. If he wanted to learn something, he needed to pay attention and note his observations.

“Test conditions remain compromised. Controlling for outside chemical variables remains impossible. N-Doxy may be effective in the subject group, but the placebo group has begun mimicking the subject group’s behaviors. Perhaps larger doses will show more overtly obvious results.”

Or they might kill someone, Frank thought wryly. He pulled the bottle containing the fifty milligram samples out of his coat pocket and looked at it. That probably won’t happen, he thought, unless some kid’s already high on a conflicting medication, and it creates an unknown compound reaction.

Which… isn’t entirely unlikely. Dammit.

He could have done this in a lab back at the hospital. Probably should have, really. He could’ve controlled the variables correctly there. If he’d been willing to write a grant proposal, beg the board for funding, and debate the experiment’s ethics with the oversight committee. Oh, and he’d have to cut all the bureaucrats in on a piece of the action once he got everything working for them, too.

He couldn’t forget that. That was the most important part.

Plus, he had to admit that he liked being here. He liked the noise, the heat, and the chaos. He liked pretending, for a few hours, that he belonged in a world that had never once made room for him.

“Hey! You the guy with the shit?”

Frank whirled, slamming the N-Doxy bottle back into his pocket. He looked up quickly, feeling his face heat.

“What?!” He had to shout to make himself heard.

The girl stood maybe five-foot-five. She had a lithe, slender frame and the fiercest blue eyes Frank had ever seen. She’d dyed her hair so darkly crimson that it looked almost maroon, and she wore it in a straight bob, parted on the left with long bangs that hung down like a curtain just below her eyebrows. Below, she wore a thin white tank-top with a single black gear stenciled onto the front. Frank saw a word beneath that gear, “Rage”. Her shirt had long since soaked through with sweat, and Frank could tell that she wasn’t wearing a bra because he could see her nipples standing straight out through the fabric. Her breasts weren’t big, but still Frank had to struggle to take his eyes off of them, to force himself to look her in the face.

Those eyes then held him in a vice’s grip, and his breath fled. He completely forgot about the frustration of his experiment.

She looked maybe nineteen years old. And she was staring right at him.

“Come on, man!” the girl yelled. “My roommate Jackie said she got the best stuff ever off’a you, and now she’s in the bathroom blowin’ some dude. Girl’s a prude like nobody’s business, so whatever that shit was, it must be off the chain. How much for a taste?”

“How old are you?” Frank asked.

“The fuck do you care?” the girl snapped. “I came to score, not get interviewed by some freakshow. You gonna sell to me or what?”

Frank shrugged and tried to act casual. “Just curious.”

The girl stepped in close, letting her body rub up against Frank’s shoulder. “Curious, huh? I think maybe you just want to fuck me and then write about it in your little book there.”

“I’m not the one who came over here looking to score.”

She reached for Frank’s notebook, but he stood and backed a step, holding it away from her. He held it behind him, though, so when she went for it again, she smashed into him, throwing him off-balance. She lunged again as he recovered and snatched it despite his best efforts.

“Hey!” Frank yelled.

She danced back and started reading through the pages. A beat passed before she looked up again. “What the fuck, man? You runnin’ some kind of experiment or some shit?”

“What’s it to you?” Frank asked. He grabbed her elbow and steered her back toward a quieter, less crowded part of the club.

“Says here you got a stronger version somewhere. Where’s that?”

Frank sat her down at one of the corner tables and pulled the fifty milligram bottle back out from his jacket pocket. He held it up where she could see it. “I have the good stuff right here,” he said teasingly. “What’re you gonna gimme for it?”

The girl fished in her jeans pocket. “I’ve got twenty bucks.”

“Twenty bucks? I give you one of these, and in twenty minutes, you’ll be begging to go down on me.” Frank took a deep breath and gathered his courage. “How ‘bout we get outta here instead?”

The girl made a face. “Come on, man, that’s disgusting. What are you, like thirty or something?”

Frank sighed, feeling deflated. He was, in fact, thirty-two, and if he didn’t feel old, exactly, he’d still come to the club wearing an ironed, buttoned down plaid shirt under his blazer alongside plain chino slacks. This girl must think that he looked like a banker or something. He suddenly felt all too conscious of his receding hairline, his wire-framed glasses, and the paunch he’d developed around his middle.

He had to force himself to say, “What’s your name?”

“Jaynie.”

