Reads of 2017 - A Night in the Lonesome October


There are books I enjoyed reading, books I enjoyed and have stayed with me ever since, and then there are books that I absolutely love and read over and over again. Roger Zelazny's A Night In The Lonesome October falls into that later catagory. It is one of my all time favorites that I have read over and over again. It was the last book Zelazny ever wrote and it features illustrations by Gahan Wilson. The book concerns a gathering that happens whenever there is a full moon on Halloween known only as the Game. The Game consists of Openers, who want to bring Lovecraftian Elder Gods to Earth and end our world as we know it, and Closers, who want to prevent this from happening. The Players of the Game change constantly, but out protagonist has lived an unnatuturally long life and seen more than a few of these Full Moon Halloweens.

The novel is told through first person POV of our Protagonist, who is named Snuff. He is a dog.

His master is a man named Jack, who is probably Jack the Reaper and also probably Cain, cursed to walk the earth forever (along with his dog of course), but we only ever get to know him as Jack. He is a Closer, and so far the Closers have always won, or at least the Openers have never actually been successful, as can be seen by the fact that the world is full of people and not non-Euclidian squishy alien demonoids. We don't know whether the other players in the Game are Openers or Closers until we get closer to the end of the month. The novel itself starts on October 1st and ends on the 31st.

Snuff's best friend is a cat who works for a witch named Crazy Jill. The book also features appearences by Count Dracula, Doctor Frankenstein and his Monster, Larry Talbot the Wolfman, Sherlock Holmes, and a few assorted cultists and mad men. Each of the players has an animal familier who have an uneasy alliance of sorts unti it comes time to declare sides and either open or close the rift between worlds.

So we have a monster mash with lovecraftian evil told from a dog's POV, which is what sold me to begin with. A monster mash, or any kind of vast cast of hommages, is not so easy to pull off, but Zelazny does a perfect job here. But it is also a great read with some really funny bits, from the constant taunting of the horrible monsters Jack keeps bound in mirrors and attics, to the Great Detective's attempts to win Snuff over as he tries to figure out what is going on with all these supernatural shenanigans, to the interactions between the familiers themselves. This is what keeps me coming back to it.

It also shaped how I characterize some of these classic characters now. My own mental version of Larry Talbot is pretty much a combination of these version and Neil Gaiman's. Anyone who has read the Monster Smackdown sourcebook I wrote for the Buffy RPG and wonders why Dracula has a strong opinion about opening the Hellmouth, well, that opinion came from the Dracula in this book.

Like I said, it is one of my all time favorites and from on e of my favorite classic science fiction writers. Apparently, when asked which one of his books were among his favorites, this one always made his list as well.

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Reads of 2017 - Finn Fancy Necromancy


One of the many joys of the Rainforest Writers Retreat is getting a chance to meet an author you admire. This year, Randy Henderson, aka Folly Blaine's husband, was in the same session as me. I was halfway through his book at the time and was especially looking forward to meeting him because he is a Pacific Northwest writer who does humorous modern fantasy set here and who also comes off as a really nice guy with a decent social justice analysis and a very deep and obvious love for his wife. I figured we'd have a lot in common maybe.

Though now that  think of it, most of the people I have met who do humorous genre fiction in one form or another have turned out to be really cool people in person. Must be the wiring.

As for the book itself, it reminded me a little bit of Ernest Cline's Ready Player One with all of it's nostalgia bits thrown in. But whereas the nostalgic throwbacks seemed a little forced in that one, it came off much more naturally in Finn Fancy Necromancy. Our protagonist, the Finn of the title, has been exiled to the Other Realm for a crime he didn't commit, spending the past twenty-five years as a disembodied spirit having his memories ransacked by the Fey for their amusement while a changeling operated his body in the human world. When his sentance was over, he was supposed to get his memories of the past twenty-five years back from the changeling, but something goes horribly wrong and he ends up back in his 40-year old body with no memories of his human life after age 15.

