Stop At The Tavern #1

Listen (4 min) | Announcements, featured notes, and this month's reading

Hello friends,

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and a reinvigorating New Year. Stepping away for a couple of months renewed me. I’ve got plenty of stories and personal adventures to share in 2025, and I’m glad to have you with me.

Announcements

• I’ve created a new and—I hope—manageable publishing schedule.

  1^st, 3^rd, and 5^th Wednesdays of the month will be for fiction, with 5^th Wednesdays being a wildcard. The fiction you receive on that day will be different. It could be an old-but-unpublished work I’ve revisited, a piece of 24-hour fiction which I’ve written, edited, and recorded in the space of a day, a story based on a writing prompt, or a story written in a new-to-me style/genre. Sky’s the limit.

  2^nd Wednesdays, you’ll receive a piece of personal nonfiction that focuses on my efforts to cultivate silence in my personal and creative life.

  And 4^th Wednesdays will be for this—announcements, catching up, featured Substack Notes, and what I’ve been reading. I think of it as a visit to the virtual tavern.

• In July 2024, I stated that I’d be getting rid of my smartphone and trading it in for a Lightphone. I hoped to have the phone by now, but the manufacturers have notified me that it won’t be available until March, or April at the latest. It’s still my intention to write about this change once I’ve had the phone for a month, so look for that piece in late spring or early summer.

Featured Notes

This Month’s Reading

January began with Agatha Christie’s Midwinter Murder. This is a themed anthology of some of the author’s short stories. During the holidays, I was dealing with a prolonged illness, and I had very little energy or focus for reading. It was far easier to commit to reading one short story at a time than it was to pick up a novel. And I love a cozy mystery.

My second piece of reading was the brilliant play, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I’d like to finish reading all of Shakespeare this year. I know that’s a tall order, but as they say, aim for the moon and hit the stars. I’ve got the entire collection, both on Audible and my bookshelf at home. Now, all I need is the time.

Lastly, I finished Firefly: Coup de Grâce by Una McCormack, the eighth book in the Firefly series, based on the Joss Whedon TV show of the same name. This one was disappointing. There was no end to the characters wandering around, which really killed the pace. Too slow for an adventurous space Western.

If you’d like to see what I’m reading in real time or you’d like to share what you’re reading, you can follow me on Story Graph (not sponsored) under username jjamesreading. Story Graph is a nice way to track what you read and get recommendations, both from those you follow and from the website itself. If you’re not on Story Graph, I’d love to hear what you’re reading in the comments section below.

That’s all for now.

I’m looking forward to what the rest of the year has in store, and I’m glad to have you all with me. Whether you’re new, old, or rarely here, thanks for coming along.

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Painting is Interior of a Tavern with a Blind Fiddler by Hendrik Leys (1815–1869)