"Heroes" is an interestng show, one that I like a lot more than I thought I would based on what I'd read and heard about it. (For the record, the same holds true for "Lost", which I am now hopelessly addicted to.) While the show has some issues in the writing department, it's overall very enjoyable, and I've enjoyed watching the 1st season alongside my darling wife, who turned me on to the show (she's already seen all of it, including up to most recent episode of season 2, while I just finished the penultimate chapter of the first season.) While much of the plot/story is somewhat derivative of....well, most every comic book I've ever read...the show has some great ideas for how super powers would work and be used in the real world (including some highly creative uses for telepathy and telekinesis), nicely developed characters, and an undeniable momentum that carries you along even when you're not sure if the writers know where they're leading you. (In case it doesn't sound like one, that little review there was a recommendation: it's a great show, and I can easily see why it's become so popular.)
Coincidentally, quite a few months ago, before I knew anything about "Heroes", I ran into this Youtube video while searching for music by Imperative Reaction (a talented agro/electro/dance industrial band that I like). This video (made by one Evilatino) puts scenes from the episodes "5 Years Past" (one of my 3 favorites of Season 1, with the possible exception of the unseen finale) and "Landslide" to the song "Closed In", to pretty good results. (Of course, I knew some of the names of characters but didn't know what any of them looked like, so when I viewed this video for the first time I was completely mistaken about what I thought was going on.)
(Be warned that the scenes here contain spoilers to those episodes, and to the season in general, so if you haven't watched through the end of season 1 and you're interested in the show you may want to skip this. Also note that there's a bit of violence in the video, what with people getting their heads telekentically opened like tuna cans, and whatnot.)
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Sunday, December 9, 2007
The Best Snowman Ever
Snow in Washington! (No way!) Truth be told I'm not all that fond of the stuff...it's nice to have around for the holiday atmosphere, but it does murderous things to my commute, and try as I have to come to appreciate the whole "melting snow inside of my socks" thing, that particular sensation has yet to find a fond place in my memories.
But, in any case, we don't get much of the white powdery stuff here in Washington, so the kids and I seized the opportunity when this early portent of a White Christmas decended earlier today and constructed the beautiful snowman that you see above!
Now...before you get too critical, please keep in mind that we don't have a lot of experience with snowman construction. In fact -- and I'm prepared to be as incorrect about this fact as I've ever been incorrect about anything, which is qite a bold statement indeed when one considers how incorrect I am half of the time about everything else -- so far as I can recall this is the first snowman I've ever built. Sure, I may have participated in the construction of somone else's snowman back when I was in elementary school in the 1600s, I grant you, but such duty was likely akin to holding the carrot nose (which I was allowed to do only in exchange for not speaking) or else fetching one of the grown-ups a beer while they made the snowman (one of my favorite grade school activities, I must say...my Dad used to pay me $1 a beer!).
No, I do believe that this was my first tour of duty as Head of Snowman Construction Operations.
Yes...he's a little dirty. And...sort of...lacking in tallness...but hey, with the aid of my trusty minions (aka son and daughter) I think "Whitey" here is a fine first attempt in what is destined to be a future saturated with snowman construction!
Thursday, November 29, 2007
I Did It!!!!!
While I'm nowhere near to being finished with this silly little project, I surpassed my 50,000 word requirement for Nanowrimo (though my week has been so crazy I honestly couldn't tell you if it happened yesterday or today). "The Ending Dream" isn't even remotely finished (I've barely scratched the surface on Part One of the novel, to be perfectly honest) and I won't even say it's my best work (my writing has taken something of a strange turn this year...which isn't necessarily a bad thing, mind you), but it was a fun distraction, and since I'd so long intended to work on this project I'm going to try my best to keep rolling with it. Of course, I also have about four novels worth of already written material that desperately needs revision...oh, well, one thing at a time.
In other news (and I should have blogged about this days ago), M&M (or "Mom & Michael", as they're more popularly referred to) are moving to Washington! Michael actually arrived on Tuesday after a very lengthy drive, and we're excited to have them about...it'll be nice to add to the repertoire of local family folks (and it seems that my baby bro may be joining us, as well...it's going to get crowded, I think).
In the meantime, I'm going to lay off on the excessive blogging for a while. My darling wife signed me up for Nanoblowpo...no, wait...Nanoblomo...wherein one was supposed to blog every day for the month of November. Well, I nearly did it (one post was eaten, and I missed one day this week), but in the meantime I'll be back to my once a week or so blog postings.
November is nearly finished -- have a great weekend, and bring on December! I can take it! (Wait, no...not in the face!!!!...)
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Tis' the Season
Christmas Shopping!!!! Ahhhhhhh!!!!!
I actually enjoy Christmas shopping. I love the buying of "loot" for others (especially kids) and anticipating their opening it days/weeks/months down the road. I love searching through wish lists, standing in line at stores and hunting down great sales. I love trying (generally unsuccessfully) to come up with new, original or even just unexpected ideas of what to grab for people. I love hiding the loot, wrapping the loot and then showing off the wrapped/hidden loot in oblique manners to pique the curiosity of the intended gift recipients.
I may be a bit insane for liking all of these things. But so be it.
What I DON'T like is budgeting for Christmas. This year, we've had unexpected car repair bills, unexpected medical bills, the unending headache of mortgage and credit card payments, and a trip to DC for my daughter looming juuuuust over the horizon. Because of budgeting headaches, I think I can understand why some people don't like Christmas, or at the very least don't get as excited about it as perhaps they used to. I'm trying -- desperately trying -- not to become one of those people. It's tough, but I know I can do it.
To everyone who may be feeling a bit dragged down by the whole "sick of gift buying/gift budgeting" flu this holiday season, here's what I tell myself when I feel the bite: keep your chin up. You'll work through it, just like you always have. And, in the end, you'll be a happier person for all your efforts. :)
(This unusually chipper blog post brought to you by the letter "A", for: Accountant who's finally done with stupid a$$ meetings for the day...)
I actually enjoy Christmas shopping. I love the buying of "loot" for others (especially kids) and anticipating their opening it days/weeks/months down the road. I love searching through wish lists, standing in line at stores and hunting down great sales. I love trying (generally unsuccessfully) to come up with new, original or even just unexpected ideas of what to grab for people. I love hiding the loot, wrapping the loot and then showing off the wrapped/hidden loot in oblique manners to pique the curiosity of the intended gift recipients.
I may be a bit insane for liking all of these things. But so be it.
What I DON'T like is budgeting for Christmas. This year, we've had unexpected car repair bills, unexpected medical bills, the unending headache of mortgage and credit card payments, and a trip to DC for my daughter looming juuuuust over the horizon. Because of budgeting headaches, I think I can understand why some people don't like Christmas, or at the very least don't get as excited about it as perhaps they used to. I'm trying -- desperately trying -- not to become one of those people. It's tough, but I know I can do it.
To everyone who may be feeling a bit dragged down by the whole "sick of gift buying/gift budgeting" flu this holiday season, here's what I tell myself when I feel the bite: keep your chin up. You'll work through it, just like you always have. And, in the end, you'll be a happier person for all your efforts. :)
(This unusually chipper blog post brought to you by the letter "A", for: Accountant who's finally done with stupid a$$ meetings for the day...)
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Lost while waiting for "Lost"...
I don't want to dwell, or sound like too much of a fanboy, but I'll admit it right now: I'm a "Lostie". I'm re-watching Seasons 1 and 2 in anticipation of acquiring my DVD copy of Season 3, which I of course plan to devour and re-watch in preparation for Season 4, which should, at the very least, prove interesting.
The only thing I don't like about "Lost" is that most other shows just can't even compete with it for my attention. Do I know every secret and every connection? Do I fully comprehend what the heck is going on and where things are going? Do I have my expectations on how things should turn out so I can be disappointed when the ending doesn't fit my theories? The answer is "Heck No!" on all counts, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
"Lost" is, quite simply put, a continually intriguing, exciting, and entertaining slice of intellectualized science fiction/mystery, and, in my humble opinion, it's getting better and better as it rolls along. Some have accused "Lost" of spinning its own wheels or being directionless, but I almost hesitate to acknowledge those arguments. "Lost" is consistent with delivering what it's viewers have come to expect. It is a show that delights in presenting mysteries, not solving them. It is a show that delights in the journey as much as -- if not more than -- the destination. It is a nigh unsolvable labyrinth of Byzantine connections and intriguing plot twists.
In the end, when the series is finished and all secrets have been revealed, the payoff will probably pale in comparison to the build up that got us there, but no matter: I've thoroughly enjoyed the journey much more than I have with almost any other television show I've ever watched, and I'm glad to be a part of the "Lost Experience", wherever it may end up going.
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The only thing I don't like about "Lost" is that most other shows just can't even compete with it for my attention. Do I know every secret and every connection? Do I fully comprehend what the heck is going on and where things are going? Do I have my expectations on how things should turn out so I can be disappointed when the ending doesn't fit my theories? The answer is "Heck No!" on all counts, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
"Lost" is, quite simply put, a continually intriguing, exciting, and entertaining slice of intellectualized science fiction/mystery, and, in my humble opinion, it's getting better and better as it rolls along. Some have accused "Lost" of spinning its own wheels or being directionless, but I almost hesitate to acknowledge those arguments. "Lost" is consistent with delivering what it's viewers have come to expect. It is a show that delights in presenting mysteries, not solving them. It is a show that delights in the journey as much as -- if not more than -- the destination. It is a nigh unsolvable labyrinth of Byzantine connections and intriguing plot twists.
In the end, when the series is finished and all secrets have been revealed, the payoff will probably pale in comparison to the build up that got us there, but no matter: I've thoroughly enjoyed the journey much more than I have with almost any other television show I've ever watched, and I'm glad to be a part of the "Lost Experience", wherever it may end up going.
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Saturday, November 24, 2007
Excerpt from "The Ending Dream" (Chapter One, Further Continued...)
All eyes turned in his direction. Dane stood as tall as he could, and raised his sword over his head. The gust of wind that rushed at him was almost strong enough to pitch him off of the cliff, but he stood firm and tightened his frozen fingers grip on his vra’taar. One Gorgoloth held firm to their Crujian prisoner, while another stood over the humans, maul poised over the head of the woman, who chose that moment to stop screaming: her eyes were locked on the enormous stone and metal hammer head, which was easily as large as she was.
That left one Gorgoloth to advance on Dane. The giant’s leonine mane flowed like a pale cape in the thick wind; his pale simian fangs were stained red, and his thick and knotted ebon muscles were bound in a mesh of chain and bone. He stood just over eight feet tall, and he held a massive flail in each hand; their spiked tips dangled close to the stone as he advanced, where they struck down and flared like flints.
Dane held his sword high. Coming up the incline, the Gorgoloth would have little height advantage over him, even if his reach with those flails would be difficult to get around. Movement flashed in Dane’s eyes on the other side of the bridge, but he focused on the advancing giant. He felt the Cruj’ inhuman eyes on him, watching, more intent than all of the rest. He felt himself teeter as the giant ascended: the slope was ice blue stone covered in brittle snow and scree as sharp as blades. Dane glanced over the side: the bitter bank terminated like a cut into the endless stale fog that choked the air like a rancid breath.
He heard the chain snap, saw the iron head sail towards him, but he was far ahead of his opponent: in a fluid motion Dane rolled forward, well within the arc of the swinging stone, and in a quick cut he severed the chain and sent the flail head flying through the air behind him. They were frozen in a dream: Dane dreamily watched the Gorgoloth draw back his left arm and pull the other flail into the air, but Dane dove at him, and moved up and into his chest with the vra’taar with such speed that the giant’s body shuddered as it folded itself over the blade. Cold blood fell onto Dane’s arm and neck as he twisted the blade, shifted the massive weight away from himself, and with a heave sent the massive body over the side. The giant cried out as his black body was swallowed in the bed of frothy smoke below.
Voices sounded up above. Dane saw another woman – a warrior, from the looks of her, familiar and yet entirely unknown to him – ascend from the opposite end of the bridge, a mirror of his own position. More Gorgoloth trailed behind her, rushing at her with axes and enormous spears while she made a dangerously fast descent down the slope; bits of loose stone and black ice fell away before her.
Dane felt the ground shift, and he heard a loud crack of stone. There was too much weight on the bridge. The ship’s wood creaked, loudly, as if voicing its protest. The Gorgoloth on the bridge looked back and forth between Dane and the dame. Time seemed to freeze as Dane readied himself for the hammer blow that would follow. The dame, he saw, also had a vra’taar in hand, and for a moment, even though he couldn’t clearly see her at that distance he knew that at that moment they locked eyes, that they saw in each other a kindred that would last only moments before they both died protecting people they’d never before met. They raised their blades overhead at once; their radiant blades refracted the dead light of the pale sun.
For that moment – perhaps the first moment in his entire laugh – Dane was proud of himself.
The Gorgoloth moved closer. The maul in the giant’s hands was covered in fetishes and jagged bone protrusions, and the sling that dangled from the hooks at hammer and hilt was woven of beaded human flesh. Dane crouched down and set his blade. The white eyes of the black giant fell on Dane, and then past him. Dane saw a shadow in the reflection of those eyes: a cloaked wraith that floated through the air in a haze of silver and grey.
The maul swung, and missed, and even as the resounding impact against the stone sent up sparks and echoed through Dane’s skull he leapt forward into the air and arched his vra’taar down to take the giant in the throat. At that moment, a funnel of churning flame violently tore the world apart: it was a lance of cold white fire, and it tore through the sky and ignited the air.
Everything happened at once. Dane felt hot blood wash up over him as his momentum forced the dead Gorgoloth to the ground; the impact knocked the wind out of Dane and jolted his limbs with such terrible force that he felt his bones nearly snap. Shouts and steel hammered his skull as he rolled forward and onto the slope, where his motion rolled him painfully forward down loose stone and a rain of sparks. Dane’s eyes opened for a moment, long enough to see the dame escape down from the opposite hill, long enough to see the Cruj struggle against his captor, long enough to see the Gorgoloth sentry walk towards him, languidly. Its bare and clawed feet crunched ice and rock beneath their path as the giant almost playfully advanced to where Dane would end his uncontrolled descent. Its axe was ready, and Dane almost felt it cleave in half well before the haft was even raised and his executioner’s massive teeth gleamed in the white fire, which was just moments before the sky seemed to explode.
There was, for the briefest of moments, a splotch of darkness in the sky: a blot of ink, a hole. Then there was the fire, which erupted in a whirlpool of churning white and blue that had the consistency of ice but that burned with such intense heat Dane almost screamed. Bits of the flaming goop sprayed onto his armor, and if not for his continued fall towards the nadir of the stone bridge the heat would have undoubtedly eaten through his armor. His would-be executioner was not so lucky: the Gorgoloth’s eyes and face were burned in a spray of flaming ice that latched onto its black skin and clung there like a burning parasite. Heat lashed against Dane like whips of fire. Something died in front of him; sticky drops of red rain hailed down onto the snow. The sound of the explosion shook the air.
Dane landed at the bottom of the bridge, hard on his face. He tasted blood and felt ice pressed into his face like splinters. Though the air had been knocked from his lungs, Dane struggled to rise. The fire was gone, but the sonic vibration left in the air in the wake of the strange explosion still resonated. Dane came to his knees with the help of a beautiful blonde-haired woman. She had deep green eyes and a scar down one side of her face, and she wore the black and purple armor of The Fallen, even if she bore a Dawn Knight’s blade. Dane looked behind her, and saw that all of the Gorgoloth had shared a similar fate as that who’d been ready to kill him: their flesh had been burned away by the same dreadful fires, the fiery plasma vomited up by their burning hole in the sky. Their bodies writhed on the ground all along the bridge and on up the slope that led to the far ridge; smoking vapors rose from their immense corpses.