“Yeah?” Frank leaned back in his chair, searching for any sense of the relaxed cool that had never once come to him naturally. “Listen, Jaynie… I’m just tryin’ to pay my bills here, y’know? Genetics is cool and all, but I’ve got some pretty big college loans to think about. Do you have any idea how much medical school costs?”

She threw herself down in the chair across from him. “You’re a doctor?”

“I’m the Head of Biomolecular Research at Yale University Hospital. This shit,” he said, holding up the bottle of N-Doxy again, “is merely a side project. I’ve been trying to field-test it.”

“Jesus,” Jaynie said. “You must be a freaking genius or something.”

“I dislike that term,” Frank admitted, warming to his subject. “It implies some kind of mythic intellectual status or guaranteed success or whatever. In the real world, success takes work. That’s why I’m here. Unfortunately, these chaotic conditions have made my observations decidedly suboptimal.”

“Damn doc. You really are a genius.”

Frank shrugged. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bore you.”

She leaned forward. “You’re not boring me. Let me have some of the good stuff, and I’ll be your guinea pig. I’ll let you know how it goes or whatever.”

Frank considered just giving it to her and then waiting ten minutes. She thought he was old now, but if he gave her fifty milligrams of N-Doxy, that might change. That was the theory, anyway.

Unfortunately, his conscience nagged.

Idiot, he chided himself. This is no way to become a drug dealer. He couldn’t help it, though. This girl had no idea what she might be doing to herself. Anything could happen, especially in such a wildly uncontrolled environment.

He looked at her and reluctantly shook his head. “I’ll give you the twenty. I’m sorry, but the other shit’s entirely too experimental. I’ve never even tested it!”

Jaynie threw his notebook at him and then leaned back from the table, giving him attitude. “What the fuck is wrong with you, man? I’m not gonna OD or nothin’. I can handle it.”

“I’m not worried that you’ll OD,” Frank said seriously. “I’m worried that you’ll wake up at the center of a six-way gangbang. You seem like a nice girl. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you.”

“Dude, you are obviously trippin’. There’s nothin’ nice about me.”

“Even so,” Frank said, “you want the twenty, gimme twenty bucks. You want the fifty? You gotta come back to my place, so I can keep an eye on you.”

“You’re a perverted fucker, you know that?”

Frank shrugged. He felt an uncanny recklessness grab him and knew at once that he could stare happily into her eyes for the rest of his life. “It is what it is,” he said at last. “Call it field research. You can bring a friend if you’d like.”

She glared at him. “Is that supposed to make this sound less perverted?”

“It’s supposed to make you feel safer.”

“It’s not workin’,” she said. She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back away from her eyes. Then she leaned back across the table toward Frank. “Is that shit as good as they say it is?”

“I’m not the one who came here looking to score,” Frank replied, “but it worked for your friend, and that wasn’t even the good stuff. The stuff I’ve got here should be truly spectacular. In theory, at least.” He then put the bottle away and tried to play it cool. He could feel his heart racing within his chest, though, and he couldn’t stop staring at her.

“Shit,” Jaynie said at last, “I must be crazy. You gonna take it with me?”

Frank’s eyes popped wide with surprise, but he covered it as quickly as he could. He’d come much too far to back out now, and anyway, why should he want to?

“Of course,” he said, hoping to hide his nerves. “We’ll try it together.”

She stood up and grabbed him by the collar. “Come on then, doc. Let’s get out of here before I change my fucking mind. If this shit ain’t the bomb, though, I am so gonna kick your ass tomorrow morning.”

The FAFO Podcast is out!

2026-09-27T09:02:49.669-04:00

I talked about it on this week's Five Things on a Friday, but in case you missed it, I did the FAFO Podcast this week, and my episode dropped yesterday. I don't know if you'd rather listen or watch us talk, but I'll include embeds below.

I'll drop the show notes after the jump.

In Episode 88 of The FAFO Podcast, BD Storm sits down with Danno E. Cabeza—author, adventurer, charity racer, West Point Class of ’95 graduate, former Army swimmer, and Editor & Managing Partner of As For Football.

We get into his time at West Point, Army sports and the culture surrounding Army Football, writing, endurance and charity events, adventure, family, and the strange collection of experiences that eventually find their way onto the page. We also talk about his memoir Swim, Bike, Run, Live, Love, Repeat and his upcoming novel The Return of Dr. Necropolis.

Connect with Danno:

As For Football: https://www.asforfootball.com/

Casa Cabeza — Danno’s Writing & Blog: https://dannos-lair.blogspot.com/

Facts. Truth. No BS. This is FAFO.