So now Finn has to figure out who is trying to frame him (again) and make his way through a world of magic and monsters with memories a quarter century out of date, all while dealing with family drama and trying to reconnect with all the people he had left behind. It is a ripping yarn with some great twists and amazing world-building, plus it is a genuinely funny read with some great characters in it.

I enjoyed this one a lot and recommend it highly.

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Rainforest Writer's Retreat Two - Electric Boogaloo


This year we went to the Rainforest Writer's Retreat again, our second time there. We had one of the cabins this year, with a great view of the lake, so I spent most of my time in the cabin to do my writing, 15.690 words worth in fact. It was great actually being at the retreat this time (last year I misunderstood the fact that rooms were already held for us and ended up staying at the lodge down the road). The other big difference is this year it actually snowed while we were there, and we were the last session during the first week in March.

Still, it was awfully pretty.

Speaking of pretty...



... here's a picture of my beautiful wife and a beautiful waterfall. This year, my wife wants to show my some of the sights of Lake Quinault that I missed last time, so we took a little drive as much around the lake as you can get really. This was one of my favorite spots.

Last year I got an amzing amount of writing done, but when I got back, I realized that there were some early plot points that needed to be reworked, so I've been slowly doing another draft as I work on all the things I need to do to get into grad school. So this year at Rainforest, I actually finally managed to get past the point I had reached last year at Rainforest. Hey, if writing novels was easy, everybody would be doing it.

This year, I got to meet Randy Henderson, husband of former Writer's Cramper Folly Blaine, so that was cool. He's a super sweet guy who has a good social justice analysis and clearly loves his wife, writing funny novels about supernatural shenanigans in the Pacific Northwest. I myself am also a super sweet guy who has a good social justice analysis and clearly loves his wife, writing funny novels about supernatural shenanigans in the Pacific Northwest. I was really looking forward to meeting him and getting him to sign some books for me.

Speaking of Writer's Cramp, this year there was actually someone from my writing group in my session, Writer of the Future winner Stephen Merlino. It was great getting a chance to hang out with him a little, though of course we spent most of our time just writing. Still, I had fun expalining to him what a Tatzelwurm was at the cabin party (every writer has a niche specialty and mine seems to be strange beasts and where to find them).



When it was all done and time to go home, we all got slammed by a snow storm and while the Mazda Miata handled it better than other cars I have had, still. This is a light sports car going through heavy mountain snow. We slide twice, once having to rely on the kindness of strangers to get us pushed back on the road proper, but after a slow 20 mph crawl to Aberdeen, the snow let up and we were able to make it safely home.

Also, during the final day raffle, I managed to win a stay at a beach cabin donated by Amy Thomson, so we will be heading out that way again this year for our very own litte writing retreat. Just not in the snow this time.

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Reads of 2017 - Norse Mythology


As part of my plan to go back to school and become a teacher, I had to take some prerequisite classes, which took up an awful lot of my reading and writing time, so there hasn't been a lot of these reads posted lately because I haven't had a lot of time to read anything. Now that all the preliminary suff is done and there is nothing left to do but wait for the good news, it's time to catch up on my reading.

I loved Neil Gaiman since the Sandman comics and I have loved Norse myths since early childhood, so Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology got snatched up as soon as I saw it on the shelves. This isn't new fiction about the Aesir, like when they showed up in the Sandman comics (which is also when I started reading them and then I went and got all the back issues) but instead a retelling based on classical sources. Actually it reminded me a lot in spirit of John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, where Steinbeck pretty much follows Malory closely until Lancelot shows up, and then it starts becoming more of his own take on the mythos.