© 2007 Steven Montano
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That left one Gorgoloth to advance on Dane. The giant’s leonine mane flowed like a pale cape in the thick wind; his pale simian fangs were stained red, and his thick and knotted ebon muscles were bound in a mesh of chain and bone. He stood just over eight feet tall, and he held a massive flail in each hand; their spiked tips dangled close to the stone as he advanced, where they struck down and flared like flints.
Dane held his sword high. Coming up the incline, the Gorgoloth would have little height advantage over him, even if his reach with those flails would be difficult to get around. Movement flashed in Dane’s eyes on the other side of the bridge, but he focused on the advancing giant. He felt the Cruj’ inhuman eyes on him, watching, more intent than all of the rest. He felt himself teeter as the giant ascended: the slope was ice blue stone covered in brittle snow and scree as sharp as blades. Dane glanced over the side: the bitter bank terminated like a cut into the endless stale fog that choked the air like a rancid breath.
He heard the chain snap, saw the iron head sail towards him, but he was far ahead of his opponent: in a fluid motion Dane rolled forward, well within the arc of the swinging stone, and in a quick cut he severed the chain and sent the flail head flying through the air behind him. They were frozen in a dream: Dane dreamily watched the Gorgoloth draw back his left arm and pull the other flail into the air, but Dane dove at him, and moved up and into his chest with the vra’taar with such speed that the giant’s body shuddered as it folded itself over the blade. Cold blood fell onto Dane’s arm and neck as he twisted the blade, shifted the massive weight away from himself, and with a heave sent the massive body over the side. The giant cried out as his black body was swallowed in the bed of frothy smoke below.
Voices sounded up above. Dane saw another woman – a warrior, from the looks of her, familiar and yet entirely unknown to him – ascend from the opposite end of the bridge, a mirror of his own position. More Gorgoloth trailed behind her, rushing at her with axes and enormous spears while she made a dangerously fast descent down the slope; bits of loose stone and black ice fell away before her.
Dane felt the ground shift, and he heard a loud crack of stone. There was too much weight on the bridge. The ship’s wood creaked, loudly, as if voicing its protest. The Gorgoloth on the bridge looked back and forth between Dane and the dame. Time seemed to freeze as Dane readied himself for the hammer blow that would follow. The dame, he saw, also had a vra’taar in hand, and for a moment, even though he couldn’t clearly see her at that distance he knew that at that moment they locked eyes, that they saw in each other a kindred that would last only moments before they both died protecting people they’d never before met. They raised their blades overhead at once; their radiant blades refracted the dead light of the pale sun.
For that moment – perhaps the first moment in his entire laugh – Dane was proud of himself.
The Gorgoloth moved closer. The maul in the giant’s hands was covered in fetishes and jagged bone protrusions, and the sling that dangled from the hooks at hammer and hilt was woven of beaded human flesh. Dane crouched down and set his blade. The white eyes of the black giant fell on Dane, and then past him. Dane saw a shadow in the reflection of those eyes: a cloaked wraith that floated through the air in a haze of silver and grey.
The maul swung, and missed, and even as the resounding impact against the stone sent up sparks and echoed through Dane’s skull he leapt forward into the air and arched his vra’taar down to take the giant in the throat. At that moment, a funnel of churning flame violently tore the world apart: it was a lance of cold white fire, and it tore through the sky and ignited the air.
Everything happened at once. Dane felt hot blood wash up over him as his momentum forced the dead Gorgoloth to the ground; the impact knocked the wind out of Dane and jolted his limbs with such terrible force that he felt his bones nearly snap. Shouts and steel hammered his skull as he rolled forward and onto the slope, where his motion rolled him painfully forward down loose stone and a rain of sparks. Dane’s eyes opened for a moment, long enough to see the dame escape down from the opposite hill, long enough to see the Cruj struggle against his captor, long enough to see the Gorgoloth sentry walk towards him, languidly. Its bare and clawed feet crunched ice and rock beneath their path as the giant almost playfully advanced to where Dane would end his uncontrolled descent. Its axe was ready, and Dane almost felt it cleave in half well before the haft was even raised and his executioner’s massive teeth gleamed in the white fire, which was just moments before the sky seemed to explode.
There was, for the briefest of moments, a splotch of darkness in the sky: a blot of ink, a hole. Then there was the fire, which erupted in a whirlpool of churning white and blue that had the consistency of ice but that burned with such intense heat Dane almost screamed. Bits of the flaming goop sprayed onto his armor, and if not for his continued fall towards the nadir of the stone bridge the heat would have undoubtedly eaten through his armor. His would-be executioner was not so lucky: the Gorgoloth’s eyes and face were burned in a spray of flaming ice that latched onto its black skin and clung there like a burning parasite. Heat lashed against Dane like whips of fire. Something died in front of him; sticky drops of red rain hailed down onto the snow. The sound of the explosion shook the air.
Dane landed at the bottom of the bridge, hard on his face. He tasted blood and felt ice pressed into his face like splinters. Though the air had been knocked from his lungs, Dane struggled to rise. The fire was gone, but the sonic vibration left in the air in the wake of the strange explosion still resonated. Dane came to his knees with the help of a beautiful blonde-haired woman. She had deep green eyes and a scar down one side of her face, and she wore the black and purple armor of The Fallen, even if she bore a Dawn Knight’s blade. Dane looked behind her, and saw that all of the Gorgoloth had shared a similar fate as that who’d been ready to kill him: their flesh had been burned away by the same dreadful fires, the fiery plasma vomited up by their burning hole in the sky. Their bodies writhed on the ground all along the bridge and on up the slope that led to the far ridge; smoking vapors rose from their immense corpses.
© 2007 Steven Montano
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Thursday, November 22, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving!
(There's not much more to say when you're as bloated and tired as I am from having consumed 87 pounds of the world's best Holiday food. ;)
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
DDM WOTC Internal League: Match Update
A busy work schedule and the general wussiness of my fellow gamers here at work has led to my only being able to get 2 games played in the League thus far, and I'm honestly not sure how many more there will be...that being the case, here's a quick summary of my second match.
Mount(s) Doom!, v 2.0
Eternal Blade (54 points, Commander 4)
Rage Drake (65 points)
Nightmare (44 points)
Blood of Vol Fanatic (30 points)
Boneshard Skeleton (7 points)
Map: Market Square
5 Activations, 200 points
vs.
Steve Winter (Website Manager, D&D RPG)
Eternal Blade (54 points, Commander 4)
Mercenary General (43 points)
Large Fire Elemental (31 points)
Blood of Vol Fanatic (30 points)
Shadar-Kai Assassin (24 points)
Statue (10 points)
Flamesnake (8 points)
Map: Hellspike
7 Activations, 200 points
Map Played On: Hellspike
The Winner: Mount(s) Doom! strikes again
Final Score: 190-37
New Piece: Nightmare! (which will not be used, as I've already given it to my daughter as a consolation prize for having an extremely crappy Monday...she's been drooling over that piece since she first saw it)
Mount(s) Doom!, v 2.0
Eternal Blade (54 points, Commander 4)
Rage Drake (65 points)
Nightmare (44 points)
Blood of Vol Fanatic (30 points)
Boneshard Skeleton (7 points)
Map: Market Square
5 Activations, 200 points
vs.
Steve Winter (Website Manager, D&D RPG)
Eternal Blade (54 points, Commander 4)
Mercenary General (43 points)
Large Fire Elemental (31 points)
Blood of Vol Fanatic (30 points)
Shadar-Kai Assassin (24 points)
Statue (10 points)
Flamesnake (8 points)
Map: Hellspike
7 Activations, 200 points
Map Played On: Hellspike
The Winner: Mount(s) Doom! strikes again
Final Score: 190-37
New Piece: Nightmare! (which will not be used, as I've already given it to my daughter as a consolation prize for having an extremely crappy Monday...she's been drooling over that piece since she first saw it)
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Nestor: The Triumphant Conclusion
If you've stuck with it this far, then you deserve to see the happy ending....go, Nestor! (Tomorrow we return to something...a bit more normal. Sorry about this, but it had to be done.)
Monday, November 19, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
A Holiday...Treat?
My wife grabbed the video of this cute little claymation film at my request: I saw that Mike Nelson had done a Rifftrax for the short, and since it was from the same people who made the old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and Jack Frost specials, I thought it looked like fun.
Things were darker back then. While in the end this is a cute little story (about the Donkey that saved Jesus...yes, you read that right...), it's also pretty freakin' depressing. There are some things you're not used to seeing in Chrismtas specials, like...well, I don't want to give too much away. Enjoy Part One of this Three Part Story, "Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey" (or, as my wife referred to it, "Bambi 2: The Revenge!").
Things were darker back then. While in the end this is a cute little story (about the Donkey that saved Jesus...yes, you read that right...), it's also pretty freakin' depressing. There are some things you're not used to seeing in Chrismtas specials, like...well, I don't want to give too much away. Enjoy Part One of this Three Part Story, "Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey" (or, as my wife referred to it, "Bambi 2: The Revenge!").
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Excerpt from "The Ending Dream" (Chapter One, Continued)
The sky never changed: Dane felt sure it should have been night. He’d wondered for what felt like days. Admittedly, he’d moved slow, for more Gorgoloth had made themselves known, most of them burdened by sacks full of slain Jlantrian soldiers, and Dane had been sure to keep to the shadows of the still-endless ruins. His skin had grown used to the biting cold, but his armor had grown heavy, so he’d slowed his pace, taking extra care to not attract any attention. He felt like a coward, but he’d convinced himself there was no point in getting killed: if he saw any fellow soldiers he’d go to their aid, but though Dane sometimes still heard the sounds of distant battle he never saw any, and by the time he reached any fighting it was already done, always with the black giants victorious.
All the time, Dane wondered where he was, and how he’d gotten there.
That he’d somehow wound up in the Reach was beyond question. The Gorgoloth had no foothold anywhere else, not after the Rift War, and it was known that their numbers were greatest there, in that frozen wasteland west of the White Dragon Empire, where the Thirteen Towers keep the black-skinned brutes at bay. Dane didn’t remember them ever being this large…the Cruj were giants, true, but they and the Gorgoloth, though once allies, were different races. Maybe this was something new.
How did I get here? What happened to the Veilwarden who saved me?
The more questions he asked, the less he remembered. So he pressed on.
Dane found shelter for a time in what looked to be the hollowed out remains of an ancient church. Shattered pews lay covered in drifts of frozen and ice blue snow; shards of broken glass had petrified like fossils inside sheets of frost on the stony ground. Desperate as he was for a fire, Dane knew he didn’t dare, so he huddled in a corner, back against the wall and vra’taar on his lap, and rested his eyes. Shadows passed through the tall, long shattered windows over his head now and again, but nothing disturbed him. He nursed the scar on his cheek – the shape of the wound told him someone, a human someone, had raked at his face with fingernails – and tried his best to rest without sleeping.
She falls up.
He sees a field of ruin: a plain of red sand, surrounding by tributaries of brackish water. The forces descend upon the city, a city with no walls, no defenses, and no reason at all to be nestled so far from any other civilization, so far from anything that can protect it.
Dane woke to a woman’s screams. At first he thought it was part of the dream, but as he shifted the muscles in his sore neck and straightened his stiff back against the crumbling wall it came again, closer than any of the sounds of battle he’d heard that day before. The scream sounded yet again; this time, it was followed by a bellow, a bestial roar that cut through the air like a fistful of knives. Dane sprang to his feet.
Fresh tracks lay in the snow outside the church, as well as fresh blood: a trail ran from the direction Dane had approached from to a narrower expanse of the mountain, a crumbling ledge from which chunks of snow-laden rock detached and plummeted into the fog below. Dane advanced cautiously. The way ahead narrowed and descended, and while Dane could see where the mountain ledge elevated and widened on the far side, from his vantage near the ruined church he couldn’t see anything that happened on the depression ahead. He was now close enough to the edge to gaze full on into the vast empty space below. A curtain of white mist lay hundreds of feet below: there was no telling how high up he really was, but judging from the sharp pull of the wind and the thin quality of the air he guessed several thousand feet, easily as high as the Razorback Mountains he’d spent so many of his years as a Dawn Knight in, and maybe even as high as the Titans.
He sees the dead girl. She stares up at him from the mud; her eyes are locked forever open.
Dane shook himself to.
What the hell is wrong with me?
The scream came again. Dane held his weapon ready, and cautiously advanced far enough to peer down the mountain path to see what lay at the nadir of the natural bridge. His armored boots threatened to give way at the icy stone beneath him, but Dane crouched down and used the weight of his sword to lend him balance.
The shelf of rock below him was wider than he would have expected, but also thinner – even from his elevated vantage, it was clear that the bridge was only four or five feet thick, and beneath the stretch of stone lay a sea of frothy white fog. Thick banks of snow and black ice formed low walls on the natural bridge, which was just wide enough across to accommodate the size of the wrecked sailing ship that had somehow landed there. Dane blinked, sure that he’d lost his mind. The ship was ancient, a small galley whose hull had been breached in numerous places, enough that one could peer into the hollow innards of the lower decks. Tattered and snow-covered sails fluttered in the heavy wind, and the level of decay and frost of the old wood indicated that the vessel had been wrecked some time ago, even if there was no visible clue as to how a sailing ship had been marooned on the top of this vast peak. The bow of the ship dangled just over the edge; Dane watched a whip of wind tear away some loose boards and send them sailing off into the icy air.
Two Gorgoloth held a fourth giant, who’d been tied down and forced to its knees just in front of the ship. It was a Cruj: of that Dane was certain, even though he’d never seen one in person before. The Cruj were known for their extreme size and enormous girth, and if the Gorgoloth were only vaguely humanoid in nature, the Cruj were even less so: its head was square and squat and little in the way of a neck, its mouth was large and filled with blunt teeth, and its arms and legs all seemed too large for its body, branch-like and simian. The Cruj giant towered over the Gorgoloth, who in turn were larger than the human prisoners huddled together and held at bay by a bloodied maul yielded by a fourth Gorgoloth. They were all just about a hundred feet away, at best, but Dane made out three: the screaming woman and two men. All of them were in manacles, and held together by a length of old iron chain.
The whole scene was something from a nightmare. The Gorgoloth were known to the Empire, and feared. The Cruj were even more feared, but most people had never seen one: they’d acted behind the scenes during the War, serving Vlagoth as her war engineers and advisers. The brutal, Veilcrafted war machines that the Cruj built for use during the Rift War were legendary, as was the death toll they’d brought about. Dane didn’t know why these Gorgoloth – who’d once served the Cruj as Vlagoth’s soldiers – would be beating this one now, and he didn’t much care. He wasn’t worried about them, but about the human prisoners, and what the woman screamed about: a fourth human prisoner who lay at the feet of the guardian Gorgoloth and who lay face down on the ground at the giant’s feet. Dane wasn’t positive, but he thought it was a child.
“Time to die, I guess,” he muttered. He hoped they wouldn’t be his last words…he’d always hoped to say something more profound just before he died. Regardless, Dane decided to take the direct approach: there was no cover at all between himself and the ship, and as much as he’d have preferred to use a ballista on the Gorgoloth, that wasn’t exactly an option. “Giants!” he shouted.
© 2007 Steven Montano
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All the time, Dane wondered where he was, and how he’d gotten there.
That he’d somehow wound up in the Reach was beyond question. The Gorgoloth had no foothold anywhere else, not after the Rift War, and it was known that their numbers were greatest there, in that frozen wasteland west of the White Dragon Empire, where the Thirteen Towers keep the black-skinned brutes at bay. Dane didn’t remember them ever being this large…the Cruj were giants, true, but they and the Gorgoloth, though once allies, were different races. Maybe this was something new.
How did I get here? What happened to the Veilwarden who saved me?
The more questions he asked, the less he remembered. So he pressed on.
