AMBER BENSON THINKS I'M FUNNY! I WIN THE INTERNET!

Link is here. It's a good blog, well worth reading. If, however, you're in a hurry, just do what I always do and search the page for "Goodrich". And you will find out that John Everson, at my suggestion, signed Amber Benson. As soon as I can scam some pictures off his website, I'll post them.

5/11 Addendum: For those of you who do not know,Amber Benson played Tara on Buffy the Vampure Slayer. In my opinion, she was one of the best actresses on the show. Since Buffy, she has on to write a series of books with Chris Golden.

When John Everson posted that he was going to be signing with Amber Benson, I said that he should remove the preposition and go ahead and sign her. John mentioned this to Amber, and the thought the idea was funny. So she let him sign her. And here's the proof:

Did You Know?

Ten Top Trivia Tips about John Goodrich!

1. In his entire life, John Goodrich will produce only a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.
2. Contrary to popular belief, John Goodrich is not successful at sobering up a drunk person, and in many cases he may actually increase the adverse effects of alcohol!
3. A John Goodrichometer is used to measure John Goodrich.
4. John Goodrich is the largest of Saturn's moons!
5. Birds do not sleep in John Goodrich, though they may rest in him from time to time!
6. Human beings are the only animals that copulate while facing John Goodrich!
7. If you toss John Goodrich 10000 times, he will not land heads 5000 times, but more like 4950, because his head weighs more and thus ends up on the bottom!
8. Twenty-eight percent of Microsoft's employees are John Goodrich.
9. John Goodrich was declared extinct in 1902.
10. John Goodrichology is the study of John Goodrich.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

And thank God for #6!

Mood:

Pleased

I have received the table of contents for the Cthulhu Unbound pair of anthologies from Permuted Press, as well mock-ups of the covers. I don't know when they'll be available (certainly not before Necon), but I can say I'm pleased to have gotten under the cover I prefer.



BOOK ONE
1) Noir-lathotep by Linda Donahue
2) The Invasion Out of Time by Trent Roman
3) James and the Dark Grimoire by Kevin Lauderdale
4) Hellstone and Brimfire by Doug Goodman
5) Star Crossed by Bennet Reilly
6) The Covenant by Kim Paffenroth
7) The Hindenburg Manifesto by Lee Clark Zumpe
8 ) In Our Darkest Hour by Steven Graham
9) Blood Bags and Tentacles by DL Snell
10) Bubba Cthulhu's Last Stand by Lisa Hilton
11) Turf by Richard D. Moore
12) The Menagerie by Ben Thomas
13) The Patriot by John Goodrich
14) The Shadow over Las Vegas by John Claude Smith
15) Locked Room by CJ Henderson



BOOK TWO
1) Passing Down by Inez Schaechterle
2) The Tenants of Ladywell Manor by Willie Meikle
3) The Hunters Within the Corners by Douglas P. Wojtowicz
4) Surely You Joust by Patrick Thomas
5) References in Cthonic, Eldritch, Roiling Creations are Recondite by Warren Tusk
6) New Fish by Kiwi Courters
7) Tomb on a Dead Moon by Tim Curran
8 ) The Long, Deep Dream by Peter Clines
9) Santiago Contra el Culto de Cthulhu by Mark Zirbel
10) Stomach Acid by David Conyers and Brian M. Sammons
11) Sleeping Monster Futures by Brandon Alspaugh
12) Nemo at R'lyeh by Joshua Reynolds
13) What's a Few Tentacles Among Friends? by Sheila Crosby
14) An Incident Occurring in the Huachuca Mountains, West of Tombstone by Gary Vehar
15) Abomination With Rice by Rhys Hughes

The Inevitable Gygax Memorial

Mood

Unmotivated

In the wake of all the Gary Gygax tributes, it has occurred to me that many people have missed the man's ultimate legacy. Dungeons and Dragons took an antisocial demographic, the geek, and got them together for a social activity. Yes, most game groups were closed circles, but at least we were all talking. We laughed, we faced challenged in a team-building way, and we spent a lot of time interacting with each other.

This, really, is Gary Gygax's legacy. A generation of geeks and nerds who have a modicum of social ability, who can get together be social and polite, and gave us a common culture: role-playing games.

That's right. Gary Gygax united the geeks.

Why My Heart Belongs to New England

Any questions?

Just Another February 29th?

So you’ve survived the innocuous extra day that gets tacked onto February once (almost) every four years. Leap year is something most people don’t really think about. Which is kind of too bad. We’ve made it very easy to overlook something rather extraordinary—the fact that the rate at which our Earth revolves around the sun is not in precise agreement with our 24-hour day.

