Temporary Anne and "The Gate"

Briane Pagel is here today pimping his new book Temporary Anne.

I'll have a review of it later in the week (possibly tomorrow?). As I'm writing this, I haven't, yet, finished reading the book, but I fully expect to have finished it by the time this posts. So far, I have nothing but good things that I could say about it, but I have to leave open the possibility that the author could spoil it at the end since I've read more than one book that went along swimmingly (ask Anne) right up until the end, when the book suddenly drowned. Of course, in Anne's case, the swimming happened first, but I'm getting ahead of the story, I think.

Before I hand things over to Briane, I should add that Briane has taken my idea of including stories from other authors and run off with it. In fact, he ran off with one of my stories, a story that I had planned to release all on its own for the same price as Briane's book, so, hey, it's like two stories for the price of one. AND I'm not the only one with a short at the back of Anne. You can also find stories by PT Dilloway, Rusty Carl and Nigel Mitchell. So, actually, that's FIVE stories for the price of ONE! What a deal. So go pick up Temporary Anne for the low, low price of absolutely nothing (because today it is FREE!) and read "The Magic Cookies." I guarantee you that it's not the kind of story you've come to expect from me.

All of that said, here's Briane!

WELCOME!

This is DAY TWO of the release tour for my newest book, Temporary Anne.

Temporary Anne is a horror story about a woman so desperate to avoid Hell -- the fate for the evil she's done during her life -- that she makes things infinitely worse after her death.

To celebrate the release, I'm doing a blog tour in which I'm writing a short story, LIVE, with your help!  At each stop, I'll do an installment of the story and you can suggest where it goes next!

Below is PART TWO of the story.  PART ONE appeared on Tina Downey's Life Is Good, and if you didn't catch it, click here to read that first before going on, maybe, so the story makes more sense to you!

But it was no good, as before I could speak, Stephen King -- the man himself! The legendary author! The guy who once had threatened to punch my lights out in an alleyway, or so I told people back home! -- suddenly shot up out of his seat.

You would be forgiven if you thought I, as a writer, was merely using descriptive language to demonstrate how Stephen King stood up suddenly, perhaps to storm onto stage and announce that he would let me finish but really Dean Koontz should've won this award, but I assure you, I am in no way exaggerating.

As I said "I", Stephen King rose several feet above his seat, lifted in the air and his legs flailing and arms grappling towards his throat but not reaching it, Stephen King levitating above the assembled, dignified-but-suddenly-shocked crowd, a crowd which had figured on simply sitting through boring speeches before cocktails but which now suddenly was treated to a spectacle!

They seemed to enjoy it, for the few seconds that Stephen King was merely writhing above their heads apparently pantomiming being strangled by a being much larger (and meaner! and more claw-ish and fang-having than they were, although they did not know that!) than he, but their enjoyment quickly faded when first Stephen King's left, and then Stephen King's right, eyeball was pulled from his head as if by a vacuum cleaner.

Can you imagine? I, and the Vice President of the United States, and the assembled dignitaries, need not imagine what it looks like, but you may not have read all of the news accounts, many of which were not so graphic, so I'll describe it:

Stephen King's eye -- the left one, first, remember-- begins to bulge out.  As though he were a cartoon wolf, looking at a sexy cartoon sheep! It bulges, rounder and rounder and then, if you were looking closely at it, you'd see the lens about to tear off but the optic nerve must break first, and the eyeball -- still whole! Still whole! -- POPS! from the socket, the squishy rip of the nerve pulling off being overshadowed by the sucking sound the orb makes as it disappears into the invisible maw of the beast only I can see.

I can see all of them.

I saw the beast as it walked through the aisle, not betraying its presence by touching anything until it reached the third row.  I saw its slimy tentacles stretch above Stephen King, nearly brushing the Vice President's ear, and I saw it lift him up.

"Um..." I said, and covered my surprise with a sip of water from the glass on the podium, putting the glass down as pandemonium broke loose upon Stephen King's unfortunate (for him!) demise.

