Bill Bodden's Blog, page 26
January 15, 2014
Guest Blog Post: Steve Lickman
What is Metastasis?
me•tas•ta•sis :noun, plural me•tas•ta•ses
1. Pathology .
a. the transference of disease-producing organisms or of malignant or cancerous cells to otherparts of the body by way of the blood or lymphatic vessels or membranous surfaces.
b. the condition produced by this.
2. Transformation
- Random House Dictionary
Are you alone? If not, take note of the two closest people. If you are, imagine the two most important people in your life are sitting next to you: one on your left and one on your right. Now know this. At some point one of the three of you will be infected with cancer. Actually, if you imagined one or more men with you, chances are that two of you will suffer from it.
Sorry if you find that an unpleasant thought, but those are the statistics . The older I get the scarier those statistics become. But I know I’m not alone. Cancer scares us. It’s the slow death sentence, the wasting disease of mystery. For all that science has learned about cancer there is still so much we do not know. Worse, there is no shortage of people who will pray upon our fears to spread misinformation.
To help combat this uncertainty WolfSinger Publications has released Metastasis, a charity anthology to benefit cancer research. Edited by Rhonda Parrish, the collection contains 26 speculative fiction stories and poems. Each story examines the impact of the disease. None of them flinch away. For example, my own story, "Next Placement", deals with how cancer treatment can damage an individual’s sexual identity.
It was not a simple story to write. But the moment I read the open call for submissions, I knew I had to submit something. I am no stranger to cancer. Several of my friends and family have felt cancer’s touch. In fact, on the day Metastasis was released I learned that my beloved 10 year old corgi had nasal carcinoma. He’s fighting it now, but there is no cure. My family must one day make the tough call to throw the towel in on his fight.
Again I know I’m not alone. The numbers don’t lie.
So aside from raising awareness, how does this anthology help? Over 62% of all proceeds from the sale of Metastasis are being donated to the American Cancer Society. WolfSinger Publications recently announced that Metastasis was their best selling print book for 2013. That’s good news. Not just for the authors involved, but for cancer research as well. But it would be sweeter if we could keep the momentum going.
I won’t lie to you. Metastasis is not an easy read. But I think it is a damn good one. Make no mistake; the stories inside it will make you forget your cares. Just not in the traditional sense.
Metastasis can be bought from the following places:
Amazon.com
Smashwords.com
Barnes & Nobles.com
You can learn more about Steve Lickman at his website, beerandmonsters.com
me•tas•ta•sis :noun, plural me•tas•ta•ses
1. Pathology .
a. the transference of disease-producing organisms or of malignant or cancerous cells to otherparts of the body by way of the blood or lymphatic vessels or membranous surfaces.
b. the condition produced by this.
2. Transformation
- Random House Dictionary
Are you alone? If not, take note of the two closest people. If you are, imagine the two most important people in your life are sitting next to you: one on your left and one on your right. Now know this. At some point one of the three of you will be infected with cancer. Actually, if you imagined one or more men with you, chances are that two of you will suffer from it.
Sorry if you find that an unpleasant thought, but those are the statistics . The older I get the scarier those statistics become. But I know I’m not alone. Cancer scares us. It’s the slow death sentence, the wasting disease of mystery. For all that science has learned about cancer there is still so much we do not know. Worse, there is no shortage of people who will pray upon our fears to spread misinformation.
To help combat this uncertainty WolfSinger Publications has released Metastasis, a charity anthology to benefit cancer research. Edited by Rhonda Parrish, the collection contains 26 speculative fiction stories and poems. Each story examines the impact of the disease. None of them flinch away. For example, my own story, "Next Placement", deals with how cancer treatment can damage an individual’s sexual identity.
It was not a simple story to write. But the moment I read the open call for submissions, I knew I had to submit something. I am no stranger to cancer. Several of my friends and family have felt cancer’s touch. In fact, on the day Metastasis was released I learned that my beloved 10 year old corgi had nasal carcinoma. He’s fighting it now, but there is no cure. My family must one day make the tough call to throw the towel in on his fight.
Again I know I’m not alone. The numbers don’t lie.
So aside from raising awareness, how does this anthology help? Over 62% of all proceeds from the sale of Metastasis are being donated to the American Cancer Society. WolfSinger Publications recently announced that Metastasis was their best selling print book for 2013. That’s good news. Not just for the authors involved, but for cancer research as well. But it would be sweeter if we could keep the momentum going.
I won’t lie to you. Metastasis is not an easy read. But I think it is a damn good one. Make no mistake; the stories inside it will make you forget your cares. Just not in the traditional sense.
Metastasis can be bought from the following places:
Amazon.com
Smashwords.com
Barnes & Nobles.com
You can learn more about Steve Lickman at his website, beerandmonsters.com
January 8, 2014
Guest Blog by Alana Joli Abbott: Wibbly wobbly timey wimey
Despite working on several projects together, including us both being contributors to Haunted: Eleven Tales of Ghostly Horror, Alana and I have never met in person. I admire her writing talents, and am amazed at just how much writing she does besides her fiction work.
***
Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey
Alana Joli Abbott
A lot of people will tell you that the hardest part about writing isn’t getting the ideas. It’s not coming up with snappy dialog, although that’s a challenge. It’s not even revision. Common wisdom says that the most difficult part of writing is writing.
I’m here to tell you that for me, that isn’t it either. For me, the most difficult part of being a freelance writer is finding – or making – time.
Here’s a little about me. I’m a freelance writer and editor. I’ve been doing this gig – sometimes part time, sometimes full time – for almost ten years now. I write games . I write fiction . I write blog posts about trending topics. I write obituaries and edit autobiographical essays by notable writers. I write a lot of book reviews. I do some project management. I even ran a
successful Kickstarter to fund the self-publication of my third novel after the original publisher went defunct.
I’m also a stay at home mom, a practicing black belt in kempo, and the secretary of my daughter’s pre-school board. (Yeah, we have one.) And here’s the truth. There is never, never enough time.
When I was a kid (before I realized I was destined to write speculative fiction – this should have been a clue), I used to wish I had a little pocket dimension where I could go and hang out to read books or do my homework, but not lose time in the real world. Even that early, I knew I wanted extra hours in the day. I would imagine this lush green meadow under a bright sky where I could relax. Or take a nap. Or practice running so I could stop being so bad in gym class. I wished that I could master the tesseract ala Madeline L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time, so that I wouldn’t lose time traveling. Come to think of it, I still crave those things, although I’ve realized that the Internet, one of my great tools of the trade, wouldn’t work very well in a pocket dimension.
I’d like this to be a post about how I mastered time management. I’d like that – but it wouldn’t be true.