#FAFOPodcast #DannoCabeza #AsForFootball #ArmyFootball #WestPoint #GoArmy #AuthorInterview #BDStorm

🔥 Join our Outlaws and support the Channel right here to receive amazing benefits and discounts: https://thefafopodcast.online/

Five Things on a Friday: Joining The Peace Corps

2026-09-25T07:05:21.858-04:00

Happy Friday, friends.

We had a busy week at Casa Cabeza. Among other things, we sent our oldest child off to the Peace Corps on Monday morning. She is now serving our nation overseas!

As you can imagine, we had quite the emotional scene dropping her off at Westchester County Airport, only to see all her would-be flights get cancelled throughout the day until she finally wound up back at home just after 8 pm Monday night. She was then up all night trying to rebook her flights, which continued to get cancelled throughout the night and into the following morning. Thank you American Airlines! She finally made it to staging in Miami over thirty-six hours after we'd initially dropped her off.

Needless to say, she was a tough combination of exhausted and frustrated by the time she joined her cohort. But her follow-on flight went better, and once she finally catches up on all the sleep she missed over the course of those disastrous travel delays, I'm sure she'll be fine.

Sally and I are proud but also sad this week. What can you do?

1. Cover work on The Return of Dr. Necropolis

We started work on the cover for The Return of Dr. Necropolis this week. I wound up going with Natalia from Dawn Book Design based on a recommendation from my friend and former plebe roommate Sean Smith. This same company did the cover for his book, Even A Dog Enlists, Why Not You?

As I've mentioned before, I love this cover.

With that said, my book's cover looks nothing like this. But it's always better to get a recommendation in situations like this, and here we are.

I can't show you anything yet, but it's been pretty exciting so far.

2. 40th Annual Swim Across the Sound Marathon: July 31, 2027!

The Swim sent out a Save the Date email this week, setting the day for next year's Swim. I took this year off but have every intention of doing the Swim again next year, so consider this your Warning Order. I'll be coming to you looking for donations to help BEAT CANCER in maybe six months or so.

3. 2026 Week 4 College Football Predictions for Every Game (Bleacher Report)

They've got Army & Navy both winning this weekend, which makes me nervous. They've also got Texas winning a tight game at Tennessee. We'll see about that as well. I took Tennessee and the points at home on this week's College Football Roundtable podcast. As an aside, I was really happy with this week's Roundtable, so definitely give that a listen if you haven't already.

Fun fact: Bleacher Report runs a TON of AFF Articles on their Army page. I don't know if they've got some kind of RSS feed hooked in, or if it's just an intern or whatever who happens to like our stuff, but we got a TON of traffic from B/R last year. Not a lot this year, alas. Not sure how many people are really reading B/R's college football coverage, honestly, based on the drop-off in referrals, but it's still cool that they found us somehow.

4. I Did The FAFO Podcast Yesterday

Facts. Truth. No BS.

This isn’t a safe space—it’s a real space. The FAFO Podcast is where uncomfortable truths get said out loud, weak excuses get exposed, and reality hits exactly the way it’s supposed to.

With that name and tagline and a host calling himself "Big Daddy Storm," you'd think this was the most MAGA podcast to ever MAGA. With that in mind, I wasn't sure I was even gonna do this show. But a casual glance at their recent interviews revealed that the show isn't remotely MAGA, at least not in its execution. It's just a decidedly macho front-facing brand.

More to the point, combat infantrymen have been arguably the best audience for my book, so I figured I should maybe lean into that and try to reach macho men where they are.

As it turned out, the interview went really, really well. I enjoyed it, and Storm made me feel good about myself, which is a good trick for an interviewer. I gotta say, too, that he has an amazing radio voice. He does local high school football play-by-play and has probably the best sounding show I've ever been on.

As usual, I have no idea when my episode will release. But I think you'll like it. We talked a lot about the actual writing process, which was nice. We even talked a little D&D!

Everybody always wants to talk sports, and while I love sports, that won't sell my book. Plus, I get tired of having to be the same person all the time. I also write, y'know?

5. We asked pro athletes: What’s the one thing a leader said that helped you most? (The Athletic)

"Believe in your preparation, and you have to believe in what you see.”

[Former Steelers LB Levon] Kirkland said those words gave him “all the confidence in the world” as a football player. In his next three seasons, he made two Pro Bowls and twice finished the top six for Defensive Player of the Year...

“I really believe that when you find out your identity, you are able to reduce anxiety,” he said. “You understand your place in this world. If you can do that, you can do anything. The outside won’t get to you. The coach yelling at you won’t get to you. You know your purpose. I really believe that’s trusting your eyes.”

