Everyone Loves a Good Review

But not as much as I love a positive review of my work.

Bob Freeman recently posted this review of Cthulhu Unbound on the Monster Librarian website. It runs like this:

H.P. Lovecraft’s intricate mythos of chthonic alien monstrosities and human madness is an industry onto itself, spawning role-playing and computer games, pastiches in all shapes and sizes, and influencing literature and film ad nauseam. The latest anthology to drape itself in the cloak of Lovecraft’s dark creation comes from Permuted Press. Cthulhu Unbound, the first of two volumes, attempts to unshackle the mythos from preconceived boundaries of the genre, but the anthology that is uneven at best. Some of the tales are quite good, such as Kim Paffenroth’s “The Covenant” and D.L. Snell’s “Blood Bags and Tentacles”, but most fall embarrassingly flat. The crowning achievement in the anthology goes to John Goodrich’s “The Patriot”, a ghoulishly creepy war story that was atmospheric and a delight to the end. The anthology is worth the price of admission for those three stories alone. For public or private collections.


"Crowning achievement"


I'll take that.

Helping the Less Fortunate

Yeah.

So, on Friday, I spent twenty-six (we have a phone that times calls) minutes over three different phone calls, helping a man mourn the passing of his X360.

Twenty-six minutes. I didn't sell him anything, but I did get to hear about the history of said X360, as well as that of his Wii. And his opinion of the relative merits of the Nintendo, Playstation and Xbox on-line communities. During those twenty-six minutes, I was also working ringing out customers, and really would have liked to get to receiving some of the games that had come in.

Because you tan talk to the Bartender to Geeks when no one else will listen to you witter on about your games.

Huh

Dunno if it's the season, or a low time in their cycle, but the SFF Online Workshop reviewed me twice in five hours. With my last two submissions, I waited two weeks or more before anyone decided to write an opinion.

I don't believe either of my reviewers is known to me... Maybe it's just that college is out and there are a lot more potential writers reading and reviewing. Maybe I'm getting more interesting.

Another meme, so I can ply you with more lies...

Matociquala sez its time for the first lines meme. So let's see:

New York’s endless parade of pedestrian museums, stodgy libraries, dull theaters, redundant opera, unimaginative concerts, and boring ethnic restaurants had long ago lost Neville’s interest. "N is for Neville"

People packed the small room to listen to Mark’s speech. "Darwin's Cosh" (A bit shit isn't it?)

Len lay on his belly, overlooking a huddle of filthy shacks. The ammonia reek of chicken shit was like sandpaper up his nose. "God of Chickens"

Robert was a coward, and he knew it. "Too Short For an Angel"

George Orne and Harry Whitfield were chopping up a stump when George glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye. "Queen Anne's Lace and Juniper"

Dudley hated taking the bus. It was full of niggers, faggots, retards, and worse. "Not an Ulcer"

Tamara “Psycho-Therapist” Lee grunted and went down as Maria “Sister Mary Maniac” Eddiston slammed into her. "The Sisterhood"

Dramus’s head snapped up when the intruder alarm went off. "A Certain Society of Concerned Citizens"

Falling snow turned the wet tree-trunks beside of the road into a faded, black and white photograph. "Beanie Baby"

Novel

Azubuike had been in the reek of bodies, sweat, shit, and despair for so long, she couldn’t smell them anymore. Hag

Know the rules, respect the laws

I’m doing my duties as the Bartender to Geeks, and I’m listening to two gamers talk about combat. One of them keeps repeating a word that sounds wrong: feent. It’s only when he says that you do it to set up the next attack that I realize he’s talking about a feint. This I recognize as the standard nerdboy (I include myself) need to sound out a word that they’ve never heard. OK.

I go over and correct him. I do not say that it’s a French word imported after teh great Vowel Shift and therefore has Continental vowel pronunciation. Because that would have been, you know, too much.