Finding time is, to me, the hardest thing about writing because it’s an area where I constantly feel like I can improve. I squeeze in hours for writing contracted assignments during school. I stay up late. Sometimes, very rarely, I get up early. And the work gets done. But every day I feel like I’m still trying to figure out how to do it better. In fact, I only have two tips.
Take a little bit of downtime, even when it feels like there isn’t any. Because some nights, if I don’t sit down and catch the latest episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D with my husband or do something equally light on brain activity, I’ll sit at the keyboard and just feel tired. Example: on a night I spent an hour relaxing, in the next two hours, I wrote three essays. The next night, in the same three-hour period but with no me-time, I agonized over finishing one.
Try to find writing gigs that you love and really want to work on. I’m doing revisions on that third novel – the one funded by Kickstarter – right now, and it’s almost as much fun to be back in that world, doing those rewrites, as it is to be reading a book just for fun. Not quite, but almost.
If you’re a writer or are self-employed in another pursuit, how do you manage your time? What tricks have you learned to create more hours in the day?
Also, if you know where to find a pocket dimension on eBay, I’d love the listing…
--
Alana Joli Abbott is a freelance writer and editor whose short fiction has appeared online and in anthologies, including Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror. Her most recent interactive fiction game, Showdown at Willow Creek, is a Western detective novel in a multiple choice format. Her third novel, Regaining Home, is forthcoming at DriveThruFiction and other online booksellers. You can find her at her home page at Virgil and Beatrice or at her Friday column on comics and interactive fiction on Black Gate.
***
Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey
Alana Joli Abbott
A lot of people will tell you that the hardest part about writing isn’t getting the ideas. It’s not coming up with snappy dialog, although that’s a challenge. It’s not even revision. Common wisdom says that the most difficult part of writing is writing.
I’m here to tell you that for me, that isn’t it either. For me, the most difficult part of being a freelance writer is finding – or making – time.
Here’s a little about me. I’m a freelance writer and editor. I’ve been doing this gig – sometimes part time, sometimes full time – for almost ten years now. I write games . I write fiction . I write blog posts about trending topics. I write obituaries and edit autobiographical essays by notable writers. I write a lot of book reviews. I do some project management. I even ran a
successful Kickstarter to fund the self-publication of my third novel after the original publisher went defunct.
I’m also a stay at home mom, a practicing black belt in kempo, and the secretary of my daughter’s pre-school board. (Yeah, we have one.) And here’s the truth. There is never, never enough time.
When I was a kid (before I realized I was destined to write speculative fiction – this should have been a clue), I used to wish I had a little pocket dimension where I could go and hang out to read books or do my homework, but not lose time in the real world. Even that early, I knew I wanted extra hours in the day. I would imagine this lush green meadow under a bright sky where I could relax. Or take a nap. Or practice running so I could stop being so bad in gym class. I wished that I could master the tesseract ala Madeline L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time, so that I wouldn’t lose time traveling. Come to think of it, I still crave those things, although I’ve realized that the Internet, one of my great tools of the trade, wouldn’t work very well in a pocket dimension.
I’d like this to be a post about how I mastered time management. I’d like that – but it wouldn’t be true.
Finding time is, to me, the hardest thing about writing because it’s an area where I constantly feel like I can improve. I squeeze in hours for writing contracted assignments during school. I stay up late. Sometimes, very rarely, I get up early. And the work gets done. But every day I feel like I’m still trying to figure out how to do it better. In fact, I only have two tips.
Take a little bit of downtime, even when it feels like there isn’t any. Because some nights, if I don’t sit down and catch the latest episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D with my husband or do something equally light on brain activity, I’ll sit at the keyboard and just feel tired. Example: on a night I spent an hour relaxing, in the next two hours, I wrote three essays. The next night, in the same three-hour period but with no me-time, I agonized over finishing one.
Try to find writing gigs that you love and really want to work on. I’m doing revisions on that third novel – the one funded by Kickstarter – right now, and it’s almost as much fun to be back in that world, doing those rewrites, as it is to be reading a book just for fun. Not quite, but almost.
If you’re a writer or are self-employed in another pursuit, how do you manage your time? What tricks have you learned to create more hours in the day?
Also, if you know where to find a pocket dimension on eBay, I’d love the listing…
--
Alana Joli Abbott is a freelance writer and editor whose short fiction has appeared online and in anthologies, including Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror. Her most recent interactive fiction game, Showdown at Willow Creek, is a Western detective novel in a multiple choice format. Her third novel, Regaining Home, is forthcoming at DriveThruFiction and other online booksellers. You can find her at her home page at Virgil and Beatrice or at her Friday column on comics and interactive fiction on Black Gate.
January 1, 2014
Guest Blog by Alex Bledsoe: Speaking Of Monsters
I first met Alex Bledsoe at a reading from his first novel, Blood Groove, in May of 2009. Since then, he’s released a number of other novels across three series and a half-dozen or so short stories. His sequel to Blood Groove, Girls With Games Of Blood, currently awaits my attention on my to-read shelf. He has also launched a series of fantasy novels involving the exploits of a detective, Eddie LaCrosse, and he recently created a new series about an isolated group of people in East Tennessee, the Tufa.
Alex and I shared billing in two anthologies, and spent time together reading from our stories to promote the books: Haunted: Eleven Tales of Ghostly Horror, and Sidekicks!. His story in Sidekicks! is one I admire tremendously; at the same time spare and rich in words, he delivers a clever story with a surprising ending that was the perfect tale to lead off the book.
Alex’s own website can be found at alexbledsoe.com, where one can find his appearances schedule, more information on his books, and his own blog.
***
SPEAKING OF MONSTERS
by Alex Bledsoe
With each Eddie LaCrosse novel, I try to strike out in a new direction, bringing in fresh influences. For example, Dark Jenny was my take on Arthurian stories, while Wake of the Bloody Angel contained everything I loved about pirates.
The latest, He Drank, and Saw the Spider, draws from the works of Shakespeare: not directly, but if you’re familiar with his plays, you’ll probably spot plenty of things you recognize, tweaked to work in Eddie’s world. And one of those things is a monster, who I call Tatterhead.
First, I should say that I love monsters. From Frankenstein’s creation to Godzilla, from King Kong to the kaiju of Pacific Rim, I just adore them. I love their scale, their strangeness, their ability to destroy beyond all reason, and the fear they inspire. And a lot of that is because monsters don’t actually exist: in the real world, things are limited by biology, physics and evolution. A five-hundred-foot lizard simply couldn’t exist, but man, what if one did? That’s the thrill they give you, whether you’re five or fifty.