This was a shockingly good article from The Athletic on what it feels like to be a high-level athlete and what it takes to both succeed and stay at the top. Not a lot of sportswriters get this side of it in my experience because most writers are strictly Non-Athletic Regular People (NARPs). This one, though, is really worth your time.

* * *

That's all we've got for Week Four of this new reinvention of Five Things.

As always, if you want to keep up with all the happenings on Dr. Necropolis, go ahead and sign up for my new mailing list. I'm just sending out one email per month, but that's still the best way to make sure you're in the know.

Have a good weekend!

Chapter 6

2026-09-21T05:00:00.000-04:00

Despite his mother’s warning, Blaine found himself in Special Agent Tiffany Trujillo's FBI-issued Lincoln cruiser the next morning, heading north up the Taconic Parkway toward Sing Sing Correctional Facility and Dr. Necropolis. Tiffany had worn a professionally laundered white shirt beneath a plain, dark blue pants suit. For once, she looked more like an FBI agent than one of the world’s most famous former superheroes. She remained quiet to the point of being uncommunicative, however, and after twenty minutes or so, her demeanor started to make Blaine nervous.

“I talked to my mother yesterday,” he said to break the silence. “It seemed like maybe Dr. McGuinness scared her. Any idea why? She’s always been, well, outspoken about whatever I do. But yesterday, she actually seemed… frightened, maybe? I don’t know. It was weird.”

Tiffany didn’t reply. She seemed lost in thought. Blaine was about to try asking his question a different way when at last she said, “I don’t remember your folks ever tangling with Frank. But your mother struck me as a woman who was all about control back in the day. Of herself, her surroundings, her image…

“She’s the Ice Queen, y’know? That’s the way I remember her, anyway.”

“She’s still like that,” Blaine agreed.

“Well, Frank could be like that, too. Every time we went up against him, we wound up walking into an ambush. So maybe your mom’s afraid we’ll lose control somehow? When you deal with Frank, that’s a distinct possibility.”

She lapsed back into silence. Blaine looked out his window and watched the endless green forests of upstate New York blow past on either side. He couldn’t help feeling antsy, but then, riding in a car always made Blaine antsy. Thankfully, the Taconic sat nearly empty that morning, at least in the northbound direction, though it remained a winding, decidedly hilly road. Tiffany drove exactly the speed limit. She seemed in no hurry to get where they were going.

“I don’t know,” Blaine said after a while. “How scary can this guy be? He’s been in a cell for the last ten years!”

“Sure,” Tiffany replied, “but there’s never been anyone like Dr. Necropolis. Not back in the day and certainly not now. The things he did… nobody did that shit. Nobody else could.” She took a deep breath and then slowly let it back out again. “Maybe he’s mellowed over the last ten years, but somehow I doubt it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Blaine asked.

“Look, can we just drop it? You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

Blaine sighed. “You guys always get like this whenever you have secrets to protect,” Blaine said. “You always act like you want to protect me from some hard truth or whatever, but in my experience, you’re really just trying to cover your own asses.”

“Who’s ‘you guys’ in this, Blaine?”

“You and the other legends. All you old guard superheroes.”

“Jesus. You make it sound like I belong in a retirement home.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly. “It’s just that I’ve been around enough Society-types to know the brush-off when I hear it.”

“I’m not trying to keep anything from you here, Blaine. There are case files. You can read them. They’re not classified or anything.”

“But that won’t tell me what the man was like. You actually knew him.”

“Like you said, Frank McGuinness has been in prison for ten years. Probably none of this will even matter.”

“And yet, you’re driving us all the way up to see him,” Blaine replied. “Clearly somebody thinks he might know something. And my mother, the freakin’ Ice Queen, got scared silly when I mentioned it to her.

“I’m not asking for state secrets here,” he continued. “I just want a little insight. I’d like to be prepared.”

“It’s not state secrets I’m worried about, Blaine. You’re asking about my life.”

Another long moment passed, and Blaine was about to say something else when Tiffany finally started talking again. “I don’t know exactly what your mother’s deal was, okay? I didn’t know her particularly well back in the day, and we haven’t exactly moved in the same social circles the past few years.

“Your mother, I mean, who knows what goes on in her head? She was an actual supervillain before she married your father, and a lot of people thought maybe she married your old man just to get out of going to jail. But who knows? Maybe that’s just jealousy. Your dad was a rich, good-looking guy, and suddenly, instead of going down for her part in the Radical Robot Rampage, she married arguably the most eligible bachelor in the State of New York. I can see why people found that fishy.

