Due to a variety of events, most recently a busted water heater, things have been a little hectic around here. As a consequence, our re-read of Lord Dunsany is on hiatus. Hope your own week went well, and hope to see you back next week.
As with preceding Hardboiled Mondays, Chris Hocking and I are working our way down the master list in alphabetical order. Details and the list are here. And earlier discussions are here.
Today Chris and I are looking at two excellent, little-known, and hard-to-find private eye novels by Barry Fantoni, Mike Dime and Stickman.
If you’ve spent much time on the Black Gate website you’ve probably seen Barbarian Prince get mentioned at least once.
A solo board game from the ’80s designed by Arnold Hendrick, Barbarian Prince is a little like one of those old “choose your own” adventure books, except that the order of events is far more random, for they’re generated by rolling on a number of tables depending upon your location on the map and are partly affected by choices you have made and gear and allies you may have accumulated in your travels.
It never plays the same way twice, and a lot of us find it glorious fun — although it is difficult to win. John O’Neill is a huge fan of the game, and he got me interested some years back when he gave me an extra copy he had lying around.
When I heard rumors of an unofficial redesign over at BoardGameGeek, I dropped by to take a look and was incredibly impressed. Someone — Todd Sanders, as it turns out — had gotten permission to create a new game board, pieces, and redesign the layout of the rule and event books.
The result was brilliant, beautiful, and a completely professional product.
It’s available, free, for anyone who wants to download the files and create their own version of the game (the original version of Barbarian Prince is also available for free download, courtesy of Reaper Miniatures and Dwarfstar Games).
I contacted Todd to learn more about his redesign and what had inspired it, and discovered he was responsible for a number of stunning games of his own creation.
We talked about game design, Print and Play games, and, naturally, Barbarian Prince. Larger versions of the lovely game boards can be seen by clicking on their pictures.
Note: This article is reposted from the Black Gate web site, where it appeared in 2012.
Some stunning work from Heather Jansch.
Bill Ward and I were talking the other day about the vast waves of spam that wash up from the Internet onto our sites and how it could be inspiring. After all, wonderful artwork can be fashioned from driftwood swept in from the sea. Could we do the same with phrases clipped from tens of thousands of messages and “friendly posts” for our blog sites trapped by our spam filters?
Yes. Yes, we could. And surely we have shaped it into art destined to shine like a beacon and illuminate the way for future disciples.
Incidentally, Bill searched for Spam Haiku and found a Haiku site dedicated to the actual food product. Really and truly. Ours is different from that, though. We’re artistic innovators, we are, fashioning masterpieces culled from Internet spam.
Well, maybe not masterpieces. Surely not masterpieces.
They’re not true Haiku,
but perhaps they will amuse.
They fit the meter.
Anyway, our creations can be found below, made entirely from phrases we found in our spam filters. Some were trimmed for size, but it’s surprising how much of it simply worked as it was.
After more than a half dozen years away, I’ve finally returned to East-West Karate, where I earned my Black Belt. I didn’t start from zero, though. I began regular calisthenics in June and noticed how good that made me feel each morning. It increased my energy levels overall. After a few months I decided to re-up my membership and start work towards my second degree black belt. (Both of my children have now earned their first degrees, which pleases me mightily.)
Now I’ve been working out at the karate dojo for a month and I’m starting to re-learn the mid-level katas, or forms. I look pretty sloppy still, but it’s nice to be moving through a kata and suddenly have some of the old knowledge snap into place. I’m looking forward to getting crisp with them, relearning the higher level forms, and eventually getting to the final ones required for the second degree black belt test. It’s a year or two off, assuming I can get up to speed fairly quickly, but I don’t care. Just the thought of having the chance to try for a second degree is pretty swell. I thought, after my knee issues, that I’d never be able to do this stuff again.
I’m deep in revision, so there may be a little radio silence here for a while.
I’m head down over the second pass of the second Paizo novel of the summer, smoothing out the rough draft and groaning at the bad stuff. Occasionally I happen upon a chunk of text I like so well I can hardly believe I wrote it, which is always a nice surprise. Will I complete it and a final, third pass, by the end of September? Will Lassie warn the firemen? Will the sherif stop the stagecoach? Probably.
Sometimes I feel a generation removed from the important things that are happening in social media, and then I realize that there are plenty of people my age who ARE engaged in the arguments and concerns raging across Twitter or writer/publisher blogs. It’s just me, not my generation. I always learn about controversies and rumors weeks, months, or years later and have to explain to people I live in a hole. As much as I tell myself, “Och laddie, ye’ve got to change” (without using a terrible Scottish accent) my efforts to alter this aspect of my social behavior continue to fail.
I woke this morning to discover that someone had posted a long screed railing against something I rather liked right here on one of my recent updates.
I deleted the screed immediately. Not because I disagreed with it, but because of its venomous tone.
Its author is clearly a newcomer to the site and is unlikely to revisit. In case he returns, or that other axe-grinders start showing up, the rules about interacting here are pretty simple.
Another Crossing the Streams contest has ended. I’ve chosen my favorite entry, randomly selected another, and sent all entries over to Ari Marmell, who will pull one at random so that one lucky person will get one free book from ALL of the authors in the contest. That grand prize winner will be announced next week some time.
To enter my contest you had to name your favorite sword-and-sorcery/heroic fiction novel/story that has NOT been made into a movie, and explain why it should happen.
Through those entries I read about a lot of work I’d never heard of, and I read about some suggestions I happento agree should long ago have been made into movies… although no one mentioned The Chronicles of Amber, which I personally feel should be converted into a trilogy as soon as possible. I can’t believe it hasn’t happened yet. Oh, if it does, can I PLEASE be involved in the script writing? Even if I’m just like the xerox boy?
There might be a little more radio silence for the next few days as I bear down hard on a writing project. Maybe I’ll set up a few more article reprints…
I don’t know that I’ve been so excited about the premiere of a television show since I was a teenager waiting to see the first episode of a new Star Trek. I had such high hopes for The Next Generation… I know it has its adherents, many among them close friends who tell me that if I just watched to maybe the third, or possibly fourth, season, I’d find great stuff. But when The Next Generation premiered all I knew was that I was seeing a level of quality, script wise, that measured up to the dreadful third season of the original. You know, the season with the space hippies and the men who were half white/half black (but on opposite sides).