Early solutions to this observation were admittedly rickety. The pre-Julian Roman Calendar is as delightfully complex a calendar as you might find. Every other year, the short month of Intercalaris was inserted toward the end of a truncated February (most scholars agree) on a roughly alternating schedule as to whether Intercalaris was 23 or 24 days. Since the “standard” Roman year was 355 days, and the “special edition” year was 378 or 379, it averaged out reasonably well as long as someone paid close attention.

However, the office of the Pontifex Maximus, the most powerful priest in Rome, was in charge of a lot of things, including the calendar. Of course, if he was busy, say during a Civil War, or the Second Punic War, the Pontifex Maxiumus might not get around to properly assigning the year. Or it might be that the current Pontifex, an elected official, might want to assist his political cronies by making the transient month arrive sooner rather than later, extending their term in office.

Unsurprisingly, the calendar did not always work as simply as it seems in print. Julius Caesar, setting up reform and establishing the Julian calendar extended the year 46 BC to 445 days in order to bring the following year back into seasonal alignment. To do this, he inserted the usual Intercalaris in February, as well as another 23 days into November, and 22 more into December. After that, he established the familiar 365 day calendar with a leap year tacking an extra day onto February every four years.

In light of the Julian reform, the Roman Calendar looks cobbled together, but it was a calendar based on observation and constant attention. It worked as long as it was properly maintained. Like a lot of the side-projects of the high and mighty, time and attention were a problem. What Julius “Shakespeare wrote a play about me” Caesar did was to simplify the calendar so that anyone who knew the leap-year rule could make their own calendar, rather having it issue from a specific office every year.

And the Julian calendar worked pretty well for fifteen hundred years, but it hadn’t been worked out to enough decimal places to be eternal. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar (named for Pope Gregory XIII), instituted a new refinement. The Julian calendar declared that all years divisible by 4 were leap years. The Gregorian rule is a bit more complex, stating that every year that is divisible by four is a leap year, except for years divisible by 100. Centuries that are divisible by 400 are leap years. Thus 1600 was a Gregorian leap year, while 1800 was not. However, because the Julian calendar was now some ten days off meeting solar equinox with calendar equinox, ten days would have to be lopped off the current year of any country that adopted the Gregorian calendar.

And of course, European countries wanted to display their allegiance or defiance of the Pope and his newfangled calendar. So there is a lag of some 300 years during which Western Europe slowly converted to the Gregorian calendar. The Orthodox church still hasn’t, which is why Eastern Orthodox holidays are celebrated some twelve or thirteen days after Catholic and Protestant ones.

The delay among countries adopting the Gregorian calendar has resulted in some interesting quirks of calendary. For real giddy fun, consider that Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same date (April 23, 1616), even though Cervantes predeceased Shakespeare by ten days. Spain was using the Gregorian calendar at that time, while Britain was using Julian.

So the apparent simplicity of the additional day of February that makes little impression on you has been the result of a lot of hard work, finagling, and political chicanery. There is absolutely nothing sinister about this. Unless you count in the fact that Feb 29 is Tim Powers’ birthday, which makes it just a touch suspicious.

Happy birthday, Tim.

Mission: Networking!

Mood:






Mission Accomplished

I took Saturday and went to Boskone 45, Boston's largest and primarolty literary SF convention. There I met several Neconites and using information gleaned from them, crashed the New England Horror Writers' dinner. And I met (OK, met and remembered, because I've apparently met Jack before) Jack Haringa, who is cool, classy, a great conversationalist, and a also an appreciator of Muppets, Nick "I don't have to write, I'm a Stoker-Nominated author!" Kaufmann, Paul G. Tremblay, F. Brett Cox, who , it turns out, works at the same university my father used to, Lon Prater, and of course Nick Mamatas. I did a lot of networking, at least as far as I could shout down the table.


I'm interested in following the development of the latest horror award, the Shirley Jackson Awards, and not just because I've been to her house. Jackson is, however, the origin of the myth that we stone people to death in Bennington. This is a dirty lie—Jackson lived in North Bennington.


The collaboration between David Conyers and I has been sent off to the editor. I think it came out rather well, and am hoping that it gets into the anthology.

Sweet, Sweet, Publication

Mood:









Overly self-satisfied

Dissecting Hannibal Lecter has come out, with my essay "Hannibal at the Lectern: A Textual Analysis of Dr. Hannibal Lecter's Character and Motivations in Thomas Harris's Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs"



Thomas Harris's star was waned some since the enormous success of the book and film versions of Silence of the Lambs. But his signature character of cannibalistic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter remains a fascinating one. Norman Bates is his father, Patrick Bateman and Dexter Morgan his literary descendants. But for me, it seemed that many people missed the point of Lecter. Consider this exchange from Silence of the Lambs, p. 277:

     "What does he do, this man you want?"
     "He kills —"
     Ah &mdash" [Dr. Lecter] said sharply, averting his face for a moment from her wrongheadedness. "That's incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does, what need does he serve by killing?"