Dane found shelter for a time in what looked to be the hollowed out remains of an ancient church. Shattered pews lay covered in drifts of frozen and ice blue snow; shards of broken glass had petrified like fossils inside sheets of frost on the stony ground. Desperate as he was for a fire, Dane knew he didn’t dare, so he huddled in a corner, back against the wall and vra’taar on his lap, and rested his eyes. Shadows passed through the tall, long shattered windows over his head now and again, but nothing disturbed him. He nursed the scar on his cheek – the shape of the wound told him someone, a human someone, had raked at his face with fingernails – and tried his best to rest without sleeping.
She falls up.
He sees a field of ruin: a plain of red sand, surrounding by tributaries of brackish water. The forces descend upon the city, a city with no walls, no defenses, and no reason at all to be nestled so far from any other civilization, so far from anything that can protect it.
Dane woke to a woman’s screams. At first he thought it was part of the dream, but as he shifted the muscles in his sore neck and straightened his stiff back against the crumbling wall it came again, closer than any of the sounds of battle he’d heard that day before. The scream sounded yet again; this time, it was followed by a bellow, a bestial roar that cut through the air like a fistful of knives. Dane sprang to his feet.
Fresh tracks lay in the snow outside the church, as well as fresh blood: a trail ran from the direction Dane had approached from to a narrower expanse of the mountain, a crumbling ledge from which chunks of snow-laden rock detached and plummeted into the fog below. Dane advanced cautiously. The way ahead narrowed and descended, and while Dane could see where the mountain ledge elevated and widened on the far side, from his vantage near the ruined church he couldn’t see anything that happened on the depression ahead. He was now close enough to the edge to gaze full on into the vast empty space below. A curtain of white mist lay hundreds of feet below: there was no telling how high up he really was, but judging from the sharp pull of the wind and the thin quality of the air he guessed several thousand feet, easily as high as the Razorback Mountains he’d spent so many of his years as a Dawn Knight in, and maybe even as high as the Titans.
He sees the dead girl. She stares up at him from the mud; her eyes are locked forever open.
Dane shook himself to.
What the hell is wrong with me?
The scream came again. Dane held his weapon ready, and cautiously advanced far enough to peer down the mountain path to see what lay at the nadir of the natural bridge. His armored boots threatened to give way at the icy stone beneath him, but Dane crouched down and used the weight of his sword to lend him balance.
The shelf of rock below him was wider than he would have expected, but also thinner – even from his elevated vantage, it was clear that the bridge was only four or five feet thick, and beneath the stretch of stone lay a sea of frothy white fog. Thick banks of snow and black ice formed low walls on the natural bridge, which was just wide enough across to accommodate the size of the wrecked sailing ship that had somehow landed there. Dane blinked, sure that he’d lost his mind. The ship was ancient, a small galley whose hull had been breached in numerous places, enough that one could peer into the hollow innards of the lower decks. Tattered and snow-covered sails fluttered in the heavy wind, and the level of decay and frost of the old wood indicated that the vessel had been wrecked some time ago, even if there was no visible clue as to how a sailing ship had been marooned on the top of this vast peak. The bow of the ship dangled just over the edge; Dane watched a whip of wind tear away some loose boards and send them sailing off into the icy air.
Two Gorgoloth held a fourth giant, who’d been tied down and forced to its knees just in front of the ship. It was a Cruj: of that Dane was certain, even though he’d never seen one in person before. The Cruj were known for their extreme size and enormous girth, and if the Gorgoloth were only vaguely humanoid in nature, the Cruj were even less so: its head was square and squat and little in the way of a neck, its mouth was large and filled with blunt teeth, and its arms and legs all seemed too large for its body, branch-like and simian. The Cruj giant towered over the Gorgoloth, who in turn were larger than the human prisoners huddled together and held at bay by a bloodied maul yielded by a fourth Gorgoloth. They were all just about a hundred feet away, at best, but Dane made out three: the screaming woman and two men. All of them were in manacles, and held together by a length of old iron chain.
The whole scene was something from a nightmare. The Gorgoloth were known to the Empire, and feared. The Cruj were even more feared, but most people had never seen one: they’d acted behind the scenes during the War, serving Vlagoth as her war engineers and advisers. The brutal, Veilcrafted war machines that the Cruj built for use during the Rift War were legendary, as was the death toll they’d brought about. Dane didn’t know why these Gorgoloth – who’d once served the Cruj as Vlagoth’s soldiers – would be beating this one now, and he didn’t much care. He wasn’t worried about them, but about the human prisoners, and what the woman screamed about: a fourth human prisoner who lay at the feet of the guardian Gorgoloth and who lay face down on the ground at the giant’s feet. Dane wasn’t positive, but he thought it was a child.
“Time to die, I guess,” he muttered. He hoped they wouldn’t be his last words…he’d always hoped to say something more profound just before he died. Regardless, Dane decided to take the direct approach: there was no cover at all between himself and the ship, and as much as he’d have preferred to use a ballista on the Gorgoloth, that wasn’t exactly an option. “Giants!” he shouted.
© 2007 Steven Montano
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Friday, November 16, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Another Just A Quick Blog
It's been a long week...work is crazy, I've been trying to find time for DDM games both online (EC) and at work, I'm only barely meeting my daily writing quota, and we were without a car for 3 days as it was getting a new O2 sensor and a coolant flush. Sheesh!
So enjoy my daily writing widgit (that sounds dirty, for some reason), and hopefully at some point I'll find time to blog about something a bit more amusing than my busy life. :)
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So enjoy my daily writing widgit (that sounds dirty, for some reason), and hopefully at some point I'll find time to blog about something a bit more amusing than my busy life. :)
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Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Match Report: DDM Internal League
My Band: Mount(s) Doom!
Drow Spider Priestess (43 points, Cmdr 4)
Rage Drake (65 points)
Nightmare (44 points)
Blood of Vol Fanatic (30 points)
Shadow Mastiff (17 points)
Map: Magma Keep
My Opponent: Chris Lindsay (Online Media Training & Operations Manager)
Eternal Blade (54 points, Commander 4)
Astral Stalker (45 points)
Umber Hulk Delver (36 points)
Blood of Vol Fanatic x2 (60 points total)
Farmer (3 points)
Map: Mithril Mines
Map Played: Magma Keep
Final Score: 205-40
Winner: The Mounts Rule!
New Piece Acquired: Eternal Blade
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Drow Spider Priestess (43 points, Cmdr 4)
Rage Drake (65 points)
Nightmare (44 points)
Blood of Vol Fanatic (30 points)
Shadow Mastiff (17 points)
Map: Magma Keep
My Opponent: Chris Lindsay (Online Media Training & Operations Manager)
Eternal Blade (54 points, Commander 4)
Astral Stalker (45 points)
Umber Hulk Delver (36 points)
Blood of Vol Fanatic x2 (60 points total)
Farmer (3 points)
Map: Mithril Mines
Map Played: Magma Keep
Final Score: 205-40
Winner: The Mounts Rule!
New Piece Acquired: Eternal Blade
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Monday, November 12, 2007
Sunday, November 11, 2007
An Excerpt from "The Ending Dream"
His eyes snapped open. He stared into a white void: a dead sky as pale as bones. He felt himself fall into and out the sky at once, torn from one world to the next. Briefly there was a sensation of falling, and a sickening jolt as the earth rushed up to meet him. He hadn’t really fallen – somehow he knew that, even before he knew who or where he was.
He woke from a nightmare of ebon mirrors and carrion mists, and fell back into himself.
For a moment, Azander Dane believed that he was dead: he felt weightless and cold, adrift in a white sea. Cold gripped him like an icy hand, and heavy pain pushed against the backs of his eyes like a fire in his skull. His breaths came slow and ragged, and something thick and wet covered his face. After a moment his dizziness subsided, and he came to realize that he lay on his back in a bed of snow. Frozen wind tickled the wide scars on his left cheek, and as he exhaled he felt blood trickle up from between his lips. Heavy white flakes drifted across his vision like dying birds.
She falls into the sky.
The white void was silent for a moment, but after he took in a long breath Dane ccould hear again, and the noises of battle crept into his senses like a sluggish wave, slowly at first, but then the chortled cries built to a crescendo, and the clash of steel hammered down on him like breaking glass. The perfect white space of his vision was interrupted by a shadow – long, thin, but it grew bigger. It was only at the last moment that he realized it was an axe blade, and Dane rolled up and out of the way.
His muscles screamed. The snow-covered stone sparked from the blade impact behind him. Dane stumbled and tripped on his own cape. His armor, though designed to be lightweight, seemed to weigh a ton as he ripped the cape away and rose to his feet. He wore no helmet, but his vra’taar was in hand, a long hand-and-a-half blade with a wicked edge and a short blade that protruded from the hilt like a baneful tooth. The air swam. Dane dimly registered the chaos of a battle all around him, but he only had a moment before the Gorgoloth was on top of him. The black-skinned brute was easily two heads taller than he was and twice as broad in the shoulder, and his knotted muscles strained with visible effort as he hefted his bone-white axe over his head in preparation for a crushing blow. Dane saw the ruins of a building behind the brute, so dark that the Gorgoloth nearly disappeared in its shadow. He senses movement behind him, and knew that another one of the beasts was closing in. Head spinning, Dane steadied himself, set his feet in the snow and prepared for the charge.
The Gorgoloth behind him leapt first. Dane saw its shadow fly towards him in the light of the frozen sun, and in spite of his fatigue he spun on his heel and took the misshapen, white-maned head from its shoulders with one swing of his blade. Black blood sprayed onto his face and chest. Instincts drove him. He turned in time to meet the first Gorgoloth, unarmored like his fellow so that Dane saw his scarred chest lined with rings and scars as he dove forward with an axe nearly as tall as Dane. Dane crouched and set his sword; the Gorgoloth’s reach would bring the axe down before it landed on his blade, so he waited, waited, and at the last moment threw himself forward, under the arc of the axe’s swing and into the ebon torso, where his blade chewed through bones as hard as steel and pushed through the stomach and out of the creature’s back.
Dane cursed. He’d missed its heart, which meant it was far from dead. A painful blow landed on one armored shoulder, and he felt the creature’s hot breath on his face. Large fangs like those of a wild cat bore down on him as the Gorgoloth struggled to rip the blade free. Dane put his weight down, twisted and pushed, and then he dropped back and fell away from its claws and teeth as he released his blade. The Gorgoloth hunched forward to follow, and he felt hot pain flare across his back as its nail-like claws raked through his armor. Its death groan rarrled against Dane’s ear as it pushed itself further onto his blade and impaled its own heart on the steel. Dane rolled away and tugged his blade free, and stumbled to his feet.
He stood at the outskirts of a ruined city at the edge of a vast canyon. Fighting raged all around him: black-skinned, bare-chested Gorgoloth with mauls and axes ran down scores of Jlantrians, most of which were soldiers who looked barely capable of putting up a fight. Cold wind howled through nearby ice-capped mountain peaks. Collapsed buildings, blocks of rubble and wrecked wagons lay strewn everywhere, some halfway out over the cliffs, all in such ruin that they must have dropped out of the sky.
Where are we?
An axe-head flew through the air, and Dane had only a moment to deflect it before he was attacked again. Four more Gorgoloth flew at him. Their giant mauls were soaked with steaming blood, and deep scars and tattoos cast in silver ink marked their midnight-hue skin. They towered over Dane and came in from all sides like a phalanx of shadows. Dane moved reflexively, thankful that his black and gold Dawn Knight’s armor was much more flexible than it looked, for although metal plates covered his vital areas the joints were leather and chain mesh, allowing him to dodge away from the first few maul blows that tore apart stone and snow in a shower of wet sparks. Their mauls were crude things of stone and wood, but with their reach the four giants could easily take their time; Dane would never be able to get close enough to do any harm, and since they were unarmored they’d easily be able to chase him down if he took flight. Dane crouched low, readied his blade, and waited for them to come at him.
A circle of cold blue fire erupted on the ground between Dane and the Gorgoloth, and they hesitated. The flames gave off no heat, and they crawled and twisted unnaturally into the air, pushing the giants back as the flickering arcane light illuminated their blank white eyes. Dane caught motion out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t dare move – even with the flames, the Gorgoloth looked ready to pounce. He tightened his grip on the vra’taar and tensed for an assault just as the flames flashed in a noisy explosion: a sound like thunder fell straight out of the sky and crashed down to the ground. The blue-white flames funneled into a whirlwind of frozen fire that erupted into the sky.
The Veil.
Dane turned and ran, knowing full well that the distraction wouldn’t last long. The Gorgoloth’s cries of fury and alarm were barely audible over the roar of the fires as they reached like dancing ghosts into the pale sky. Dane raced through the remains of a rubble-hewn lane, through cold blasts of wind-blown snow and intermittent walls of smoke and ash. Fighting went on just out of sight: every glimpse that Dane caught of battle was the aftermath, when there was only broken bodies and broken weapons left to show that there’d been fighting at all. Dane followed the shadow of his savior, the Veilwarden who’d crafted the arcane fires that had kept him alive, but every time he drew close the shadow vanished, just out of sight around the bend of a building or over another outcropping of rock.
The limits of the city were almost unfathomable. Shards of shattered stone and splintered wood lay in every direction. He was on the top of a tall mountain, for the sky was thin and Dane could see the majestic void of snowy valleys beyond debris that went on and on, acre after acre of discarded civilization left like refuse on the face of this frozen peak. Dane came upon bodies and ruin, and only occasionally did he spy other living things: when he did, it was always Gorgoloth, tall and ebon-skinned, white manes and whiter eyes like extensions of the snow.
Dane ducked in and out of hiding places. He wasn’t sure what direction he traveled in, or if he was moving closer or further from the mountain’s edge, because for all that he could see the narrow crest of the ridge went on forever, like it wasn’t so much a mountain he walked on as an endless and vastly tall wall of ancient natural stone that thrust from the snowy landscape like a vast scar.
The cold numbed him. Frost accumulated on Dane’s blonde stubble and gauntleted hands, and his throat grew raw from the air. He moved quickly and quietly, ducking in and out of ruins. He passed through the shattered remnants of inns and homes, a woodworker’s and a smith’s, but most of the structures were beyond his ability to identify, too ruined by whatever devastation had brought them here to be anything more than torn debris. Dane’s boots uncovered lost things in the snow: broken spinning wheels and old tables, children’s dolls and rusted axe-blades. Shadows moved around him, made thin and long by the sickly pale sun hidden by an invisible veil of ghost-white clouds. The sky had no depth, the peaks went on forever, and even the howl of the wind wasn’t enough to cover the cries of the dying.
I’m dead. I have to be. This is hell.
Still he walked.
© 2007 Steven Montano
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He woke from a nightmare of ebon mirrors and carrion mists, and fell back into himself.
For a moment, Azander Dane believed that he was dead: he felt weightless and cold, adrift in a white sea. Cold gripped him like an icy hand, and heavy pain pushed against the backs of his eyes like a fire in his skull. His breaths came slow and ragged, and something thick and wet covered his face. After a moment his dizziness subsided, and he came to realize that he lay on his back in a bed of snow. Frozen wind tickled the wide scars on his left cheek, and as he exhaled he felt blood trickle up from between his lips. Heavy white flakes drifted across his vision like dying birds.
She falls into the sky.
The white void was silent for a moment, but after he took in a long breath Dane ccould hear again, and the noises of battle crept into his senses like a sluggish wave, slowly at first, but then the chortled cries built to a crescendo, and the clash of steel hammered down on him like breaking glass. The perfect white space of his vision was interrupted by a shadow – long, thin, but it grew bigger. It was only at the last moment that he realized it was an axe blade, and Dane rolled up and out of the way.
