Posted on General

Dread Spherical – the Novel

Jack Mangan has returned to set matters right.
At long last, Tomi’s story is told in full, from her hidden birthright. . . to her time as lead battlecoder for the Shogun. . . to her fugitive days pursued by warlords and digital gods. . .

Dread Spherical is an action-packed examination of what it means to exist, to love, and to suffer in times of conflict.

Available now from Amazon. Click here to order.

173 thoughts on “Dread Spherical – the Novel”

    • I only ordered 20, but I’m planning to order more.

      I’ll have a table at this year’s Phoenix Fan Fusion, formerly known as Phoenix ComiCon. I’ve also been invited to do an event at a local bookstore, am waiting eagerly to hear back.

  9. And btw, we took the little one to see Project Hail Mary yesterday.

    That’s the best new movie I’ve seen in the theater in a long time.

  13. My husband is funny. Since we aren’t gaming today, I said to him, “We have snacks, we can hold them until next week.”
    What he heard is, “We have snacks.” and has already opened the bag of sweets. Silly man.
    (for game days we always buy two salt snacks and one sweet)

  14. So I switched to ad supported Disney + subscription as it was getting too expensive.

    Bloody hell the ads are frequent and two minutes at time which is so annoying. Netflix does ads so much better.

    Going to give it a month before cancelling.

  20. I got new glasses as mine were really old. I usually wear contacts but wanted glasses for backup. Picked them up today and am currently wearing them. While the vision itself is clear, it’s just so weird looking through glass lenses instead of having (the feeling of) nothing between you and sight.

      • Yeah I don’t trust my self sticking anything directly on to my eyes.

        I’ve been wearing glasses since childhood so there is nothing weird about looking through glass lenses to me.

  21. So Austin Powers was frozen for 30 years from the groovy 1960s until he woke up in the 1990s.

    If you were to make a movie now with the same premise, the character would be frozen in the mid-late 1990s.

    • Someone waking up from the 90’s would probably have an even harder time wrapping their heads around the world today. Star Trek lies about everything.

  22. Crap joke for the day:

    Guy goes into a barber shop for a haircut.

    There’s the barber, another guy and a little boy sitting on a chair.

    The guy sits in the barber chair to get his haircut.

    He asks the barber, “Is that your son?”

    Barber says, ‘No, he just a kid that hangs around here. And he’s dumber than a box of rocks. Watch this.”

    The barber reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dime and a nickel. Calls the little boy over.

    “You can have one of these but only one. Which one do you want”

    The kid grabs the nickel and runs out the door. Everybody laughs.

    Later, the guy is walking down the street and sees the little boy sitting outside the store eating an ice cream cone.

    “You know, when the barber offered you those two coins, the smaller one is worth twice as much as the bigger one you took…”

    The kid smiles and says, “Yeah, I know. But if I take the dime, they quit playing.”

  28. The husband is in an olds hoop state of mind. Watched the first episode of old shoe Fireball XL5. It’s right up Van’s alley

  33. So a lot of tourists on threads post beach photos that state “at the beach in Newcastle”.

    Thing is Newcastle doesn’t have a beach they are posting photos from towns on the east coast, towns that are not called Newcastle.

    /gnashes teeth

  37. Today one of the local movie channels has the husban’s nod of approval. We just watched the original West World, nest up is Silent Running, followed by Jason and the Argonauts

    Today it’s the best channel ever

  39. The Glendale Cat Cafe did its grand opening today, with a special $10 for 30 minutes deal, which was a pretty great way to spend a half-hour.

  43. We watched “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” last night. As a movie, it wasn’t very good. It was aimless and did not clearly layout what the movie was about. But, it was a very interesting insight into the artist, and his Nebraska album. I enjoyed it from that perspective.

    • The KC Convention Center is pretty huge! Was Planet Comicon able to fill out the whole building? Fun Fact: In the early 2000s I spent some time working for A Zahner, https://azahner.com/, the metal fabricator that did the metal sculptures on top of the pylons of the convention center. They did a lot of metal siding for various Frank Gehry projects around the world.

  47. As for female-fronted Japanese metal bands, I don’t have many recommendations, other than the ones talked about. I wouldn’t classify Gacharic Spin as metal, definitely alternative, but not metal. Still a cool band. And I’ve heard a bit about Nemophilia, but I haven’t listened to them much yet.

    If we are talking about other genres, I have a lot more recommendations

  48. The KC Convention Center is pretty huge! Was Planet Comicon able to fill out the whole building? Fun Fact: In the early 2000s I spent some time working for A Zahner, https://azahner.com/, the metal fabricator that did the metal sculptures on top of the pylons of the convention center. They did a lot of metal siding for various Frank Gehry projects around the world.