Here, Gaiman is following the Eddas and other Norse sources, and it is pretty much standard orthodox with Ymir and the creation of the Nine Worlds. It is once we start getting into the stories about the Gods themselves, especially all the Thor and Loki adventures, that it really starts to becomes Gaiman's own thing. The plots are all straight from the sources, but the dialog gets more and more creative. One of my favorite bits is after Sif gets her hair cut off, Thor immediately goes after Loki. When asked why, the God of Thunder says that it saves a lot of time, because there is a very good chance the deed was done by Loki, and if it wasn't, then Loki is who you want to go to in order to hatch a plan.

That was the point where I fell in love with this book.

I tore through the whole thing in two days and it may be one of my favorite Gaiman books after American Gods, which also has the Aesir in it, so there you go. This really is a must read (especially for my writing group, so they can learn who all those Gods are running around in my own Work-in-Progress).

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The Story of How Teddy Got His Name


So we got a new car (new to us anyway) a while back because the old one needed to be sent to the Auto Farm where it can retire in the fields all day or whatever cars do when you donate them (we gave ours to KEXP). This new car is a hell of a ride, I never knew how much fun a convertable could be until I got one, and it's a beautiful color to boot. There was only one thing missing.

We needed a name.

All good cars need a name. The old car was Goldie Hyundai (it was gold). The car I had in Virginia was the Tree Frog (it was a green civic that looked like a tree frog). We tried a bunch of names based on teh color of the car but none of them fit.

Looking into the history of Mazda Miatas, I found out that the name comes from the Old High German word for "gift" or "reward". Mazda of course is from Ahura Mazda, one of the names for the Monotheistic Creator God, specifically what he is called in Zoroastrianism. So if you put them together you get Gift of God.

Which in Greek becomes either Theodore or Dorothea.

Simone decided that this was a boy car, so Dorothy was out. Theodore seemed too formal for such a fun little car.

So he ended up with the name Teddy.

Makes me think of some British teen with a bit of attitude, like in Quadrephenia or something.

All in all, entirely appropriate.

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It's Been A While, But Here////

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Reads of 2016 - Tigerman


With the start of the new Day Job and its funky Day Job hours, I haven't gotten as much reading and writing done as I would normally like, but I did manage to finish Nick Harkaway's Tigerman. It's a superhero novel set on the fictional island of Mancreu, a setting which really reminded me of Al Amarja from the old Over The Edge RPG. Not that it was a Burroughs acid trip of a setting or anything, more the fact that it is a strange mix of African and Asian cultures dropped in the Inidan Ocean and existing in a legal limbo. There is a danger that the island will be spewing deadly toxic chemicals in the ocean so the Powers-That-Be have decided that a scortched earth/nuke from orbit policy is the best way to deal with it. As the islanders slowly and reluctantly begin to leave, a cluster odf ships called the Black Fleet cluster around the island to take advantage of the complete lack of jurisdiction in the wake of impending doom to create the kind of niche marketplace that would otherwise be hampered by things like laws and human rights.

The sole British presence left on the island is the Sergeant, stationed at this doomed little island of anarchy for pissing off the wrong people. He is not really suppossed to do anything as the UK doesn't want to claim responsibility for the place anymore than any other nation (hence the lawlessness and the Black Fleet), just bid his time until the last boats leave and then get out before the whole place is destroyed. He manages to make friends with the Boy, a native of the island whose English comes by way of comic books and action miovies. The Boy is a big fan of things that are full of win.

The Sergeant is a big fan of the Boy and hates the idea of the kid ending up in a refugee camp somewhere. He is pretty sure the Boy has no family, and if that turns out to be true, he is thinking about adopting him and taking him back to England where there will be more opportunity for him. Before he really has a chance to actual discuss this with the Boy, their mutual friend is murdered before their eyes, gunned down in a cafe.

The Boy wants revenge for their murdered friend. The Sergeant is hampred by what he can officially do as the diplomatic representative of one of many countries that want as little to do with Mancreu as possible. After the Sergeant has a chance encounter with a tiger in the jungle, he tells the Boy about it and a crazy plan is hatched that the Sergeant should create a new identity- the superhero Tigerman.