After the eyes, the head appears to collapse inwards on itself-- only I know that it is one of the three arms of the Beast that has used its claws to puncture the ears on each side before crushing the skull.  Only I can see the tentacle then fling Stephen King's lifeless, nearly-headless body, at the now-screaming seats of dignitaries, dignified no longer as they scramble for exits, avoiding the security guards who have rushed in to -- too late!-- to protect Mr. King.

Only I need not fear this Beast, as it turns upon the security guards.

One! 

Two!

ThreeFourFiveSixSeven!

Tentacles grasp and pull, guards' guns stop firing, guards hearts burst from the squeezing pressure.

One!

Two!

ThreeFourFiveSixSeven!

From its seven mouths come seven tongues, tongues that are lined with needles, like a cactus, but only if that cactus had been grown in Lucifer's own garden plot, and even then only by a particularly malicious gardener!

Three arms waving, five legs stomping, seven tentacles grabbing, too-many-heads-having, the Beast dispatches the guards.  Only a few of the audience have been crushed by it, although some probably will die from having been lit on fire by its breath.

In the melee, I close my eyes, but even then, I can still see the Beast.

It is looking at me. 

"YOU!" a voice says.

It is not the voice of the Beast.

______________________________________________________

YOU get to help Andrew pick what happens next!  I'll leave it wide open and see what you, and Andrew, come up with.

Remember: click this link to GET TEMPORARY ANNE FREE!  I promise nobody will suck out your eyeballs*!

*Promise not valid in the 6th, 14th, and 17th dimensions.

--Briane Pagel

"That's a lot of infinity!":  http://www.nonsportsmanlikeconduct.com

"I sometimes call him Pumpkin Pie.": http://www.thinkingthelions.com

"In my defense, I didn't know what whores were" : http://www.troublewithroy.com

This has been a production of the Vince Lombardi fanfic group:  http://www.nonsportsman.com

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

 So you heard the man. Leave suggestions in the comment section about where the story goes from here. I'll pick what I like best and pass it on to Briane. Part 3 of his story on the run will appear on Laws of Gravity on September 18. Make sure you check it out!

To continue on with the FREE! stuff, today is also the release of "Part Thirty-two: The Gate"! Oh, we're so close to the end, now; can't you taste it? Okay, please don't do that. Seriously, get your tongue off of your monitor. Do you know how dirty that thing is? Yeah, I see that those dried coffee spots where you sloshed your coffee two weeks ago and didn't bother to clean it off. And that other thing... oh, man, I don't even know what that is! Don't you ever clean your monitor? It's not a science experiment!

Anyway...

Here is the list of today's FREE! Shadow Spinner offerings:

"Part Thirty-two: The Gate" (also FREE! tomorrow, Tuesday, September 17)

"Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes"

"Part Thirty: Called in Judgement"

"Part Twenty-nine: Loss"

"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"

"Part Twenty-two: The Undying"

"Part Twenty-one: The Chase"

"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"

"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"

"Part Fifteen: Food of the Garden"

"Part Ten: The Broken Window"

"Part Nine: The Shadow of the Tree"

There you go, twelve FREE! parts, today. And don't forget to grab Anne while you can!

The Tour with a Camera (a Star Wars post)

If you've been following me for any length of time, you will know that the Lucasfilm offices and Skywalker Ranch are not places unfamiliar to me. There have been two problems with this:
1. Not owning a cellphone (and, thus, an always on hand camera), I have not ever had a camera with me when I've been. Usually, this isn't an issue as we're not going to be any place really cool, anyway; however, there have been a few events where a camera would have come in handy:

• the premier event for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -- lots of cool props on hand at the gathering after the movie
• the premier event for the debut of Star Wars: The Clone Wars -- since it was animated, there were no props, but there was a lot of the pre-vis models and sketches and stuff
• that time George Lucas said "howdy" to me -- okay, so a camera would have gotten me in trouble that time, but since I didn't have one with me...

2. I've never actually been on a tour of either facility. Wait a minute... had never.

So, yeah, I finally got a tour of the Lucasfilm offices down at the Presidio in San Francisco and I took my camera with me. Although that was kind of scary. You have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before getting to go in (and get a security badge and all that) and that includes not taking any pictures. I  hadn't met up with my friend, yet, as I was getting my badge and stuff, but one of the main reasons for the tour is that I wanted to get some pictures, so not getting to take any would kind of defeat the point. Not that it would be a reason not to get the tour, but, you know, PICTURES! But I signed the agreement and went looking around for my friend. No, no, not in the building. Back outside, since I figured he was looking for me (and I couldn't actually go in without him, anyway). Once I found him, I was, like, "Dude! I just signed a thing saying no pictures. Does that mean no pictures?" And he was, like, "Well, I don't think so."

