Evil Editor's Blog, page 289

Cartoon 745

Caption: Anon.

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New Beginning 789

Men get a hankerin' for war. Every 20, 30 years when a new crop of boys grow into manhood ready to flex their muscle and show their mettle and the old guard starts remembering their glory years and lusting after their youth, it starts to happen. If you listen close you can hear it: in the hush of the children, the whispers of the womenfolk, the shouts of 'duty' and 'honor' over the grime and sweat of work, whiskey and fisticuffs at night, and offering plates passed between pews on Sundays.

It's in the blood. It can't be helped.

Find a cause, take a side. Don't matter which. Most of the time you don't get to choose anyway. The war chooses for you. Saxon or Norman, Christian or Jew, North or South. Who you were born, where you were born are far more important than what you think.

Charlie Daniels liked war. He liked the pageantry of it -- liked waking to the sound of the bugle and marching to fife and drum. When the muskets fired, he liked breathing in the sharp smell of gunpowder till he could taste the sulfur on his tongue. When the howitzers went off, he was there like a setter on a pheasant, watching the mortar shells tear through walls and men alike.

Now you can be just like Charlie Daniels, marching into battle with your fellow soldiers, happily fighting the most bitter of campaigns, in:

Reenactment: Ain't War Grand!

Available now for Xbox, Wii and Playstation 3.

Experience war as it should be -- where the dead never bleed and they get right up again at four for a cold one at McHale's.

Exclusive online content: Where's Dem WMD? and Anyone for Waterboarding? mini-games.


Opening: Anon......Continuation: anon.

Cartoon 744

Caption: anon.

Your caption on the next cartoon! Link in sidebar.
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Sunday Feature 7

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Saturday Film Series

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Face-Lift 828

Guess the Plot

Whispers in the Dark

1. Leisha is distracted from her mission of tracking a drug ring by a menacing voice that only she can hear. Is she losing her mind, or are revolutionaries from other planets attacking her sanity in a coup against the artificial intelligence programs that control their lives?

2. Every night after she turned out the light, Sonya could hear them under her bed, from behind the closet door . . . damn these time-share telemarketers anyway.

3. In the Cherokee nation of early America, Shines Like Sunshine and Walking Hawk are young and in love. But jealous eyes watch from behind every tepee and totem pole, envious of their simple joy. Can Walking Hawk escape the murderous clutches of his mate's ex-boyfriend, Whispers in the Dark?

4. Iggy the busboy must descend into the basement of Bud's Diner. This time he's on a mission to listen to the wireless for an important breakfast order from the French Underground. But the chatter he hears sounds more like a Guy Fawkes plan to blow up Parliament. Has he entered a time tunnel? Or does the free world now depend on himself and savvy waitress Loretta Muldoon?

5. The kingdom of Roth'na'hersh is threatened. Dark forces of the Fae are rising up like a bad tv dinner. Thirteen-year-old Drychmae has a magic sword, a hankering to kill her some Fae, and mysterious voices telling her how to go about it. But can she believe those . . . Whispers in the Dark?

6. As he wanders in the dark on Halloween, hillbilly boy genius Buddy Boone hears whispering voices and realizes he's near the spot where Fred Jones, bootleg distiller, vanished during Prohibition. And he sees a foggy figure in the shrubbery. Plus his iPhone spectral apparition meter app is buzzing.



Original Version

Whoever said that technology makes life easier was full of it. [And whoever said it doesn't has never tried to get a message to his sister in Hawaii.] For the Colonized Planets, the Artificial Intelligence programs monitor and assist the Colonies, allowing them to remain united and simplifying most daily tasks by administrating the System. With travel, communications, and information networks all automated, humans have very little to worry about. The AIs aren't quite what they seem, however, and one person knows exactly what they are. [That one person is me, the author, and I'm not talking.] [Dump that paragraph. Anything in it that's essential can be woven into the other three plot paragraphs.]