Lecter applies this reasoning to Buffalo Bill, but what if we apply it to the good doctor?

There are also magnificent essays by ST Joshi, Davide Mana, Peter Messent, Philip Simpson, Robert Waugh, as well as editor Benjamin Szumskyj.

Templecon was Fun!

Mood:

Havin' fun playin wiv mah bruvva

I had a good time playing with my brother at Templecon, a large east coast Warmachine convention. I didn't win any prizes, because my style of play, which is to not commit fully until the enemy makes a mistake then pounce on him, really isn't as consistently effective as having an well thought-out plan.

And I still have that competitive edge that makes losing a too-personal experience for me. I get that uncomfortable feeling in my stomach, and the face-too-tight sensation when I watch my opponent really gain the upper hand in a match. Although after six months of play, this has eased off a bit. I doubt it will ever actually stop bothering me, but I think repeated defeat in public will continue to erode that humiliating feeling of utter failure when I am beaten.

The games had many interesting moments, the most visual of which is below. My Iron Lich Asphyxious (in black) fighting a Seraph (in blue and orange) on a tall rocky pinnacle. Asphyxious did not actually kill the Seraph; he severely hurt it and threw it off the tower. It was the Slayer jack (at bottom right) that struck the killing blow.



Outside of the game itself, I'm enjoying painting Warmachine models (you can see some on my website). It takes a bit less talent than I had originally feared. And it's a good rest when I'm brain-tired from writing.

Not Dead, Incapacitated, or Bored

January is usually that time of year when I attempt to withdraw from all human contact. After the relentless need to get stuff done before Christmas (several people didn't get presents who really deserved them, and for that my deepest apologies, and I'm running late on Ray Solberg's birthday), January is generally a time of staying in and feebly trying to catch up on correspondence. This year, I'm really sucking with the contacting people, so this post to reassure people that I am not dead, incapacitated, or bored.

I have so much stuff on my mental to-do list that I had to write it down in order to keep it straight. And nothing says "This will make a great blog post" like a list. The sad thing is that I'm probably reference this post as a to-do list for a couple of months. Here's what I have to do, as of 1/22/2008:

•  "Raw, New Things." This is my newsletter to the Esoteric Order of Dagon in which I review recent anthologies of Mythos short stories or novels. ~4,000 words. Done 1/24.

•  Tart up the Necromancer for Hire query letter. Which also includes a day trip to the library to find more literary agents who are amenable to fantasy submissions, as well as fantasy publishers who take unsolicited manuscripts.

•  Think up a better title (Are you there, Shakespeare? It's me, John) for the revision of "Sire" that I sweated over during most of January. Revise one more time and then send.

•  Complete and then revise collaborative story with David Conyers.

•  Revise "Death of the American Family Farm" and submit it to Space and Time magazine.

•  Write two stories for anthologies I've been invited into: A CSI Arkham story (and necessary research into police procedure and crime scene investigation), and one concerning anthropologists, and Greenland's Dorset culture.

•  Write story and submit it to Mythos Books' Cthulhu 2012 anthology.

•  Write questions to ask authors who were influenced by Robert Bloch, then write article on Robert Bloch's influence as a literary mentor.

•  I have not updated the Ultimate Hellblazer Index in six months.

•  Other stories that need to be written: "God of Chickens", "Almost Human", "Rather Short for an Angel", "A Certain Society of Concerned Citizens", "Captain Scar", "Beanie Babies", "Darwin's Cosh", "The Secret History of Earth", and "The Whiskey Tango File".

•  And at some point, I want to take six months and write a horror novel, Hag.

•  I owe a lot of people email.

My non-work, non-writing schedule for February looks like this:

Feb 1-3: Templecon. I spent the 26^th painting up my bane knights so my Warmachine forces will look good on the table. I will not have time to paint and assemble my harrower.

Feb 10: A "Write Your Own Valentine" get-together with the SouthShire Roundtable.

Feb 15-17: Boskone. To add insult to injury, I am not the Guest of Honor, although the mass slaying of peeps could possibly make up for this.

Feb 19-21 I am having my niece and nephew over during Winter break. This begs the question of how the hell am I going to keep them from being bored? I think I could park Redhead Reader in front of the bookshelf and she'd be happy, but doing that for three entire days would be irresponsible. Her brother, Redhead Runner, I have even less clue about.

So hello to all of you out there! I am not dead, incapacitated, or bored! I love you all and can I start referring to you as my fandom?