  49. So setup up a passkey for my PSN account, first time I’ve used a passkey, so far it doesn’t doesn’t to be better than using the old two factor authentication.

  58. I learned today that there’s a sketchy site using jackmangan dot com without the www. (My phone browser gave me a warning when I tried to click through to it. . . so investigate with caution).
    I didn’t even know that was possible.

  65. Super Mario Galaxy is nuts. More coherent and likable than I expected, but still 2 hours of madness. There’s gotta be 10,000 little references and things to see in every frame.

    Modern animated movies seem to lean all in on overstimulation. I’m not trying to be “ old man yells at cloud,” just making an observation.

  70. As you celebrate today, remember it’s about a man giving up a weekend so we can fight a bunch of wars in his name

  76. My copy of Spherical Tomi arrived Saturday!
    Now I have to hope I live long enough to get time to sit down and read. ☹️

    When I read, I like to get into it. Picking up a book and reading a few pages at a time “when you have a moment”, ruins the flow for me.

  77. The husband is trying to convince me Psycho is actually a movie on morality since the only reason she ended up at the motel is because she was on the run after stealing a bunch of money.

  78. So tonight I saw the horror film ‘Undertone’ at the cinema.

    Wasn’t happy with the ending but damn the use of sound made it very creepy.

  79. Today should be an historic celebration of one of our greatest achievements.

    Instead, history books will remember the worst of humanity behaving as the worst of humanity.

    • Right?
      How many slang terms have we seen come and go with the seasons.
      Give it a month and the internet will have moved one.

      Funny note. Talking to an old guy like me last night and he was telling me about having sent a message out to his group saying he would “be out of pocket” one afternoon.
      He had several, “20 something” employees who were scandalized because they had never heard that term and thought it was some kind of slang for getting drunk or the like.

  85. Kinda tired after 2 long days… I watched a few Jason Bonham Led Zeppelin songs… Jason is telling one of his long stories..(which are great)… Headed toward the exit… Then he sings the riff to Kashmir….

    Turned right back around.

  88. A crap joke for the PGA’s “Masters Tournament”
    “What’s the difference between a golf ball and a Mercedes?

    Answer: Tiger Woods can drive a golf ball 300 yards, without hitting a tree.

  90. So watching The Right Stuff for the first time.

    Now some of the actors in the movie have died but seeing the actor who was an old man in The Walking Dead series as a much younger guy feels a bit weird.

  91. The band on the stage near my booth just did “Play That Funky Music,” and you’d have thought there was run at Costco. The place went nuts.

  93. We have this one friend we game with and, I’m not sure why, but they always win. Seriously, it can be a brand new game they’ve never played before but they always seem to understand the mechanics immediately and will inevitably win.
    And yet, being the masochists we are, the husband and I still enjoy playing with him.
    (yes, I know it’s the company)

  94. Finally got to catch “The Hail Mary Project” at the theater this afternoon. Really enjoyed the audiobook and I thought the movie did a good job translating the story.

    • We’re getting a lot of pressure from friends to see it in the theatre. Everybody says that’s the way to see it. It’s not going to happen, but 8 hear good things

      • The Missis has informed me that we are no longer going to the movie theater. I was like, really, why? She said when you watch a film at home, you don’t have to fight crowds, you can pause and take a potty break whenever you need to, and you don’t have to spend a fortune on snacks. I expected to feel a sense of loss, but I can’t say that I did.

        • I’m largely the same, but my wife and daughter wanted to catch this on in theater. I think the last time I’ve been to an actual theater was for Dune part 2.

          • This is the first movie I’ve seen at the theaters since before the pandemic. And the reason we stopped going is that theaters are not accessible. It’s too much of a challenge for T to get around. And we agree with all the other points. We miss going to the theater, but it just doesn’t work for us anymore.

  95. So finally got around to playing with a DJI Neo I bought about a year ago.

    You have to register it yearly for a fee to legally fly it outside in the UK as it’s not classed as a toy drone so just had to fly it around the house.

    Even using the phone it was very stable in flight and easy to land on the palm of my hand.

    Going to have to register it now so I can take it outside.

  96. I listen to “The Rest is History” podcast.
    Thy just did a 4 part series on the KKK.

    Some interesting revelations –
    That organization has had 3 distinct iterations.
    The 2nd (and perhaps worse) version started in the 1920’s.
    The MAIN focous of their agression was NOT people of color (although yes, they stated POC were not equal to “white” people). Their main focous was … Catholics!
    (May explain some of trump’s actions)

    Also this second iteration was started by one guy, a traveling salesman/grifter who saw it as a way to make money and when he hooked up with a pair of advertising professionals who had just run a campaign for EUGENICS, it took off.
    That KKK was nothing more than a pyramid scheme and in its first year it made its owners 8 million in 1920s dollars… and did a lot of social damage.