Tatterhead’s antecedent is pretty clearly Caliban, the “monster” from The Tempest. Just as many of Shakespeare’s plays can work in various unlikely settings (The Tempest itself provided the framework for the SF classic Forbidden Planet), even individual characters can be made to represent things that never even existed when Shakespeare wrote his plays.
In the play, the magician Prospero is marooned on an island with his daughter. Caliban is the island’s only other corporeal inhabitant, son of the witch Sycorax and supposedly fathered by a devil. Caliban is depicted as primitive and amoral, and even tries to unapologetically rape Prospero’s daughter. He plots ludicrously to kill Prospero in one of the play’s goofier sub-plots. And he’s been used to represent the oppressed masses of almost every era since Shakespeare’s. After all, the island used to belong to him, until that rich/powerful/European/capitalist/paternalistic/trope of your choice Prospero came along.
But is he really a monster?
There’s a lots of scholarly stuff written about that, and I’ll leave it to you to pursue it if you’re so inclined. For me, he was: partly human, but partly not, and with a legitimate grievance against Prospero for taking over “his” island. And were Prospero not a magician, Caliban might’ve wreaked much more monster-like damage on the island and those on it.
When I set about putting a Caliban-esque figure in He Drank, and Saw the Spider, I wanted him to be a monster, but one that could speak, feel, and interact with Eddie and the other human characters. In fact, I wanted his “monster” status to be a bit ambivalent to both the characters and the reader, so their view of him would change as the story progressed.
Luckily, Shakespeare’s actual physical description of Caliban is rather vague, so I wasn’t locked into anything. Much as when I depicted dragons in Burn Me Deadly, I tried to apply some level of biological realism; I didn’t want a character so far outside Darwinian nature that he’d be laughable. That’s why I made an issue of his distinctive odor, something that often precedes him; it’s hard to believe a monster wouldn’t smell at least a little unpleasant.
As for his personality–is he friend or foe?–you’ll have to read the novel. Which also features a sorceress, a slumming prince, a wise-crackering reporte–uh, I mean, scribe, bad sheep jokes and a barn full of babies. It’s available January 14th from Tor.
Alex and I shared billing in two anthologies, and spent time together reading from our stories to promote the books: Haunted: Eleven Tales of Ghostly Horror, and Sidekicks!. His story in Sidekicks! is one I admire tremendously; at the same time spare and rich in words, he delivers a clever story with a surprising ending that was the perfect tale to lead off the book.
Alex’s own website can be found at alexbledsoe.com, where one can find his appearances schedule, more information on his books, and his own blog.
***
SPEAKING OF MONSTERS
by Alex Bledsoe
With each Eddie LaCrosse novel, I try to strike out in a new direction, bringing in fresh influences. For example, Dark Jenny was my take on Arthurian stories, while Wake of the Bloody Angel contained everything I loved about pirates.
The latest, He Drank, and Saw the Spider, draws from the works of Shakespeare: not directly, but if you’re familiar with his plays, you’ll probably spot plenty of things you recognize, tweaked to work in Eddie’s world. And one of those things is a monster, who I call Tatterhead.
First, I should say that I love monsters. From Frankenstein’s creation to Godzilla, from King Kong to the kaiju of Pacific Rim, I just adore them. I love their scale, their strangeness, their ability to destroy beyond all reason, and the fear they inspire. And a lot of that is because monsters don’t actually exist: in the real world, things are limited by biology, physics and evolution. A five-hundred-foot lizard simply couldn’t exist, but man, what if one did? That’s the thrill they give you, whether you’re five or fifty.
Tatterhead’s antecedent is pretty clearly Caliban, the “monster” from The Tempest. Just as many of Shakespeare’s plays can work in various unlikely settings (The Tempest itself provided the framework for the SF classic Forbidden Planet), even individual characters can be made to represent things that never even existed when Shakespeare wrote his plays.
In the play, the magician Prospero is marooned on an island with his daughter. Caliban is the island’s only other corporeal inhabitant, son of the witch Sycorax and supposedly fathered by a devil. Caliban is depicted as primitive and amoral, and even tries to unapologetically rape Prospero’s daughter. He plots ludicrously to kill Prospero in one of the play’s goofier sub-plots. And he’s been used to represent the oppressed masses of almost every era since Shakespeare’s. After all, the island used to belong to him, until that rich/powerful/European/capitalist/paternalistic/trope of your choice Prospero came along.
But is he really a monster?
There’s a lots of scholarly stuff written about that, and I’ll leave it to you to pursue it if you’re so inclined. For me, he was: partly human, but partly not, and with a legitimate grievance against Prospero for taking over “his” island. And were Prospero not a magician, Caliban might’ve wreaked much more monster-like damage on the island and those on it.
When I set about putting a Caliban-esque figure in He Drank, and Saw the Spider, I wanted him to be a monster, but one that could speak, feel, and interact with Eddie and the other human characters. In fact, I wanted his “monster” status to be a bit ambivalent to both the characters and the reader, so their view of him would change as the story progressed.
Luckily, Shakespeare’s actual physical description of Caliban is rather vague, so I wasn’t locked into anything. Much as when I depicted dragons in Burn Me Deadly, I tried to apply some level of biological realism; I didn’t want a character so far outside Darwinian nature that he’d be laughable. That’s why I made an issue of his distinctive odor, something that often precedes him; it’s hard to believe a monster wouldn’t smell at least a little unpleasant.
As for his personality–is he friend or foe?–you’ll have to read the novel. Which also features a sorceress, a slumming prince, a wise-crackering reporte–uh, I mean, scribe, bad sheep jokes and a barn full of babies. It’s available January 14th from Tor.
December 26, 2013
End of Year Warp-Up and An Announcement!
2013 has been a year of mixed results for me. While I was thrilled late last year to learn my story "In The Shadow Of His Glory" was to be included in the Sidekicks! anthology edited by Sarah Hans, the death of my 89 year-old mother in August, while hardly unexpected, was definitely a low point.
A high point was being recommended by a good friend for writing work with UK RPG publisher Modiphius Entertainment; further cause for celebration was that I continue to receive offers of work from them throughout this year and into 2014, including a gig over the summer as lead writer on the guidebook to the Pacific Theater, due out in the first part of 2014. A low point was parting ways - amicably, I assure you - with the good folks at Green Ronin Publishing, after more than seven years.
I was also pleased to realized that I had successfully maintained my blog, posting for 12 of the last 13 weeks since billbodden.com went live in October. Blogging regularly --even only once a week -- isn't easy. The hardest part for me is coming up with new things to say. Fortunately, life and pop culture provide ample fodder for my blogging apparatus. I will continue to post my blog here, but I also encourage you to check out billbodden.com directly.
