How many words can a squirrel say?

Well, that depends.

But I'm sure all the squirrels currently rampaging unchecked around my yard (thanks for all the holes guys) will agree that there is a definite trend in Fantasy that has for the past five years been getting me down.

Sad face!

It is the death of the trilogy!

Indeed it's true, the trilogy may follow the sagely one shot into the realm of myth soon with so many epics going on even when there's no need to. Am I saying no to all epics? Nope, I'm a Erikson fan to the end even when the writer in me rails at the complete lack of semblance to a normal flowing plot. (That stream of consciousness style of his is great for long mornings on the deck, only memory required and coffee, lots of coffee.) At some point I'll read a Song of Ice and Fire when Martin stops pissing me off by saying stupid crap about Lovecraft. Heck Glenn Cook's Black Company series (highly recommended) is epic fiction all the way. But when you pick them up you know that instantly. No surprises, no shock, no decade long waits not knowing really why.

Some stories need only 1 blook, 1 volume to tell it all fully and to satisfaction. Some need 2 like the Promethean Man books. Others need 3 and trilogies are great and fun and long enough where if I like the world I don't mind reading them all to the exlusion of all others.

But some worlds do end at the final page of book1, 2, or 3. Whether people are loathe to give up the place they are comfortable to write in or publishers would rather keep 1 world that already has an audience and will need less of a push to sell I can't say. As an outsider looking in all I know is there is a definite feel to a book that is stretched too thin, a book that really could never live up to the originals, the ones that hooked me in the first place.

Worlds end be they at book 1 or book 10. Just take me along for the ride and say goodbye quietly and succinctly. Sometimes nothing is as sweet than to see on the final page the end.

The Summer is stealing my internets!

Yes indeed. With the warm weather comes the unavoidable "To do" list. So I've really done nothing but fight my annual war with the weeds, wonder who's going to buy the house next door (and now that I know I want to move), write, level my Druid who is my new favorite character of all time (Rawr I'm a bear!), and look at all my books but not have the time or energy to read one.

Then along came overtime. What with the pool of doom needing financing I threw on my poly-awesome work clothes and sat for 8 hours reading a book.

It was glorious!!!

The Bell at Sealy Head by Patricia McKillip was just what I needed to jump back into reading. (Truth be told reading Steven Erikson's Toll the Hounds took alot out of me. Sometimes that series is just brutal and I need to hold something nice and cuddly afterwards. I'm sure Jupitor is less amused than I am about the whole thing.)

It was like reading a fairy tale without the weirdo stuff. There was talk of books in the book (a sure way to keep me hooked) and most of all there were characters. Not names but actual characters you could tell apart instantly from the text, characters I rooted for and ones who I boo'd at quietly. I wouldn't say the story of a house within a house and worlds trapped within other worlds spoke to the child in me but I was hooked, came home exhausted and stayed up to finish reading it.

Some books I get from the library I love and then ship them back off to the home. Some I stop after a few chapters and just go bleh. Some I stop because I want to buy them and read them again. The Bell at Sealy Head will be purchased because I think when the fall comes and I am once again stuck in my house on a cold rainy November afternoon the people in that little coastal town will help the day and night fly by.

In short I recommend it! Highly! Ooooooo pretty book!

Nicities first

Where were you when you met Cthulu?

I was in Back Bay station trying to not kill the Amtrack driver that was blowing a ridiculously loud horn in a very cramped narrow platform. There, bundled up like some tragic hobo (my fashion sense never does get any better btw) I read against the column about Cthulu and the wonders of the Necronomicon. {Lovecraft is great once you get past the stylized 80 year old writing.}

It seemed like such a pleasant idea that day when I was sure my hearing was gone once the train took off to think of Cthulu waiting at the end of the tunnel to eat the stupid engine car.

I wonder where these guys were when they first discovered the Great Old Ones?

Getting there

I've always like research. Though the topics tend to bounce from things like epic poems to WW1 planes and aeronautic technology (how more people didn't die is a plain miracle IMO), from kendo to gardening.

The more I work and the more effort and time I put into my writing I've started taking it much more seriously. Its still a hobby but now that Warcraft is indefinitely on hold it is my primary one. (The gym and hiking aren't hobbies, they are tools that keep me sane.) So I've been researching.

More than the AW forums I've been reading agent, editor and writer blogs. Other than the obvious leaning towards LiveJournal by nearly the entire community I've been stunned by the sheer amount of words people manage to write. The average daily seems to be around 5K.

More than anything I'm stunned by the sheer amount of output. I thought getting 7-10K a week was fast paced. Admittedly getting 35K is just all kinds of daunting. Now some of them don't have other jobs and have to write as it is their only way to feed themselves and whatever minions they have (we writers always have minions - all of mine are asleep at the moment).

I think in this respect I'm lucky. My day job gives me the security of never having to explain the concept of missing meals to my ducklings and at the same time gives me the opportunity to write. If I can get 30K a month then I foresee all kinds of wordy shenanigans. Now to get cracking, time is awastin'!

Pick your Posion

Now there are a lot of "Cons" in the world. There is ComicCon, DragonCon, ReaderCon, ect. If you know what any of them are then you are a geek. (Better yet you already know that and accept it as part of your DNA.)

