Judging by the numbers, I’m getting a big influx of new visitors here. My blog’s been running for a number of years at this point, and it might be a challenge to get the lay of the land without a whole lot of poking around. Even frequent visitors might not have dug deep enough to find some of my favorite posts.
That’s why I thought I’d take most of today’s post space to show you around.
Or, at least, continues to receive some of the attention he deserves courtesy of a new line of e-reprints. A new review went live the other day at The Post Modern Pulp Blog (maintained by the talented Jack Badelaire, who uses his film degree about as well as I use mine).
I’ve talked about Fargo several times on my own blog, probably most prominently in this post, if you want the lowdown on why I hold the character in such high regard. But if you don’t have time for a long essay or for link hopping, I’ll give you the summary. Ben Haas, writing as John Benteen, created a men’s adventure series in the ’70s about a globe-trotting mercenary, earning his trade in the days before the Great War. It’s high octane, lean and muscular, and packs more power than you’d think formula fiction ever capable of. And it IS formula, but as my friend Chris Hocking says re: Haas, there’s cheeseburgers, and then there’s cheeseburgers whipped up by a master chef.
It’s the day of New Year’s Eve, and I’m answering a vague compulsion I have to consider the last 365 days. I had some laughs, and some good times, and overall I’m lucky, but you know, I’m glad I’m putting a lot of it behind me.
I guess the best thing for me this year it is that I’ve learned to be a little more balanced so that I’m not careening from deadline to deadline. I have more time to connect with my wife and kids. I got some nagging health problems squared away so that I’m sleeping pretty well and have fairly normal energy levels again.
My family and I got to visit New York, and Philadelphia, and my wife and daughter and I spent some time in the Florida theme parks. My daughter got a lead role in a play at her school and my son got a lead role in a play at his, and they’re both doing pretty well in school. More importantly, they’re turning into great human beings who will, all-too-soon now, be moving out of the house. And I think that’s what gets me the most. How fast it’s all shooting by. How much I need to savor what is here before me. I’ve been working so hard on trying to turn this crazy writing thing into a career that I’ve sometimes lost track of the fact the kids are getting older every day.
I’m going to log off. A little house cleaning lies before me, then a trip to the post office, then some writing time. Come evening the family and I will probably watch the ball drop on the TV screen, and then hopefully we’ll just laze around relaxing together on the first day of the new year.
Here’s hoping you and yours get a new year off to a good start.
With the year winding down, I thought I’d write up a post on the Jones blog itself.
In the last 12 months I’ve gone from 2500 unique visitors a month to well over 7000 unique vistors a month, and the number of visits, hits, and page views has more than quadrupled. I want to thank you for that — although, judging from many of the links, many of those visiting come from Russian sites COMPLETELY unrelated to anything here on this blog. I still don’t quite understand why that’s happening. But, hey, if you’re an English reading Russian and want to visit, you’re welcome.
The most popular posts are a strange grab bag.
Battle Academy in action. Be warned — it is LOTS of fun.
With the children off for a few days, I plan on spending some time gaming or playing music or watching movies with them, although, old as they are, they’ll probably want some alone time as well — playing Minecraft, or in my son’s case, playing piano or guitar — so I’ll get some writing in.
I’d hoped to be coming to a close on the rough draft of this first Hearthstones book by year end, and while I’m closing in, I’m not that close. December, with all its running people to appointments and gift shopping and minor home disasters, slowed down the process. Still, there’s a good chance that I’ll have five of the seven parts drafted (some of which will be finely polished) by December 31st, which will mean a January completion date.
Speaking of the looming end of year, my Arabian fantasies of Dabir and Asim have made a few “best of lists” I wanted to share.
First, they’re mentioned over on Fantastical Imaginations. Second, while you’ll usually find detailed restaurant and wine reviews at The Passionate Foodie, you’ll also find some thoughtful book posts, and I made the fantasy year’s best list there.
Whew! It’s been a busy week. The snow has melted here near the Sea of Monsters, though, and the weather is about as nice as you can expect for Indiana in the winter.
Unless you’re interested in a blow-by-blow of day-to-day activities, I don’t have much to report this week. What with shopping for presents and picking a high school kid up half way through the day (finals week), writing has been pretty sporadic.
An English composition student burned a CD of music for me back when I was teaching some years ago. He turned me on to a group called The Hush Sound which I always liked, but upon revisiting, have decided that I extra plus like. Even better, it looks like while I wasn’t paying attention they got back together and are preparing to release a new album.