And that's when things really get weird.

The novel is quite the ripping yarn with quite a few twists and turns, with an interesting take on why anyone would actually want to become a costumed crimefighter and how they would actually go about doing it in this age of sattilite surveillance and instant Youtube videos. It was a hell of a ride and the end caught me comepletely by surprise.

Most excellent summer read, full of win.

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Southside With You


This year we had a whole list of films we wanted to see for the Seattle International Film Festival, but we only managed to catch one on the last day. The one we did manage to catch was Southside With You, which is pretty much like Before Sunrise if the two leads were People of Color, those POC leads were fictionalized versions of real people, and hey did not grow up to cheat on each other and hate their children (fuck you, Linklater).

The couple in question is Barack and Michelle Obama on their very first date.

Well, he thinks of it as a date anyway. She is very clear that is definitely NOT a date and the movie is the two of them wandering through Chicago, from the Art Institute to a community meeting in the projects to a showing of Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing, and before the night is done (spoiler alert) they kind of like each other.

The film certainly touches on race and has some interesting things to say about being Black in America, but mostly it is a charming and funny story about a young man trying to win the heart of a beautiful woman, and you don't really get to see a lot of those that don't star haole actors.

After the final credits had rolled, the director/writer Richard Tanne came out for a little Q & A and he actually made this point, that one of the reasons he wanted to tell this story is that you don't get to see a lot of POC leads in quirky romantic comedies. Also, turns out that Richard Tanne is a white dude. I thought that he did an amazing writing authentic African-American voices, but then again, even with my brothers-from-other-mothers and my neice and nephews and almost-god-daughter, I myself am also a white dude. I'll let my brothers tell me how good a job the guy actually did.

Writing aside, the actors were incredible. Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter have great chemistry together and capture the essence of the current POTUS and First Lady in their young days without resorting to some kind of comedic impersonation.

I really did like this movie a lot and am glad we got a chance to see it during SIFF. It comes out for realsies at the end of August and is well wort catching.

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Reads of 2016 - The Atomic Blood-Stained Bus


One of the dark holes you can fall into as a writer is research and one of the biggest traps is TV Tropes. One minute you're looking at a particular genre concept and an hour later you have bounced from one related topic to the next while perusing multiple examples of each, all the while getting absolutely no writing done whatsoever. The bright side is that sometimes, buried within all of those multiple examples, is something you have never heard of before that sounds amazing.

Which is how I found out about Michael J. Ritchie's debut novel, The Atomic Blood-Stained Bus.

According to the author, this started out as a Nanowrimo exercise, and when he was done, he ended up with a novel about a journalist investigating a series of bizarre murders, an immortal druid looking for his lost love while feeding on the flesh of his victims, and the former God of Spring (among other things) who comes along for the ride. It's sort of a comedic-horror-fantasy kind of thing, which makes it a hard one to put a genre label on, which is probably why it is only available in digital form instead of hard copy.

Actually, there is a perfectly good genre label for it- The Kind Of Thing Thom Marrion Loves To Read. Unfortunately, that only has a guarentied audiance of one. I downloaded this on my iPhone and had the interesting experience of reading an entire novel through a little handheld device. Not too bad, though I still prefer the good-old fashioned method of holding tattooed dead trees in my hands. Yeah, I'm old. Kids today, with their not-getting-off-my lawn etc etc.

I loved this book. Granted, I'm a sucker for dark comedies about mythical beings. I'm currently writing a dark comedy about mythical beings. But still, if anything about that appeals to you, go download this now. It's a damn fine first novel, especially when you take into account that the first draft was knocked out in a month. See the good things that can come out of Nanowrimo?

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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Franchise


The wife and I saw this mostly because I was curious, she wanted to go to a movie, we were in Columbia City, and it was either this or a kid's animated movie. It probably helps that I went in with low expectations, but overall I liked it. It's certainly a flawed disjointed mess of a movie, but certainly better than something like The Spirit or Van Helsing.