His muscles screamed. The snow-covered stone sparked from the blade impact behind him. Dane stumbled and tripped on his own cape. His armor, though designed to be lightweight, seemed to weigh a ton as he ripped the cape away and rose to his feet. He wore no helmet, but his vra’taar was in hand, a long hand-and-a-half blade with a wicked edge and a short blade that protruded from the hilt like a baneful tooth. The air swam. Dane dimly registered the chaos of a battle all around him, but he only had a moment before the Gorgoloth was on top of him. The black-skinned brute was easily two heads taller than he was and twice as broad in the shoulder, and his knotted muscles strained with visible effort as he hefted his bone-white axe over his head in preparation for a crushing blow. Dane saw the ruins of a building behind the brute, so dark that the Gorgoloth nearly disappeared in its shadow. He senses movement behind him, and knew that another one of the beasts was closing in. Head spinning, Dane steadied himself, set his feet in the snow and prepared for the charge.
The Gorgoloth behind him leapt first. Dane saw its shadow fly towards him in the light of the frozen sun, and in spite of his fatigue he spun on his heel and took the misshapen, white-maned head from its shoulders with one swing of his blade. Black blood sprayed onto his face and chest. Instincts drove him. He turned in time to meet the first Gorgoloth, unarmored like his fellow so that Dane saw his scarred chest lined with rings and scars as he dove forward with an axe nearly as tall as Dane. Dane crouched and set his sword; the Gorgoloth’s reach would bring the axe down before it landed on his blade, so he waited, waited, and at the last moment threw himself forward, under the arc of the axe’s swing and into the ebon torso, where his blade chewed through bones as hard as steel and pushed through the stomach and out of the creature’s back.
Dane cursed. He’d missed its heart, which meant it was far from dead. A painful blow landed on one armored shoulder, and he felt the creature’s hot breath on his face. Large fangs like those of a wild cat bore down on him as the Gorgoloth struggled to rip the blade free. Dane put his weight down, twisted and pushed, and then he dropped back and fell away from its claws and teeth as he released his blade. The Gorgoloth hunched forward to follow, and he felt hot pain flare across his back as its nail-like claws raked through his armor. Its death groan rarrled against Dane’s ear as it pushed itself further onto his blade and impaled its own heart on the steel. Dane rolled away and tugged his blade free, and stumbled to his feet.
He stood at the outskirts of a ruined city at the edge of a vast canyon. Fighting raged all around him: black-skinned, bare-chested Gorgoloth with mauls and axes ran down scores of Jlantrians, most of which were soldiers who looked barely capable of putting up a fight. Cold wind howled through nearby ice-capped mountain peaks. Collapsed buildings, blocks of rubble and wrecked wagons lay strewn everywhere, some halfway out over the cliffs, all in such ruin that they must have dropped out of the sky.
Where are we?
An axe-head flew through the air, and Dane had only a moment to deflect it before he was attacked again. Four more Gorgoloth flew at him. Their giant mauls were soaked with steaming blood, and deep scars and tattoos cast in silver ink marked their midnight-hue skin. They towered over Dane and came in from all sides like a phalanx of shadows. Dane moved reflexively, thankful that his black and gold Dawn Knight’s armor was much more flexible than it looked, for although metal plates covered his vital areas the joints were leather and chain mesh, allowing him to dodge away from the first few maul blows that tore apart stone and snow in a shower of wet sparks. Their mauls were crude things of stone and wood, but with their reach the four giants could easily take their time; Dane would never be able to get close enough to do any harm, and since they were unarmored they’d easily be able to chase him down if he took flight. Dane crouched low, readied his blade, and waited for them to come at him.
A circle of cold blue fire erupted on the ground between Dane and the Gorgoloth, and they hesitated. The flames gave off no heat, and they crawled and twisted unnaturally into the air, pushing the giants back as the flickering arcane light illuminated their blank white eyes. Dane caught motion out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t dare move – even with the flames, the Gorgoloth looked ready to pounce. He tightened his grip on the vra’taar and tensed for an assault just as the flames flashed in a noisy explosion: a sound like thunder fell straight out of the sky and crashed down to the ground. The blue-white flames funneled into a whirlwind of frozen fire that erupted into the sky.
The Veil.
Dane turned and ran, knowing full well that the distraction wouldn’t last long. The Gorgoloth’s cries of fury and alarm were barely audible over the roar of the fires as they reached like dancing ghosts into the pale sky. Dane raced through the remains of a rubble-hewn lane, through cold blasts of wind-blown snow and intermittent walls of smoke and ash. Fighting went on just out of sight: every glimpse that Dane caught of battle was the aftermath, when there was only broken bodies and broken weapons left to show that there’d been fighting at all. Dane followed the shadow of his savior, the Veilwarden who’d crafted the arcane fires that had kept him alive, but every time he drew close the shadow vanished, just out of sight around the bend of a building or over another outcropping of rock.
The limits of the city were almost unfathomable. Shards of shattered stone and splintered wood lay in every direction. He was on the top of a tall mountain, for the sky was thin and Dane could see the majestic void of snowy valleys beyond debris that went on and on, acre after acre of discarded civilization left like refuse on the face of this frozen peak. Dane came upon bodies and ruin, and only occasionally did he spy other living things: when he did, it was always Gorgoloth, tall and ebon-skinned, white manes and whiter eyes like extensions of the snow.
Dane ducked in and out of hiding places. He wasn’t sure what direction he traveled in, or if he was moving closer or further from the mountain’s edge, because for all that he could see the narrow crest of the ridge went on forever, like it wasn’t so much a mountain he walked on as an endless and vastly tall wall of ancient natural stone that thrust from the snowy landscape like a vast scar.
The cold numbed him. Frost accumulated on Dane’s blonde stubble and gauntleted hands, and his throat grew raw from the air. He moved quickly and quietly, ducking in and out of ruins. He passed through the shattered remnants of inns and homes, a woodworker’s and a smith’s, but most of the structures were beyond his ability to identify, too ruined by whatever devastation had brought them here to be anything more than torn debris. Dane’s boots uncovered lost things in the snow: broken spinning wheels and old tables, children’s dolls and rusted axe-blades. Shadows moved around him, made thin and long by the sickly pale sun hidden by an invisible veil of ghost-white clouds. The sky had no depth, the peaks went on forever, and even the howl of the wind wasn’t enough to cover the cries of the dying.
I’m dead. I have to be. This is hell.
Still he walked.
© 2007 Steven Montano
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Saturday, November 10, 2007
Just a Quick Blog
I actually have quite a bit to blog about, but at the moment I'm trying to tie up today's writing and then I'm off to go watch Season One of "Lost" with my daughter, so hopefully I'll get to bigger better stuff tomorrow. Have a good weekend!
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Friday, November 9, 2007
A New Film Makes the Favorites List
Last night, something incredible happened: a new movie was added to my all-time favorite list.
This doesn't happen very often. While I am something of a film geek, and indeed I own more movies than any person has any right to ever own, over the past few years I've found my tastes growing something...jaded. Maybe it's the bitterness of approaching middle-age. Maybe it's from watching too many Rifftrax. Or maybe it's just due to the fact that I've seen waaaaaaaaay too many movies, and any more something has to be pretty extraordinary to actually impress me.
I try to find new favorite movies...I really do. I thought that "300" would be the big movie this year to really blow me away, and while I did indeed find "300" to be one very exciting and finely crafted film, something about it left me a bit let down. Maybe because it delivered what it promised, but nothing more. Maybe my expectations were too high, since it was really the one film released in 2007 that I was looking forward to. Whatever the case, "300" was very good...but not great.
So, lo and behold, it wasn't a 2007 movie at all to make it onto my coveted by somewhat elusive "list", but a leftover from 2006: "Apocalypto," Mel Gibson's adventure epic about a man trying to survive the beginning of the end of the Mayan Empire and save his family in the process.
Mel Gibson may have gone a bit wacko in the past couple of years, with anti-Semitic drunken outbusts, DUIs and verbally abusing film students who ask him too many questions, but DAMN can he make a movie! Apocalypto has visual and emotional resonance. It's a cutionary tale of what happens to a civilizaton that drowns in its own excess, masked in the guise of an adventure story. It's a foreign language art-house film given an action/adventure makeover. And it's one of the most involving, frightening, and exhausting films I've seen in a long, long time.
Apocalypto is well directed, beautifully shot, finely acted and completely exciting from start to finish (especially the extended chase sequence that occupies nearly the entirety of the final 45 minutes of the film). It's also incredibly well-paced -- I was hard pressed to believe that 2 hours and 18 minutes had passed. As a final word of warning, "Apocalypto" is also INCREDIBLY violent. People put off by violent images will find much of the film simply unwatchable...so you've been warned.
But if you have the stomach for it, and if you can get past the "subtitled" hurdle (it's never bothered me, but I know some people have trouble with subtitled films), then I strongly recommend "Apocalypto". Some of us keep hanging on year after year and keep watching out for the next great film, even when so much of what is made these days is just a waste of our time: films like "Apocalypto" are our reward.
wordcount widgets
This doesn't happen very often. While I am something of a film geek, and indeed I own more movies than any person has any right to ever own, over the past few years I've found my tastes growing something...jaded. Maybe it's the bitterness of approaching middle-age. Maybe it's from watching too many Rifftrax. Or maybe it's just due to the fact that I've seen waaaaaaaaay too many movies, and any more something has to be pretty extraordinary to actually impress me.
I try to find new favorite movies...I really do. I thought that "300" would be the big movie this year to really blow me away, and while I did indeed find "300" to be one very exciting and finely crafted film, something about it left me a bit let down. Maybe because it delivered what it promised, but nothing more. Maybe my expectations were too high, since it was really the one film released in 2007 that I was looking forward to. Whatever the case, "300" was very good...but not great.
So, lo and behold, it wasn't a 2007 movie at all to make it onto my coveted by somewhat elusive "list", but a leftover from 2006: "Apocalypto," Mel Gibson's adventure epic about a man trying to survive the beginning of the end of the Mayan Empire and save his family in the process.
Mel Gibson may have gone a bit wacko in the past couple of years, with anti-Semitic drunken outbusts, DUIs and verbally abusing film students who ask him too many questions, but DAMN can he make a movie! Apocalypto has visual and emotional resonance. It's a cutionary tale of what happens to a civilizaton that drowns in its own excess, masked in the guise of an adventure story. It's a foreign language art-house film given an action/adventure makeover. And it's one of the most involving, frightening, and exhausting films I've seen in a long, long time.
Apocalypto is well directed, beautifully shot, finely acted and completely exciting from start to finish (especially the extended chase sequence that occupies nearly the entirety of the final 45 minutes of the film). It's also incredibly well-paced -- I was hard pressed to believe that 2 hours and 18 minutes had passed. As a final word of warning, "Apocalypto" is also INCREDIBLY violent. People put off by violent images will find much of the film simply unwatchable...so you've been warned.
But if you have the stomach for it, and if you can get past the "subtitled" hurdle (it's never bothered me, but I know some people have trouble with subtitled films), then I strongly recommend "Apocalypto". Some of us keep hanging on year after year and keep watching out for the next great film, even when so much of what is made these days is just a waste of our time: films like "Apocalypto" are our reward.
wordcount widgets
Thursday, November 8, 2007
DDM Internal League
It's DDM Time Again!
I don't want my silly miniatures hobby to take over the new blog here...but it is one of my only hobbies, so I'd be doing myself a disservice if I didn't at least mention what's going on with that. Rather than go into gory detail, however, I'll keep posts about the DDM Deserts of Desolation League bare bones: following this post, I'll just list Warbands used for any given match, the map that we played on, who my opponent was and the match results (including the final score). I'll also post what new figure I acquired (we're using the "Sideboards" option that we've used in the past, wherein we get to roll for a random miniature to add to our reserve ranks for use in building our warbands).
We haven't had any DDM Leagues here at work in a while (the last one was for Unhallowed, which was well before GenCon), so I'm excited, as much for the opportunity to play with the nutjobs here at work again as I am to finally get my hands on some Desert of Desolation figures.
So, without further ado, my pull from my two boosters were...well, they were crap, but here they are anyways:
Rage Drake (65)
Nightmare (44)
Drow Spider Priestess x2 (43, Commander 4)
Blood of Vol Fanatic (30)
Drow Blademaster (22, Commander 2)
Shadow Mastiff x2 (17)
Snaketongue Cultist (17, Commander 2)
Black Woods Dryad (16)
Tiefling Rogue x2 (11)
Flame Snake (8)
Merchant Guard x2 (8)
Boneshard Skeleton (7)
Hmmm...while I'm not too excited about all of the duplicates, I love the Rares (the Rage Drake and the Nightmare), and even after a core of those two figures and a commander I still have some room to experiment and mess around.
My first version will look something like this:
Mount(s) Doom!
Drow Spider Priestess (43 points, Cmdr 4)
Rage Drake (65)
Nightmare (44)
Blood of Vol Fanatic (30)
Shadow Mastiff (17)
5 Activations, 199 points
Map: Magma Keep
I'll post abbreviated match reports as they occur (the League doesn't actually begin until Monday the 12th). In the meantime, I'm off to finish watching "Apolcaypto" (which thusfar is very, very good) and to finish up some writing. I'll try to put an excerpt from Chapter One up in the next few days.
wordcount widgets
I don't want my silly miniatures hobby to take over the new blog here...but it is one of my only hobbies, so I'd be doing myself a disservice if I didn't at least mention what's going on with that. Rather than go into gory detail, however, I'll keep posts about the DDM Deserts of Desolation League bare bones: following this post, I'll just list Warbands used for any given match, the map that we played on, who my opponent was and the match results (including the final score). I'll also post what new figure I acquired (we're using the "Sideboards" option that we've used in the past, wherein we get to roll for a random miniature to add to our reserve ranks for use in building our warbands).
We haven't had any DDM Leagues here at work in a while (the last one was for Unhallowed, which was well before GenCon), so I'm excited, as much for the opportunity to play with the nutjobs here at work again as I am to finally get my hands on some Desert of Desolation figures.
So, without further ado, my pull from my two boosters were...well, they were crap, but here they are anyways:
Rage Drake (65)
Nightmare (44)
Drow Spider Priestess x2 (43, Commander 4)
Blood of Vol Fanatic (30)
Drow Blademaster (22, Commander 2)
Shadow Mastiff x2 (17)
Snaketongue Cultist (17, Commander 2)
Black Woods Dryad (16)
Tiefling Rogue x2 (11)
Flame Snake (8)
Merchant Guard x2 (8)
Boneshard Skeleton (7)
Hmmm...while I'm not too excited about all of the duplicates, I love the Rares (the Rage Drake and the Nightmare), and even after a core of those two figures and a commander I still have some room to experiment and mess around.
My first version will look something like this:
Mount(s) Doom!
Drow Spider Priestess (43 points, Cmdr 4)
Rage Drake (65)
Nightmare (44)
Blood of Vol Fanatic (30)
Shadow Mastiff (17)
5 Activations, 199 points
Map: Magma Keep
I'll post abbreviated match reports as they occur (the League doesn't actually begin until Monday the 12th). In the meantime, I'm off to finish watching "Apolcaypto" (which thusfar is very, very good) and to finish up some writing. I'll try to put an excerpt from Chapter One up in the next few days.
wordcount widgets
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Some Really Good Writing Advice
This was an e-mail sent to all of the Nanowrimo participants today. It is, quite simply, some of the best writing advice I've ever seen, and I thought it merited being shared:
"The single most important technique for making progress is to write ten words. Doesn't matter if you're badly stuck, or your day is completely jam-packed, or you're away from your computer---carry a small paper notebook and write a sentence of description while you're waiting on line at a coffee shop. I think of this as baiting a hook. Even if you have a few days in a row where nothing comes except those ten words, I find that as long as you have to think about the novel enough to write ten words, the chances are that more will come.
The rest of this advice comes out of my own bag of tricks for getting those ten words and then turning them into many. It may well be that only some of these or none at all will work for you; they may not fit into your life or your own mindset. But if these don't, try and come up with others that do work for you.