I sometimes forget that each year is filed with ups and downs of varying potency; mostly, I recall a year for it's major events -- good or ill -- and sometimes that means I overlook the positive, little things as a result. One of the very best things in my life, as always, and in no way a little thing, was having the support and friendship of my awesome wife and partner Tracy. The constant reminder that I have much to be thankful for in the form of many good friends and colleagues is often a boost to my easily damaged morale, and I am grateful for that, too. So here's an end-of-year toast: May we all enjoy a prosperous 2014, with hopes for a year filled with laughter, love, good food, and good friends.
See you next year!
*****
The Announcement part
Starting in January, I'm opening up my blog to some guest writers, in order to give them the opportunity to tell you all about the incredibly cool stuff they've been working on. First up -- and posting on New Year's Day, no less -- will be Alex Bledsoe, co-conspirator with me on both the Sidekicks! and Haunted: Eleven Tales of Ghostly Horror anthologies. I admire Alex's writing style, which I understand he honed as a reporter in Tennessee. Be sure to check back next week to catch Alex's guest appearance!
A high point was being recommended by a good friend for writing work with UK RPG publisher Modiphius Entertainment; further cause for celebration was that I continue to receive offers of work from them throughout this year and into 2014, including a gig over the summer as lead writer on the guidebook to the Pacific Theater, due out in the first part of 2014. A low point was parting ways - amicably, I assure you - with the good folks at Green Ronin Publishing, after more than seven years.
I was also pleased to realized that I had successfully maintained my blog, posting for 12 of the last 13 weeks since billbodden.com went live in October. Blogging regularly --even only once a week -- isn't easy. The hardest part for me is coming up with new things to say. Fortunately, life and pop culture provide ample fodder for my blogging apparatus. I will continue to post my blog here, but I also encourage you to check out billbodden.com directly.
I sometimes forget that each year is filed with ups and downs of varying potency; mostly, I recall a year for it's major events -- good or ill -- and sometimes that means I overlook the positive, little things as a result. One of the very best things in my life, as always, and in no way a little thing, was having the support and friendship of my awesome wife and partner Tracy. The constant reminder that I have much to be thankful for in the form of many good friends and colleagues is often a boost to my easily damaged morale, and I am grateful for that, too. So here's an end-of-year toast: May we all enjoy a prosperous 2014, with hopes for a year filled with laughter, love, good food, and good friends.
See you next year!
*****
The Announcement part
Starting in January, I'm opening up my blog to some guest writers, in order to give them the opportunity to tell you all about the incredibly cool stuff they've been working on. First up -- and posting on New Year's Day, no less -- will be Alex Bledsoe, co-conspirator with me on both the Sidekicks! and Haunted: Eleven Tales of Ghostly Horror anthologies. I admire Alex's writing style, which I understand he honed as a reporter in Tennessee. Be sure to check back next week to catch Alex's guest appearance!
December 18, 2013
My Take On The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
So my lovely wife T and I took in the latest installment of Peter Jackson’s Tolkein franchise last night. I have to admit, after seeing the first part last year, I went into this with lowered expectations. I was STILL disappointed. I will do my best to leave out spoilers for those of you who still intend to see the film.
To be fair, the dragon, Smaug, was awe-inspiring. The composite effect of all those thousands of terrabytes of computer-generated images was truly impressive. Also, we get to see more of the inside of the dwarf kingdom of Erebor – the Lonely Mountain – which I found fascinating. In the Mirkwood scenes, the spiders were quite scary, but by the way the Mirkwood sequences _ a major part of the book – were treated, it seems to have been included almost as an afterthought.
Taking all that into account, I have to admit this is the first time I was actively unhappy about a film from this franchise. Too much was added – and, in my opinion, to no good effect – to claim it had much to do with the original book. T made a fabulous point: the film lacked the charm of the books; scenes like Bilbo throwing acorns at the spiders to lure them away from the captured dwarves were omitted altogether. Sacrificing the very soul and innocence of the story for more action scenes — and more screen time for the elves who were barely involved with the story of The Hobbit — seems the order of the day in modern filmmaking. Sometimes that works; here, it did not. In the end, the film was unsatisfying, and is a classic example of folks in Hollywood thinking they know better how to tell a compelling story than the person who wrote the original, wildly-popular book on which the film is based.
Much can be said about any number of logistical decisions made regarding these films: splitting this book into three entire films leaps to mind as entirely egregious, and frankly I think now we see why that was a poor, though clearly solely an economic, choice. Too much filler had to be created from whole cloth to turn a 300-page children’s book into three entire, feature-length (perhaps even lengthier than that!) films.
I greatly admire the work of Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens to turn the Lord of the Rings trilogy into three spectacular feature films. However, they run a very real risk of undoing all that good work by not only pushing the metaphorical envelope with The Hobbit, but by ripping it to pieces and jumping up and down on the bits.
I will still see the third film, and as the time grows near I will doubtless be filled with anticipation just as I was five times before. Life goes on, and the films will make buckets of money, but the excitement for me is gone. T. and I agreed that we feel no need to own copies of ANY of The Hobbit films. Contrast this with the previous trilogy, where we could hardly wait to obtain the DVDs and watch them, over and over. That is a powerful testament to the film-making skills involved that filled us with such a strong sense of wonder. Where those skills and that sense of wonder went this time is anybody’s guess.
To be fair, the dragon, Smaug, was awe-inspiring. The composite effect of all those thousands of terrabytes of computer-generated images was truly impressive. Also, we get to see more of the inside of the dwarf kingdom of Erebor – the Lonely Mountain – which I found fascinating. In the Mirkwood scenes, the spiders were quite scary, but by the way the Mirkwood sequences _ a major part of the book – were treated, it seems to have been included almost as an afterthought.
Taking all that into account, I have to admit this is the first time I was actively unhappy about a film from this franchise. Too much was added – and, in my opinion, to no good effect – to claim it had much to do with the original book. T made a fabulous point: the film lacked the charm of the books; scenes like Bilbo throwing acorns at the spiders to lure them away from the captured dwarves were omitted altogether. Sacrificing the very soul and innocence of the story for more action scenes — and more screen time for the elves who were barely involved with the story of The Hobbit — seems the order of the day in modern filmmaking. Sometimes that works; here, it did not. In the end, the film was unsatisfying, and is a classic example of folks in Hollywood thinking they know better how to tell a compelling story than the person who wrote the original, wildly-popular book on which the film is based.
Much can be said about any number of logistical decisions made regarding these films: splitting this book into three entire films leaps to mind as entirely egregious, and frankly I think now we see why that was a poor, though clearly solely an economic, choice. Too much filler had to be created from whole cloth to turn a 300-page children’s book into three entire, feature-length (perhaps even lengthier than that!) films.
