New Posts at Vault of Story

Three posts in, the plot of The Truant is ripening. Check out Vault of Story for the latest exploits of Danny Bates as he sinks deeper into trouble at school for failing to turn in his homework.

Things are proceeding smoothly. My initial apprehension has faded and good things are ahead. Once there are a couple more posts, I'll register with Entrecard and the familiar yellow and black widget will appear at the sidebar. This would happen sooner but they require no less than five entries for a blog to qualify. At my current pace, this should happen no later than Thursday!

Saturday Song

We saw Johnson County play a fabulous set last night at Skylark. One of my favorite songs of theirs is "Whiskey Moon" and here's a capture of it from a couple months back -enjoy!

Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos

Know what it takes to be a winner? You can be sure that Chuck Norris does. Nobody knows better how to win than the indomitable Chuck Norris. About what other beacon of victory in human form could the following statement be said?

His tears cure cancer. Too bad Chuck Norris never cries. Ever.

How does he do it, and does it involve a diet of bacon-infused gimlets?

You can find many pithy truths at The Original Chuck Norris Fact Generator. However, all appearances to the contrary, the man cannot make it on his own. Like the rest of us measly mortals, Chuck Norris needs a good solid team of Karate Kommandos to get his back.



If all of us could put aside our differences and enlist with this elite melting pot of justice, what a better world this would be.

Karate Kommandos? My car stalled on the Interstate...

Before you know it, a sumo wrestler will show up with his scuba diver sidekick and get that problem fixed. Who needs Allstate, when you've got this team on your side?

Here is an international force for good that knows no borders. They are Kommandos sans Frontières and they will save the day every time. Text your nearest Kommando liaison and watch the world's problems vanish.

Karate Kommandos, ever heard of a little place called Afghanistan?

or

Karate Kommandos, Vladimir Putin is taking his shirt off in front of the camera -again!

or

Karate Kommandos, my dog hasn't been walked all morning!

But don't settle for having them as friends: be a Karate Kommando and win.

My Cookie Would Kill You

This moment from Black Belt Jones shows us how hard it can be to woo that special lady:

Hot Rod Apocalypse

In the future there will be... hot rods.

I fulfilled a years' long dream yesterday and watched Mad Max. Not to see the film itself, which made a huge impression in my early teens, but to hear the original performances. When Mad Max was released in the US, distributors thought the Australian accents were too thick and overdubbed all the actors with voices straight out of Super Friends. Really ridiculous voices. Mel Gibson has never sounded more like an animated monkey in his entire career.

If you've seen Mad Max, you know what a disastrous effect the overdubs have. So, it was my dream to hear the film as it was meant to be heard. In 2001 a special edition dvd was released that includes the Australian version, and only yesterday, nearly a decade later, I finally got around to watching it.

I'm not a leather fetish kind of guy, but there is plenty here for anybody who likes it. Also, there are hot rods, and how.

Mad Max is the first post-apocalyptic western. Instead of horses everybody rides a hog or a hot rod. There may not be enough food, fuel or love to go around, but when it comes to highways there is an embarrassment of riches. This is like a high-octane predecessor to Cormac McCarthy; an alternate title could have been The Roads.

Anyone with even a passing interest in hot rods (me, for instance) can feel the love. Cops roar around in MFP V-8 Interceptors with genius paint jobs. Seriously, I want to paint my car yellow and stripe it in blue, white and red -because it looks so damn awesome. Of course, if I carry it further and drive like post-apocalyptic police do, I'll be serving a life sentence at San Quentin in no time. Those suckers really tear up the landscape.

Sadly, everyone in the future seems to live on the shoulders of the highway. Parents have also lost all control of their toddlers. How else can you explain the wee ones toddling down the center of the road when it is most inconvenient? There's got to be a better time to let infants play in the road than when bandits are about with jet-powered cars. To their credit, cops and baddies alike have excellent skills and never hit a single baby. Caravans, on the other hand, are open game: we see no less than two totally demolished within the first ten minutes of Mad Max.