Remove distractions. The internet is a phenomenal research and communit y tool without which you might never have started the novel you're working on right now. It is an equally phenomenal tool for procrastination and wasting time. Unplug your connection. While you're at it, put down that book, turn off the TV, shut down the Wii. Make scrambled eggs and salad for dinner. The dishes can wait to be washed. Ideally, get out of your house filled with your stuff that you like and go somewhere where you have nothing better to do than write.
I like writing longhand a lot for clearing jams and rapidly generating new scenes. I don't generally try and write complete scenes when I am writing longhand, I do more of a pencil-sketch version of a scene, all rough and scribbled, drifting in and out of outline form, full of shorthand and initials and incomplete sentences. This is also a easy way to get some polish in without losing speed---when you transfer the longhand to your computer, you'll almost without thinking improve the sentences. And it's fun having a physical artifact to commemorate the work---get one of those nice journals from your local bookstore, and if you are the kind of person who hates to waste money, spend enough on the journal that you will then feel bad if you don't finish the novel.
If characters aren't coming clear, play casting director. Instead of trying to invent a character from scratch, mentally cast someone in the role and try to imagine how they would do it---their physical mannerisms, their vocal tics, the way they hold themselves. The nice thing is, as the casting director of a novel, you are free to cast actors who are booked elsewhere, too young or too old for the role, not actually actors (your next-door neighbor will never know), dead, or fictional (a writer of my acquaintance once cast Madame Bovary as a character in his modern-day novel).
If you're finding a scene boring to write, cut it and skip to the good part. Set something on fire. Have zombies a ttack. Note that boring is not the same as hard. Really great scenes can be very hard to write and take a long time, but if you're sitting there going "god, when will this be over," make it be over. You indeed have that power. It's your novel.
Have fun with it.
Naomi Novik"
--
Naomi Novik is the author of the Temeraire series---His Majesty's Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, and Empire of Ivory. For more info on Naomi, visit www.temeraire.org.
"The single most important technique for making progress is to write ten words. Doesn't matter if you're badly stuck, or your day is completely jam-packed, or you're away from your computer---carry a small paper notebook and write a sentence of description while you're waiting on line at a coffee shop. I think of this as baiting a hook. Even if you have a few days in a row where nothing comes except those ten words, I find that as long as you have to think about the novel enough to write ten words, the chances are that more will come.
The rest of this advice comes out of my own bag of tricks for getting those ten words and then turning them into many. It may well be that only some of these or none at all will work for you; they may not fit into your life or your own mindset. But if these don't, try and come up with others that do work for you.
Remove distractions. The internet is a phenomenal research and communit y tool without which you might never have started the novel you're working on right now. It is an equally phenomenal tool for procrastination and wasting time. Unplug your connection. While you're at it, put down that book, turn off the TV, shut down the Wii. Make scrambled eggs and salad for dinner. The dishes can wait to be washed. Ideally, get out of your house filled with your stuff that you like and go somewhere where you have nothing better to do than write.
I like writing longhand a lot for clearing jams and rapidly generating new scenes. I don't generally try and write complete scenes when I am writing longhand, I do more of a pencil-sketch version of a scene, all rough and scribbled, drifting in and out of outline form, full of shorthand and initials and incomplete sentences. This is also a easy way to get some polish in without losing speed---when you transfer the longhand to your computer, you'll almost without thinking improve the sentences. And it's fun having a physical artifact to commemorate the work---get one of those nice journals from your local bookstore, and if you are the kind of person who hates to waste money, spend enough on the journal that you will then feel bad if you don't finish the novel.
If characters aren't coming clear, play casting director. Instead of trying to invent a character from scratch, mentally cast someone in the role and try to imagine how they would do it---their physical mannerisms, their vocal tics, the way they hold themselves. The nice thing is, as the casting director of a novel, you are free to cast actors who are booked elsewhere, too young or too old for the role, not actually actors (your next-door neighbor will never know), dead, or fictional (a writer of my acquaintance once cast Madame Bovary as a character in his modern-day novel).
If you're finding a scene boring to write, cut it and skip to the good part. Set something on fire. Have zombies a ttack. Note that boring is not the same as hard. Really great scenes can be very hard to write and take a long time, but if you're sitting there going "god, when will this be over," make it be over. You indeed have that power. It's your novel.
Have fun with it.
Naomi Novik"
--
Naomi Novik is the author of the Temeraire series---His Majesty's Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, and Empire of Ivory. For more info on Naomi, visit www.temeraire.org.
wordcount widgets
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Monday, November 5, 2007
A New Gadget to Mark My Nanowrimo Progress
This will just start to appear at the bottom of my usual blog, but today it's exciting enough that it warrants a post all its own! :)
wordcount widgets
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Saturday, November 3, 2007
The Ending Dream: Prologue
PROLOGUE
The first thing that he sees is the mountain: a vast edifice of black rock embalmed in hoarfrost. It stands like a grim edifice, and it is so immense that it penetrates the pale sky like a blade. Ice winter clouds float across its onyx face; silver mist rolls across the ground, and hovers just above the sluggish crystal waters that flow through the heart of a silver marsh.
Four women sit on the brittle grass, their bare feet in the ice-laden stream. They are fair and pale, skin the color of milk and moon. They are bound in a prison of sleeping trees whose branches lay across the ground like lovers. The jet mountain looms over them, a silhouette that eclipses the clearing they sit in. A gentle wind blows through and ripples their plain brown dresses and long hair; they are caressed as if by a lover’s hands. When they speak he can’t hear them, but he can see their words, like platinum in the dark.
Somehow, he sees their memories: memories of empire. They recall dark buildings slick with black rainfall and streets thick with armor and smoke. Statues of tall men eclipse the dark city in their shadows, and the air they breathed there was heavy with fear.
But this is a better place for them. They sit near the waters and laugh, quietly, knowing that they must keep their presence here a secret. They dream of the present, and though he knows they must be freezing they look at ease. Gossamer branches sway in the distance, and beyond the lavender trees they can see the rising moon, cold and empty, a portal in the clouds.
A sound like a distant roll of thunder approaches, but he knows it is not thunder: it is the unicorns. The girls look at each other, frightened, disbelieving. They knew this day would come, but none of them thought it would be this soon. The unicorn's hooves splash in the water, and their whinnies fade through the mists in an inhuman dirge.
The women run. Their thick wool dresses are heavy with moisture, and the marshy forest conspires against them with sodden earth and thick tendrils of silver smoke.
He tries to help them, but he can only watch. He isn’t really there.
The unicorns emerge from the silver fog in a chain of nightmares. Their skin is black and coarse, and thick jet blood oozes from their eyes, nostrils and hooves. Their eyes are crimson, and their horns are pale and jagged, covered in black scratches that look like wounds. When they whinny their teeth are revealed to be fangs.
They descend on the girls. Only one of them falls, but the unicorns are patient, and they know that they can take the others whenever they want. She is young and thin, with wheat-colored hair that turns red as she is trampled beneath their hooves. Her terrified face is reflected back in their eyes before their horns rend her fragile body apart.
Like in a dream, he sees her fall away from the unicorns, up into the sky, where she is swallowed by rain that falls like tears and into a bed of clouds.
The other women run. They scream and struggle through the marsh, caught after every few feet by thick vines and walls of foliage. Fog cages them.
Again, he sees their memories of empire. Black rain falls onto the steep stone steps that ascend to a grim palace: the heart of the black city they once called home. Silhouettes of soldiers surround them, held upright by their determination to keep their home safe from the faceless advance of a distant enemy. White fires burn in the distance in great pits at the outskirts of the city: dank beacons to light their return. Armor grinds against stone as they march, out of the city and onto fields wet with blood and rain.
He cannot see their enemy: he can only see them die. Men fall in waves, face down in the mud, where they swallow earth and grime before their lives are painfully crushed from their bodies. The women cry for these men in their memory, and he realizes that those dead soldiers are why they are here, or why they will be here, for it has not yet happened.
He tries to reach out, but he can’t. A memory of white nags at him and tries to pull him away, but he stays. He cannot leave them, even though there is nothing he can do.
One by one, they fall. The unicorns are persistent hunters, and they know no mercy. The next of the women is taken when they race across a flat field, hoping to reach safety in a thick copse of trees that they think the unicorns can’t enter because of their great size, but it doesn’t matter. The horn punches through the next woman's back, and blood pours from her mouth.
The third woman is taken in the dark, when she and the last survivor hide in the shadows. They are exhausted, covered in silver ice; their hair and dresses have been soaked through with water, and they huddle together in the dark, in the shadow of tall rocks shaped like broken fingers. They neither hear nor see the unicorns appear, but the last of them – she is tall and older than the others, with bone white hair and high cheekbones and azure eyes – smells the brimstone and blood, the miasma that follows them wherever they go. The unicorns' horns are now brown with blood, and their manes have gone white, a result of their feeding on the sacrifices that have been sent to them. They break through the old stones and trample the third woman underfoot, and the last can only stagger away, empty and lost. She is alone.
He reaches for her, and for a moment he thinks she sees him, and that she wants to reach back.
Her mind goes back to the creeping shadows that hover over the fields of war. Her memories of empire bleed to more recent recollections of that better place, her small paradise filled with silver haze and girls with white skin. In her mind – in his mind – she falls up, into the sky. Even as the unicorns come for her, all that she can think of is how the worst days are behind her, and she falls upward into a world of tears and leaves.
The sky freezes as she falls into its embrace, and there she stays, held in gray stasis: the last victim of a lost age, forever frozen at the edge of her own death.
© 2007 Steven Montano
The first thing that he sees is the mountain: a vast edifice of black rock embalmed in hoarfrost. It stands like a grim edifice, and it is so immense that it penetrates the pale sky like a blade. Ice winter clouds float across its onyx face; silver mist rolls across the ground, and hovers just above the sluggish crystal waters that flow through the heart of a silver marsh.
Four women sit on the brittle grass, their bare feet in the ice-laden stream. They are fair and pale, skin the color of milk and moon. They are bound in a prison of sleeping trees whose branches lay across the ground like lovers. The jet mountain looms over them, a silhouette that eclipses the clearing they sit in. A gentle wind blows through and ripples their plain brown dresses and long hair; they are caressed as if by a lover’s hands. When they speak he can’t hear them, but he can see their words, like platinum in the dark.
Somehow, he sees their memories: memories of empire. They recall dark buildings slick with black rainfall and streets thick with armor and smoke. Statues of tall men eclipse the dark city in their shadows, and the air they breathed there was heavy with fear.
But this is a better place for them. They sit near the waters and laugh, quietly, knowing that they must keep their presence here a secret. They dream of the present, and though he knows they must be freezing they look at ease. Gossamer branches sway in the distance, and beyond the lavender trees they can see the rising moon, cold and empty, a portal in the clouds.
A sound like a distant roll of thunder approaches, but he knows it is not thunder: it is the unicorns. The girls look at each other, frightened, disbelieving. They knew this day would come, but none of them thought it would be this soon. The unicorn's hooves splash in the water, and their whinnies fade through the mists in an inhuman dirge.
The women run. Their thick wool dresses are heavy with moisture, and the marshy forest conspires against them with sodden earth and thick tendrils of silver smoke.
He tries to help them, but he can only watch. He isn’t really there.
The unicorns emerge from the silver fog in a chain of nightmares. Their skin is black and coarse, and thick jet blood oozes from their eyes, nostrils and hooves. Their eyes are crimson, and their horns are pale and jagged, covered in black scratches that look like wounds. When they whinny their teeth are revealed to be fangs.
They descend on the girls. Only one of them falls, but the unicorns are patient, and they know that they can take the others whenever they want. She is young and thin, with wheat-colored hair that turns red as she is trampled beneath their hooves. Her terrified face is reflected back in their eyes before their horns rend her fragile body apart.
Like in a dream, he sees her fall away from the unicorns, up into the sky, where she is swallowed by rain that falls like tears and into a bed of clouds.
The other women run. They scream and struggle through the marsh, caught after every few feet by thick vines and walls of foliage. Fog cages them.
Again, he sees their memories of empire. Black rain falls onto the steep stone steps that ascend to a grim palace: the heart of the black city they once called home. Silhouettes of soldiers surround them, held upright by their determination to keep their home safe from the faceless advance of a distant enemy. White fires burn in the distance in great pits at the outskirts of the city: dank beacons to light their return. Armor grinds against stone as they march, out of the city and onto fields wet with blood and rain.
He cannot see their enemy: he can only see them die. Men fall in waves, face down in the mud, where they swallow earth and grime before their lives are painfully crushed from their bodies. The women cry for these men in their memory, and he realizes that those dead soldiers are why they are here, or why they will be here, for it has not yet happened.
He tries to reach out, but he can’t. A memory of white nags at him and tries to pull him away, but he stays. He cannot leave them, even though there is nothing he can do.
One by one, they fall. The unicorns are persistent hunters, and they know no mercy. The next of the women is taken when they race across a flat field, hoping to reach safety in a thick copse of trees that they think the unicorns can’t enter because of their great size, but it doesn’t matter. The horn punches through the next woman's back, and blood pours from her mouth.
The third woman is taken in the dark, when she and the last survivor hide in the shadows. They are exhausted, covered in silver ice; their hair and dresses have been soaked through with water, and they huddle together in the dark, in the shadow of tall rocks shaped like broken fingers. They neither hear nor see the unicorns appear, but the last of them – she is tall and older than the others, with bone white hair and high cheekbones and azure eyes – smells the brimstone and blood, the miasma that follows them wherever they go. The unicorns' horns are now brown with blood, and their manes have gone white, a result of their feeding on the sacrifices that have been sent to them. They break through the old stones and trample the third woman underfoot, and the last can only stagger away, empty and lost. She is alone.
He reaches for her, and for a moment he thinks she sees him, and that she wants to reach back.
Her mind goes back to the creeping shadows that hover over the fields of war. Her memories of empire bleed to more recent recollections of that better place, her small paradise filled with silver haze and girls with white skin. In her mind – in his mind – she falls up, into the sky. Even as the unicorns come for her, all that she can think of is how the worst days are behind her, and she falls upward into a world of tears and leaves.
The sky freezes as she falls into its embrace, and there she stays, held in gray stasis: the last victim of a lost age, forever frozen at the edge of her own death.
© 2007 Steven Montano
Friday, November 2, 2007
Thursday, November 1, 2007
The Novel Begins!
Nonowrimo is here! And man....what horrible timing! :)
I lost my water bottle on the train this past Monday. Then I lost my glasses on Tuesday. And then my phone yesterday. (Somewhere in there my sanity went, too....) Gearing up for Year End here at Wizards has been absolute hell. My kids are both getting in trouble at school. And I'm sick.
Ok, enough bitching. Here's my book.
After all of the deliberation and flip-flopping, I did what I knew I ultimately would and went with my original idea. Duh.
"The Ending Dream" is part of the "Crown of Blood" series, but it doesn't exactly fall into the regular trilogy. That doesn't mean it's a prequel...not exactly. I'm thinking of it as a sort of supplmental piece to the 2 3/4 of the four-part series that I've completed to date (with this one, it officially becomes a 5-part series). While logic would dictate that I should just finish Book 3 (which was a plan I had earlier this year) or else finish up the "Razor" trilogy (Plan B), the truth is that the ideas for "The Ending Dream" have been floating around in my head for several months now, and every time I sit down to brainstorm I keep coming back to this. I'm more excited about this project than I have been for any writing in a long time....and since being excited about something is an almost sure fire way to ensure that I'll actually work on it, I figured this was probably the best way to go.
So without further ado, I decided to take a few minutes this afternoon (since, as usual, I didn't really get anything resembling a lunch break) and get started. Check out my progress here.
P.S. To my lovely wife: thanks for your continued inspiration, love and support. (And did I mention that I love your new haircut?)