    The more you know.

    • What a perfect storm of the worst of humanity. Organized hatred, violence, intimidation, dehumanization, grift, exploitation all under one hood.

      The formula clearly works and continues to work.

      • So apparently it was during this 1920’s stretch of the KKK that the current President’s father got involved with them and was apparently arrested at one of their functions.

        It all kind of starts to fit together.

  99. Tonight I rewatched Amélie at the cinema, it was recently re-released for it’s 25th anniversary.

    Goodness I adore this film, quirky French humour and a lovely soundtrack.

  100. The next thing: the insurance just cleared, so tomorrow we’re have the bathroom demolished. We had a leaky pipe that caused a little bit of damage. We caught it early, but not early enough.

    • For those with TLDR-

      The duo followed Pufnstuf with The Bugaloos (1970-72), the Claymation series Lidsville (1971-73), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973-75) and Land of the Lost (1974-76), which spawned an ill-fated Will Ferrell movie adaptation in 2009. Those shows were wildly popular in syndication as well.

      “We screwed with every kid’s mind,” Marty told THR. “There’s a Krofft look — the colors. There’s an edge. Disney doesn’t have an edge.”

  103. Crap home for today:

    An hour into an Airbus 380 flight from London to New York. A young blonde in economy stood up, gathered her purse from the overhead locker and strutted up to and through the dividing curtain and sits her ass down to into a first-class seat.
    The flight attendant rushes quickly over to checks her ticket and after she does so says,
    “Ma’am, you paid for an economy seat, this is the first-class section- could you please return to your allocated seat.”

    The blonde replies,
    “Hey, listen and listen good, I’m blonde, I’m beautiful, I’m going to New York, and I’m staying right here!”

    She point blank refuses to move, so the flight attendant has no option but to tell the pilot and co-pilot about the situation.
    The co-pilot comes out to see her and tries to explain, but the blonde repeats,
    “I’m blonde, I’m beautiful, I’m going toNew York, and I’m staying right here!”

    He comes back and tells the pilot. The pilot says,
    “She’s blonde? Don’t worry, I’ve got this – I speak Blonde. After all, I’m married to one.”
    He comes out of the cockpit and walks to where the blonde is sitting, whispers something in her ear,. After a moment’s thought the blonde stands up and says,
    “Oh, I’m so sorry!” and returns to her seat in economy.

    Everyone is stunned. “What on earth did you say to her?” they all ask.
    He smiled and replied,
    “I told her first class isn’t going to New York.”

  104. Your Crap joke for today:

    An hour into an Airbus 380 flight from London to New York. A young blonde in economy stood up, gathered her purse from the overhead locker and strutted up to and through the dividing curtain and sits her ass down to into a first-class seat.
    The flight attendant rushes quickly over to checks her ticket and after she does so says,
    “Ma’am, you paid for an economy seat, this is the first-class section- could you please return to your allocated seat.”

    The blonde replies,
    “Hey, listen and listen good, I’m blonde, I’m beautiful, I’m going to New York, and I’m staying right here!”

    She point blank refuses to move, so the flight attendant has no option but to tell the pilot and co-pilot about the situation.
    The co-pilot comes out to see her and tries to explain, but the blonde repeats,
    “I’m blonde, I’m beautiful, I’m going toNew York, and I’m staying right here!”

    He comes back and tells the pilot. The pilot says,
    “She’s blonde? Don’t worry, I’ve got this – I speak Blonde. After all, I’m married to one.”
    He comes out of the cockpit and walks to where the blonde is sitting, whispers something in her ear,. After a moment’s thought the blonde stands up and says,
    “Oh, I’m so sorry!” and returns to her seat in economy.

    Everyone is stunned. “What on earth did you say to her?” they all ask.
    He smiled and replied,
    “I told her first class isn’t going to New York.”

  107. https://www.npr.org/2026/04/13/nx-s1-5783924/2026-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-inductees

    There’s hand-wringing every ear about the RnR Hall of Fame inductees, which is silly. I’m in favor of including musicians from Rock n’ Roll-adjacent forms, like Rap, Country, Jazz, World Music, whatever. I almost never object.
    I have had some beef with a few of their snubs, and with their disrespect of Heavy Metal bands. They’ve taken a step in the right direction (finally) with the induction of Iron Maiden.

    Although it’s unlikely Iron Maiden will show up.

    • We’ve been watching the new season of Monarch, and with Wyatt and Kurt changing roles, I brought up the idea of an EFNY sequel with Wyatt to Teresa. LOL In other streaming news, did anyone else laugh when Mireille Enos showed up on “For All Mankind”?

    • Remaking it is simply an attempt at a cash grab.
      It wasn’t good movie.
      What made it something I’d watch again tomorrow is Kurt’s performance.
      You can’t remake that.

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