They're Tearing Down Aker's Mill Theater Today

It'll be gone in an hour or two. Very efficient.

I tried to contact the owners back in 2001 to find out how much it would cost to lease the place, and perhaps start a Cinema/Draft-house. They told me that they were planning a big renovation and didn't want to rent it or lease it.

I see now that they've hired Designs by Caterpillar - I think I saw them on DIY.

It is where I saw my first midnight movie.
It is where I saw my first "R" rated movie.
It is where I saw the re-release of "Heavy Metal"
It is where my friend John first saw "Dawn of the Dead."

Of course it is also where I saw "Event Horizon," for which the bulldozer may balance Karma.

The Shape of things to NaNoWriMo

This is the map of the Southlands where my NaNoWriMo project takes place. I will have to add more details later, but this should work for getting me through the 50K. And my chapter outline is 10 chapters long so far, so I think it needs about 20 more... So far, so perilously close to "iffy."

The older I get, the sweeter the scent of nostalgia

I'm fascinated by the world of my youth, because when I lived in it I had such a narrow view that I missed a lot of stuff. I certainly wasn't deprived access to the arcade at the mall, but I didn't have many quarters and my skills were sadly underdeveloped.

But if you can't BE good at a game from the 80's, at least you can wear a shirt with the game's logo on it: PowerUp Clothing has the shirts. I just need to lose a 100 pounds so I can represent without causing confusion and delay when I wear them.

What does this button do?

I keep seeing this little button that says "BlogThis!" and I decided to click it and see what it does. (If anything.) I'm hoping it adds a blog entry to my own blog automatically. However, if it doesn't - then what does it do?

Dead Babies

I went to a graveyard near work today at lunch. These three sad markers sat side by side.
Carl O. Waters 9/28/1915 - 02/04/16 (4 months?)
John D. Waters 01/04/21 - 01/16/21 (12 days)
Charlie T. Waters 06/30/23 -12/02/25. (1 year, 5 months?)
Mr. And Mrs. Waters were interred next to the kids... According to the tombstone, she was the sunshine of Mr. Water's life, but it looks like she delivered a lot of rain too.

It made me sad, and I wondered what had happened to the kids.

incidentally, Kathleen and I went to a graveyard in Canton, GA a few years ago and it looked like there were lots of families that had lost a huge number of kids. I wasn't sure if that was from the influenza, or what. But that must have been a sad town for a while. Some families lost more than others... I know that it is a recent thing that parents "expect" to have their kids make it to adulthood, but it is the only world I've known directly. My grandparents on both sides came from large families, and a lot of them made it to senior-adulthood which made for big reunions.

What's the gaming opportunity here?

1. It would be a cool intro to a mystery in an RPG. What happened in year X that caused all these kids to die. And will it happen again?

2. In this graveyard I was visiting, there were a lot of unmarked & sunken graves. And lots of graves were missing their tombstones, or had just a rock to mark them. Behind the graveyard is a shopping-center, and the drainage for the shopping center backs up to the graveyard, and there are tunnels where the water comes from the shopping center down to the drain pit. A similar set of tunnels burrows off towards the graveyard, and that set has a man-sized access hole with a rusty steel grating... and it has been pulled off and discarded. Do those tunnels actually extend under the tombs?

Happy Birthday

I surprised my wife with an early birthday gift!

Halloween costume

Still got some work but getting there!

Mini Display

I finally got my minis put up in their shadow box.

And then, just hours later, my Matt Wilson signed print showed up!

Huzzah!

Medieval Times

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Medieval Times!

Thanks to my wife for arranging that, and going with me. :)

I'll post a review of my experience in a later blog entry.

The Secrets - the secret secretions secreted into secrecy

For those of you coming to the secrets "late" in the game, you may have noticed that episodes 1 through 8 are retired according to the text of the feed. However, the episodes weren't deleted from the server yet - and here are the links to the episodes:

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7

I don't know how long they'll stay up there, but if you find the links are broken let me know and I'll edit this post and remove the hypertext. If you find that there is no hypertext in this post, then you may safely assume that the episodes are gone.

About my NaNoWriMo project:

For years and years I’ve been a fan of Sword & Sorcery type fantasies. However, with the exception of G. R. R. Martin and Tolkien I harbor this belief that they’re easy to write. I’ve never tried, until now.

My NaNoWriMo project will be “high fantasy.”

I'm writing my novel based on a strange opening phrase that came to me in a dream while I was stationed in the Middle East in the Navy.

On the night that Ossifer's mother coupled with the dragon,
she carefully swallowed a whole raven's egg.
And two-score weeks later when she delivered him,
he came out clutching the bird.