Yeah, that put my mind at ease.

But we stayed to, basically, public areas where there was no sensitive Episode VII stuff going on, so we're pretty sure the pictures are okay. And a couple of the security dudes seem to think it was okay, too, so, finally, I have some pictures. However, if you never hear from me again, you'll know what happened. I just hope they put me in a cell not connected to one of the garbage compactors.

Until then, here is your (partial) photographic tour of some of the cooler things I saw there:

Yeah, you have to pretty cool to get your own Lego head made for you by the Lego company.

The most famous blaster in the galaxy.

A statue to Ray Harryhausen, possibly the "Father of Stop-motion photography."

The Yoda fountain.

He's offering me cookies. (Recognize the shirt Briane?)

What? You thought it was all Star Wars?

Okay, it's a lot Star Wars.

But this is not Star Wars. (Knowing might win you points in my so far unimplemented point system.)

These should look familiar to at least some of you.

This guy kept trying to sell me stamps.

This is so sad.

Anyone recognize these guys? They don't come with batteries.
Well, that's about it for the pics (that I'm going to share), so everyone

"Beee goood."

Long Hard Times To Come (an Indie Life post)

I'm not sure of the precise reason, but, when I think of the life of the independent author, this is the song that comes to mind. Okay, the actual reason, the apparent reason is a great part of it: "On this lonely road, trying to make it home... I see them long, hard times to come." It really says it all, even if there is more than just that in the song that resonates with me and this path.

The life of the indie writer is a long, hard, lonely road. Well, unless you just get lucky right at the start. Most of us, though, will not get lucky and any success we achieve will come at the end of a long, hard road.

Right now, I am feeling that long, hard road, and it doesn't feel as if I brought enough water along.

But I knew what I was getting into, or onto, when I started this journey; I do not, however, think a lot of writers who choose to go the indie route really know what kind of journey they're starting. At the beginning, there is some hold-your-breath expectation to be one of those lucky few that have the stars align and light your path with gold-showered success as soon as you step onto the path. You learn very quickly, after that, to breathe... or pick yourself up off of the ground after you've passed out.

And the real problem with the indie road is that it's not, yet, well-trod, no matter how many people are on it. The paths of traditional publishing are well established, paved even, not that they are any less long and hard these days. The buses and limos that used to pick authors up along the way on the traditional road are becoming fewer and fewer and more and more authors are being forced to walk that road rather than catching a ride. But, still, it's clearly marked, and it's hard to get lost.

The road for the indie author, though, is more like a big field, a huge field, with people wandering around in it trying to figure out in which direction to go. There are what amounts to game tracks here and there where several authors have gone before, but those paths fade away and become unclear and harder to follow as the terrain becomes rough. We're just out there trying to figure out which way to go, full of questions without answers, so much so that we forget the questions.

This journey's too long, I'm looking for some answers

So much time stressing, I forget the questions

The real issue is that too many people set out without an actual destination, a goal, in mind beyond that vague hope for fame and fortune. Fame and fortune, though, are not a destination. It may happen but not because there's a road that leads there. Not a seen road, anyway; it's more like an unseen highway that may or may not coincide with the road you're on. If you are, in fact, on a road and not just wandering around hoping to find fame and fortune as if you are in an Arkansas diamond field.

So how do you find your way?

Find your mountain. Pick your point on the horizon and go towards it. You don't have to worry about anyone else's path that way. If you find a path that is going in the same direction, great, but, if you find what looks like a great path but it's leading in some other direction, don't take it. Stick to your path, your road, no matter how long and hard it is. The only question is, "What is your mountain?"

Mine, right now, which is only like a foothill in the overall picture, is finishing Brother's Keeper. That's my point on the horizon. Of course, right now, I'm still working my way off of the path that was called Shadow Spinner, and I have to finish crossing that plateau now that I'm on the top before I can start climbing the next hill, but I am ready to start on that next hill.