“That’s not the kind of backstory you want to take into a fight with Dr. Necropolis. A story like that? That’s the kind of thing he’ll use. And then you’re screwed, big time.”

“But how can he gain control here? That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.”

“Who knows?” Tiffany replied. “He’s a freaking genius. A real one. We’re talking Einstein or Edison here.

“He started making designer drugs and testing them out on club kids.” She shook her head, and her voice got bitter. “One batch, the press called it ‘Sex’. He pumped that shit into the ventilation system at a rave in Brooklyn and—”

“You’re kidding,” Blaine said, aghast.

“I wish I was. Dude triggered an orgy.”

“Jesus!”

“Four hundred naked teenagers, all gettin’ it on right on the floor of some abandoned warehouse down in Greenpoint. He called it a marketing ploy.”

“So what happened?”

“These were upscale kids, Blaine. Preppies. It sent the press into a feeding frenzy. They nearly had a riot down at one of the big private schools, although what all those pissed off parents thought the school was gonna do is beyond me.”

“I remember that,” Blaine said. “I was just a kid, but it seemed hard to imagine at the time.”

“Believe it,” Tiffany said. “That shit he uses is real. Me and Oberon, we were chasing him this one time, and he turns around and starts laughing. And Oberon starts laughing, too, because, y’know, everything was a joke to Oberon, and anyway, they’d been friends. But then Frank pulls out this gas grenade. Next thing I know, it’s two weeks later, and me and Oberon are married. We lived in this little hut down on a beach in Cabo San Lucas.” She looked over at him. “We were married, Blaine. Me and Oberon, the all-time king of commitment-phobia.”

“Wait. You and Oberon got—?!”

“Yeah. We both went bat-shit insane for two full weeks. Dropped everything and just went for it right then and there.”

“Oh man…”

“I know. But we got it annulled once the drugs wore off.”

“Oh shit. That’s—”

“It was,” Tiffany agreed. Quietly, she added, “Best two weeks of my entire life.”

Blaine didn’t know what to say to that. Outside, trees rolled past. Tiffany grew quiet again, and this time, he decided to respect her privacy. Eventually, though, she started talking again.

“That shit, whatever it was, it scared the hell out of Oberon.” She hesitated. “He was different afterward. I don’t know if he freaked because Frank somehow cracked the code on his DNA, or if things somehow got personal between them. Whatever it was, he was never the same happy-go-lucky guy after that. He got more serious. About Necropolis and a bunch of other stuff, too. And it still took him almost a year to bring Frank down.”

“At the Federal Reserve Bank of New York?”

“Yeah,” Tiffany said. She looked over at him and sighed. “Look, Blaine, story time’s over, okay? You want the rest, go read the reports. Just know that the hype is real. Be careful in there. Frank has a way of turning the tables on you right when you least expect it.”

* * *

Sing Sing Correctional Facility turned out to be a squat collection of off-white brick buildings set down by the Hudson River. The set up reminded Tiffany of a medieval castle, all turret towers and low brick walls surrounding an inner keep, the whole topped by razor wire. The place had been built for defense-in-depth, though the danger in this case came from within. The layout gave the prison an ugly, inhuman vibe, even as talking about Frank McGuinness had put Tiffany herself into an ugly mood.

But at least Blaine had finally stopped with his twenty questions routine.

The trip still seemed an exercise in futility. Necropolis had spent ten years in prison without giving up the real names or locations of his partners, the Siberian Tiger and Gun Girl Gracie, and Tiffany doubted that this would change any time soon. The police knew that Frank and Gracie had been an item, and they had tape of the Tiger talking, so they knew that the man was Russian. Beyond that, they’d never had much. Necropolis had been amazingly thorough back in the day, to the point that whenever the authorities had found DNA or other forensic evidence at any of his old crime scenes, the samples had always degraded to the point of uselessness by the time they’d gotten to a lab. Since Frank had gone down, though, the Tiger and Gracie had made a point of staying off the radar. The Diamond District job was the first anyone had seen or heard of either in over ten years.

Frank McGuinness had always cherished his secrets. Tiffany didn’t think for a minute that Sing Sing would have changed that. If anything, Frank’s secrets were all he had left. If she and Blaine could get out of the interrogation room without inadvertently helping Frank escape or otherwise giving him a chance to showboat in front of his fellow inmates, Tiffany would consider it a win. If they could somehow manage to avoid spending too much time strolling down Memory Lane, that would be something of a miracle.