I remember a conversation I had with Mark Henry a few years ago about writing novels and he was talking about starting out with scenes and then building on those scenes until you have a whole book. This definitely has some great scenes in it, especially whenever Wonder Woman shows up, but in the end it feels like a pantser who hates outlining managed to get his first draft thrown up on screen. A third of ths film could eaily have been cut, and maybe a little more editorial thought on the sheer amount of dream sequences and non-linear story telling would have helped.

More than anything else, this felt like a clunky pilot for the DC Cinematic Franchise. Nothing against clunky pilots, some of my favorite shows started with clunky pilots, but this thing was clunky just the same.

Still, like I said, Wonder Woman was gold. The five second glimpses we get of Cyborg, Flash, and Aquaman were fun. I liked Lois and Clark in this. I was even okay with verge-of-madness Lex Eisenberg. He didn't hold a candle to Clancy Brown, but he was no worse than late season Smallville Lex.

Truthfully, the worse parts of this movie were whenever Supes and Batman were together, which is unfortunate considering this is a Supes vs Batman movie. That and the fact that this is Snyder's loveletter to DKR, with a little bit of post-911 crazy-hat Frank Miller thrown in for good measure.

Overall, completely missable or wait for a matinee or until it shows up somewhere like the Crest for four bucks. Not the worst movie, but Civil War is going to do the same kind of thing better in a few months and that was based on a truly god-awful comic series. Sill, as a clunky pilot, I liked it and am looking forward to Suicide Squad and the Wonder Woman movie.

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Reads of 2016 - Forged in Fire


This year has been a little tight. Here I am as Spring is sprung and only now get around to the first book review of the year. Truthfully, I read this back in January and haven't gotten around to posting about yet and also haven't bought a new book since. Like I said, things are a bit tight at the moment.

This is the third book of the Sarah Beauhall trilogy but it doesn't feel at all like the last book in a series. This is because it's not. Word of God says there are at least two more books on the way, so who knows how many more adventures we'll get to see? This one still feels early in the saga, with Sarah just coming into herself as both a lesbian and a wielder of magical sword while her girlfriend Katie starts to develop some magical powers of her own, making them a Fighter/Bard combo in D&D lingo.

There are troll babies and dark necromancy, new loves and the return of old enemies, daring rescues, big battles, and more going on in the Eastside than you would ever have imagined possible. Who knew you could have ripping yarns taking place in Sultan and Monroe? (For anyone unfamiliar with the Seattle area, you'll just have to trust me on this one.)

Reading the first book, you got the impression that the dragons were making the world a horrible places under their clawed and collective thumbs, but by the time you get to the end of this one, maybe they're not so bad. Not at all nice, but moments of sympathy nevertheless, and we're not so sure that things were any better when the Aesir were running things. These books have certainly brought up some interesting questions about the world that Mr. Pitts has built. It will be fun to see where he goes with it.

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Rainforest Writers Retreat 2016


I have always wanted to go to the Rainforest Writers Retreat, but was never really able to pull it off until this year (mainly because my wife realized how much I wanted to go and was determined to make sure it happened come hell or highwater). It was a nice vacation, a beautiful (though soggy) road trip, a chance to meet other writers, and a great writing experience.

It was also something of a comedy of errors.

We left late, not getting out of Seattle until 7pm. This was just in time for the partially cloudy afternoon to turn into a full-blown rainy night, but there were things that needed to be done, so no helping that really. Despite the late start, we made pretty good time and would have gotten to the retreat fairly close to schedule except for the fact that I took the wrong Highway 101 exit. Instead of zipping along to Aberdeen and then up to the Rainforest Writers Village, I went all the way north to Sequim wondering how I missed Lake Quinault. The answer was that I was on the completely wrong side of the Olympic Mountain range and so we had to go through Port Angeles and Forks, circumnavigating the Olympic Pennisula, in order to get to our destination.