So, yeah, you climb your first mountain and find out that it was only just a foothill of a much larger mountain, but, you know what, that's okay. That's the way it goes. And you keep climbing. And you keep climbing. And you keep climbing. You make it past each peak, and you keep going, and, one day, you find that you have reached the top, the real top, and you cross over to the other side, the side with all the people, and they see you come across in the sunrise, you who have never been there before, and they look up at you and wonder about your "overnight success," because, remember, you weren't there the day before, and you look down the long, long, slope behind you, you look back at the hills and valleys, all of which you crossed, and you kind of smile because you know how long "overnight" really was. But it's okay, because you're there.

Or maybe not, because, for you, maybe there is another mountain, and you see that the long, hard road keeps going and that there are more "Long Hard Times To Come." But that, too, is okay. You rest a bit, refill your water bottles, and set your feet back on the path and keep going.

(This post has been brought to you, in part, by Indie Life.)

The Monday That Will Be and the Monday That Is

The Monday That Will Be

As many of you know, I am not big on cover reveals or book debuts. As I've explained in probably more detail than anyone was actually interested in reading, this is due to the idea of promoting something that I have no actual experience with, and I don't want to be telling, or even suggesting, anyone to buy something that isn't actually a worthwhile product. On the other side of that, I don't actually ask people to promo my stuff before they've experienced it, either. I figure that's a fair trade.

However, I am participating in Briane Pagel's tour for his newest book, Temporary Anne.

I'm making an exception to my rule for two reasons:
1. I like almost everything Briane writes (sorry, the Stupid Pineapple failed to grab me (that's not me calling the Pineapple stupid; that's the name of the story)). I'd strongly suggest Eclipse; it will warp your mind as you try to figure out what's really happening. Or happened.
2. It's not really an exception as Briane sent me promo copy of Anne, which I'm reading right now so I should (assuming nothing catastrophic happens this week) have a review ready for my stop on the tour. That would be stop #2.

Here's the full tour list:

1. life is good -- Friday, Sept. 13
2. StrangePegs -- Monday, Sept. 16
3. Laws of Gravity -- Wednesday, Sept. 18
4. The Blutonian Death Egg -- Friday, Sept. 20
5. Nigel G. Mitchell -- Monday, Sept. 23
6. Jessica Bell -- Thursday, Sept. 26
7. Sandra Ulbrich Almazan --Monday, Sept. 30
8. Jess's Book Blog -- Thursday, Oct. 3
9. Lara Schiffbauer's Motivation for Creation -- Monday, Oct. 7
10. P. T. Dilloways' Blog -- Thursday, Oct. 10

At any rate, Briane is someone that gets overlooked a lot because of the length of his posts. He's the only guy around (that I know of) that consistently has longer posts than me (not including John Scalzi, who does, also, sometimes have longer posts than me, but, also, puts up tons of posts with almost no words a all). Briane is well worth reading. Although his posts are often rambling, they are generally full of all sorts of insight and frequently make me LOL. In fact, my wife has come to expect that if I am LOLing while blog reading that I am reading one of Briane's posts. She's probably correct about 99% of the time.

Briane's books, on the other hand, while frequently philosophical in nature (though not always), are not rambling. He tells good stories even if he does sometimes need an editor to help him with punctuation and stuff. He does not need an editor to help him with his stories. At all. And his books are all less than a buck which is almost nothing so they're well worth picking up. AND reading.

So, yeah, come back next week... just don't let Anne catch you.

The Monday That Is

Look! It's another Monday and another Shadow Spinner release! The end is near...
Here's the list of today's FREE! parts:
(NEW) "Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes" (also FREE! tomorrow, Tuesday, Sept. 10)
"Part Thirty: Called in Judgement"
"Part Twenty-nine: Loss"
"Part Twenty-eight: The Shadow Place"
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"
"Part Twenty-two: The Undying"
"Part Twenty-one: The Chase"
"Part Twenty: The Sword of Fire"
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"
"Part Fifteen: Food of the Garden"
"Part Fourteen: Anger and Laughter"
"Part Ten: The Broken Window"
"Part Nine: The Shadow of the Tree"
"Part Eight: The Cold and The Dark"
Well, that's only 14 FREE! parts this time, but I can only make available what Amazon allows me to make available. Remember, the first collection, "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1-5)" is available!