Anyway, if you like guitar power pop — sort of Jellyfish crossed with Fountains of Wayne — you can visit here, or check out this great song. And as always, Captain Pike is ready to answer your questions with sage wisdom.
I’m not a particularly religious person, nor were my parents, but I was brought up celebrating Christmas as a kind of cultural tradition. We put up a tree and sang carols and exchanged gifts. My mother always emphasized that we were to take pleasure in picking out gifts for others, moreover, that this was more important than awaiting for gifts yourself.
That was a harder sell to little kids, but I think something must have stuck with me because as I got older the choosing of gifts became my chief joy at Christmas season.
At this stage of my life I am fortunate enough to possess most of the material things that I truly want (as these are usually books or music my wants have rarely broken the bank). It’s been a long time since I was waiting eagerly to see what awaited me under the Christmas tree, but I’ve been able to get excited about getting things for the rest of the family, and watching their surprised and pleased expressions.
It’s been one of THOSE days. This morning as I was getting the kids ready for school I had a nice little writing post composed in my head, but then I discovered we had no Internet service. Before that got resolved, my wife discovered she’d left her work calendar at home with a bunch of important papers, so I ran that in to her.
Then, because we MAY need passports for the kids in the coming year I looked in the appropriate place for their birth certificates and found that they were gone!
A frantic search ensued which involved much mess that will now have to be cleaned up. In the end, though, the birth certificates were right where they were supposed to be and I’d actually been LOOKING at them earlier. They are so different from mine, issued in the late ’60s, that for some reason I didn’t recognize them for what they were and assumed I’d done something stupid and put them in the wrong place.
In the old days, assuming that I’d not put something back where it belonged was always the most logical conclusion, but I’ve gotten more organized now and need to remember to step back before I naturally accept blame and run off to put out a fire.
Anyway, it’s after 1o and I still need to feed the horses, so there’ll be no fascinating site update today, because as soon as I get back in from the windswept snowscape that is currently our yard, I need to write some prose. All is well, no one here at Jones central is hurt or in any danger. We’ve got it good. A little smoother sailing would have been nice, but I’ll just move forward.
Having recently spent some time at the Disney Hollywood Studios, I feel compelled to offer some suggestions to provide attractions of greater interest, as apart from a nifty roller coaster and a terrifying plunge ride, the theme park seems mostly to consist of shops all selling more or less the same thing.
1. How about a James Bond ride? You could climb into an Aston Martin simulator and back up Double-O Seven and fight Goldfinger’s brother, Copperfinger, or maybe even Goldsting.
2. So you have Star Wars. Why not Star Trek? As a matter of fact, why not model off of Epcot’s Mission: Space, and create a simulator ride that’s a shuttlecraft to the Enterprise? (Although I think what everyone would REALLY want would be the chance to have a lirpa fight to the death, or maybe a styrfoam rock fight with a Gorn.)
3. As long as we’re talking about science fiction, why not a ride that’s an homage to ’70s science fiction greats? You could flee from some Sandmen or play Rollerball. Maybe the reason the carts always turn up empty in the ride is that they deposit all the visitors in Soylent Green vats…
Wow, what a busy week. I was working on my truck until 9:00 Wednesday night and spent part of Thursday morning tinkering some more until I finally gave up and had it towed to the service center. Turns out there was a single bad wire, so, apart from the tow fee things weren’t nearly as bad as I’d feared.
While I’m far behind, I have once again been reminded of how I ought to be thankful of all the things that I take for granted. Say, time to work, or a working truck, or my health.
Today I’m turning attention back to my Dabir and Asim story for Kaiju Rising. I’m delighted that the funding level not only reached the stretch goal that activated my story, but that ALL the stretch goals for the anthology have now been met. I find myself in the odd position of having a story I’m not through writing already planned for an antho.
I believe I’ve mentioned before that writing a character who’s a genius is tricky because I’m not a genius. And right now I’ve written poor Dabir and Asim into a corner and am scratching my head trying to get them out. Dabir, of course, will put it all together quickly over the course of the story, but Howard doesn’t have it yet.
Still, though, the day is good. Wonderful weather here. And I had a delightful accidental phone conversation this morning. Allow me to explain. My phone is a constant irritant. The way that the screen touch buttons are arranged means that if I put the phone to my face while talking I can accidentally mute my phone, activate the speaker, block the mic, or even dial random strings of digits. While finishing a chat with my wife while she drove into work I accidentally chin dialed Lou Anders.