I lost my water bottle on the train this past Monday. Then I lost my glasses on Tuesday. And then my phone yesterday. (Somewhere in there my sanity went, too....) Gearing up for Year End here at Wizards has been absolute hell. My kids are both getting in trouble at school. And I'm sick.
Ok, enough bitching. Here's my book.
After all of the deliberation and flip-flopping, I did what I knew I ultimately would and went with my original idea. Duh.
"The Ending Dream" is part of the "Crown of Blood" series, but it doesn't exactly fall into the regular trilogy. That doesn't mean it's a prequel...not exactly. I'm thinking of it as a sort of supplmental piece to the 2 3/4 of the four-part series that I've completed to date (with this one, it officially becomes a 5-part series). While logic would dictate that I should just finish Book 3 (which was a plan I had earlier this year) or else finish up the "Razor" trilogy (Plan B), the truth is that the ideas for "The Ending Dream" have been floating around in my head for several months now, and every time I sit down to brainstorm I keep coming back to this. I'm more excited about this project than I have been for any writing in a long time....and since being excited about something is an almost sure fire way to ensure that I'll actually work on it, I figured this was probably the best way to go.
So without further ado, I decided to take a few minutes this afternoon (since, as usual, I didn't really get anything resembling a lunch break) and get started. Check out my progress here.
P.S. To my lovely wife: thanks for your continued inspiration, love and support. (And did I mention that I love your new haircut?)
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
Halloween Top 10 (or so)
Halloween Time!
It's that time of year again -- spooky costumes, scary stories, freaky movies and...lots of candy.
Ignoring the whole candy thing, I thought it might be fun to compile my very own list of Halloween favorites. This is a combination of films and novels that I've enjoyed over the years and that I can recommend to someone looking for a good scare or a Halloween flavored bit of entertainment. These items are arranged in no particular order...aside from the order in which they popped into my tiny brain.
(Books) Clive Barker's "The Books of Blood"
While not necessarily a "horror author" these days, Clive Barker started his career writing grisly, disturbing and highly creative splatter horror fiction, and it was this collection that garnered the talented British author his initial fame and critical praise. There are actually several different versions of Clive Barker's excellent collection of horror short stories; stateside, "The Books of Blood" generally refers to a 3 volume collection, but I prefer the British 6 Volume edition which includes the short stories from the U.S. Releases "In the Flesh", "The Inhuman Condition" and "Cabal" in addition to the original stories. (There's also a "bonus" story called "On Jerusalem Street", which nicely wraps up the entire collection.) While not generally "scary", Barker's gory tales are always disturbing and highly creative, and definitely worth a read for those who aren't too faint of heart (or that have weak stomachs).
Highlights from the series for me include "The Midnight Meat Train" (a tale of a subway serial killer with bizarre motivations), "In the Hills, the Cities" (a very strange update on a Dickens classic), "The Body Politic" (where humankind is threatened by a most unusual revolution), "How Spoilers Bleed" (an extremist cautionary tale that warns those darn Imperialists to stay the hell out of Africa) "Dread" (the original torture-porn story), "The Yattering and Jack" (which I'm surprised Tim Burton hasn't already made into a movie), and "Babel's Children" (which explains how political decisions are *really* made).
(Movie) "Aliens"
While some fans defend the original "Alien" as the definitive entry in this *mostly* marvelous science-fiction/horror series (I say *mostly* because one can't forget the less-than-stellar third installment and the downright embarrassing 4th film), I've always found James Cameron's "Aliens" to not only hold the highest entertainment quotient of the series, but to also be the film that leaves me the most drained after having watched it. This film literally sucks you in and drags you along on its nightmarish and consistently exciting ride; it's one of those rare films where the audience is left as exhausted as its (surviving) characters by the time the end credits start to roll. Viewing the original "Alien" isn't mandatory to enjoy this massively entertaining motion picture, which is easily James Cameron's finest film and still one of my favorite movies to watch this time of the year.
"Game over, man!"
(Books) Tanith's Lee's "Dark Dance" and "Personal Darkness"
One might as well label these two books "By Goth, for Goths", but to do so would be to highly marginalize the sheer brilliance of this fine pair of vampire novels. Tanith Lee has always been a remarkably stylish writer, and she is in top form here, as both novels are full of evocative descriptions, resonant emotional turmoil, and scenes of raw and disturbing sexual energy that stick with the reader long after the book has been put down.
I recommend reading the first two books of this series, as they actually read much better as a single novel and tell a complete tale, one that wraps up most of the open plot lines while still offering us a satisfying view of Lee's world of secret vampires. (While a third installment, "I, Darkness", was published, it feels like a largely unnecessary addition to the series, even if some scenes -- particularly those that describe with surprising subtlety the fate of a kidnapped English child-- are profoundly well-written in and of their own right.)
Highly recommended reading.
(Movie) "Dawn of the Dead" (2004)
Believe it or not, I'm actually not a huge fan of horror films: more often that not they're "gore" with very little "horror", and the plot conventions and characterizations are oft times so utterly predictable as to be insulting. That being said, Zack ("This is Sparta!") Snyder's 2004 update of George A. Romero's 1978 film is one of those rare horror films that is scary, exciting and genuinely tense (and, yes, it's gory with a capital "G"). What this version of "Dawn of the Dead" does right far outweighs its few flaws, and I can enjoy films of any genre when talent like this is involved. While Snyder's direction isn't quite as stylized here as it would become with "300", his talent is in ample evidence, and the acting and characterizations are, for the most part, remarkably good for a horror film (due in no small part to the talented cast, especially Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber and Mekhi Phifer).
This is one horror film I have no trouble watching again or recommending to others. Just don't sit down to watch it while you're eating. And watch out for that chainsaw!
(Book) Stephen King's "Desperation"
While selecting just one story from Stephen King's impressive body of work is difficult, I don't hesitate to call "Desperation" one of my favorite horror novels: gripping, tense, exciting, and thoroughly, unabashedly "don't read it at home alone" frightening. "Desperation" grabs you from the start and rarely lets go. King has a wonderful ability to find terror in the simplest of places, and to take his plots in bold and unexpected directions. This is one of the rare books that I actually had trouble putting down, even though I wanted to more than once out of sheer fright. A great yarn.
(Many will also recommend "The Regulators", the "companion/alternate" piece to "Desperation", but I hesitate to do so. I'm not sure why, but something about "The Regulators" really annoyed me. I didn't enjoy that companion story, although I do tip my hat to Mr. King for crafting such an interesting novel-writing experiment.)
(I also will not recommend the made-for-TV "Desperation" film with Tom Skerrit, because I haven't seen it. Based on the reviews I read, I don't think I want to.)
(Movie) "Se7en"
While not technically a "horror" film, few movies have left such a lasting and disturbing impression on me as David Fincher's "Se7en", a tale of a twisted serial killer whose murders mimic the seven deadly sins. Brad Pitt (in an early and successful attempt to shed his "cute boy" image), Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, R. Lee Ermey and the actor who plays "John Doe" (I'll keep the secret for those eight people who haven't already seen the movie) are all in top form, as is director David Fincher, whose mastery of cinematic craftsmanship has never been more prominently displayed than it is here.
Don't be surprised if this film leaves you looking over your shoulder, feeling nauseous, or just questioning your own sanity. Good, clean Halloween fun.
(Book) Brian Keene's "The Rising" and "City of the Dead"
Recommended as a sort of companion for "Dawn of the Dead". Brian Keene's debut novels about a zombie uprising are tautly paced and packed with scary, gory stuff. While no one would ever accuse Keene of being a remotely subtle writer, his update of the zombie sub-genre of horror fiction is energetic and original...and damn it if he doesn't come up with creative ways for his (well developed and likable) characters to get killed.
(I recommend both books, to be read in the order above; like Tanith Lee's vampire books, the two novels really tell one complete story. "The Rising" ends on such a diabolically ambiguous note that Keene had to write the sequel after literally receiving fan mail that told him how much the ending to his first novel "pissed everyone off".)
(Movie) "Signs"
While opinions on writer/director M. Night Shyamalan vary far and wide, I've always enjoyed this, his third "major" film, and arguably his most subtle and effective. While ostensibly an "alien invasion" film, there are more elements of old fashioned horror present in "Signs" than anything else, and as usual the director's low-budget, "show them nothing" approach is very effective at creating an evocative and creepy atmosphere. Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix both give solid performances, and this is the rare "scary film" that most parents can probably be comfortable watching in the company of their adolescent or younger teenage children, for even though the film is creepy it's never truly terrifying, and there's little to no bloodshed and only mild language.
All in a all a solid effort, and a nice example of what can be done when a director focuses on atmosphere instead of gory special effects.
(Movie/Book) "The Shining"
Ok, this last one is a bit of a cheat, but in spite of Stephen King already holding a spot on my list I need to pay some tribute to this remarkable work. "The Shining" (the novel) is one of King's most literate, most jolting and most terrifying tales, and one could easily make the argument that this is, indeed, his finest work. While ostensibly a "haunted hotel" story, "The Shining" delves into psychological terror by pulling apart the institution of the American family. This is NOT a book to read while home alone, in the dark or otherwise. It's easily one of the scariest books I've ever read.
When I say "The Shining", the film, I'm referring to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 version of Stephen King's novel. Critics will quickly point out that the more recent, made-for-TV version of "The Shining" follows King's source material much more faithfully, but, at least for me, that matters little. Films and books are different mediums, and should be treated as such, and while it's fine for a film based on a novel to follow said novel, I've never felt it was mandatory: film makers (especially highly artistic film makers like Mr. Kubrick) often use novels for inspiration, but they take the material in directions that suit the type of story they wish to tell. Kubrick's film is dark and disturbing, a slow-boiling horror tale that subtly latches into the viewer and won't release. While King's novel is overall more frightening, Kubrick's film, in many ways, leaves a longer lasting impression, for while King chooses to end his tale with the family unit somewhat in tact Kubrick chooses to annihilate it in a most disturbing fashion. Of the two, the film leaves a more disturbing aftertaste, but both are, in my opinion, works of art.
So there you have it. Nanowrimo starts next Thursday (I think I know what I'm doing...despite my claim in a previous post that I'd made up my mind, I'm still as uncertain as a cheerleader's chastity as to the projected project), and next week is the glorious start to another Month End Close...hooray!
Have a great weekend. Watch out for monsters.
It's that time of year again -- spooky costumes, scary stories, freaky movies and...lots of candy.
Ignoring the whole candy thing, I thought it might be fun to compile my very own list of Halloween favorites. This is a combination of films and novels that I've enjoyed over the years and that I can recommend to someone looking for a good scare or a Halloween flavored bit of entertainment. These items are arranged in no particular order...aside from the order in which they popped into my tiny brain.
(Books) Clive Barker's "The Books of Blood"
While not necessarily a "horror author" these days, Clive Barker started his career writing grisly, disturbing and highly creative splatter horror fiction, and it was this collection that garnered the talented British author his initial fame and critical praise. There are actually several different versions of Clive Barker's excellent collection of horror short stories; stateside, "The Books of Blood" generally refers to a 3 volume collection, but I prefer the British 6 Volume edition which includes the short stories from the U.S. Releases "In the Flesh", "The Inhuman Condition" and "Cabal" in addition to the original stories. (There's also a "bonus" story called "On Jerusalem Street", which nicely wraps up the entire collection.) While not generally "scary", Barker's gory tales are always disturbing and highly creative, and definitely worth a read for those who aren't too faint of heart (or that have weak stomachs).
Highlights from the series for me include "The Midnight Meat Train" (a tale of a subway serial killer with bizarre motivations), "In the Hills, the Cities" (a very strange update on a Dickens classic), "The Body Politic" (where humankind is threatened by a most unusual revolution), "How Spoilers Bleed" (an extremist cautionary tale that warns those darn Imperialists to stay the hell out of Africa) "Dread" (the original torture-porn story), "The Yattering and Jack" (which I'm surprised Tim Burton hasn't already made into a movie), and "Babel's Children" (which explains how political decisions are *really* made).
(Movie) "Aliens"
While some fans defend the original "Alien" as the definitive entry in this *mostly* marvelous science-fiction/horror series (I say *mostly* because one can't forget the less-than-stellar third installment and the downright embarrassing 4th film), I've always found James Cameron's "Aliens" to not only hold the highest entertainment quotient of the series, but to also be the film that leaves me the most drained after having watched it. This film literally sucks you in and drags you along on its nightmarish and consistently exciting ride; it's one of those rare films where the audience is left as exhausted as its (surviving) characters by the time the end credits start to roll. Viewing the original "Alien" isn't mandatory to enjoy this massively entertaining motion picture, which is easily James Cameron's finest film and still one of my favorite movies to watch this time of the year.
"Game over, man!"
(Books) Tanith's Lee's "Dark Dance" and "Personal Darkness"
One might as well label these two books "By Goth, for Goths", but to do so would be to highly marginalize the sheer brilliance of this fine pair of vampire novels. Tanith Lee has always been a remarkably stylish writer, and she is in top form here, as both novels are full of evocative descriptions, resonant emotional turmoil, and scenes of raw and disturbing sexual energy that stick with the reader long after the book has been put down.
I recommend reading the first two books of this series, as they actually read much better as a single novel and tell a complete tale, one that wraps up most of the open plot lines while still offering us a satisfying view of Lee's world of secret vampires. (While a third installment, "I, Darkness", was published, it feels like a largely unnecessary addition to the series, even if some scenes -- particularly those that describe with surprising subtlety the fate of a kidnapped English child-- are profoundly well-written in and of their own right.)
Highly recommended reading.
(Movie) "Dawn of the Dead" (2004)
Believe it or not, I'm actually not a huge fan of horror films: more often that not they're "gore" with very little "horror", and the plot conventions and characterizations are oft times so utterly predictable as to be insulting. That being said, Zack ("This is Sparta!") Snyder's 2004 update of George A. Romero's 1978 film is one of those rare horror films that is scary, exciting and genuinely tense (and, yes, it's gory with a capital "G"). What this version of "Dawn of the Dead" does right far outweighs its few flaws, and I can enjoy films of any genre when talent like this is involved. While Snyder's direction isn't quite as stylized here as it would become with "300", his talent is in ample evidence, and the acting and characterizations are, for the most part, remarkably good for a horror film (due in no small part to the talented cast, especially Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber and Mekhi Phifer).
This is one horror film I have no trouble watching again or recommending to others. Just don't sit down to watch it while you're eating. And watch out for that chainsaw!
(Book) Stephen King's "Desperation"
While selecting just one story from Stephen King's impressive body of work is difficult, I don't hesitate to call "Desperation" one of my favorite horror novels: gripping, tense, exciting, and thoroughly, unabashedly "don't read it at home alone" frightening. "Desperation" grabs you from the start and rarely lets go. King has a wonderful ability to find terror in the simplest of places, and to take his plots in bold and unexpected directions. This is one of the rare books that I actually had trouble putting down, even though I wanted to more than once out of sheer fright. A great yarn.
(Many will also recommend "The Regulators", the "companion/alternate" piece to "Desperation", but I hesitate to do so. I'm not sure why, but something about "The Regulators" really annoyed me. I didn't enjoy that companion story, although I do tip my hat to Mr. King for crafting such an interesting novel-writing experiment.)
(I also will not recommend the made-for-TV "Desperation" film with Tom Skerrit, because I haven't seen it. Based on the reviews I read, I don't think I want to.)
(Movie) "Se7en"
While not technically a "horror" film, few movies have left such a lasting and disturbing impression on me as David Fincher's "Se7en", a tale of a twisted serial killer whose murders mimic the seven deadly sins. Brad Pitt (in an early and successful attempt to shed his "cute boy" image), Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, R. Lee Ermey and the actor who plays "John Doe" (I'll keep the secret for those eight people who haven't already seen the movie) are all in top form, as is director David Fincher, whose mastery of cinematic craftsmanship has never been more prominently displayed than it is here.