I greatly admire the work of Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens to turn the Lord of the Rings trilogy into three spectacular feature films. However, they run a very real risk of undoing all that good work by not only pushing the metaphorical envelope with The Hobbit, but by ripping it to pieces and jumping up and down on the bits.
I will still see the third film, and as the time grows near I will doubtless be filled with anticipation just as I was five times before. Life goes on, and the films will make buckets of money, but the excitement for me is gone. T. and I agreed that we feel no need to own copies of ANY of The Hobbit films. Contrast this with the previous trilogy, where we could hardly wait to obtain the DVDs and watch them, over and over. That is a powerful testament to the film-making skills involved that filled us with such a strong sense of wonder. Where those skills and that sense of wonder went this time is anybody’s guess.
December 13, 2013
Holiday Game Recommednations
In case you weren't aware, my day job involves working with games - either at the local games store where I log a few hours a week, or doing freelance writing for companies within the game industry. As such, I present ten favorite games I'd like to recommend to help you pass the time at those holiday get-togethers. I mean, what's more in the spirit of the Holidays than slaughtering each other at the game table?
First on the list is Zombie Dice from Steve Jackson Games. Talk about fast, stupid fun, Zombie Dice has the players pretending to be zombies and gathering brains. The brains are on the dice, which players roll three at a time to score that elusive grey matter. Watch out though; shotgun blasts will shut down a brain hunt very quickly! Number of players is flexible, and even a large group can play a game of Zombie Dice in under 20 minutes.
You probably wouldn't think a game about bean farming is what one might call fun, but you'd be wrong. Bohnanza is a card game where players try to score the most coins by harvesting beans at the right time. The trick to this game is that you must keep your bean cards in the order they were dealt. You only have two fields to work with, which means you have to get rid of the beans you don't want in order to find more of the beans you've already planted. Very fun and surprisingly strategic, Bohnanza is not a brain buster, but is a solid family card game for 2-7 players. Plays in about an hour.
Walk The Plank, from my friends and former co-workers at Green Ronin Publishing, is a basic trick-taking card game that's designed to force people out. You have to capture a trick to stay alive, and each hand sees the survivors receiving fewer cards until only one player is left. A game, even with a full crew, plays in five to ten minutes, so no one will be sitting idle for long. Everyone will want in on the next game to take revenge on the scurvy dogs what sent them to see Davy Jones! For 3-9 players.
ROFL, designed by my buddy John Kovalic, is a terrific party game that riffs on clever abbreviations used in texting. One player is the judge, and is the only one who doesn't know the phrase for that round. Players come up with the shortest abbreviation they can manage, and the player whose clue is guessed gets the points. Flexible number of players/teams; plays in about an hour.
Ingenious is a long-time favorite of mine, with colorful tiles that players try to match to score points. The trick to this game is to keep your lowest-scoring color higher than your opponent's lowest score. The description doesn't do the game justice: go out to Fantasy Flight Games' website and look at the box cover for yourself.
Lost Cities is a favorite of my wife and I. For only two players, this game has players deciding which archaeological digs to explore based on which cards one has. You must score more than twenty points' worth of cards for the dig to pay off; your opponent may be going for the same dig, so guard your secrets closely! Playing time is roughly 30 minutes per game.
One of my favorite big group games is Nanuk, another amusement by Steve Jackson Games. In Nanuk, the players take on the roles of Inuit hunters bragging about how successful tomorrow's hunt will be. When the bragging gets too outrageous, their bluff is called, and the hunt is on. Players win by collecting the most sets of animal cards (one each of deer, seal bird and fish cards) and by avoiding Nanuk, the Great White Bear. You need a larger group for this one; 5-8 players are needed, though play only runs roughly an hour.
Werewolves of Miller's Hollow is a variation on the classic convention game, Mafia. Players are assigned a secret role at the start of the game - either Werewolf or Villager - and must guess which other players are werewolves, then "execute" the most likely candidate before nightfall. At night, the werewolves come out and "eat" one of the villagers. Many players get knocked out of the game early, but it's still fun watching people try to pin the werewolves tail on someone else - especially if they really ARE the werewolf! For 8 to 18 players who have 30-60 minutes to kill.
Recently highlighted on the YouTube series TableTop was Unspeakable Words. In this classic word game, two to six players must create words using the letter cards in hand. Then the player must roll equal to or higher than the score of the words on a twenty-sided die as a "sanity check". If you fail, you lose one of your five Cthulhu tokens. The first player who stays sane and scores 100 or more points wins.
In Pandemic, players take on one of six roles at the CDC and attempt to control outbreaks of various infectious diseases. Each role has it's own superpower, and the object is to find cures for all four diseases before you run out of cards. Plays in about an hour. For two to four players who can work together.
So where, you ask, can one find these gems of entertainment? Try your favorite local game store. Mine just happens to be Pegasus Games in Madison Wisconsin (see the link under the sidebar "Bill's Friends" on the right-hand side of the page), but there are lots of good stores throughout the country, and pretty much all of them could get these for you if they don't have them on hand.
Happy Holidays!
Bill
First on the list is Zombie Dice from Steve Jackson Games. Talk about fast, stupid fun, Zombie Dice has the players pretending to be zombies and gathering brains. The brains are on the dice, which players roll three at a time to score that elusive grey matter. Watch out though; shotgun blasts will shut down a brain hunt very quickly! Number of players is flexible, and even a large group can play a game of Zombie Dice in under 20 minutes.
You probably wouldn't think a game about bean farming is what one might call fun, but you'd be wrong. Bohnanza is a card game where players try to score the most coins by harvesting beans at the right time. The trick to this game is that you must keep your bean cards in the order they were dealt. You only have two fields to work with, which means you have to get rid of the beans you don't want in order to find more of the beans you've already planted. Very fun and surprisingly strategic, Bohnanza is not a brain buster, but is a solid family card game for 2-7 players. Plays in about an hour.
Walk The Plank, from my friends and former co-workers at Green Ronin Publishing, is a basic trick-taking card game that's designed to force people out. You have to capture a trick to stay alive, and each hand sees the survivors receiving fewer cards until only one player is left. A game, even with a full crew, plays in five to ten minutes, so no one will be sitting idle for long. Everyone will want in on the next game to take revenge on the scurvy dogs what sent them to see Davy Jones! For 3-9 players.
ROFL, designed by my buddy John Kovalic, is a terrific party game that riffs on clever abbreviations used in texting. One player is the judge, and is the only one who doesn't know the phrase for that round. Players come up with the shortest abbreviation they can manage, and the player whose clue is guessed gets the points. Flexible number of players/teams; plays in about an hour.
