Daily Archives: January 15, 2014

Farewell, Something Lovely

I swear I didn’t plan this. I was recently contacted by my old friend, the talented Fraser Ronald, who’s launched a Kickstarter for a collection of hardboiled sword-and-sorcery stories titled Farewell, Something Lovely. That this post comes right after I read Farewell, My Lovely and wrote a stupid post titled “Farewell, My Fence Rail” can only mean that synchronicity is at work. It’s also a sign that you need Fraser’s collection!

If you’ve been visiting the site over the last week or so, you’ll have noted how the interconnection between sword-and-sorcery and hardboiled pops up from time to time. Charles Rutledge in particular called it out in the comments section from the More on Noir post. Fraser hits that interconnection with both barrels… er, long swords.

Anyway, I strongly urge you to take a look at Fraser Ronald’s Kickstarter, which includes some art from my old friend Storn Cook. Don’t delay — there aren’t too many days left to join in!

Farewell, My Fence Rail

The writing day started out quite well. I rose without aid of an alarm clock and put in  a half hour of good work before I roused everyone else. Things got interesting after I returned from taking one of my children to school.

I have a three rail horse fence. One of my horses loves to press against the top rail to get the grass on the other side. When I pulled in this morning I found he had pressed against BOTH the top and middle rails and cracked them apart so that they hung down and a vast gap was there revealed (Our fence is old, and this happens occasionally, but usually only a rail at a time.) If he had cared to do so Trigger could have stopped munching at the grass and gone running wild and free. (And naked, but that’s not such a big deal if you’re a horse.)

In any case, Trigger’s adventure necessitated  a horse fence repair job that occupied my time until 12:30 or so, because after I fixed the broken boards I discovered three others that were close to going. I figured that as long as I was out there with all the tools I might as well head off future troubles

Despite all that, I got a lot of good work in once I finally made it back inside. And I must say, if I had to work on a fence in January, the weather THIS week is a far better time for it than say, last week when the temperature was frequently below zero. Today I ended up taking my jacket and hat off while I worked.