The character Ossifer didn’t have a name when that dream first hit me. Instead, because I kept thinking of this wandering, raggedy man with a Solomon-Kane style Puritan hat, a walking stick and a talking bird on his shoulder as somehow “amusing” I decided to construct his name with a meaning. I chose the name Ossifer as a nominal form of “Ossify” – meaning, in my intent, “bone.” Then I selected the last name “Bean” as synonymous with “head.” So Ossifer Bean literally meant “Bone-Head.” However, I later decided that I didn’t want the character to be stupid, so I’ve changed his basic nature to being stubborn in the sense of “tenacious” but hopefully not stubborn to stupidity.

Yet that clearly doesn’t make any kind of story. That’s just a character.

So I’ve added the following other characters to my tale:

Caul – a bird
Fox – a thief
Keg – a fighter
Jade – a half-orc monk

But when I went to fill out my NaNoWriMo form, I knew I wanted Ossifer to be the main character. I figured he ought to be fighting somebody – or falling in love with somebody. And I figured putting this antagonist’s name in the title (or title in the title) might help me focus my thinking better.

But would anybody actually publish a story called, “Ossifer Bean and the Very Naughty Sorceress”?

Maybe. But I don’t intend for the tone to be as light as all that.

What you may observe I have not included here is any kind of plot. That is because I don’t have one put together yet. At this point (October 12, 2006) I’m working on Character outlines, a map of the territory – and then I’ll be working on politics in the region. I've got rules for the world, and some simple ideas for the main story - but a lot of work to be ready by November 1st!

The Secrets - NaNoWriMo Issue

Mr. Stackpole's special "NaNoWriMo" issue of The Secrets podcast is available. Even if you don't care to subscribe to his free podcast, this special episode may be of use to you if you're going to participate.

The focus of this episode is: Writing Fast.

One thing I definitely agree on - even if you're a writer who likes to edit as you go, you'll have a lot of difficulty reaching 50K in one month if you do. Write first, Edit later.

The Conceit

Mortality. We're all mortal, and just days away from dying.

The method by which the majority of Western society goes on to accomplish great feats of discovery, engineering and art involves a conceipt: We pretend we're immortal.

We may know rationally that we're going to die, and even feel at peace with the idea. But most of us ignore the looming spectre of death, or would find ourselves either paralyzed by fear of the event itself, or crippled by the exasperating pointlessness of the creative process given that we and everyone we know are going to dust.

The conceit is simple: Pretend you're going to live forever - until you die.

When we encounter the death of someone close to us, it not only saddens us at the loss but also pierces the thin veil of our conceit.

Two things have recently reminded me of this:

1) Tearing out my ACL in my left knee. This reminded me that while I "feel" as immortal as ever, I am actually succeptible to physical injury. (So much for the Kryptonian Immigrant fantasy I had going...)

2) My Grandfather broke his ankle. As I understand it, the foot was loose, heel-up and flopping around loose like a sock full of rocks when they moved him to get him to the hospital.

The latter event is troublesome because Grandpa's always been more of a force of nature than an actual person to me. That may sound weird if you don't know him. And he's such a connundrum of mixed philosophies. He's a farmer, a former builder, and a former army nurse. He always reminded me of John Wayne's characters (not the actor himself) in his ruggedness and simple certainty of his opinions. But with that toughness came an aloofness and while I've no doubt he loves me as a grandson, I don't remember ever hearing him say it. But he's shown his - if not love - at least loyalty to his family in his support of them despite the variety of mistakes all family members are bound to encounter through the years.

Now this man who I thought of as immortal is getting really old. His foot is broken. His heart is not working like it should. He has clogged veins and arteries.

But I still think if the doctors ticked him off he would hop out of his bed on one foot and beat them up with his cane. I'm probably wrong about that - but it's my conceit.

NaNoWriMo - Building to a Frenzy of Mental Preparedness

Ok - there are some things you (and I) can be doing to prepare for NaNoWriMo. We want to be building up to a frenzy of productivity so we can produce something truly useful with our 50,000 words.

1) Sign up on the NaNoWriMo site so you can keep track of your work and word count. I think it will be fun to be able to look at their nifty interface and track my progress.

2) Go ahead and figure out a few things about your book. I would say that consists of the following things:

• Write a preliminary outline, with a story arc
• Write a chapter break-out of at least one sentence describing what will happen in the chapter, and how it will propel the story (plot).
  
• Write short bios for your characters - include questions and answers to things like: favorite hobbies?, when was your first-kiss?, would you kill for love?, who do you want to be like? Favorite Food? Personal Motto? Or at least think about this and figure out who these people are you're creating.
  