Later, the some other guys are talking about Internet porn and rule 34. One of us has the temerity to say that there’s no site devoted to hot girls in the shower playing electric guitars. Approximately thirty seconds later, I was able to demonstrate his wrongness. Do not doubt Rule 34.

Arm-wrestling With Technology

So, the Queen of Science got an MP3 player for her birthday. On the ghosts of Oppenheimer and Darwin, that was the damned longest continued struggle with technology I've ever had.

The Queen has a laptop which she uses for basic stuff--word processing, etc. We don't connect it to the net much, so we've kept it with the same basic Windows XP that it came with. Well, last generation's MP3 player can't work without Service Pack 2 and the most recent version of WMP. We're on dial-up. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

At noon (we started the SP2 download at 8), I go to work where, we have high-speed. Additionally, woot has just delivered one of the 4 gig USB drives. Oh good, I'll just download it at work, then take it home. Only the USB drive doesn't work. I spend some ten minutes trying to figure out why it doesn't work, and eventually borrow a different drive to put the stuff on.

Installation takes its time. We check yes to the EULA we don't read, we install SP2, we install WMP. We install the program that makes the MP3 player go. We plug the MP3 player in, according to instructions. The computer cannot figure out that the fuck it is. Contrary to the instructions (thanks, manual writers!) we eventually figure out that we have to install the MP3 player as a piece of hardware. And viola, a mere thirteen hours after it was unwrapped, we listened to the first MP3 off her new player.

Ain't technology grand?

After Twenty-Five Years... a Return to the Stage

Well. I have been invited to play a bit part in the Hubbard Hall production of Carmen.

Yeah, Carmen. The opera. The director asked for someone to be a swaggering gypsy who can fence, and somehow, they came up with me. And I said yes.



I am, I have to admit, nervous. The last time I was on the stage, George Orwell's most famous book had special edition.

Dates:

August 13 pay what you will open rehearsal
August 14, 15, 20, 21, 22 at 8pm
August 23 at 2pm
$30 nonmember / $25 members / $20 students

I blame PD Cacek for getting me into this mess.

Revision, revision, revision: The writer's life for me.

Yeah, in addition to blowing the faces off super-mutants, ghouls, raiders, and Enclave soldiers, I'm also doing the glorious grind on "N is for Neville." I've gotten good feedback on it (workshopped it on Tuesday), have done major revisions on it twice. The story continues to improve, mostly as I remove superfluous prepositional phrases on each pass. Fortunately, it can rest until I get some more feedback on it.

Oh, and the proofs came in for Tales Out of Miskatonic University. Proofs can be a bit humbling. While it shows how much I have learned in the past year, it depresses me to find so much that I would change in a story.

Long Time, No Post

Well, I haven't been keeping up with this blog in June. I do have an excuse. Over April and May I managed to crank out the initial drafts of four stories. I'm not saying they're awesome stories, but the bones are laid down, and now the polishing begins. And I've got a special market in mind for an older story, and a kind hired gun has helped me to clean it up. So back to the grind.

In my copious spare time, I've been going here:



And doing a lot of this:




It's been ten years since a good Fallout game, and I'm really enjoying myself. I wish Bethesda could have introduced a few new elements, which would have created a sense of difference between the East Coast and the West Coast. I also understand that they were relaunching a beloved franchise, and didn't want to take a lot of chances. That said, though, I'm enjoying the heck out of myself.

What a Weekend!

Memorial Day was crazy crazy crazy. But we did run down to the Rock of Ages home to see friends. The Queen of Science and I love the Rock of Ages family, they're our age, they're parents, and they really didn't change at all after they had their kids. And they've got interesting, engaging children.

In a moment of rare unity, all of us, four adults and two kids, aged nine and six, gathered around the computer screen and sang. You know, like people used to do in the old days, singing together, gathered around the radio, or the phonograph? Of course, what was sang was incredibly geeky...



A good time was had by all.

Of the whole weekend, there was really only one false note. I saw this disturbing piece of equipment:



Yes, that's a Hello Kitty sewing machine



WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?