R.A. McCandless's Blog, page 29

The Man in Black Fled Across the Desert . . .

. . . and the Gunslinger followed.The trailer for The Dark Tower released today, and it’s something of a mixed bag.  The theme offered is, “There are other worlds than these, Gunslinger.”  That’s certainly a part of the book series, but here it’s clear that Nikolaj Arcel—who has directed nothing you will have heard of—is shouting his caveat emptorto the fans of the series.
Viewer beware indeed.


Go ahead and give it a watch or three.  I’ll wait here:


All set?  Groovy!
But . . ....

As If You Needed Another Reason

This goes on the list of Reasons-Getting-Old-Sucks.
Yesterday, about a half-mile into my run, a cramp tore through my left calf.  It felt like something vital had been torn.  In my 40+ years of running, I’ve never cramped while in the middle of a run.  Side-stitches, heat exhaustion, dehydration, and even tripping on flat sidewalk and scraping the hell out of my knee are all things that have happened.
Cramping so bad I could barely walk back to the locker room was a first.

Apparen...

Aliens vs Couples—More Meh for Your Moolah

Sums it up nicely.Have you caught the trailer for the newest Aliens installment?
Underwhelmed is the term that comes to mind.  Maybe the series has just panned out, and there's no real point anymore.  At least George Lucas tried to ratchet up the effects and provide greater "depth" to his stories.  Sure, he stripped Star Wars of everything that made it fun and worthwhile, but he tried.
This just seems like more of the same.  Not even an interesting level of the same—Alien: C...

Adjust Your Beatitudes

He's watching you. Always watching . . . I’ve hit that point in my writing where soul-crushing fear fills every crevice, every phrase, every choice and screams: YOU’RE NOT GOOD KID.  GET OUT OF HERE!
But here’s a writer who kicked ass and took names.  Enjoy:
“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, the demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Mos...

By the Blade by David Ekrut

Jax finds himself abandoned far from home in the desert nation of Kalicodon. When any infraction to tribal honor will land him in chains as a slave, he must learn quickly to adapt in a foreign land in hopes of maintaining his freedom. In his struggles to liberate Daren from slavery, he meets Jesnia, a woman from his homeland, who has hunted fugitives from justice to the eastern edge of the desert. Without his own cunning and her talents, Jax may very well meet his end, fighting for his life i...

A Long Time Ago, We Used to be Friends

I have no use for prisoners. Kill them all.In many ways, I'm will miss going to the movie theater, but theaters are a dying breed, an archaic way seeing movies. For a long time, they solved the problem of how to watch films without investing in all that equipment and space and whatnot.  But technology was always against them, and it surpassed them a long, long time ago.  It’s our dogged fear of change that has kept them afloat like Jack clinging to a piece of Titanic debris in the i...

In Defense of Episode IX

There's more where that came from!AVAST: THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD.  YE BE WARNED!
Some folk appear to be up in arms that Carrie Fischer (a moment of silence, a raised glass of Scotch) won’t appear in Episode IX.  They claim this proves that the Disney-ification of Star Wars is now complete.  They’ve altered the Star Wars universe, and fans should just shut up and pray they don’t alter it further.
Except they’re wrong.
The most amazing thing is that Disney totally gets what Star War...

Rejected, Dejected, and Ejected

You suck, kid, and not in a good way!If not, how in the world would anything ever get published.  A writer would submit a work for review, it would be rejected (with or without notes) and that would be the...

Belgium

In Bruges!I may need to go to Belgium . . . for research.  I wonder when a good time to go is?
Also, don't bother me. 
I'm writing. 

Quite a bit.

Fear, Honor, Interest and All Things Fun

“It was in keeping with the practice of mankind for us to accept an empire that was offered to us, and if we refused to give it up under the pressure of three of the strongest motives, fear, honor, and self-interest.Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War 1.76

And then . . . THE UNIVERSE!Villains, enemies, allies and friends should all act with motivation.  This is easy for writers to tap into with “good guys”, but it becomes trickier with protagonists.  This largely stems from...