José Pablo Iriarte
Spec fic author and middle grade novelist. Cuban-American ceterosexual enby. They/them.
Debut MG novel BENNY RAMÍREZ AND THE NEARLY DEPARTED is a Norton, BSFA, Ignyte, and Florida SSYRA finalist!!!
linktr.ee/labyrinthrat
- I'm a fan of panlexicon, but I dig this thing m-w does with their thesaurus where they color-code words in the results to indicate closeness in meaning to the search term.
- Hey, I don't know how many people following me on here are in the Central Florida area, but on Tuesday evening, I'll be reading something new at Loose Lips, a local spoken word event at Lil Indies on Mills. @mariness.bsky.social will also be there reading new work!
- I'm jealous of the cool spoken word events I hear about from the west coast and from New York, but Loose Lips is our own Orlando tradition!
- I trunked four novels *before* my first published one. I haven't *yet* trunked one since, but my first book came out in 2024, so maybe too soon to say. That said, though I can't control whether a novel sells or not, at this point, I have a lot of confidence that I'm putting out professional work.
- At this point, if no acquisition editor wanted a manuscript of mine, I don't think my inclination would be to trunk it, but maybe to write another and, meanwhile, wait for the market to be more receptive.
- Given that I'm shopping a nonbinary MG book right now, I guess I'mma find out real soon if the market is receptive to what I'm doing or not. But it's a good book either way. I know it is.
- Tonight I had one of my usual favorite microwave meals, Healthy Choice's Unwrapped Burrito Bowl, and . . . holy hell, they have upped the heat level by 200%. I am thinking I won't be able to buy this again.
- I have a pretty adequate tolerance for heat. I'm not one of those people that likes to show off by mainlining hot sauce or whatever, but I don't usually shy away from spicy food.
- I watched the video, didn't hear the thing, maybe my speakers aren't good enough. But since watching it, I've been troubled by . . . if true, what am I supposed to take away from it? He's a evil man with evil policies. Whether he defecates himself in the oval office doesn't speak to any of that.
- Is this different from mocking him for being fat or from alleging that he has a small penis, or is it in the same vein? I'm open to arguments asserting that there's a difference, but my gut reaction is there is not.
- Based on my genetics, I don't expect to see 80, but if I do, I don't expect to be fully continent by that point.
- If you're from Florida and you're old like me, you know Royal Castle was better than White Castle.
- The term "rape culture" is one I don't see getting as much mainstream use as it did maybe half a decade to a decade ago, as though conservatives successfully shouted it out of mainstream discourse, but . . . anybody else notice that most billionaire men seem to be showing up in those files?
- Almost as though a lot of cishet men are into rape the moment they perceive they are more powerful than the law.
- Getting rid of billionaires won't fix the culture, but I reckon it would still prevent a lot of harm.
- I start to pay attention to basketball when both football and baseball are in their offseason, but I never get too invested because the "excitement" feels bogus to me: it feels like no matter how one-sided a game might seem, most games end up within reach in the fourth quarter.
- You're always like six minutes from a 17-3 run and a game being back in reach. As a writer, I find the drama predictable and less compelling than the other two sports I mentioned. (I know people like to disparage baseball, but I disagree with those that do.)
- And the NBA season feels equally bogus, drama-wise. Ten teams per conference have *some* sort of post-season, while only five do not, so it's hard to care what is happening in February.
- Anyway. Go Heat!
- The optometrist where I take my kids has a whole wall plus two stand displays pushing AI glasses. Powered by Meta. Are these things actually selling well?
- Never mind the jobs you had, tell me 5 classes you took in college: 1. Building the City of God - An atheist history professor and a catholic theology professor team-taught this deep dive into Augustine and history.
- 2. The 1960s - or maybe it was 1968 specifically. All about US political turmoil. Half the class took it because they wanted to know what the hell Billy Joel was singing about. 3. Art and Social Justice
- 4. Medieval Romances - we read the earliest readable-to-us versions of Malory, Chrestien de Troyes, etc 5. Discrete Math - stg this class was all puzzle-solving. I mean, more than math classes usually are.
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