Ingenious is a long-time favorite of mine, with colorful tiles that players try to match to score points. The trick to this game is to keep your lowest-scoring color higher than your opponent's lowest score. The description doesn't do the game justice: go out to Fantasy Flight Games' website and look at the box cover for yourself.
Lost Cities is a favorite of my wife and I. For only two players, this game has players deciding which archaeological digs to explore based on which cards one has. You must score more than twenty points' worth of cards for the dig to pay off; your opponent may be going for the same dig, so guard your secrets closely! Playing time is roughly 30 minutes per game.
One of my favorite big group games is Nanuk, another amusement by Steve Jackson Games. In Nanuk, the players take on the roles of Inuit hunters bragging about how successful tomorrow's hunt will be. When the bragging gets too outrageous, their bluff is called, and the hunt is on. Players win by collecting the most sets of animal cards (one each of deer, seal bird and fish cards) and by avoiding Nanuk, the Great White Bear. You need a larger group for this one; 5-8 players are needed, though play only runs roughly an hour.
Werewolves of Miller's Hollow is a variation on the classic convention game, Mafia. Players are assigned a secret role at the start of the game - either Werewolf or Villager - and must guess which other players are werewolves, then "execute" the most likely candidate before nightfall. At night, the werewolves come out and "eat" one of the villagers. Many players get knocked out of the game early, but it's still fun watching people try to pin the werewolves tail on someone else - especially if they really ARE the werewolf! For 8 to 18 players who have 30-60 minutes to kill.
Recently highlighted on the YouTube series TableTop was Unspeakable Words. In this classic word game, two to six players must create words using the letter cards in hand. Then the player must roll equal to or higher than the score of the words on a twenty-sided die as a "sanity check". If you fail, you lose one of your five Cthulhu tokens. The first player who stays sane and scores 100 or more points wins.
In Pandemic, players take on one of six roles at the CDC and attempt to control outbreaks of various infectious diseases. Each role has it's own superpower, and the object is to find cures for all four diseases before you run out of cards. Plays in about an hour. For two to four players who can work together.
So where, you ask, can one find these gems of entertainment? Try your favorite local game store. Mine just happens to be Pegasus Games in Madison Wisconsin (see the link under the sidebar "Bill's Friends" on the right-hand side of the page), but there are lots of good stores throughout the country, and pretty much all of them could get these for you if they don't have them on hand.
Happy Holidays!
Bill
December 5, 2013
A Semi-Insider's Guide to the Bellydance Community
My wife has been involved with the local Middle Eastern Dance community for a number of years. I’ve been involved too; mostly, I’ve been her sidekick and general dogsbody, but it’s been a fun time.
Belly dance, more accurately known as Middle Eastern dance, is a dance form common to areas of the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, and the Arab-speaking nations of North Africa the Middle East and central Asia. Mostly, the dancers seen performing are women, though there are a few men who perform. Generally male Middle Eastern dancers use similar, albeit more masculine versions of the dance.
It’s important to dispel one major myth about Belly dance/Middle Eastern dance: Belly dance is NOT the same as stripping. NOT AT ALL. I imagine some strippers saw belly dance performances and thought ‘ Wow, those are great moves; I’m going to incorporate them in my routine.’ That association has often stuck in the minds of many people, and their reaction when you say “Belly Dance” is immediate and clearly disapproving because of it.
One of the many things I’ve learned from being involved is the difference between the two major styles of Middle Eastern Dance: Raqs Sharqi and American Tribal. Most of the differencs between the two are superficial, but there are nearly as many schools of thought within the two groups as there are dancers.
Raqs Sharqi is often considered the more traditional version of the dance. Seen performed in restaurants and at shows, it often encompasses what people think of when they hear the term “belly dancer”: flashy costumes and dances done in a caberet-style setting are kind of the norm here. Dancers sometimes perform using zills (finger cymbals), or props like canes or swords.
It’s generally agreed that American Tribal Fusion started (where else!) in California, and often involves group improv where one or more people lead at various times. Tribal dancers often dance to music other than traditional Middle Eastern songs: particularly popular right now is music from Eastern Europe.
Shoes are optional; most dancers I’ve seen prefer not to wear shoes while dancing. In a restaurant setting where the dancer isn’t wearing shoes, all I can think about is the possibility of encountering a stray shard of glass, and that gives me the willies.
Once, at a performance in a restaurant, I observed a group of women were goofing around just before the dancer was ready to begin her second set. They were swinging around their hookah — a tall water pipe for smoking flavored tobacco. Hookahs are common in the Middle East, and are often available at Middle Eastern restaurants in the United States if local ordinances allow it.
So one of these women was swinging the hookah around, parodying the dancer we’d just seen, when a smoldering coal fell out of the hookah and landed in the middle of the floor. Since a dancer was about to dance in that specific area, I grabbed a napkin, dipped it in water and retrieved the hot coal with the water-logged napkin, extinguishing it. Of the many dangers to dancers during public performances, most involve drunk people.
My wife has been involved with the Middle Eastern Dance community for over a decade at this point. She’s learned a great deal, but her fybromyalgia prevents her from participating as actively as she would like. Previously, she organized regular haflas for the community as a whole, which were well attended and well received. They were a lot of work, not the least of which involved finding an affordable venue.
We organized about a dozen such haflas over the course of 6 years. Food and beverages were provided on a pot-luck basis, and dancers could sign up to perform in a venue where there was less snark and judgment and much more support and encouragement than at a more structured performance setting. It allowed many dancers to experiment with new ideas they may not have been ready to try out more formally, and that was a very positive aspect of these events.
The fact that students from any teacher were welcome, even those from out of town, is one of the things that sets the haflas we ran apart from most haflas. That was a specific goal of the events my wife organized: to allow dancers a space to hang out and dance for/with each other where rivalries could (hopefully) be set aside for the evening.
Middle Eastern dance is a rich and complex art form, but it’s also fun to watch and easy to enjoy as a spectator. I’ve enjoyed my time as a supporter and facilitator of the community, and look forward to many more years of serving as porter, MC, and loudly appreciative audience member.
For more information on our local Middle Eastern Dance community, check out the website my wife constructed. Be sure to check out the photo galleries!
Belly dance, more accurately known as Middle Eastern dance, is a dance form common to areas of the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, and the Arab-speaking nations of North Africa the Middle East and central Asia. Mostly, the dancers seen performing are women, though there are a few men who perform. Generally male Middle Eastern dancers use similar, albeit more masculine versions of the dance.
It’s important to dispel one major myth about Belly dance/Middle Eastern dance: Belly dance is NOT the same as stripping. NOT AT ALL. I imagine some strippers saw belly dance performances and thought ‘ Wow, those are great moves; I’m going to incorporate them in my routine.’ That association has often stuck in the minds of many people, and their reaction when you say “Belly Dance” is immediate and clearly disapproving because of it.