As for hearing it properly, I can't say there is a profound difference from what I remember. How distributors ever concluded that the accents were too thick is beyond me. It isn't like they're speaking English as a fifth language. The only plausible explanation is envy, pure and simple. Yanks have a knee-jerk opposition to anyone who speaks English with more flavor than we do.

It doesn't help when their hot rods are more yellow than ours, either.

Vault of Story!

My new blog has its first entry, the opening section of a short story written by... me! Vault of Story will showcase my speculative fiction, and as of today is officially open for business. Please forgive that is still rough around the edges, I couldn't wait any longer to share a project that has gestated long enough. Check it out and let me know what you think, feedback is most welcome.

Speechless Tuesday

My new idea for "Speechless Tuesday" is to use it as an excuse to highlight blogs that I read and enjoy. To wit, Superficial Gallery (from whom I borrowed the stunning Alphonse Mucha image) ponders pronunciation far more eloquently than I. Check it out and watch this space for a weekly recommendation of the finest blog brews out there.

Monday Should Be Your Fun Day

My new blog is at the cusp of readiness, and I be stoked. Continuing with my theme of oddly-named blogs, this one takes its moniker from the title of my novel, Narchitect. The idea is that it will serve as platform for the book once it hits a bookseller near you. Since that magic day has yet to arrive, I'll present shorter pieces of speculative fiction from my Vault of Story. To encourage high reader recidivism rates these tales of wonder and suspense shall be serialized, to last no more than a couple weeks or so before reaching their conclusion. When one story is done, a fresh entry will follow to start the cycle anew.

I'm excited to finally get this blog underway. It's hard to describe what a moment this is, of culminating a long dream into reality. Though I've known since I was but a wee lad that I wanted to be a writer, only in the last few years has the desire begun to take real shape. Narchitect marks another milestone on this long road that has many more twists and turns ahead yet. I can't wait to see where they lead!

Narchitect's opening piece focuses on the truancy of Danny Bates at a school where no one is ever late. Watch for an announcement here when the first installment becomes available.

Saturday Song

Song for the New Year

Blue Moon

A lovely image from DeviantArt.

It's the first new year's eve to see a blue moon since 1990 -if you believe in such a thing. There is some discussion about how exactly to define the occurrence of a "blue moon" and various schools of thought have formed.

The numerological school attributes two full moons in a single month to qualify as "blue", but if you listen to farmers, it is either a 13th full moon at the end of the year or the 3rd moon in any particular season.

As those who work the land have been known to do, their ideas are borrowed from ancient practice. The appearances of full moons set the date of important religious observances, such as Easter, and designating any extra moons as blue kept ecclesiastical calendars on track.

Turning to the cooler heads of science, we find a literalist interpretation. In order for a blue moon to occur, the atmosphere must contain particles that are bigger than usual. These chunky bits floating in the air scatter red light and give the moon a bluish tint. The last time such conditions existed was in 1883 when Krakatoa erupted, so unless Dick Cheney's latest outburst counts, there probably isn't enough polluted spew in the air this year to alter Luna's color.

Happy new year -whether your moon is blue, green, paisley or plaid, may it be a blessed event for you and yours.

Outstanding Blogs of 2009!

Here they are, folks who made a good year even better (according to me, anyhow) by providing laughter, insight, and appreciation of the finer things in life, listed in no particular order but on display so that you can check out the outstanding blogs of 2009:

Apocalypse Blog


Blazing Minds


CAP News


Comedy Plus


Earth to Holly


The Half Life of Linoleum


Margie and Edna's Basement


New Psalmanazar


Paperkraft


Poetic Shutterbug


Robot Armageddon


Secret Forest


The Way I See It


Toronto City Life



The Virtual Dime Museum


Wii Mommies

Speechless Tuesday (Holiday Edition)

Dances with Smurfs

James Cameron's Avatar is a long movie about a soldier at the end of his rope who falls in love with an oppressed tribe and fights to protect them from his own war-like, culturally-insensitive peoples. Does this sound like another overlong blockbuster? I might have been the only person in the theater wondering if there would be a Kevin Costner cameo, because this film is very similar to his Dances with Wolves, another tale of a soldier who goes native.