But did you ever wonder how geeky you were? Well there's this charty thing that can help! Observe:

Click to read and pick where you belong.

While this is an excellent graph-thing it is missing some categories like those who listen to Alestorm or people who actually build their own airship goggles (not that I've thought about it, nope not me).

So, where do you rank?

(FYI It's a great confidence boost to at least be higher than a furry!)

(Chart by Lore Sjöberg)

Who do you believe in?

(*Be forwarned I'm procrastinating writing the final moments of a very tough scene and I don't feel like getting emotional before work - after work while waiting for rugby is a completely different story. So presenting the rambles!)

Perhaps it's just the circle of friends I have but occasionally the topic of superheroes comes up. This of course covers comics and everything else under the sun. So I present:

The Evolution of My Heroes.

Around the time I was 12 I saw 2 movies that definitely started out my Hero worship. Before then I really liked the Batman tv show and read some Spidey and Batman comics but I also read the Children's Encyclopedia cover to cover so I think at first I liked the words more than the men they were about. Then came The Crow and Wyatt Earp. In 1994 my world twisted a bit. I liked each for different reasons but in the end they don't let evil (and that is what both were fighting) go unanswered even if their methods could be considered morally questionable. When people called one of these a 'murderer' I, in my 12 year old glory would get royally mad and list of people on his side who had been off'd. For good or bad the very gray area they sit in on the chart of morality is interesting to me.

When the superhero movies first started to come back most people (some in my circle included) were enamored with Spiderman. Don't get me wrong, web slinging through NYC would be pretty freaking sweet but he lacks the Grrrness I like in my Superheroes. Enter the next Gen (or the Old Guard I guess since everything is kind of circular) Wolverine and Himura Kenshin.

Wolverine is just all kinds of awesome. Case closed.

Kenshin, especially in the manga is very much aware of what he is and what he has done. Reading it is like watching a great white shark domesticate itself. He's learning how to live with people and how to live with Kenshin. Very tragic stuff at the core but in the end still some of the coolest stuff I had read/watched by my late teens and early 20's. (You get a sense of this from the Samurai X movies but that is really the before picture and manga is the aftermath.)

So that leaves just the late 20's. Who do I root for now? Well, Iron Man for one. I read a good chunk of the comics in Jr. High and loved them. The movies? Awesome and anyone who can blow shit up with a flick of a wrist gets major bonus points on the Hero chart. I really can't wait to see how they work out the cluster^%$# that is the Avengers. (Sorry, I have issues with Captain America.) Tony Stark is morally tortured character with anger issues. I'm really interested to see if they touch on what him so interesting to me in Iron Man 2 (shiny suit aside, ooo shiny.)

My other hero is Karsa Orlong. 99.9% of the world have never heard of him but his all kinds of "In you face" awesome. He's a character in the Malazan Books of the Fallen and he is right now smashing his way through that world in a fury that would make even the Hulk jealous. Is he a hero in the sense of the others stated and anyone your mind can bring up? No. He's a hero like Beowulf is a hero. The kind of hero who's an ass but who also rips off your arm and beats you death with it. (That's Beowulf not Karsa, well not yet anways.) They take the world and make what they want, unapologetically. They are the very opposite of passive. In theory, on the page that's pretty freakin cool and yeah I cheer for Karsa and Beowulf every time they show up.

(FYI I still don't think Wyatt Earp was a murderer. I'm just sayin.)

Old Lady Alert!

Yes, I am an old lady.

/bow

/waves Sluggity at the kids in my yard with old lady menace

As a self professed luddite (seriously if Facebook didn't have Mahjong and Bejeweled on it I'd never log on) I tend to see things like wicked old word processors (the type that actually make sounds when you write, fabulous!) and think "OMG that's the greatest thing ever!" I remember as a kid I had a type writer (probably is still at the lake house actually) and I would write whatever my little mind could think of and if I actually managed to find a spelling error I'd pull the paper out, use an eraser and then try desperately to fit the paper back in to re-type. While this process made stories look like the machine was drunk at the time of publication I think still worked out.

See, that's nostalgia. That's something that if you tell to an 8 year old they'll squint at you and explain about the existence of Microsoft Word.

Now there are a bunch of virtual books out (the Kindle, the Reader, the Nook for instance). This might just be another example of my love for that old type writer but I don't care how many books you can upload onto one of those things, I'll stick with books. The pages, the weight of them, the presence they have all add to the reading experience.

People say "but its such a pain to carry the heavy things". Yeah cause your Danielle Steele book is so much heavier than my Steven Erikson epics that if I do clock someone with them that person is going down.

"But you can have so many."

On a good day I can actually read. Lately I haven't even done that but when I do its always one book at a time. True I do read linguistic texts together with fiction, short stories around the same time as novels but still there's only 1 open at a time. What do I need to carry around 100 for?

Maybe its the greenies who want to save trees. I like trees, I saved 2 last week.

Between libraries, apps, downloads and such the rest of the world is welcome to it. Me, I'm sticking with the books. Besides, when I fall asleep what do I want to hug a mini computer or a tome? Going with the cool cover of vicious man eating dogs.