One of the many things I’ve learned from being involved is the difference between the two major styles of Middle Eastern Dance: Raqs Sharqi and American Tribal. Most of the differencs between the two are superficial, but there are nearly as many schools of thought within the two groups as there are dancers.
Raqs Sharqi is often considered the more traditional version of the dance. Seen performed in restaurants and at shows, it often encompasses what people think of when they hear the term “belly dancer”: flashy costumes and dances done in a caberet-style setting are kind of the norm here. Dancers sometimes perform using zills (finger cymbals), or props like canes or swords.
It’s generally agreed that American Tribal Fusion started (where else!) in California, and often involves group improv where one or more people lead at various times. Tribal dancers often dance to music other than traditional Middle Eastern songs: particularly popular right now is music from Eastern Europe.
Shoes are optional; most dancers I’ve seen prefer not to wear shoes while dancing. In a restaurant setting where the dancer isn’t wearing shoes, all I can think about is the possibility of encountering a stray shard of glass, and that gives me the willies.
Once, at a performance in a restaurant, I observed a group of women were goofing around just before the dancer was ready to begin her second set. They were swinging around their hookah — a tall water pipe for smoking flavored tobacco. Hookahs are common in the Middle East, and are often available at Middle Eastern restaurants in the United States if local ordinances allow it.
So one of these women was swinging the hookah around, parodying the dancer we’d just seen, when a smoldering coal fell out of the hookah and landed in the middle of the floor. Since a dancer was about to dance in that specific area, I grabbed a napkin, dipped it in water and retrieved the hot coal with the water-logged napkin, extinguishing it. Of the many dangers to dancers during public performances, most involve drunk people.
My wife has been involved with the Middle Eastern Dance community for over a decade at this point. She’s learned a great deal, but her fybromyalgia prevents her from participating as actively as she would like. Previously, she organized regular haflas for the community as a whole, which were well attended and well received. They were a lot of work, not the least of which involved finding an affordable venue.
We organized about a dozen such haflas over the course of 6 years. Food and beverages were provided on a pot-luck basis, and dancers could sign up to perform in a venue where there was less snark and judgment and much more support and encouragement than at a more structured performance setting. It allowed many dancers to experiment with new ideas they may not have been ready to try out more formally, and that was a very positive aspect of these events.
The fact that students from any teacher were welcome, even those from out of town, is one of the things that sets the haflas we ran apart from most haflas. That was a specific goal of the events my wife organized: to allow dancers a space to hang out and dance for/with each other where rivalries could (hopefully) be set aside for the evening.
Middle Eastern dance is a rich and complex art form, but it’s also fun to watch and easy to enjoy as a spectator. I’ve enjoyed my time as a supporter and facilitator of the community, and look forward to many more years of serving as porter, MC, and loudly appreciative audience member.
For more information on our local Middle Eastern Dance community, check out the website my wife constructed. Be sure to check out the photo galleries!
November 27, 2013
Congratulations Dr. Who!
I’ve been watching Dr. Who since it premiered on American television (in my case, my local Public Television station, WHA-TV) back in the early 1980s, and found myself smitten with Tom Baker’s portrayal. Since then, there’s been a lot of water passing under that bridge, with a number of subsequent Doctors failing to make much of an impression on me until David Tennant only a few short years ago. With the 50th Anniversary of the premiere of the series on British television, this seems like a fine time to recall a few things I enjoy about the series.
Tennant’s Doctor is charming like Tom Baker’s, but has a more powerful edginess. There is more anger there, and more ferocity too, I think. Matt Smith’s Doctor was also charming in a slightly more naiive way, but while I found his youthful enthusiasm contagious, his darker moments were less effective — less believable to me.
There are lots of favorite episodes that spring to mind, many of them more recent. From the Tom Baker era “The Horns of Nimon” is a favorite around our house, if only to mock the dialogue of one character, Soldeed. Scary and compelling is “The Seeds of Doom”, and “City of Death” has to be counted as among my favorites largely because of the skills of talented veteran actor Julian Glover. The special effects from this age of the Doctor we’re all that special, but the writing was generally quite good – and clearly the show was no longer the kid’s programme it was during its infancy. “The Five Doctors” special filmed during Peter Davison’s tenure also amuses our household greatly – so much so that we watch our DVD of it every year or two.
Tennant’s episode “Silence In The Library” must be my all-time favorite episode, in which a shadowy creature stalks visitors to a massive, apparently abandoned library. “Blink” — also creepy and horrifying and features the ‘weeping angels’ characters — is a very, very close second.
While in earlier days the numerous time paradoxes that cropped up were solved with some determined hand-waving, current scripts are genuinely more thoughtful about such issues, treating them seriously and with a certain amount of respect. It’s this respect that has me turning back into a Dr. Who fan after years away from the fold.
Tennant’s Doctor is charming like Tom Baker’s, but has a more powerful edginess. There is more anger there, and more ferocity too, I think. Matt Smith’s Doctor was also charming in a slightly more naiive way, but while I found his youthful enthusiasm contagious, his darker moments were less effective — less believable to me.
There are lots of favorite episodes that spring to mind, many of them more recent. From the Tom Baker era “The Horns of Nimon” is a favorite around our house, if only to mock the dialogue of one character, Soldeed. Scary and compelling is “The Seeds of Doom”, and “City of Death” has to be counted as among my favorites largely because of the skills of talented veteran actor Julian Glover. The special effects from this age of the Doctor we’re all that special, but the writing was generally quite good – and clearly the show was no longer the kid’s programme it was during its infancy. “The Five Doctors” special filmed during Peter Davison’s tenure also amuses our household greatly – so much so that we watch our DVD of it every year or two.
Tennant’s episode “Silence In The Library” must be my all-time favorite episode, in which a shadowy creature stalks visitors to a massive, apparently abandoned library. “Blink” — also creepy and horrifying and features the ‘weeping angels’ characters — is a very, very close second.
While in earlier days the numerous time paradoxes that cropped up were solved with some determined hand-waving, current scripts are genuinely more thoughtful about such issues, treating them seriously and with a certain amount of respect. It’s this respect that has me turning back into a Dr. Who fan after years away from the fold.
New Work, Plus Some Odds and Ends
It’s always a good day when I get offered new writing work; in this case, I got TWO offers in less than a week – both in the gaming industry. One is a short bit of work filling in some technical details, and the other is — something else. Not sure how much I can talk about, so until I’m certain, they will be called project Project Blue Nose and Project Red River. I also have a somewhat nebulous offer hanging right now; it depends on me covering a particular event for a local magazine shortly after the New Year, so stay tuned for more details on that one.