"Shadow Spinner: Collection 2: The Man with No Eyes (Parts 6-12)" will be coming soon.

A Good Day For This Movie To Die Hard

Despite the bad reviews, I figured I should probably see A Good Day to Die Hard since I've seen all of the other Die Hard movies and liked at least one of them. Okay, maybe two of them. However, I went in with low expectations. This is the series in which the protagonist survives the explosion of a boat by jumping into the water next to the boat. Because, you know, being in the water totally protects you from explosions in the water. So, not only do we have that, but this one, the 5th (and I'd totally lost track, at this point, that this was the 5th one), was actually getting pretty horrible reviews.

It seems I did not lower my expectations far enough. Good Day fails at pretty much every level of story telling and movie making. Well, except for the explosions. It has plenty of those, which, in the Michael Bay theory of movie making, is all you need to make a good movie. I have to suppose John Moore and Skip Woods (the director and writer, respectively) are Bay disciples.

The first real mistake the movie makes is having the movie open with McClane's son instead of with McClane himself. It's Die Hard; we're here to see John McClane, not junior. To make it worse, they just throw the audience into the middle of a situation for which there is no context. This is one of the reasons I hate that whole "start in the middle of the action" "rule." They definitely did that with this movie. However, not knowing anything about the characters or the situation, there is no way real way to know whom we should be caring about, so we don't really care about anyone. Of course, this all ends, as we come to find out, with John Jr. (Jack) in a Russian prison. And, as my wife said, "What? I didn't even know he had a son."

[As a total aside, the plot arc includes the exposition for a reason. When you skip that part so that you can "start in the middle of the action," you skip the part where the audience gains empathy for the protagonist and comes to care for him or her. Without an exposition, you do not have a complete story, and that's just bad writing.]

The issue here is that there is an expectation that we will care about Jack because John cares about Jack. Except we don't have any context, really, for John caring about Jack since he's barely mentioned or seen in the other movies. Conveniently enough, John has suddenly chosen this moment to care about Jack, whom he has not spoken to in years, and has had one of his old cop buddies track Jack down for him just at the time that Jack is arrested and thrown into a Russian prison. Of course, there is no good reason why McClane's cop friend should be able to find out that undercover CIA agent Jack McClane has been thrown into a top Russian prison. Especially within what seems to be hours of it happening. Not that McClane even knows that his son is CIA.

Being John McClane, he just jumps on a plane to Russia with some vague expectation that he will be able to connect with his son when he gets there. His son that is in a top, possibly top secret, Russian prison. And, of course, without planning it, he happens to arrive on the day that his son is going to appear in Russian court as a witness against the guy that Jack is supposed to be saving. And, also of course, he stumbles into the middle of a prison break/abduction of the guy that Jack is supposed to be saving (and also testifying against).

This is where we expect, I guess, John McClane to become "yippee-ki-yay" John instead of old, tired John that we find at the beginning of the movie. But we don't get that. No, what we get is John chasing his son around during the middle of a fire fight trying to talk to him about how sorry he is that he wasn't there for him when he was a kid. I think it was supposed to be funny. I think. But it didn't even rise to the level of ludicrous as John meanders through the bullets and explosions and, eventually, when his son takes off in a vehicle without him, steals a truck to follow his son while yelling, "I'm not through talking to you!"

And through all of this we have been given no real reason as to why this guy Jack needs to save is so important other than that the CIA want him and that some muckety-muck Russian wants him dead. Or abducted. And the guy's daughter is involved, except we're not supposed to know that, but as soon as the dude tells McClane that he has a daughter, I knew it was his daughter that was the woman in the group trying to capture and/or kill the dude. And also of course no one turns out to be on the sides they're presented to be on except McClane, the sadist bad guy, and the dead people.