• If your book was a movie, who would you want to direct it? That's the kind of writing you need to do. Is Raimi, Spielberg or M. Night going to do this thing? Or will it be a Mike Nichols film starring Meryl Streep? Think of each chapter as a film shoot. Who is behind the camera?

3) Remember the most important rule for getting out 50,000 words: EDIT LATER! Just keep typing, make a note if you figure out you've screwed up something. You can fix it in the edits. If you realize half-way through the story that your buddy-road-trip movie should be a screw-ball romantic comedy - just turn Bill into Billie and do a find & replace December 1st. For now, you need to type, type, type your way to success. There are NO prizes for the best edited 30,000 words in NaNoWriMo, only the 50,000 you actually write will be your ticket to the winner's circle.

4) Stay motivated. In the words of Jesse "The Body" Ventura in Predator, "I ain't got time for writers-block." There are a million reasons to stop writing; you just need to find one reason to keep writing.

Now, for your homework assignment:
Listen to Michael Stackpole's "The Secrets" podcast. You don't need an i-pod to subscribe and download it. It is available through i-tunes, or through his site at: http://www.stormwolf.com/thesecrets/podcasts/index.html

Hurry over there and get these episodes before they are retired! These are 15 to 20 minute episodes from a writer with 30+ books in print, and teach very good rules and provide rich experience to new writers. Remember, even if you're already trained in writing and know what you're doing it doesn't hurt to hear refresher information. His work is motivational, educational, inspirational and free!

I'm serious about this and I will pester you. Get these and listen to them - soon!

We're going to get into a writing frenzy! We're chumming the water so that the prose hungry plot-sharks of our mind will be leaping from the sea of creativity in anticipation!

Are you going to be ready for NaNoWriMo?

I am!

ISBW - Joined their Forums

For those who don't know it, I am a fan of the "I Should Be Writing" podcast, available at www.ishouldbewriting.com. (Or subscribe at i-tunes or any number of other places.)

On the forums there you can link to an 80x80 pixel picture, so I'm setting this entry up solely to mention ISBW one more time, and to host this tiny picture.

Hello, tiny me!

Coming Soon: Me in Weird Tales

I'm a very patient person. I did an inquiry today with George Scithers over at Weird Tales, and he tells me that while my story won't be in the next issue of WT - it will be in an issue "soon." I'm excited. WT has been through a lot of changes, and I'm hoping Wildside Press proves to be a good home for them.

I'll put up a link to the issue when it comes out so all my fans (and fans "to be") can find it.

Self Promotion? Hell yeah!

In the mean-time, you can check out their new site and forums at Weird Tales.

Pop Culture

Well, it is halloween-month, and I'm desperate to find what horrors await my TIVO. Horrors so vile and terrifying, that by the time I get around to watching them in November/December I'll still find them shelf-fresh and tingley.

Clues?

Well, back in the day AMC used to have Monsterfest as a commercial free extravaganza. Why in the world they aren't able to continue that using crawler-sponsor-ads, or logos and present commercial-free horror with the commercials "built-in" is beyond me.

My Net-Flix queue floweth over with potential horrors, but I can't seem to get around to watching them. Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock.

Wish I'd thought of this...

I didn' think of it.
I didn' t write it.

But I wish I had...

Adios A-Mi-Go! a Deadlands / Call of Cthulhu official cross-over product.

This Woman Is an Idiot

Sometimes idiocy is its own reward.
I shouldn't complain, though. My mother wouldn't let us watch "Bewitched" or "I Dream of Jeannie" for the same reasons - though I suspect the latter may have had more to do with her fear that Daddy would look at the costumes too closely, if you know what I mean...

---

Mom Begs For 'Harry Potter' Ban

POSTED: 12:01 pm EDT October 3, 2006

UPDATED: 12:10 pm EDT October 3, 2006

ATLANTA -- A Gwinnett County woman begged the hearing officer for the state Board of Education today to remove Harry Potter books from county school library shelves. Laura Mallory of Loganville called the popular fiction series a "evil" attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion. (READ MORE)

Star Trek - Remastered

The OLD Version:












The NEW Version:












From the site http://www.startrek.com:
"The most noticeable change will be redoing many of the special effects, created with 1960s technology, with 21st century computer-generated imagery (CGI). Upgrades include:

• Space ship exteriors – The Enterprise, as well as other starships, will be replaced with state of the art CGI-created ships. The new computer-generated Enterprise is based on the exact measurements of the original model, which now rests in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
• Show opening – The Enterprise and planets seen in the main title sequence will be redone, giving them depth and dimension for the first time.
• Galaxy shots – All the graphics of the galaxy, so frequently seen through the viewscreen on the Enterprise's bridge, will be redone.
• Exteriors – The battle scenes, planets and ships from other cultures (notably the Romulan Bird of Prey and Klingon Battle Cruisers) will be updated.
• Background scenes – Some of the iconic, yet flat, matte paintings used as backdrops for the strange, new worlds explored by the Enterprise crew will get a CGI face-lift, adding atmosphere and lighting."