Don't be surprised if this film leaves you looking over your shoulder, feeling nauseous, or just questioning your own sanity. Good, clean Halloween fun.
(Book) Brian Keene's "The Rising" and "City of the Dead"
Recommended as a sort of companion for "Dawn of the Dead". Brian Keene's debut novels about a zombie uprising are tautly paced and packed with scary, gory stuff. While no one would ever accuse Keene of being a remotely subtle writer, his update of the zombie sub-genre of horror fiction is energetic and original...and damn it if he doesn't come up with creative ways for his (well developed and likable) characters to get killed.
(I recommend both books, to be read in the order above; like Tanith Lee's vampire books, the two novels really tell one complete story. "The Rising" ends on such a diabolically ambiguous note that Keene had to write the sequel after literally receiving fan mail that told him how much the ending to his first novel "pissed everyone off".)
(Movie) "Signs"
While opinions on writer/director M. Night Shyamalan vary far and wide, I've always enjoyed this, his third "major" film, and arguably his most subtle and effective. While ostensibly an "alien invasion" film, there are more elements of old fashioned horror present in "Signs" than anything else, and as usual the director's low-budget, "show them nothing" approach is very effective at creating an evocative and creepy atmosphere. Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix both give solid performances, and this is the rare "scary film" that most parents can probably be comfortable watching in the company of their adolescent or younger teenage children, for even though the film is creepy it's never truly terrifying, and there's little to no bloodshed and only mild language.
All in a all a solid effort, and a nice example of what can be done when a director focuses on atmosphere instead of gory special effects.
(Movie/Book) "The Shining"
Ok, this last one is a bit of a cheat, but in spite of Stephen King already holding a spot on my list I need to pay some tribute to this remarkable work. "The Shining" (the novel) is one of King's most literate, most jolting and most terrifying tales, and one could easily make the argument that this is, indeed, his finest work. While ostensibly a "haunted hotel" story, "The Shining" delves into psychological terror by pulling apart the institution of the American family. This is NOT a book to read while home alone, in the dark or otherwise. It's easily one of the scariest books I've ever read.
When I say "The Shining", the film, I'm referring to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 version of Stephen King's novel. Critics will quickly point out that the more recent, made-for-TV version of "The Shining" follows King's source material much more faithfully, but, at least for me, that matters little. Films and books are different mediums, and should be treated as such, and while it's fine for a film based on a novel to follow said novel, I've never felt it was mandatory: film makers (especially highly artistic film makers like Mr. Kubrick) often use novels for inspiration, but they take the material in directions that suit the type of story they wish to tell. Kubrick's film is dark and disturbing, a slow-boiling horror tale that subtly latches into the viewer and won't release. While King's novel is overall more frightening, Kubrick's film, in many ways, leaves a longer lasting impression, for while King chooses to end his tale with the family unit somewhat in tact Kubrick chooses to annihilate it in a most disturbing fashion. Of the two, the film leaves a more disturbing aftertaste, but both are, in my opinion, works of art.
So there you have it. Nanowrimo starts next Thursday (I think I know what I'm doing...despite my claim in a previous post that I'd made up my mind, I'm still as uncertain as a cheerleader's chastity as to the projected project), and next week is the glorious start to another Month End Close...hooray!
Have a great weekend. Watch out for monsters.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
To My Wife
I Love You, Angel.
I know I tell you that a lot, but the old saying is true: some things can never been said enough.
I fall in love with you every single day.
I'm enthralled by the sight of you and enchanted by your voice.
I love the way you laugh, and I love to laugh with you.
I love that you knit, and I love how you cook.
I love all the little things that make you You.
I love the beautiful, caring, funny, charming mother who, for reasons that still escape me, chose to spend the rest of her life with a goofy guy like me. I really am the luckiest guy alive.
You are my one and only Love. I wouldn't trade you or our children or the life we lead for anything in the world. (That's right....not even the kids... ;)
I love You, Liberty. Thank you for our beautiful life, and Happy Anniversary.
Love,
Steven
I know I tell you that a lot, but the old saying is true: some things can never been said enough.
I fall in love with you every single day.
I'm enthralled by the sight of you and enchanted by your voice.
I love the way you laugh, and I love to laugh with you.
I love that you knit, and I love how you cook.
I love all the little things that make you You.
I love the beautiful, caring, funny, charming mother who, for reasons that still escape me, chose to spend the rest of her life with a goofy guy like me. I really am the luckiest guy alive.
You are my one and only Love. I wouldn't trade you or our children or the life we lead for anything in the world. (That's right....not even the kids... ;)
I love You, Liberty. Thank you for our beautiful life, and Happy Anniversary.
Love,
Steven
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Ding, Dong, the SOX Are Gone (The Writing is A-Comin')
The second SOX Assessment is finished -- hooray! And while I'll spend the next few days preparing for the next life-draining SOX Assessment, I'm at least free of any lashings from that particular scourge for at least a month or two.
Now back to all of my other projects.
I'm still (slowly) working my way through the revision of "Razor: Hell". It's simultaneously better and worse than I remember it, so my love/hate relationship with the book hasn't really changed. I don't think it's as solid as "Razor: Angel" (the first book in the series), but I have to admit that it does have its moments. (I actually can't remember laughing at so many of my own written jokes and descriptions before...and I mean laughing as in laughing at stuff that's supposed to be funny, and just not laughing at the awful quality of my own writing, which I do all of the time.)
My big problem with "Razor: Hell" is the tone I adopted for one of the storylines. Basically (without giving too much away), there are two different tales being told in the book: one takes place in Hell (which I think it's safe to say is not like most people imagine it; I really like the way this particular storyline has turned out), while the other story follows a group of vampire hunters back on earth. While I like the plot progression of this second storyline, I think it's a bit *too* obvious that I was reading Laurel K. Hamilton's "Anita Blake" novels at the time that I writing it, as I've managed to imitate Hamilton's tone, her main character, and even her strange obsession with describing everyone's clothes in onerous detail. I've tried to curtail this unintentional style theft as much as possible in the revision, but it's going to take a bit more work to get it all.
That being said, I'm over halfway done with the revision, so I should (hopefully) still be on target to start up the third and final book for Nanowrimo in November. I still have some reservations as to whether I want this to be the "Novel in November" project or not, but after far too much deliberation I've decided to go for it (if for no other reason than I'm tired of being on the fence about it).
In the meantime, on the WotC front, there have been some interesting developments. While I won't be leaving the Finance department any time soon (which is ok...I sometimes wonder if I've made the right career move, but I have a good job with good people, so I have no real call to complain), I will be broadening my horizons somewhat in the near future.
For the record, I had intended, when I first came to Wizards of the Coast, to do everything I could to get into R&D (the department that actually writes and creates all of our games). Oddly, it was shortly after I started working at Wizards that I entered the longest and most terrifying creative dryspell I've ever had...to be honest, I'm not sure I've fully recovered. Regardless, after the conclusion of a Ptolus-based campaign that I ran for my wife, her sister, my brother-in-law and my daughter (which was just one fantastic game), I've only run D&D games intermittantly at best, and I've very much fallen out of practice. I hope to remedy this situation with the release of 4th Edition D&D (if not sooner), but in the meantime my minute RPG writing skills have not been enough to get me shifted to R&D.
However, it would seem that my meager skills are not entirely without merit. I was recently asked by R&D Development Manager Andy Collins to assist the D&D Minis Development team with...well, I probably shouldn't say too much, but let's just say that it has to do with a recent announcement made concerning old miniatures and new rules. (One instantly gratifying result of this upcoming work is that I'll get access to the new Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures rules early...and I might even get a peek at those silly 4th Edition rules, as well...) :)
That's it for now -- I have meetings to (re)schedule, hopes to crush, and dreams to dash. All in all, a typical day in the life of an accountant...
Now back to all of my other projects.
I'm still (slowly) working my way through the revision of "Razor: Hell". It's simultaneously better and worse than I remember it, so my love/hate relationship with the book hasn't really changed. I don't think it's as solid as "Razor: Angel" (the first book in the series), but I have to admit that it does have its moments. (I actually can't remember laughing at so many of my own written jokes and descriptions before...and I mean laughing as in laughing at stuff that's supposed to be funny, and just not laughing at the awful quality of my own writing, which I do all of the time.)
My big problem with "Razor: Hell" is the tone I adopted for one of the storylines. Basically (without giving too much away), there are two different tales being told in the book: one takes place in Hell (which I think it's safe to say is not like most people imagine it; I really like the way this particular storyline has turned out), while the other story follows a group of vampire hunters back on earth. While I like the plot progression of this second storyline, I think it's a bit *too* obvious that I was reading Laurel K. Hamilton's "Anita Blake" novels at the time that I writing it, as I've managed to imitate Hamilton's tone, her main character, and even her strange obsession with describing everyone's clothes in onerous detail. I've tried to curtail this unintentional style theft as much as possible in the revision, but it's going to take a bit more work to get it all.
That being said, I'm over halfway done with the revision, so I should (hopefully) still be on target to start up the third and final book for Nanowrimo in November. I still have some reservations as to whether I want this to be the "Novel in November" project or not, but after far too much deliberation I've decided to go for it (if for no other reason than I'm tired of being on the fence about it).
In the meantime, on the WotC front, there have been some interesting developments. While I won't be leaving the Finance department any time soon (which is ok...I sometimes wonder if I've made the right career move, but I have a good job with good people, so I have no real call to complain), I will be broadening my horizons somewhat in the near future.
For the record, I had intended, when I first came to Wizards of the Coast, to do everything I could to get into R&D (the department that actually writes and creates all of our games). Oddly, it was shortly after I started working at Wizards that I entered the longest and most terrifying creative dryspell I've ever had...to be honest, I'm not sure I've fully recovered. Regardless, after the conclusion of a Ptolus-based campaign that I ran for my wife, her sister, my brother-in-law and my daughter (which was just one fantastic game), I've only run D&D games intermittantly at best, and I've very much fallen out of practice. I hope to remedy this situation with the release of 4th Edition D&D (if not sooner), but in the meantime my minute RPG writing skills have not been enough to get me shifted to R&D.
However, it would seem that my meager skills are not entirely without merit. I was recently asked by R&D Development Manager Andy Collins to assist the D&D Minis Development team with...well, I probably shouldn't say too much, but let's just say that it has to do with a recent announcement made concerning old miniatures and new rules. (One instantly gratifying result of this upcoming work is that I'll get access to the new Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures rules early...and I might even get a peek at those silly 4th Edition rules, as well...) :)
That's it for now -- I have meetings to (re)schedule, hopes to crush, and dreams to dash. All in all, a typical day in the life of an accountant...
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
(Non-Writing) Random Excuse Generator
Sarbanes Oxley brings out the worst in people, myself included. Without going into too much gory detail, SOX testing (for those of your lucky enough to NOT be in the know) involves rigorous examination of internal company controls. Basically, for every illegal act a publicly traded company could engage in, there is a SOX Control that explains what precautions (or "Controls") are in place that ensure said company can't actually do that bad thing. SOX testing is when some unlucky peon gets the honorable task of pulling data, running reports, and otherwise proving that any given Control is effective for any given period of time and that they don't work for Enron.
At best, SOX testing is tedious, soul crushing work that sucks away one's will to live. At its worst, it's like getting sodomized with a power drill.
As the SOX coordinator for Wizards of the Coast, I get handed lots of excuses for why any given individuals SOX testing hasn't been completed. Unfortunately, most of these excuses are by-the-numbers, run-of-the-mill affairs that lack any real pizazz or originality. That being the case, I present to you the Random Excuse Generator. Never again may you be caught without a good reason why that balance sheet isn't balanced, why your files are still on your desk, or why that meeting still hasn't been scheduled. So grab your 20-sided dice* and go be non-productive!!!!!
Die Roll/Excuse
1 "I think the janitorial staff took that report from my desk and sold it on the black market. I never did trust them."
2 "I was told to re-evaluate that task by the Senior VP. He said you'd know why, which is good because he said he didn't want to have to explain it to you. Again."
3 "I've never really liked you. Go away."
4 "The system is down, and has been for weeks. You wouldn't know, since you never actually log in. Ass."
5 "I had to decide to either do this, or to tune in to the Victoria's Secret podcast. Priorities, man."
6 "I just don't have enough energy to complete this crappy assignment AND find the willpower to keep myself from strangling you in front of your children. I'm sure your children appreciate my amazing -- albeit tenuous -- self control."
7 "How painful would it be for you to do your own work for a change?"
8 "I started it, but it was so full of glaring errors that I decided my time would be better spent playing Solitaire, which has proven to be both more stimulating and less likely to make me submit you to my patented 'Blowtorch Therapy'."
9 "I have my list of priorities. You didn't make the list. Better luck next time."
10 "Ich habe keine Ahnung wast du sprichst. Scheizerkopf."
11 "My horoscope said that something really horrible would happen to the first person I helped today....so, yeah, I guess I'll take care of that for you...."
12 "Whatever, I'll do it. Chances are I owe you, anyways, for sleeping with your wife."
13 "Are you serious? I finished that weeks ago. Twice!"
14 "We need to wait for the system upgrade before we finish it up. Don't worry, I'm sure no data will be lost."
15 "Remember that system upgrade, and how IT assured us that no data would be lost? Well...."
16 "Every time I do a task like this, Jesus kills a kitten...you insensitive, kitten-murdering bastard."
17 "Communist!!!!!"
18 "I am the Dread Pirate Roberts!" (best delivered in your best Andre the Giant voice)
19 "Man, the doc says I have rage issues...but I'm not sure what his problem is. I swear, I'm gonna tear that guys privates off and use them in the next pool tournament if he keeps saying crap like that. Rage issues...I'll show you rage issues, Dr. Katz, when I tear your friggin' arm off and beat you with it...damn it, he pisses me off! Anyways...enough about that...how can I help you?"
20 roll twice on table above and combine results, ignoring further rolls of 20
(*Void in any and all places where Roleplaying Games and/or 20-sided dice are considered to be the Devil's playthings. Also void in Montana, just because.)
At best, SOX testing is tedious, soul crushing work that sucks away one's will to live. At its worst, it's like getting sodomized with a power drill.
As the SOX coordinator for Wizards of the Coast, I get handed lots of excuses for why any given individuals SOX testing hasn't been completed. Unfortunately, most of these excuses are by-the-numbers, run-of-the-mill affairs that lack any real pizazz or originality. That being the case, I present to you the Random Excuse Generator. Never again may you be caught without a good reason why that balance sheet isn't balanced, why your files are still on your desk, or why that meeting still hasn't been scheduled. So grab your 20-sided dice* and go be non-productive!!!!!
Die Roll/Excuse
1 "I think the janitorial staff took that report from my desk and sold it on the black market. I never did trust them."
2 "I was told to re-evaluate that task by the Senior VP. He said you'd know why, which is good because he said he didn't want to have to explain it to you. Again."
3 "I've never really liked you. Go away."
4 "The system is down, and has been for weeks. You wouldn't know, since you never actually log in. Ass."
5 "I had to decide to either do this, or to tune in to the Victoria's Secret podcast. Priorities, man."
6 "I just don't have enough energy to complete this crappy assignment AND find the willpower to keep myself from strangling you in front of your children. I'm sure your children appreciate my amazing -- albeit tenuous -- self control."
7 "How painful would it be for you to do your own work for a change?"
8 "I started it, but it was so full of glaring errors that I decided my time would be better spent playing Solitaire, which has proven to be both more stimulating and less likely to make me submit you to my patented 'Blowtorch Therapy'."
9 "I have my list of priorities. You didn't make the list. Better luck next time."
10 "Ich habe keine Ahnung wast du sprichst. Scheizerkopf."
11 "My horoscope said that something really horrible would happen to the first person I helped today....so, yeah, I guess I'll take care of that for you...."
