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Writing the Books We Want to Write (Or: How to Stop Drafting the Manuscript You Think You’re Supposed to Produce and Start Drafting the One That Won’t Leave You Alone)

By Tony Hicks
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There is a special kind of exhaustion reserved for writers who are halfway through a book they do not actually want to write. You know the one. It sounded smart. It sounded marketable. It sounded like something a “serious author” would produce while wearing glasses they do not need and drinking tea that tastes like bark. It may even have a tidy outline and a compelling subtitle with a colon in it. And yet. You open the document and feel like you’re clocking in for a shift. That is not inspiration. That is literary customer service. Meanwhile, in the back of your mind, there’s another book. The inconvenient one. The weird one. The one that blends investing with existential dread, or neuroscience with sarcasm, or mystical folklore with Midwestern budgeting strategies. The one that feels slightly dangerous to admit you’re writing. That book will not let you sleep. This blog is about that book. The Myth of the “Correct” Book Writers absorb invisible rules early: Write what se...
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105 Bizarre Facts That Inflated My Pinto Bean Brain to Neutron Star Density

By Tony Hicks
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1–15: Biology Is Unhinged Wombats produce cube-shaped poop. Yes, actual cubes. Engineers still don’t fully understand how. Some turtles can breathe through their butts. (Science calls it cloacal respiration. You’re welcome.) Your bones are constantly dissolving and rebuilding. You are a haunted house with a maintenance crew. The mantis shrimp sees 12–16 types of color receptors. You see three. Stay humble. There’s a species of jellyfish ( Turritopsis dohrnii ) that can revert to its juvenile form and potentially live forever. Trees can communicate stress signals through underground fungal networks. The forest is basically a gossiping Wi-Fi system. Humans glow faintly in visible light—but it’s 1,000 times too weak for our eyes to detect. Koalas have fingerprints nearly indistinguishable from humans. Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins. Some frogs freeze solid in winter and thaw back to life. Your stomach lining replaces itself every few days so it doesn’t digest itself. A ...
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Pokémon Ruby & Pokémon Sapphire: The Hoenn Fever Dream That Wouldn’t Die

By Tony Hicks
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There are regions in the Pokémon universe that feel like settings. And then there’s Hoenn. Hoenn feels like someone at Game Freak looked at a weather app mid-meltdown and said, “Yes. This. But with lizards.” When Pokémon Ruby and Pokémon Sapphire dropped in 2002, they weren’t just sequels. They were a soft reboot wrapped in tropical humidity. New region. New Pokédex. New hardware leap to the Game Boy Advance . And, most importantly, new stakes: the planet was apparently one bad mood swing away from becoming either a desert or an aquarium. Subtle? No. Memorable? Absolutely. Fast forward two decades, and we’re now being told—very earnestly—that this era inspired Pokémon’s biggest-ever spin-off. Not just another side quest. Not a cute puzzle game. Not “what if Pikachu cooks.” No. The big one. The kind of spin-off that makes the mainline games glance over nervously like, “Wait… are we still the favorite?” So let’s talk about how Hoenn—land of trumpets, torrential rain, and morally confu...
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Carry-On Courage: Samantha Brown’s No-Drama Guide to Beating Travel Anxiety (Without Pretending You’re Chill)

By Tony Hicks
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There are two kinds of travelers in this world: The ones who say, “Let’s just see what happens.” The ones who have already seen what happens in their mind, and it ends with them sleeping in an airport next to a broken vending machine while their suitcase vacations in Lisbon without them. If you are in group two, welcome. We’ve been expecting you. You probably refreshed your boarding pass three times before opening this article. And then there’s Samantha Brown —the human embodiment of “It’ll be fine.” She’s been to more countries than most of us have been to grocery stores, and somehow she still approaches travel like it’s a delightful dinner party instead of a logistical Hunger Games. So when she talks about overcoming travel anxiety, you lean in. Not because she’s dismissive. Not because she says “just relax.” But because she’s seen the chaos—and still packs cute shoes. Let’s break down her vibe, her practical advice, and why it works—even for those of us whose fight-or-flight respons...
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This Drama Changed Television and Beat Stranger Things by Nearly 1 Billion Minutes — And Yes, That’s Wild

By Tony Hicks
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Let’s begin with the obvious: we were all emotionally preparing to crown Stranger Things the undisputed streaming monarch of 2025. Final season. Three-year hiatus. The Upside Down’s last hurrah. Dustin’s graduation speech in the epilogue. Max Mayfield’s reaction that probably launched a thousand TikTok edits. It had all the makings of a Nielsen bloodbath. And yet. The show that actually beat it — by nearly a billion streaming minutes — is a 22-season medical drama that has been emotionally terrorizing viewers since George O’Malley still had a face. Yes. It’s Grey’s Anatomy . Clocking in at 40.9 billion minutes streamed versus Stranger Things’ 40 billion, Grey’s did what it has done for two decades: survived, thrived, and quietly reminded everyone that while monsters from alternate dimensions are cool, nothing competes with a hallway breakdown at Seattle Grace. Let’s unpack this because this isn’t just a numbers story. This is a cultural reckoning. The Billion-Minute Realit...
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