SAC Casey Walcott had, of course, called ahead, so it didn’t take long for Tiffany and Blaine to get through security. After flashing their identification cards at the front gate, crossing the prison courtyard, and then showing identification again at the prison building itself, a guard proceeded to usher her and Blaine into a sterile interrogation room. Like everything at the prison, the interrogation room had been built using plain, off-white painted brick. The room was little more than a claustrophobic cube running about ten feet on a side. It sat empty when she and Blaine arrived, save for a couple of metal folding chairs and a single metal table that someone had bolted to the floor.

“You ready for this?” Tiffany asked.

Blaine shrugged. “How bad could it be? It’s not like he’ll be bringing gas grenades with him this time. And even if he does, we’re in the middle of the prison. It can’t possibly go all that wrong.”

Tiffany was about to respond when the door buzzed open. A man walked in wearing a bright orange jumpsuit.

Tiffany blinked.

The Frank McGuinness that Tiffany remembered had been a short, kind of pudgy guy with a receding hairline and a perpetually self-satisfied smirk. Prison had changed that man. The man in front of her now was definitely still Frank — she remembered him well enough to be sure of it — but though he still stood a bare five-foot-eight, he was now cut entirely from lean muscle and prison-yard bravado. Even shackled hand-and-foot, his shoulders stood out from his jumpsuit to define a newly found weight-lifter’s build. Incredibly, he now carried himself with the casual confidence of the supremely fit. He’d shaven his head at some point, so that his forehead caught a nasty glare from the room’s harsh fluorescent lighting

Frank’s old self-satisfied smirk looked long gone. Behind heavy wire rim prison glasses, his eyes now came alive with malice. Prison had turned one of the most dangerous men on the planet into a hardened, angry-looking bastard.

Despite herself, Tiffany felt her breath catch in her throat. She had to force herself to take a beat and calm back down. She looked again and saw — finally — that Frank had been beaten up recently. His left eye looked puffy and yellow, and the left side of his cheek was still swollen from where someone’s fist had left a definite impression.

She couldn’t see how this would help, but it was something.

Still, she wanted to at least try to start off politely. “You look good, Frank,” she said, though her mouth felt suddenly dry. “I think prison agrees with you.”

He flopped down in his seat and rattled his manacles. “Who’s your friend, Tiff?”

“Lieutenant Blaine Winters, EFD,” Blaine replied. “I’m the new Centurion.”

“The new…?” Frank smiled, and Tiffany could see that he was now missing a tooth. “Shit. You’re Scott and Emma Winters’ kid, aren’t you? That’s hysterical. I didn’t know your old man, but back in the day, your mom was one hot piece of ass. Huh. The Centurion dragged her off with him like she was some kind of goddamned war prize. What a legend. Damn, it’s a shame he’s gone.”

“Be nice, Frank,” Tiffany said.

It was too late, though. Frank looked to be enjoying himself.

“Fuck you, Tiff,” he said. “Be nice, my ass. I’m in here for almost ten years, and the first thing you say to me in all that time is, ‘Be nice’? Come on, I thought we were friends. You could’ve at least called.”

“We were never friends, Frank.”

“Are you serious? Don’t make me start with the old home week crap, Tiffany. You won’t like it, and the boy here might learn a few things.”

“Just tell us where the Siberian Tiger and Gun Girl Gracie are, Doctor,” Blaine said.

Tiffany ignored him, and so did Frank.

“You’ve developed quite a mouth, Frank,” Tiffany said. “Is that why somebody busted your eye open? Or why you’re missing a tooth? Did one of your fellow inmates get a little too tired of your bullshit?”

“Would you believe that the Owl did this?” Frank asked. He smiled, flashing his gap tooth like it was a trophy. “The bastard did me a favor, believe it or not. He didn’t have to hit me quite so hard, though.” Frank rubbed the bruising around his eye and then glared at Blaine. “He sends his love, by the way. Asked me if I could find out why he’s in the joint while the fucking Ice Queen is still out there living the high life.” Frank shrugged. “I told him I didn’t think you’d know. What’d’you think, Blaine? Got any ideas you’d like to share?”

“I think you need to shut your mouth, you bastard,” Blaine spit back.

“Ooo,” Frank said. “I like him. You banged him yet, Tiff? Does he know what kinda girl you are?” He looked at Blaine again and whispered conspiratorially, “She likes ‘em big, my guy. You’re just her type.”