It was 3:30 in the morning by the time we pulled into the hotel.

Which was actually a whole other thing. I somehow missed being on the yahoo list for the retreat, so I had no idea that a cabin had been held for us. When it was time to find a place to stay during the retreat, I just saw that the Rainforest Village was all booked, so I went with the Rainforest Lodge a mile down the road. The upshot of that was I ended up missing a lot of things simply because of logistics. I didn't make any of the morning presentations given by Carrie Vaughn and we didn't get to any of the evening parties.

I did however meet some great new people and I got a nice chunk of writing done, over twelve thousand words. I also had an epiphany about the work-in-progress and what I need to change, so there's that as well. Not only was it a good writing experience, it was a good vacation and my first time actually staying in the rainforest.

Despite all the craziness, we had a great time and want to do it again next year.

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Simone


Just taking a moment to point out that my wife is beautiful and I love her very much.

As you were.

Current Mood: happy

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How's y Word Count For The End Of The Year?


Not so bad. The current plan is to have this bad boy finished by Rainforest Writer's Retreat and then start sending it out.

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Reads of 2015 - The Jack of Souls


Earlier this year, there was a benefit for Duane Wilkins held at the house of J. A. Pitts featuring a chili cookoff and charity auction. Being a gathering of writers and science fiction fans, the auction had a lot of genre art and books. One of the books up for auction was a signed edition of Stephen Merlino's first novel, The Jack of Souls.

Stephen Merlino is a member of my writing group and so his book is what I blew my auction budget on. I had read the earlier draft, so it was interesting to read the fnal version (and also hold it in my hands all bound and published and everything).

The book (first installment of the Unseen Moon series) concerns young Harric, a bastard living in a frontier town and cursed by his own mother to die on his next birthday. He manages to put off his fate long enough to see his home being invaded by one of the last Old Ones and his fanatical followers. The Old Ones were an order of immortal knights, driven insane by the same semidivine blood that keeps them undying. Harric has a series of run ins with both the Old One and his fanatics, so escape becoes his only option.

With the help of his bestfriend Caris, a young woman who wants to become a female knight and has a psychc connection with horses, he escapes town. They soon join up with Sir Willard (former Old One and currently a drug-addicted old man) and Broli (apelike ambassador from a secluded northern nation) and become involved in a quest to not only save themselves, but their Queen as well.

I love the worldbuilding in this. It's a medieval fantasy world, but they have stand-ins for guns and despite the knights and armor, it has a bit of an old west feel. Magic exists, but it is outlawed in the kingdom where the story takes place (so of course Harric starts on the path to become a magician before the book ends). There are no elves nor goblins, but there are the apelike beings of Broli's nation and weird familars made of mud and twigs. The world is orbited by three moons which serve as the source of magic. Gods exist, but the worship of them is as frowned upon as magic itself. The only religion we really see is a brotherhood of priests who were told by their God not to worship Him because they were on their own.

The characters themselves are also engaging, not just the four min protagonists, but the antagonists and supporting cast as well.

It's a great adventure tale that won both the Pacific Northwest Writers Association award for fantasy and the Southwest Writers annual award for fantasy last year. I would have read it even if it wasn't written by a friend.

That being said, I love seeing others in my writing group doing well.

Way to go, Merlino. Can't wait for the next book.

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Reads of 2015 - How I Became A Famous Novelist


When we went down to San Francisco, one of the places we had to hit was City Lights Books. My wife and I picked out books we wanted and paid for each other's choices as sort of a travel present/souvenir kind of thing. My rule for picking out my books was not only did it have to be soething I wanted to read (duh), but it also had to be something I hadn't seen in Seattle. One of the books that caught my eye was How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely.