That said, if you go to Avatar for the story, you are going for entirely the wrong reason. This is a visual film. The narrative structure exists in service to lush, black-light jungles, incredible flying beasties and floating mountains straight off a Roger Dean album cover. James Cameron waited ten years for the right technology to showcase his ideas -and it shows.

My biggest gripe is length. The sustain of one visual bonanza after another gets to be too much of a good thing. Running nearly three hours in length, having a more substantial tale to tell would have helped, like, say, Dance with Wolves. Emotional investment is missing from Avatar, pretty much from the start we all know exactly how the story will end. Not that Dances with Wolves has a twist ending, yet it told a familiar tale with unexpected poignancy in scenes and characters that exceeded our expectations.

See Avatar for the visuals. They will blow you away. The 3-D effects are top-notch, so subtle you are barely aware of them but that fully immerse you in a fantastic new world.

It also doesn't hurt to admit from the get-go that this is a film about smurfs. Sure, the ham-handed allegory of Iraq makes it seem that our heroes are ripped straight off the headlines -the military in Avatar has a mission, and I quote, of shock and awe, and is determined to fight "terror with terror" (lazy writing or self-loathing?) -the noble tribe are in truth magical beings of love and togetherness, and the "jarhead clan" is run by none other than Gargamel in camo gear, intent on nothing more complicated than smash-kill-explode-rinse-repeat. Dances with Smurfs is a freebie for Seth McFarlane or whoever*; it is also the level of seriousness that should be brought to Avatar. See it for the eye candy, not the brain candy.

*I've been informed that Dances with Smurfs originates from a South Park episode. Who knew?

Saturday Song

Includes the lyric, one of my favorites, "Even Siberia goes through the motions":

Final Friday of 2009!

It's the last Friday of the Naughties, as our Briton friends like to say. This was a good end to the decade and '09 was a huge improvement over the previous year: I have no real gripes here at the end, especially seeing that 2010 is set to be an even better year.


Many thanks to readers who offered advice how I should proceed in selling my manuscript!

My old friend, Mr Woolcott, made the wry suggestion that I approach potential agents with a firearm -as leverage, naturally. I may resort to this should the year not go as planned.

Glynis advised me to establish a blog for my novel, which was echoed by Jen. The ladies, I have to admit, got me all fired up to take this approach.

Keep an eye out next month for a new blog. I'm devising one that will start out as platform for my shorter works of fiction, of which there are plenty, with the idea that it could be open to contributions from other writers. What do you think, sound nuts?

Wish Upon a (Wandering) Star

This kind of "star" is welcome on my holiday tree any year; Portishead's Wandering Star always sounds best during the frenzied, gone-before-you-know-it month of December.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

I had the totally random urge to see an image of Jack Skellington looking cheerful in his Santa disguise, and why would I keep something like that to myself?

To be honest, this isn't my favorite time of year. While I do like the season, and hearing bells echo through downtown is pleasurable -I don't even mind carolers, because when else do folks with (sometimes) decent singing voices get to gather in public and be so freaking joyful in song? -but celebrating the harvest is where my heart truly comes alive. That magical transition from Aestival is the peak of the year, until the ground solidifies and skies weep. Yuletide arrives just at the cusp of the dark months, and though I'm not prone to being other than my ordinary mopey self, neither am I prone to giddiness when lavished with gifts from family and friends. I feel guilty receiving presents. There, I said it. Receiving presents is inevitably accompanied by feelings of guilt. Why this is I leave to the head shrinkers, but the effect is a curtailment of joy in what others truly enjoy and take pleasure from, both the receiving and giving of gifts.

Perhaps this is why the image of Jack resonates with me. I laugh along with my loved ones, but feel in doing so that I'm a skeleton in disguise.

Speechless Tuesday

New TRON LEGACY Visuals!