Tiffany went very quiet. She’d known what to expect, and still, she knew a moment’s fury. Blaine started to get up, but she forced herself to grab his shoulder. She pulled him back down and said, “He’s just baiting you, Blaine. Oldest play in the book.”

Frank held up his hands to show off his manacles. “Come on, big guy. I’m no threat. I can’t even move.” He looked back at Tiffany. “So what? Have you just come for a visit, or is there some reason you came to see me? And can we lose these cuffs? Seriously, Tiffany, it’s not like I’m going anywhere. I know they gave you the key.”

Tiffany said, “Tell me about the Neural Disruptor, Frank. How’d the Tiger get it, and how can we stop him from using it?”

Frank held up the cuffs. “I can’t think with these things on my hands, Agent Trujillo. But maybe if you loosen ‘em, something’ll come to mind.”

“I’m not gonna take off your cuffs, you asshole. Be serious!”

“Ah, come on, Tiff! What am I gonna do? These things’re driving me crazy. You can even leave ‘em on my feet if you want. I can’t very well sketch out plans for the Neural Disruptor with my hands shackled together.”

Tiffany started to respond, but Blaine cut her off. “It’s okay, Agent Trujillo. It’s like he says, he’s not going anywhere. And besides, maybe if he attacks us, it’ll give me an excuse to pop him in his other eye.”

Tiffany sighed. “Fine. What can it hurt?”

She pulled the key from her pocket and leaned forward. Frank held out his hands. He smiled gleefully as the cuffs came off.

“Happy now?”

“Very,” he replied. He pulled his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the fingers of his right hand. Then he leaned back, both hands under the table, glasses still in his lap. When he spoke, his voice was low. Subdued. “I missed you, Tiff. Truly. But you said you had some questions?”

“Yeah,” Tiffany replied, “about the Neural Disruptor. Your old partner used it to put ten people into a persistent vegetative state the other night. But I don’t remember you ever using it that way, at least not on purpose. What’s he doing differently?”

“He’s a hack,” Frank said.

Tiffany had to lean forward to hear him, but against all odds, she suddenly felt a flash of hope. Maybe Frank had just needed to show off a little before he opened up. That didn’t seem impossible. He hadn’t always been an asshole, after all.

“There’s a reason I used to use all those gas grenades back in the day. The drugs, they open up the mind. Make a person more susceptible to the Disruptor’s effects. If you just go in cold, you have to overwhelm the person. Brutalize them. That’s dangerous. But if you prepare the mindspace properly—”

Tiffany didn’t realize how far forward she and Blaine had leaned until Frank struck. At first she thought he’d just slammed his fist on the table, but then Blaine cried out and grabbed his right hand. For a split second, Tiffany couldn’t process what she’d seen. Then her stomach dropped.

He’d played them. She’d come in ready for it, and he’d played them anyway.

Frank fell back and moved to cover up, but it was already too late. Blaine threw a roundhouse that caught him right at the jawline. Frank flew from his chair like he’d been hit by a truck and bounced off the brick wall behind him. Then Tiffany was moving at superspeed, trying to grab Blaine to keep him from killing Frank while Frank himself cowered with his hands over his head and face.

“What the Hell are you doing?!” Tiffany screamed.

“He attacked me!” Blaine yelled back.

“Not you, you idiot! Him!” She looked at Frank, who now lay bleeding on the ground. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Frank?”

“Fuck you, Tiff!” Frank yelled back. His voice sounded rough, but Tiffany didn’t think Blaine had broken his jaw. “You come in here after ten fucking years and think I’m just gonna tell you everything?! Fuck! You! I’d sooner eat shit and die!”

“That can be arranged,” Blaine fired back.

“Where’s Oberon, Tiff? They got the Owl in here, but not the big man. You wanna know why?”

“Fuck you, Frank! He left. You know that.”

“That’s funny. You know, they asked me how to control him. This was back before the bank job. And then suddenly he was gone. It’s funny how that happened, isn’t it?”

“What?!” Tiffany stared at Frank and saw the truth sitting there, right in his eyes.

Frank smiled.

Tiffany felt the room close in around her. For a heartbeat she couldn’t breathe.

And then the guards came in and separated them. One kicked Frank so hard in the gut that he doubled over. Tiffany and Blaine let themselves be forced out the door, and only once they’d gotten out into the hallway was Tiffany able to start thinking again.

“What the Hell was that?” Blaine asked.

The door slammed abruptly, and Frank disappeared from view. The hallway grew weirdly quiet. Blaine stared back toward the interrogation room, looking angry and confused.