The book follows Pete Tarslaw, currently ghostwriting college entrance essays for pay and pining for his soon-to-be-married exgirlfriend. Life is not turning out the way he had planned and all he really wants is (to quote the book blurb) "a realistic amount of fame that will open new avenues of sexual opportunity; the kind of financial comfort that will allow him to spend his life pursuing hobbies such as boating or skeet shooting at his stately home by the ocean or a scenic lake; and perhaps most importantly the chance to humiliate his ex-girlfriend at her wedding."

He has no idea how to do any of this until he watches a bestselling novelist being interviewed on national televison, spouting off folksy wisdom while wandering through a simple country home that only piles of money can buy. Tarslaw, being more than a little cynical, decides that the whle thing is a racket and decides that with a lot of research and as little actual work as possible, he can crack the code and write his own bestselling novel.

Between his formula and a little bit of luck, he writes a novel called The Tornado Ashes Club and gets it to the number one spot. It's a hilarious look at the publishing industry and the types of popular writing that makes it to the top 10 (one of the funniest things in this book is reading the descriptions of all the other bestsellers he is joining). Tarslaw sleeps with famous writers, drinks with famous writers, has Hollywood meetings, does bookstore readings and tries to fake his way through it all.

Spoiler alert- humiliating his ex at her wedding doesn't go quite as planned.

I loved the hell out of this book and even at his most cynical, Tarslaw still geeks out at meeting his favorite writer and also comes to the realization that story ideas are easy, it's the actual writing part that is hard (he cheats by using untested experimental drugs to power his way through it since all he cares about is bestseller fame and fortune without any regard as to whether or not the book is actually any good).

Well worth reading.

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Reads of 2015 - Sandman Slim


When I was churning out words and worlds for Eden Studios, one of the topics that always came up was setting inspirations. What works seemed most like the setting? What works inspired game masters with their campaigns? One of the things that always came up was the Sandman Slim series.

From the Buffy RPG to the WitchCraft setting, gamers kept going on about Sandman Slim.

So of course I never got around to reading the first book until this year.

I was at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop and stumbled across a new edition of the series and did one of the things I love to do in any good indie bookstore- sit in a comfy chair and read the first chapter or two to decide whether or not I want to buy the thing (which I guess is kind of the same editors do when they are deciding whether or not to publish a novel). The gamers were not wrong and I was hooked. The woman behind the counter said the same kind of thing had happened tp her. She hadn't been interested so much, but Richard Kadrey was going to do a reading there and she figured she should at least give his book a try before he came there. She was hooked and plowed through the entire series.

It really is pretty damn good.

The plot is pretty straightforward. Sandman Slim was a talented magician who got banished to hell by his so-called friends, who also killed his girlfriend (she ended up in heaven). He eventually manages to escape the infernal realms and he hunts down those what done him wrong on the streets of Los Angeles. He goes on what I went on what the movie advertisements refer to as "a roaring rampage of revenge."

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How's NaNoWriMo Going So Far

20490 / 90000 words. 23% done!


Pretty good so far

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Reads of 2015 -The Gospel of Loki


It's no secret that I loves me some Norse Mythology. I'm also a big fan of Symphony-For-The-Devil stories, where you get the Other Guy's point of view in an otherwise well known story. So of course I was going to have to read something called The Gospel Of Loki. This is Loki's story of events from his first meeting with Odin (aka the Big Guy) to his orchestration of Ragnarok and the End Of The World (not really his fault apparently).

Anything written to be Loki's memoir should have a certain level of humor and snark (if you can't picture the words being read aloud by Tom Hiddleston, then the author hasn't done her job right) and this book delivers that, from Loki's first moments of awareness in the chaos of Muspelheim to his post-mortem contemplation of how it all went wrong. Joanne Harris goes with the Wagnerian version of Loki as a Fire God and places his origin in Muspelheim instead of Jotunheim (which in this setting is the Realm of Chaos and oppossed to all the forces of Order). The worldbuilding itself is very well done, with Midgard not quite being Earth, but some human realm that existed beforehand (Loki did bring about the End of the World after all). It's all about Chaos and Order, and once Odin summoned Loki from Chaos, he was stuck in a new form and unable to go back home. Being a God, but still Other, her never quite fit in wit the rest of the Aesir and the whole Trickster thing is more about getting back at people who don't quite accept him as much as anything else.