12 "Whatever, I'll do it. Chances are I owe you, anyways, for sleeping with your wife."
13 "Are you serious? I finished that weeks ago. Twice!"
14 "We need to wait for the system upgrade before we finish it up. Don't worry, I'm sure no data will be lost."
15 "Remember that system upgrade, and how IT assured us that no data would be lost? Well...."
16 "Every time I do a task like this, Jesus kills a kitten...you insensitive, kitten-murdering bastard."
17 "Communist!!!!!"
18 "I am the Dread Pirate Roberts!" (best delivered in your best Andre the Giant voice)
19 "Man, the doc says I have rage issues...but I'm not sure what his problem is. I swear, I'm gonna tear that guys privates off and use them in the next pool tournament if he keeps saying crap like that. Rage issues...I'll show you rage issues, Dr. Katz, when I tear your friggin' arm off and beat you with it...damn it, he pisses me off! Anyways...enough about that...how can I help you?"
20 roll twice on table above and combine results, ignoring further rolls of 20
(*Void in any and all places where Roleplaying Games and/or 20-sided dice are considered to be the Devil's playthings. Also void in Montana, just because.)
Sunday, September 30, 2007
(Non-Writing) On Hobbies
Perhaps you have this problem....you've just lived through another long day at work, where you put up with people that you're fairly certain shouldn't even be allowed out of their own home (let alone into a corporate work environment) and where you deal with the soul-crushing inefficiency of rapidly tightening deadlines; you've made your hour or longer commute through a mire of cars, bodies and delicious smelling smog; you hang out with your wife/kids/pets/friends, who make it worth having trudged through your day even as they help drain the last of your hard-earned life energy; and then you finally have time to sit down and....and...hmmm...
I have this odd cycle where I go from having a single hobby that I bear only a half-hearted devotion to to suddenly being seized by what feels like a dozen different projects vying for my attention. I go from being bored to being actually too busy with free-time projects to attend to them all. That's right...I have to plan out and manage my free time.
Something ain't right here.
Case in point: up until about 2 weeks ago my past-time projects involved 1) playing D&D Minis online (a past time I was actually getting a little bored with), and 2) revising "Darker Sunset". These are both activities worthy of my attention, but you can only play the same game for so long before it eventually starts to get old, and revision projects, while thrilling in and of their own right, have difficulty maintaining my attention for long periods of time. (That's something that I just need to get over, I know, but I have to be honest: I hate revising. It's maddening, time consuming work that I often feel could have been better spent writing something new. It's an entirely illogical and ultimately non-productive standpoint, to be sure, but it's often the position taken by my tiny brain during those internal struggles when I have to decide where to better spend my time.) So I was really only tending to these interests rather than being actively engaged by them; I was trudging my way through my own hobbies in the same manner I trudge through my days at work...and that's just silly. It shouldn't be a chore to partake in your own hobby (though, of course, it does happen, especially if your hobbies involve very long creative projects).
Luckily for me, something happened. Inexplicably, all at once my seemingly limited hobbies exploded into a veritable cornucopia of enjoyable past times. I'm not sure how this happened. I didn't push a button that said "Entertain Me" or sign up for a newsletter that told me how to suddenly become too busy with my own free time. I found myself engaged in a myriad of compelling activities (well...they're compelling to me, at least, which I guess is what this is all about), to the point where I now have to find time to juggle all of these new hobbies about.
So what has me so enthralled? Weeeeeeeeeell...
Rifftrax
To be perfectly fair, for most people watching movies isn't so much of a hobby as it is a default ("I have nothing else to do, so I'll pop in a flick"). I do this too, of course, but I also tend to watch movies from a somewhat analytical standpoint (the English Lit major in me), or from a purely technical standpoint, where I enjoy films more from a craftsman's perspective than as an objective audience member. (This is the Creative Writing major in me, because when I look at a film's technical aspects I'm often looking for compelling visual imagery and storytelling tricks that I can steal.)
Sometimes, however, it isn't nearly as much fun to watch movies as it is to make fun of them. Enter Michael J. Nelson and company and their excellent Rifftrax project. Back in the day, Mike Nelson was the head writer (and later the host) for an inspired bit of Comedy Central lunacy called "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (or MST3K, for short), a strange saga of a man and two robots who were forced to sit and watch horrible movies as part of a diabolic mind control experiment. The way they survived this horrible treatment was to make fun of the movies in question by adding their own dialogue and by making wonderfully smart-ass comments about the film. MST3K carried on for some 7+ years before it finally went the way of the proverbial Do-Do, but now Mike offers us Rifftrax, a site that offers the same form of entertainment, only with movies that you know!
The concept is really simple: Mike and company (his guests include MST3K alumni Kevin "Tom Servo" Murphy, Bill "Crow v2.0" Corbett, and others) record an MP3 vocal track of their "riffs" on a movie, which you play concurrently with the movie in question (Mike doesn't actually sell the movies for copyright purposes, so you have to provide your own copy). I've downloaded 6 Riffs so far and have watched 5 of them, and thus far only one of those was even a moderate disappointment. Considering the cost (the Riffs range in price from $1.99 to $3.99), that's a good track record.
Most importantly, they're just damned funny. While we all like to make fun of movies from time to time, no one does it as well as these guys. Check out some of the free samples on their site -- if your sense of humor is anything similar to mine, you may just find these horribly addicting...
Riffs I Recommend (in order of preference): Reign of Fire, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, The Matrix.
Not Recommended: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (a major disappointment, though I understand that Mike & Company's treatment of Episode 2 is much funnier, and Episode 3 was just released about a week ago).
Purchased But Not Yet Viewed: 300
Planned Purchases: The Bourne Identity, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Eragon (my daughter owns it, much to my dismay), Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Eternal Campaign
D&D Minis is, without a doubt, my favorite game, but like any game it threatens to go stale through repetition. While a new set of rules (that will accompany the controversial arrival of 4th Edition D&D) due out in 2008 should serve to reinvigorate the game, in the meantime I've joined up with The Eternal Campaign, a delightfully entertaining expansion on the rules presented in the Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Handbook. With these rules, rather than playing single games you play a campaign that allows your game units to improve over time, collect magic items for your armies, and gain special abilities. (It really is like playing D&D without the silly role-playing. :) Best of all, you get to play new and interesting people from around the world (players hail from here in the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, and even Canada!) in ever-changing scenarios, and you only play as often as you want. If you don't play D&D Miniatures, this particular entry will mean nothing to you, but if you *do* then I suggest you check it out. You'll be happy you did.
Nanowrimo
November is approaching, and I have to be ready. Well...not *ready*, but I have to be at least partially prepared. Last year, I didn't have any intention of joining up with the so-called "Write a Novel in November" program at all, arguing to my wife that it had been too long since I'd tried to undertake a major writing project and that it would all just be a big waste of my time. Well, like most arguments I have with my wife, I lost this one utterly, in this case not because she forced me to do anything but, as usual, because she knew what I wanted and needed to do. I wrote an 80,000+ novel that month and a follow-up novel nearly twice that size in the months that followed. I'd intended to carry on to the 3rd and final book in the rather dismal "Razor" trilogy when I ran smack into Christmas, Year End, and all other sorts of bodily injuries. Because the style of the books is both very fast and linear, I thought that the next Novel in November challenge would be the perfect opportunity to finish up the series once and for all. The only problem is....I haven't looked at any of it since it was written last year and have completely forgotten the plot line and characters (oops), so for the past month or so I've been reading and revising "Razor: Angel" and "Razor: Hell" like a madman. My goal is to finish the first-pass revision of "Razor: Hell" right around the end of October, so that the story is fresh in my head when November 1st comes about and I start off on "Razor: Serpent". I'm psyched. (A little intimidated...but psyched...)
Reading
Hey, who doesn't love to read? When I heard about the pending HBO series a few months ago I decided to re-read George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire & Ice" saga. I didn't used to be very big on re-reading books, primarily, I think, because I associate such an act so much with college. (As an example, I had to read Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and Bram Stoker's "Dracula" 4-5 times each over the course of my college career. There are more, but those are the examples that also spring to mind.)
(Something else that I just realized...I don't like revising what I've already written, and I don't like reading what I've already read. Is that some old person's version of ADHD? Do I have issues with revisiting my past? Or am I just a boner?)
I enjoyed my re-read of Martin's books so much that I decided to revisit some other books that made an impression on me, namely "The Sword of Shadows" by J.V. Jones (or at least the 2/3 of the series that has been released...if that 3rd book doesn't come out in December as promised, she and I are going to have issues...), and "Tyrants & Kings" by John Marco. Marco's "Lukien Trilogy" is likely next up on my re-reads list, but we'll have to see.
That's all for now. I may post another snippet from either "Darker Sunset" or "Razor" later this week...or maybe I'll post something entirely random...so random that even I don't know what it will be....
I have this odd cycle where I go from having a single hobby that I bear only a half-hearted devotion to to suddenly being seized by what feels like a dozen different projects vying for my attention. I go from being bored to being actually too busy with free-time projects to attend to them all. That's right...I have to plan out and manage my free time.
Something ain't right here.
Case in point: up until about 2 weeks ago my past-time projects involved 1) playing D&D Minis online (a past time I was actually getting a little bored with), and 2) revising "Darker Sunset". These are both activities worthy of my attention, but you can only play the same game for so long before it eventually starts to get old, and revision projects, while thrilling in and of their own right, have difficulty maintaining my attention for long periods of time. (That's something that I just need to get over, I know, but I have to be honest: I hate revising. It's maddening, time consuming work that I often feel could have been better spent writing something new. It's an entirely illogical and ultimately non-productive standpoint, to be sure, but it's often the position taken by my tiny brain during those internal struggles when I have to decide where to better spend my time.) So I was really only tending to these interests rather than being actively engaged by them; I was trudging my way through my own hobbies in the same manner I trudge through my days at work...and that's just silly. It shouldn't be a chore to partake in your own hobby (though, of course, it does happen, especially if your hobbies involve very long creative projects).
Luckily for me, something happened. Inexplicably, all at once my seemingly limited hobbies exploded into a veritable cornucopia of enjoyable past times. I'm not sure how this happened. I didn't push a button that said "Entertain Me" or sign up for a newsletter that told me how to suddenly become too busy with my own free time. I found myself engaged in a myriad of compelling activities (well...they're compelling to me, at least, which I guess is what this is all about), to the point where I now have to find time to juggle all of these new hobbies about.
So what has me so enthralled? Weeeeeeeeeell...
Rifftrax
To be perfectly fair, for most people watching movies isn't so much of a hobby as it is a default ("I have nothing else to do, so I'll pop in a flick"). I do this too, of course, but I also tend to watch movies from a somewhat analytical standpoint (the English Lit major in me), or from a purely technical standpoint, where I enjoy films more from a craftsman's perspective than as an objective audience member. (This is the Creative Writing major in me, because when I look at a film's technical aspects I'm often looking for compelling visual imagery and storytelling tricks that I can steal.)
Sometimes, however, it isn't nearly as much fun to watch movies as it is to make fun of them. Enter Michael J. Nelson and company and their excellent Rifftrax project. Back in the day, Mike Nelson was the head writer (and later the host) for an inspired bit of Comedy Central lunacy called "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (or MST3K, for short), a strange saga of a man and two robots who were forced to sit and watch horrible movies as part of a diabolic mind control experiment. The way they survived this horrible treatment was to make fun of the movies in question by adding their own dialogue and by making wonderfully smart-ass comments about the film. MST3K carried on for some 7+ years before it finally went the way of the proverbial Do-Do, but now Mike offers us Rifftrax, a site that offers the same form of entertainment, only with movies that you know!
The concept is really simple: Mike and company (his guests include MST3K alumni Kevin "Tom Servo" Murphy, Bill "Crow v2.0" Corbett, and others) record an MP3 vocal track of their "riffs" on a movie, which you play concurrently with the movie in question (Mike doesn't actually sell the movies for copyright purposes, so you have to provide your own copy). I've downloaded 6 Riffs so far and have watched 5 of them, and thus far only one of those was even a moderate disappointment. Considering the cost (the Riffs range in price from $1.99 to $3.99), that's a good track record.
Most importantly, they're just damned funny. While we all like to make fun of movies from time to time, no one does it as well as these guys. Check out some of the free samples on their site -- if your sense of humor is anything similar to mine, you may just find these horribly addicting...
Riffs I Recommend (in order of preference): Reign of Fire, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, The Matrix.
Not Recommended: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (a major disappointment, though I understand that Mike & Company's treatment of Episode 2 is much funnier, and Episode 3 was just released about a week ago).
Purchased But Not Yet Viewed: 300
Planned Purchases: The Bourne Identity, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Eragon (my daughter owns it, much to my dismay), Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Eternal Campaign
D&D Minis is, without a doubt, my favorite game, but like any game it threatens to go stale through repetition. While a new set of rules (that will accompany the controversial arrival of 4th Edition D&D) due out in 2008 should serve to reinvigorate the game, in the meantime I've joined up with The Eternal Campaign, a delightfully entertaining expansion on the rules presented in the Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Handbook. With these rules, rather than playing single games you play a campaign that allows your game units to improve over time, collect magic items for your armies, and gain special abilities. (It really is like playing D&D without the silly role-playing. :) Best of all, you get to play new and interesting people from around the world (players hail from here in the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, and even Canada!) in ever-changing scenarios, and you only play as often as you want. If you don't play D&D Miniatures, this particular entry will mean nothing to you, but if you *do* then I suggest you check it out. You'll be happy you did.
Nanowrimo
November is approaching, and I have to be ready. Well...not *ready*, but I have to be at least partially prepared. Last year, I didn't have any intention of joining up with the so-called "Write a Novel in November" program at all, arguing to my wife that it had been too long since I'd tried to undertake a major writing project and that it would all just be a big waste of my time. Well, like most arguments I have with my wife, I lost this one utterly, in this case not because she forced me to do anything but, as usual, because she knew what I wanted and needed to do. I wrote an 80,000+ novel that month and a follow-up novel nearly twice that size in the months that followed. I'd intended to carry on to the 3rd and final book in the rather dismal "Razor" trilogy when I ran smack into Christmas, Year End, and all other sorts of bodily injuries. Because the style of the books is both very fast and linear, I thought that the next Novel in November challenge would be the perfect opportunity to finish up the series once and for all. The only problem is....I haven't looked at any of it since it was written last year and have completely forgotten the plot line and characters (oops), so for the past month or so I've been reading and revising "Razor: Angel" and "Razor: Hell" like a madman. My goal is to finish the first-pass revision of "Razor: Hell" right around the end of October, so that the story is fresh in my head when November 1st comes about and I start off on "Razor: Serpent". I'm psyched. (A little intimidated...but psyched...)
Reading
Hey, who doesn't love to read? When I heard about the pending HBO series a few months ago I decided to re-read George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire & Ice" saga. I didn't used to be very big on re-reading books, primarily, I think, because I associate such an act so much with college. (As an example, I had to read Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and Bram Stoker's "Dracula" 4-5 times each over the course of my college career. There are more, but those are the examples that also spring to mind.)
(Something else that I just realized...I don't like revising what I've already written, and I don't like reading what I've already read. Is that some old person's version of ADHD? Do I have issues with revisiting my past? Or am I just a boner?)
I enjoyed my re-read of Martin's books so much that I decided to revisit some other books that made an impression on me, namely "The Sword of Shadows" by J.V. Jones (or at least the 2/3 of the series that has been released...if that 3rd book doesn't come out in December as promised, she and I are going to have issues...), and "Tyrants & Kings" by John Marco. Marco's "Lukien Trilogy" is likely next up on my re-reads list, but we'll have to see.
That's all for now. I may post another snippet from either "Darker Sunset" or "Razor" later this week...or maybe I'll post something entirely random...so random that even I don't know what it will be....
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