Well, here's my take on this. I'm going to check it out by watching it. Hmm. Then, if the birthday gods are kind, I'll get the DVDs of the original series and can compare/contrast the differences while the eps are fresh in my mind.

In the mean time, I have to remember to setup the TIVO for this Saturday. As I've previously said (in e-mail), I expect these episodes will dominate the fiercely contested 2:35 am timeslot here in Atlanta on Sunday mornings. Look out REAL ESTATE INFOMERCIALS! Fire photon torpedoes!

This saturday one of my favorite episodes will be on - yet it is one of the most hotly debated by its author, Harlan Ellison. For a good read, and a view into how the series was put together I heartily recommend the following book:

Harlan Ellison's the City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay That Became the Classic Star Trek Episode




In this book, Harlan Ellison provides a sharp-witted and biting response to the decades old legend that G-Rod (Gene Roddenberry, as the more hip Trekkers refer to him) had to re-write because the draft Ellison provided wasn't up to par. Of course if you note that Ellison's un-rewritten script won him a Writer's Guild Award, you can already guess (correctly) that the original script was pretty darn good.

In fact, it was a cutting-edge work that dealt with the harsh realities of what can happen when drug addicts are given access to time-portals. And can we really afford to brush that kind of stuff under the carpet? I think not.

Anyway, if you don't have this book you should buy it. In fact, you should buy it off of my blog by clicking the link and going to Amazon and purchasing it. And you should purchase 10 or 15 of them and give them to every struggling Hollywood scriptwriter you know, because it gets cold out there in Hollywood and if they have one copy to read they can use the other 9 to 14 of them to fashion a winter coat.

Stranger in a Familiar Land

Heinlein's Rules. I can do this. You can too.

Obviously this has little to do with gaming, but it is my blog - so there. :P

Almost to 3000 words on the novel I'll give the working title of "Angle of Incidence".

If I change the title later, I predict I'll make some kind of bad pun about "on reflecting" on the title's appropriateness.

NaNoReady

NaNoWriMo has their site ready for 2006!

If you're planning on participating "officially" you'll need to sign up at http://www.nanowrimo.org.

My nano-name is WBLAKESMITH.
Please send me your nano-names when you're done and I'll add you as my writing buddy.

I'm very excited! I'm going to start working on my plot outlines now - and get some lists of character names together so I don't have to think 'em all up on the fly. (That's been helping my other writing cruise along.)

Looking forward to seeing your progress in November! Remember, it doesn't have to be great - or even good - it just has to be 50,000 words.

Hey Michael Martinez - don't forget to pack this!!!

Good luck in WA, dude!

NaNoWriMo - Pledge?

Well, I'm already committed to producing a novel in 1 year. I know this is an achievable goal. But what about "crazy" goals?

Can I write a novel in 1 month? A 30 day month? Along with 59,000+ other people trying to do the same?

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo - pronounced nan-oh-rhyme-oh) is coming up in November. All you have to do to participate is sign up and keep track of your word count. "Winning" involves reaching your 50,000 word goal.

Last year (2005) 59,000 people participated with 9769 completing the whole 50K words in the 30 days. That's a "success rate" of 16% - which ain't bad. And from what I hear the community out there in NaNoWriMo land is quite friendly and supportive.

You can donate to them and help support their website (www.nanowrimo.org) and they will donate excess funds to support the creation of libraries in needy parts of the world.

I don't want to say I'll succeed at this. I'm not going to get all Tony Robbins (Though I have found inspiration in some of his work). But I want to challenge my friends who are writers and have succumbed to apathy, laziness, fear, excuses, and all the ailments that writers are heir to - and urge them to join me in my silly Quixotic quest to write a novel in one month.

The rules say you can't start until November 1st. I've got other stuff (my "real" novel) to work on in the mean time, but you can go ahead and name your characters, develop your plot outlines, think up vicious things to happen to your heroes, and wonderful rewards for others. It's your book. It's your time.

You might get hit by a bus December 1st. Wouldn't that feel better if you could die secure in the knowledge that you'd squeezed 50,000 words out of your fingers?

I will be hosting a celebratory dinner for myself and any of my local friends who achieve this goal. If I make 50,000 words in November I'll have much to celebrate indeed. Look out, Taco Bell - writer's coming through for 4th meal.