******
In other news, I mentioned last week that I attended my first college (American) football game recently. Through the generosity of my wife’s employer, we were able to get free tickets to watch the Wisconsin Badgers play the Brigham Young Cougars at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin. It was chilly that day, and the chill was exaccerbated by sitting on (or close to ) a giant slab of concrete the entire time. The Wife had to call it partway through the third quarter on account of not feeling her feet any more. And seriously, why the worshipful attitude towards the song “Varsity”? The lyrics are kinda lame, but even my dad used to tear up when he heard it.
It was a spectacular show all the way around, and I’m certainly grateful for the largesse that allowed us to see the game for free. The Badgers won the game, but frankly it seemed much closer than the 27-17 final score would indicate. I was also impressed by the Wisconsin Marching Band, who put on a great show and executed some fancy formation changes during halftime.
******
With the holiday season rolling in, my schedule at my part-time job has picked up. Between that and the two writing gigs, I expect to have less free time in which to goof off. In light of this I’m moving the day I publish my blog posts from Tuesday to Wednesday. This change comes mainly because posting on Wednesday will be a little easier for me to manage until after December.
******
In other news, I mentioned last week that I attended my first college (American) football game recently. Through the generosity of my wife’s employer, we were able to get free tickets to watch the Wisconsin Badgers play the Brigham Young Cougars at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin. It was chilly that day, and the chill was exaccerbated by sitting on (or close to ) a giant slab of concrete the entire time. The Wife had to call it partway through the third quarter on account of not feeling her feet any more. And seriously, why the worshipful attitude towards the song “Varsity”? The lyrics are kinda lame, but even my dad used to tear up when he heard it.
It was a spectacular show all the way around, and I’m certainly grateful for the largesse that allowed us to see the game for free. The Badgers won the game, but frankly it seemed much closer than the 27-17 final score would indicate. I was also impressed by the Wisconsin Marching Band, who put on a great show and executed some fancy formation changes during halftime.
******
With the holiday season rolling in, my schedule at my part-time job has picked up. Between that and the two writing gigs, I expect to have less free time in which to goof off. In light of this I’m moving the day I publish my blog posts from Tuesday to Wednesday. This change comes mainly because posting on Wednesday will be a little easier for me to manage until after December.
November 15, 2013
It's Friday! and a Book Recommendation
It’s always Friday somewhere.
After missing a week on my blog, I’m now back on track — if a little later than my usual Tuesday post. Things have been happening in the last two weeks: I attended Teslacon 4, and thanks to the largesse of my wife’s new job, I attended my first ever college football game! More about those next week; for now, here’s this week’s regular blog post:
Books I Love: Carnacki: Ghost Finder by William H. Hodgson
Carnacki is cut from much the same cloth as the main character (known only as “Time Traveller”) from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. He invites a group of friends over for dinner, and then proceeds to regale them with the tale of his latest adventure, creating a narrative device to link the stories together easily. Carnacki blends mysticism and late Victorian-era psuedo-science to defeat malignant spirits, either banishing them or sending them on to their final rest.
What I like most about the stories is that there are some that are explained through good detective work – once Carnacki has investigated the matter. There are some phenomena that cannot be explained, and there are even a couple of stories where you think things have been cleared up, only to have something happen that adds a new supernatural twist to the proceedings. It’s a well-balanced mix.
More recently, Scottish-born author William Meikle has added some new Carnacki stories to the fold in his anthology Carnacki: Heaven and Hell, and I must say he’s done a cracking good job keeping the tone and feel of the original. My only complaint (and it’s a very small one) with his work is that the mix I enjoyed so much from the original stories is absent; all the Meikle mysteries have a supernatural source. Regardless, Meikle delivers good, original stories, and all of them are chilling tales you may want to read with the lights left on! Carnacki: Heaven and Hell is well worth the time and effort to track down a copy.
The original Carnacki: Ghost Finder is sometimes tough to locate. It’s seen print more frequently in the author’s home country, so obtaining a UK edition is possible, though may be a bit pricey. It is also reprinted regularly in small-ish runs of US editions, so that might be another option. If you like good ghost stories with a garnish of some solid detective work, I highly recommend making the effort to find the original Carnacki.
Potentially less difficult to find is William Meikle’s Carnacki: Heaven and Hell stories. Published within the last two years by Dark Regions Press, they are available in trade paperback only (as far as I can tell) from the publisher’s website: http://www.darkregions.com/books/carn...
Happy reading, and take care!
Bill
After missing a week on my blog, I’m now back on track — if a little later than my usual Tuesday post. Things have been happening in the last two weeks: I attended Teslacon 4, and thanks to the largesse of my wife’s new job, I attended my first ever college football game! More about those next week; for now, here’s this week’s regular blog post:
Books I Love: Carnacki: Ghost Finder by William H. Hodgson
Carnacki is cut from much the same cloth as the main character (known only as “Time Traveller”) from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. He invites a group of friends over for dinner, and then proceeds to regale them with the tale of his latest adventure, creating a narrative device to link the stories together easily. Carnacki blends mysticism and late Victorian-era psuedo-science to defeat malignant spirits, either banishing them or sending them on to their final rest.
What I like most about the stories is that there are some that are explained through good detective work – once Carnacki has investigated the matter. There are some phenomena that cannot be explained, and there are even a couple of stories where you think things have been cleared up, only to have something happen that adds a new supernatural twist to the proceedings. It’s a well-balanced mix.
More recently, Scottish-born author William Meikle has added some new Carnacki stories to the fold in his anthology Carnacki: Heaven and Hell, and I must say he’s done a cracking good job keeping the tone and feel of the original. My only complaint (and it’s a very small one) with his work is that the mix I enjoyed so much from the original stories is absent; all the Meikle mysteries have a supernatural source. Regardless, Meikle delivers good, original stories, and all of them are chilling tales you may want to read with the lights left on! Carnacki: Heaven and Hell is well worth the time and effort to track down a copy.
The original Carnacki: Ghost Finder is sometimes tough to locate. It’s seen print more frequently in the author’s home country, so obtaining a UK edition is possible, though may be a bit pricey. It is also reprinted regularly in small-ish runs of US editions, so that might be another option. If you like good ghost stories with a garnish of some solid detective work, I highly recommend making the effort to find the original Carnacki.
Potentially less difficult to find is William Meikle’s Carnacki: Heaven and Hell stories. Published within the last two years by Dark Regions Press, they are available in trade paperback only (as far as I can tell) from the publisher’s website: http://www.darkregions.com/books/carn...
Happy reading, and take care!
Bill