Tiffany shook her head, still stunned by what he’d said about the government and Oberon. Could it be true? Part of her already knew that it was. They’d been so quick with the Enhanced Forces legislation after he’d disappeared. In hindsight, they’d obviously had it ready and had merely been waiting for the right opportunity.

She looked and realized that Blaine was still staring at her. “What?” she snapped.

“Are you okay?”

“Christ, how should I know? I warned you what he was like.”

“Well, did we learn anything, at least?” Blaine asked, still holding his hand. Tiffany noticed that he’d started bleeding a little.

Serves the kid right, she thought. Maybe next time he’ll listen.

“Yeah,” she said aloud. “We learned that Frank is still smarter than both of us, and that he still thinks I’m a slut.” She started walking toward the exit. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. I told fucking Casey Walcott that this was a waste of time. Turns out I was right.”

Five Things on a Friday: Who Made Who?

2026-09-18T10:45:15.640-04:00

Let's start with a banger...

1. This Week's AFF Army Football Show: AD Tom Theodorakis (As For Football)

After a tough loss last week, I was really happy with how this week's AFF Army Football Show went. I felt like we did a decent job of not wallowing in the loss, and more to the point, we turned the page pretty quickly afterwards to give fans a reason to stay engaged. Ahead of the show, I wasn't sure how well that would work, but afterward, I have to admit I felt like we did a good job.

2. The AI Inference Revolution Is Here (IEEE Spectrum)

Friends, I'm not gonna tell you how to feel about AI, but as a matter of reality, it's not going anywhere. In which case, it behooves us all as informed adults to at least understand the basic underlying technology.

The bottom half of the article gets into a lot of chip design stuff, which is less useful to regular people, but the top-half is really a must-read for those who want to live in a world they understand rather than in a world that is strange, scary, and mysterious.

An untrained LLM is like a jumble of Scrabble tiles on a table. Instead of single letters, though, the tiles show fragments of words, called tokens. Everything you’d need to write almost anything is present, but nothing makes sense.

Training a model organizes this jumble using a guessing game played at scale. The model is shown real text with the next token hidden and asked to predict what comes next. After each guess, the correct token is revealed and then compared to the prediction, and the difference is used to calculate the model’s accuracy. The game is played not with a single sentence but over billions of passages.

While a real game of Scrabble can be played over a bag of chips and a few drinks, AI training is computationally intense. The model updates its parameters through backpropagation, a process that repeatedly calculates how each of a model’s billions or trillions of parameters should shift to make the next prediction better. This is why tech giants are building larger data centers than ever before.

It takes a lot of memory to do the next step, called "inference," which ties the statistical predictive components of the model in with what's already come before. The basic algorithm will makes sense at a micro level just because the model is trained. However, the models are only useful if they can remember what's come before. That's where this next step becomes important.

3. Ride On by Monica Valli

I'd never heard of Valli before she popped into my Instagram feed this week, but this song is a good one.

If you're wondering, they're calling Valli a blues singer.

4. Gun Girl Gracie

I copy-edited The Return of Dr. Necropolis this week and then started working on the rewrite of Gun Girl Gracie. I'll be looking for a few test-readers soon, if you're interested. In the meantime, here's a working sketch of the cover concept, based on a picture that a friend of mine took at a Panamanian beach.

5. Microsoft exec called AI scraping the “largest theft of labor in human history” (Ars Technica)

Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht repeatedly warned in documents that scraping news for AI training was “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” calling it perhaps the “largest theft of labor in human history,” news orgs said. In another document, Hecht contradicted Microsoft and OpenAI’s argument that training AI on news content is fair use, suggesting that the plan to widely scrape news made “a complete mockery of the idea of ‘fair use.’”

Over at OpenAI, ChatGPT head Nick Turley wrote in an internal message that publishers would face an “existential threat” from commercial products trained on news content that can be used to substitute news providers. One Microsoft document even described a “doom loop,” news orgs said, “that will hurt the performance of our models and the entire web at the same time.”

I'm including this to show that these guys 100% understand the difference between the basic technology itself and its unethical real-world use. We made this same point on the AFF show we did about AI, but it feels like the nuance -- which is only nuanced in an insane world! -- gets lost a lot of time.

Anyway. We are where we are. But this is gonna blow up on these guys sooner or later. It's the cigarette lawsuits all over again.

* * *

That's all I've got this week, friends. If you're interested in test-reading Gun Girl Gracie, let me know. Or just sign up for the Dr. Necropolis mailing list. I'll probably send out a new email late next week.

Enjoy the weekend!