Showing posts with label Serpent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Serpent. Show all posts

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Creepy Days in the Garden (a FREE! book day!)

 Garden
When people think of the Garden, they think of Peace. Calm. Perfection.
Eternal Life.
Then they remember the Serpent.
The Garden hadn't suffered the step of a human for millennia upon millennia...
...until Tib came.
It had become the place of the Undying.

Creepy days continue in the Garden, but don't follow Tiberius too closely.
You don't know what he might find.

Get "The Garden" today! For FREE!

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Lego "Justice" (a Fair post)

So, okay, you got me. There's really nothing to do with justice and Lego (by the way, did you know that "Lego" is the plural of "Lego"? (I think I mentioned this before, but I don't feel like checking)) in  this post. At least not together. I suppose if this was a Lego Batman post, we could talk about Lego and justice together, but it's not. No, this is about the Lego exhibit they have every year at the Fair. (We'll get to the justice part in a bit.)

The arts and crafts stuff at the Fair always includes a fairly large Lego exhibit which is something we spend a lot of time at. At least, we spend a lot of time at it in comparison to the other arts and crafts. Mostly, this is the fault of the boys. Actually, my wife and my daughter usually just glance at them and go do something else while I hang out with the boys while they examine every piece. Okay, not every piece, because my younger son has incredible disdain for kids who send in their boxed kits as their entries.

And I get it. It's supposed to be original creations. But, you know, how do you tell that to a six-year-old? Or to his parents that don't really know the difference. Or the judges who are almost certainly old(er) people that barely know what a Lego is. Yeah, I know I'm generalizing and stereotyping, but, since the contest is supposed to be about original creations and (at least) half of the entries (including some that win prizes) are just kits you can buy at the store, I have to assume that these people don't have any working knowledge of Lego.

Anyway... there have been some really incredible builds the last few years. Some guy made a huge model of a scorpion (and, when I say huge, I mean somewhere in the 3-4' long range not counting the tail) from the technic type pieces and, I'm assuming the same guy, some other similar type bug thing another year. I wanted to share pictures of those, because there was nothing quite so impressive this year, but... well, I can't seem to find those pictures. [They got put into storage (off my computer) at some point, and I don't know where they are (probably because we moved since I did that). And I did, actually, spend several hours looking for those discs to no avail.] All of that to say, you'll just have to be satisfied with the pictures of this years' creations (and hope that I find those other pictures at some point in the future).

My son assures me that these are not from kits (and I don't know of any kits of these, but they are so well done, I thought, maybe, there was some older line of military vehicles or something that I didn't know about). As you can see, they won first place in their category.
Yes, someone touched the plane on the left. My son really wanted to fix it, so I had to remind him about his feelings on the subject and whether he'd want someone he didn't know fixing it if it was his creation.
(I wanted to fix it, too.)

And, now, for the most impressive thing this year
(which is nowhere near as impressive as the things from the last couple of years).
That's the Lego show from this year.

My son always wants to enter something, but, when presented with the knowledge that he would have to submit the piece for judging at some point before the Fair starts and that it would be on display for weeks (where other people could touch it and potentially break it), meaning that he could be without his Lego for more than a month, he always decides he'd rather not. Then, he walks around grumbling about how his thing was better than this-or-that thing. Except he never said that about those Lego creatures. That just made him want more Lego so that he could build something that big. I told him when I sell a million books that we'll talk about it.

Speaking of books!

Today is the penultimate release of the Shadow Spinner serialization! Yes, the end is almost here! Want to find out what happens to Tib, Michael, and the Man with No Eyes? Well, this is your chance to do it. Not to mention the Serpent and... the Angel, Uri'el! This is one climax you don't want to miss! Grab "Justice" today!
Here's your list of today's FREE! offerings:
"Part Thirty-three: Justice" (FREE! Monday, September 23 and Tuesday, September 24)
"Part Thirty-two: The Gate"
"Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes"
"Part Thirty: Called in Judgement"
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent"
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"
"Part Twenty-two: The Undying"
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"
That's only nine parts this week, but, hey, running these things for FREE! every week uses up the free days pretty quickly. Next week: "Part Thirty-four: Uri'el" and, maybe, something else new!

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Shadow Spinner, the Serpent, and Keeping Your Serial Crisp

What kind of cereal do you like? For me, right now, I like Grape-Nuts. Mostly, I like Grape-Nuts because I don't like Cheerios. When you only keep non-sugared cereals in your house, it kind of limits your options. Actually, though, I do like Grape-Nuts. My grandfather, I suppose, taught me to like them as a young lad.

My grandfather didn't have any teeth. As long as I knew him, he didn't have any teeth. No, I don't know the story behind that, and, now that I'm thinking about it, I want to know. As a kid, though, it was just one of those things: my grandfather didn't have teeth. He also didn't have most of his right index finger (I do know the story behind that). Let me be clear, here: my grandfather didn't have teeth, and he didn't use dentures. My great-grandmother and one of my aunts also didn't have teeth, but they wore dentures, so we, as kids, didn't think of them as not having teeth. They did; they could just take theirs out. My grandfather didn't have teeth. At all. But he loved Grape-Nuts.

If you've ever had Grape-Nuts, you'll know that they're rather like they sound, except for the "grape" part; no one knows where that came from. Seriously, there are competing theories as to the origin of the name, none of which I'm buying. But, anyway, Grape-Nuts are hard, and I can't actually imagine trying to eat them without teeth. It would be like walking across scattered Lego with your bare feet. [Interesting fact: did you know "Lego" is the plural of "Lego"?] To get around this problem, my grandfather would let them soak in the milk long enough to get soft, which is the first way that I liked eating Grape-Nuts (I like them crunchy these days, though).

All of this to say that, even after 20 minutes in milk, Grape-Nuts still retain their structure; most cereal has turned to mush by that point.

I kind of went on with that longer than I mean to.

The real question, here, was me wondering what it's like for my readers being on part 24 of Shadow Spinner, but, then, I looked up some of Dickens' stuff, and people waited on the piers for the ships to come in with the newspapers that had his stuff serialized, and his stuff had, like, 60 chapters, so I'm not going to worry about it.

Well, I'm not going to worry about it beyond this:
If you're ready, RIGHT NOW! DANG IT!, to find out how it all ends--because there are another 10 chapters to go--well, you can, because Shadow Spinner is now available as a physical book! Yep, it's out there! And, remember, not only do you get Shadow Spinner, but you also get Bryan Pedas' story "Like An Axe Through Bone," available exclusively in the physical copy of Shadow Spinner. Also, what a great cover by Rusty!

If you want to keep on with the serialization, today is the FREE! release of "Part Twenty-four: The Serpent"! Let me just say, things are getting bad for Tib. Seriously bad.

Here is the list of the FREE! offerings for today, Monday, June 24:
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent" (also available tomorrow, Tuesday, June 25)
"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 Fourteen: Anger and Laughter"
"Part Thirteen: The Clearing"
"Part Eleven: The Kiss"
"Part Ten: The Broken Window"
"Part Nine: The Shadow of the Tree"
"Part Eight: The Cold and The Dark"
"Part Seven: The Moth and the Shadow"
"Part Five: The Police Car"
"Part Four: The Cop"
"Part Three: The Bedroom"
"Part Two: The Kitchen Table"
"Part One: The Tunnel"
So that's 19 of the 24 parts for FREE! this week. And you should grab parts 1-5 for sure, because, if all goes according to plan--and I'm not saying it will, because I have three kids at home on summer vacation--those will not be available in this format two weeks from now.