A year is too long to wait, but here's some tidbits to tide us over, plus a preview of the videogame that promises to bridge the original with the new film, TRON EVOLUTION:

Olivia Wilde and Garrett Hedlund looking all shiny:


The one-sheet, appearing on the walls of theaters soon:


I presume this is an upgrade of the Solar Sailer Simulation:

How to get Published?!?

With this manuscript of mine and a vow to sell it next year come hell or high tide, I wonder what are the best ways to pursue this goal. I've been told to definitely post chapters online and to definitely not post them online; some say get an agent first, but others advise going straight to the publishers and getting an agent only after the manuscript is sold. With this month set aside for strategies just how I'm going to get this sucker bought, I'm asking anyone reading this to offer any tips that might have worked for you or an author you know. Anything is helpful, I'm an ignorant cuss when it comes to stuff like this.

Caprica Starts in January

This ad for Caprica provokes a mixed reaction. Nice use of Christian imagery, but an apparently unclothed teenager seems like a blatant invitation to controversy. Does anyone remember the blowup over Miley Cyrus' photo in Vanity Fair earlier this year? That controversy was stoked by teens and irate mothers who took issue with her bare back and shoulder. We get the same in this ad. Caprica isn't aimed at a teenage audience, but that makes this image more not less disturbing: is it acceptable to lure adult audiences with this kind of cheesecake? I'm not a prude by any measure; nevertheless, I wonder if they couldn't have gone with something else to promote the show.

Maybe I am a prude. This is the tamer version of the wider release ad, which shows the lead actress' full torso. I debated even including this one, but thought the better of it knowing that she is not actually a teenager, she only plays one on cable tv.

But let's get to the real reason I'm posting, to share my excitement about Caprica! You can read about the upcoming season at Airlock Alpha to get details. The two-hour pilot released on dvd earlier this year was excellent and laid the groundwork for what could be a fantastic series. Any fan of Battlestar Galactica would be remiss to not check this out. By the same token, it's clearly aiming for a general audience, not just scifi fanatics like me. For the uninitiated, allow me to recommend the Wikipedia entry for all you need to know before checking out the series premiere on January 22nd.

Musics for Writing

What do you listen to while writing? Possibly you prefer silence, or working in a coffeehouse where the ambience sharpens your mind, or the airy environment of the library, where infrequent whispers and shufflings only linger at the fringes of audibility. I'd love to hear what other writers like, it's always fascinating what enables the writing mind to operate at its best.

As I mentioned in a prior post, I'm a musics man when it comes to the audiodrome. Here's a few selections that best accompany my writing sessions:

Godspeed! You Black Emperor, F#A#


The Future Sound of London, Lifeforms










Orbital, Snivilisation


Peter Gabriel, Passion

Speechless Tuesday

Andrew Wyeth's "Otherworld" is one of my favorite paintings and the desktop background on my new netbook, offered as today's example of something you encounter that renders speech useless.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Grenade Casualty

If you haven't played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, or for that matter any first person shooter, this still may provoke a chuckle. Without schadenfreude, what are we?

Netbook Bonanza!

I've been gifted with a netbook bonanza! Not only can I unequivocally count myself a member of the twenty-first century, this week I'll be diving into the manuscript with gusto. This is the publishing tool I've been waiting for, yeehaw!

Assassin's Creed 2

I've been needed lately in 15th century Italy. The Templar conspiracy has heated up and my fellow Assassin guildsfolk are racing to retrieve pieces of the Apple of Eden before they are snatched up by our ancient foes. If this was everything on my plate, I'd have loads of free time, but there is my Monteriggioni villa to consider: it requires upkeep and new paintings to adorn its walls, not to mention my mother is weeping in an upstairs room until I'm able to collect enough feathers to solve the mystery of our family's execution -it was the Templars, we know that much. However, there's been a recent breakthrough that makes me hopeful. Though I've been travelling a lot, bouncing between Florence and Venice, it hasn't kept me away from my good friend Leonardo Da Vinci. In fact, I'm on my way to see him today. He's finished decoding some old codex pages I found hidden in Tuscany and wants to share his findings. There's some kind of flying machine he keeps talking about, but there's no way he'd ever let me use it...