Possibly the worst bit, which is saying a lot considering how terribly the movie began, is when Jack overhears John telling the Russian dude about how bad a parent he was and how bad he feels about it and how all he wants to do is make everything right with Jack. But, since, Jack hears John saying this, we are spared any action or work on the part of John to repair his relationship with his son, because his son, now, understands that his dad worked all the time because of how much he loved Jack. And, then, of course, they bond over killing the bad guys and everything is okay.

I'm not making it out to be as bad as it really is. It was bad enough that, before the hour mark, my wife decided that she was through with the movie. I'm not actually sure why I finished watching it other than the fact that I have a hard time stopping something once I've started it no matter how bad it is. That this movie was bad wasn't even the worst part about it. It just felt completely inauthentic. McClane's actions didn't feel authentic (Who, really, just jumps in a plane and flies to Russia with the vague plan of getting in to see someone in a Russian prison? John was a cop; he, theoretically, knows how this stuff works and it's beyond far-fetched that he, even being John McClane, would just hop in a plane without contacting the State Department or something). The fact that Jack refers to his father as "McClane" didn't feel authentic (Seriously? "Damn you, McClane" is the best they could come up with for Jack to say? I buy him calling his father "John" but the whole "McClane was a stretch the rubber band couldn't take). The whole conflict of the movie involving Russia and nukes didn't feel authentic. It's not the 80s anymore.

So, yeah, give me more of escaping explosions by jumping into the water next to the boat that's exploding. At least that was just a brief moment of stupidity unlike the stupidity that was this movie from beginning to end. And that doesn't even cover how dumb the title is, because, if you're going to use the phrase "a good day to die," you need to actually have it be relevant to the movie, but no... no relation at all. Just a cool title. But, then, a cool title doesn't make a cool movie.

The Illusion of Plums (an IWSG post)

When I was a kid, I loved grapes. Which is not to say that I don't like grapes now; I do. But, when I was a kid, I loved them. There was no better option for fruit, not even watermelon (which I can no longer eat). Well... except plums.

Plums were like... they were like great, big, giant grapes (yes, I know those are redundant adjectives, but that's how I thought of them as a kid, and kids like to use redundant adjectives). That's what they looked like, anyway, giant, non-green grapes, so my cousins and I were always excited about the prospect of plums.

There was only one problem. They were always a disappointment. Plums were never as good as they looked like they ought to be. As I grew up, I continued to love the idea of plums, but the reality of them was always such a disappointment. They just kind of don't have any flavor.

I started to kind of hate them.

I thought the whole thing with the plums was just me, and, every so often, I'd buy a few just to see, you know, if anything had changed. Maybe, just one time, I would eat one, and it would be as good as it looked. That's never happened. At some point after some years of marriage, while doing that hopeful "maybe this time" thing, I found out that my wife felt the same way about plums as I do.

It wasn't just me! And, well, maybe it's everyone. People just eating plums because they look like they ought to be the most awesome thing ever when they're really not. My daughter, though, she likes them, but, then, she is the one in our family who really likes processed foods, and plums are the closest thing you can get to processed food flavor in a fresh fruit. So, well, maybe people really do like plums since people mostly really like processed stuff better than natural stuff. Hence McDonald's.

As far as I'm concerned, plums are merely an illusion. A fabrication of something better than they actually are. Sort of like people. Mostly, that's okay, that thing with people being an illusion of whom they'd like to be rather than what they really are. I think we just accept that and go about our business. But it's disappointing when you're actually forced to take a bite... um, I mean, deal with someone and you're confronted with the reality that we try to ignore on a daily basis.

I'm sure everyone has had to deal with that in some form or another. It's just difficult to avoid. Like that time in college when my cousin called me at 1:00am because he had a flat and would I please come change it for him. Because, really, me? as the mechanic guy? I'm just not that guy. But I dragged myself out of bed and drove the 45 minutes to where he was and I fixed his tire in the middle of the night. A week later, I needed a ride to somewhere we were both going, and I was mostly on his way to the place, and he totally blew me off and wouldn't give me a ride. Yeah, I'm sure everyone has had their "plum" incidents.