Who doesn't want to root for the underdog being picked on by the popular kids.

This is also a prequel to her Rune books, set five hundred years after Ragnarok, but this is very much a standalone book (I haven't read the Rune series, but I have read a lot of Norse mythology material). This was a great read and I can't recommend it enough. I mean, I've always been Team Thor and I still liked it, so you know it has to be good.

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Who The Hell Boycotts Star Wars?
Now that the trailer is out and we are seeing some more of Star Wars: The Next Generation, the last lingering racists are deciding to mount a hashtaggy boycott fest because boo hoo Star Wars just isn't white enough for them. Others have pointed out that apart from being complete asshats, this also means that they have completely missed the point of the movies. Instead of pointing out how comlpetely idiotic these racists are, I'm going to tell a story about my brother Mars.



Keith Marcellus Parham is my oldest and dearest friend, my brother from another mother, who I first met thirty-seven years ago. He was in my Social Studies class and when the teacher asked us what we would like to be called for the rest of the year, he said he would like to be known as "Keithy Weefy". The class laughed and the teacher ended up calling him that for the rest of the year. I thought he was pretty funny.

We rode the bus together, but we didn't become best friends until he showed me a comic he had drawn. Any time you have a kid who has artistic talent and is into Nerdenkultur, you're going to end up with a kid who draws his own comics. I drew superheroes. Mars had drawn his own Star Wars comic book retelling the story of A New Hope (Empire Strikes Back hadn't even come out yet).

We bonded immediately and started hanging out at each other's house, having each other's mom look after us. We would go to movies together and while we were a little too old to play make believe, but we would play a game where whenever there was a dark-haired white guy on the screen with a black partner, I would point to the white guy and say that it was me, while he would do the same thing with the black character.

Kids love seeing people like them on the screen.

Stallone and Billy Dee Williams in Nighthawks? That's us. Kurt Russel and Keith David in The Thing? That's us. David Emge and Ken Foree in Dawn of the Dead? That's us. When The Empire Strikes Back came out, we finally got to do that with a Star Wars movie. Hey, look at Han Solo and Lando Calrissian. That's us.

Even though Lando gets to fly the Millinium Falcon and blow up Death Star v2.0, how much cooler would it have been for my brother Mars to see the black guy pick up a light saber and fight the Big Bad himself? Now here we are in 2015 with a new Star Wars movie coming out and there's Finn with a light saber going up against Kylo Ren in the trailer. Heck, Finn is wielding a lightsaber in the poster. This isn't Lando being a cool character, but still never really becoming part of the main protagonist group. This isn't Mace Windu who gets to be a bad ass, but only in some bad Star Wars movies. This is a black character being one of the main protagonists in a Star Wars movie. From what I can tell from the teasers and trailer so far, Finn is kinda Luke in the same way that Rey is kinda Leia and Poe Dameron is kinda Han (and Kylo Ren is kinda Darth Vader).

Sure we had to wait until we were in our fifties to see a person of color get to be the hero of a Star Wars movie, but his little daughter gets to see women and people of color flying spaceships, fighting with lightsabers, and generally saving the day. This may very well be her first Star Wars movie for all I know, so how cool is that for an introduction to the series?

And a bunch of straight white racist assholes just basking in privaledge are having a hissy fit over it?

To paraphrase the late great Kurt Vonnegutt, they can all take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

Who knows, maybe Mars will make it up for a visit and we can watch it together. He'll get to be Finn, I'll be Poe Damaron, and his daughter can wonder why her dad and his brother are so weird.

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