Maj. Leisha O'Davoren is an undercover operative in the Peacekeepers, the law enforcement organization charged with service and protection for the Colonies. She is very good at her job, especially since she can access the AIs without a computer. [Unless you consider the iPhone Artificial Intelligence System Access app a computer.] [The first half of that sentence is repeated in the next sentence; the second half isn't needed, as we don't know why accessing the AIs without a computer is such a big deal.] Secure in her abilities and her job, she heads off to her next assignment, only to be attacked as soon as she hits the planet.

Nothing about this operation goes according to plan. Leisha is distracted from her primary goal of tracking a drug ring by an attractive stalker, programmed assassins, and a menacing voice that only she can hear. [Does the menacing voice whisper in the dark?] [Pssst. Get a frigging nightlight, lady, or I'll kill you.] With her sanity under attack, she tries to focus on her job, which is easier said than done when she's ordered to investigate her shadow, a hacker named Wynn Corriden. [An undercover operative who's very good at her job wouldn't have trouble focusing just because she has to investigate a hacker; I'm guessing her focus problem has more to do with the programmed assassins.]

When the System is hijacked by revolutionaries, Leisha is forced to team up with Wynn to return control to the AIs. However, when the true power behind the coup is revealed, she finds that enforcing the law has little to do with doing what's right, especially if it means a sacrifice that leaves her broken and alone. [That's a pretty vague closing sentence. Change it to: However, the AIs aren't quite what they seem; they are sentient tools of the Bourgeoisie underground, intent on making human life more difficult by incapacitating all TV remote controls and microwave ovens.]

Whispers in the Dark is my third novel and is complete at 87,000 words. [There's no point in mentioning your other novels unless you name them and are confident that when the agent/editor Googles the titles he/she will be thrilled that someone with your accomplishments has queried him/her.] Thank you for your consideration.



Notes

It isn't terrible, but by cutting out the boring stuff you leave room to throw in another interesting tidbit or two about what's going on. Like, who's the power behind the coup?

If you get attacked the minute you hit a planet and the attack fails, the attackers are incompetent. I mean, if I order my squad of assassins to kill Joe Shmo when he gets off the L bus at Broadway and 5th, I gotta figure at least one of them is gonna get him.[image error]

Success Story

David Gaughran, (A Storm Hits Valparaiso, Face-Lift 716) reports that his short story "Into the Woods" is the Story of the Week at Short Story America ( http://www.shortstoryamerica.com). The story will also be published in book-form as part of a compendium in Spring 2011.
You have to register to view it, but it's free. Once registered, you have access to their entire library and will get a weekly email when they publish a new Story of the Week.

Cartoon 743

Caption: Khazar-khum

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New Beginning 788

"Alex, it's time for dinner."

"In a minute, mom. I want to see the parade."

"It's not a parade, Alex, as I've told you before, it's a funeral procession. They go by your window nearly every day, do you have to watch every one?"

Alexander's second story bedroom faced the Dead Road, the dirt path from town center to the necropolis. Long, loud processions passed his window every day, and Alexander did not understand them.

His parents told him; he was from Earth, these people were different. He could see that. They said; he was only eleven, lots of time to understand things. Maybe.

The grievers went first, crying and wailing and catching their tears in little vases. Then came the musicians, playing on pipes, horns, stringed instruments, and drums. After them came the liturgists, reading from holy books and making sermons out of the passages. Then came the family and friends. Last came the problem.

The body and spirit. That wasn't a metaphor. For some reason, on this planet, the spirit was visible and it stayed with the body. With the spirit were the spirit tamers, which is to say thugs of the religion, carrying magic-imbued chains with which they whipped the spirit of the dead.

"Come on, Alex!" His mother appeared behind him, urging him to dinner.

"But Mom!" he whined. "It's the bodies." They could both see through the window the wagons carrying the distended, gray corpses, each with a twisted, writhing spirit floating above.

Mom turned away and headed back to the kitchen. Why had they moved to this God-forsaken planet, and why had she believed the realtor who told her this was the quietest road in town?

She opened the liquor cabinet and stared inside. She had some spirits of her own to tame.


Opening: D Jason Cooper.....Continuation: Anon.

Cartoon 742

Caption: Anon.

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