Back when I was first writing The House on the Corner, I ran into this kind of stuff a lot. I was reading chapters of the unfinished book in one of my kids' classes, so I had people asking me about the book all the time, about when it would be finished, and about how they just couldn't wait to buy a copy. So, eventually, it was finished and, then, it was available as a book... and, foolishly, I thought some of those people were actually going to buy the book. Sure, I knew not all of the would, but I expected some sales. I think I had two, so, I guess, technically, that was some. But it was very disappointing. It wasn't like I'd been pushing the book on anyone or trying to get them to buy it or anything. These were people that were coming up to me, initiating the conversation, and saying, "I can't wait." And, you know, I get that they were trying to be supportive, but they were doing it by offering me an illusion. By looking better than they were.

I was reminded of all of this through my recent experience with collecting the first five Shadow Spinner parts into one edition: "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1-5)." I hate asking people for favors or for help because of the... "plumness" of people, and that situation is why. It makes it difficult, sometimes, to think that any of this is worth the bother. [Not the writing, I'm not talking about that. I about talking about this. >spreads arms out to encompass the blog<] I mean, not that I went out in the middle of the night to change the tire on my cousin's car so that he would "return the favor" and give me a ride later--I didn't know I'd even need that ride--but you'd think that getting up in the middle of the night, driving nearly an hour, and changing a tire in the dark (and only the second flat I'd ever changed) would earn you some consideration, right? But that's the fault in the thinking. You can't expect any consideration or anything back. You do what you do because you do it, just like I would have gone to help my cousin even if I'd known he'd refuse to give me a ride the next week. And I'll keep doing what I do because it's what I do and I want to help other authors out by doing reviews and putting their stories in my stuff so that other people that might not normally come across that author will get the chance to do so and, well, whatever else I think of to help out.

But, still, sometimes it might be nice if people were more like nectarines...

[This is an IWSG post.]

The Things People Make (a Fair post) and a Judgement

I'm a fairly crafty person. I mean that in that I enjoy craft-type activities, not that I'm all plotty and crafty like a fox or anything. And, yes, I know the phrase is "crazy like a fox," but it's the same kind of thing. Anyway, for a long time at my kids' school, I was kind of known as the crafty guy and, when working in their classes, teachers always wanted me to lead the craft projects. Now, I'm known as the writer guy and people have mostly forgotten about all of the craft project stuff. But, well, you can see that I gravitate toward artistic expression because of my "crafty" tab up at the top of the page there.

All of that to say that I enjoy seeing the kinds of things people build and make. Seeing where imagination can take someone. Actually, that's one of the reasons I really like getting these Imagination Room stories, like the one by Bryan Pedas, "Like An Axe Through Bone," that's at the end of "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1-5);" I like seeing the places I haven't thought of that can come from something I initially envisioned.

But I digress (even if you should go buy Collection 1 (and review it))... The Fair is always full of all kinds of cool things that people have made, so I thought I'd show off a few of the ones I like best from this year.

If you look behind the clock on the left, you will also see an impressive hand-carved dolphin sculpture.

And, now, for some cakes! There were actually more cakes than I felt like taking pictures of, but I did get pictures of the ones I think were most impressive.

The dragon only got 2nd place.

To this, which is awesome.

And, look even Max!

A few other cool things:

There were also tons of cool paintings, sketches, and photographs, but I didn't take pictures of that stuff.

Also, today: "Part Thirty: Called in Judgement"! Yes, the big 3-0, and it's FREE! today (Monday, September 2 and tomorrow (Tuesday, September 3)! And don't forget, "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1-5)" is also available for the low, low price of only $1.99!

Here's the complete list of today's FREE! offerings:

"Part Thirty: Called in Judgement"

"Part Twenty-nine: Loss"

"Part Twenty-eight: The Shadow Place"

"Part Twenty-seven: Leaving"

"Part Twenty-two: The Undying"

"Part Twenty-one: The Chase"

"Part Twenty: The Sword of Fire"

"Part Nineteen: Lost in the Garden"

"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"

"Part Fifteen: Food of the Garden"

"Part Fourteen: Anger and Laughter"

"Part Thirteen: The Clearing"

"Part Nine: The Shadow of the Tree"

"Part Eight: The Cold and The Dark"

"Part Seven: The Moth and the Shadow"

That's 15 of the 30 parts for FREE! this week, which is, actually, more than half of the available parts since the first five have been collected. We're getting close to the end! Don't miss out!