Fridays suck….

…Just sayin’.

You know, my birthday IS coming up soon…

Anyone who knows me, know what a huge fan of Peter S. Beagle I am. His stories are magical–stories that defined that particular cliche. The Last Unicorn will always be my favorite. So much so, that when I ordered my new iPod this morning, I requested engraving on the back that will read “…and then the Unicorns came out of the sea.” Which is my favorite scene from that wonderful book. Tamsin, is also amazing, as well as The Innkeeper’s Song. A Fine and Private Place is my next tackling. I’ve also read some of his short stories, but none of these particular stories…

Conlan Press is putting out an effort to try to sell out of the publisher’s limited printing of 5,500 copies, to encourage another larger printing. If you are a fan of Peter Beagle, go get yourself a copy before March 31st (Conlan Press’s deadline date). If you’re not a fan, you should be. You will be hard pressed to find an author better than he.

By the way, this would make a great birthday present for me. (HINT HINT!) So if you love me, pick me up a copy (unsigned is perfectly fine, though signed would be fabulous, and personalization doesn’t really matter, but if you want to, go ahead). If you decide to do this, I ask only two things. First, buy from this link, and this link only. Buying through Conlan Press ensures that Peter gets a larger percentage of the profits. (“More than half the purchase price on this product goes to directly support Peter S. Beagle and his works”–works which include the next Last Unicorn novel!!!) Also, please let any of my other friends know you’re getting it, because I cannot read more than one book at a time.

If you do this, know that I will love you forever.

I’ve been doing some behind-the-scenes work on my novel, which, unfortunately doesn’t increase my word count. Listening to audio dramas probably doesn’t help either.

But I’ve been posting the story on my other blog (it’s private and password protected), and I’ve been receiving some great feedback from other graduates. The story, so far, has been very well received, and I’ve gotten some great suggestions on making it stronger. Woo!

Audio Dramas Making a Comeback!

I’m a huge fan of audio dramas from the 30s and 40s, my favorite being The Shadow, but I also enjoyed Suspense, and a lot of the comedies.

I’d heard of audio dramas making a comeback with the onset of podcasting, so yesterday I started looking into it.

And found a gold mine!

Not only can you find all sorts of the golden oldies on iTunes podcasting, but people are actually putting forth the effort of creating new shows!

Pendant Productions being a prime example. I’m listening to their Batman: The Ace of Detectives audio drama. It’s actually very good. I’m not a huge fan of Tim Drake in this incarnation, but I’m told he gets better as  the show goes on (which will be a huge relief). Batman is pretty close-some of the dialogue wouldn’t be of my choosing, and the Joker is really great. Catwoman is also good.

They also do Superman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Martian Manhunter. Right now, I’m listening to the Imperium Crossover, which, given the large cast of characters, is HUGE! So far, very good.

There’s also no advertising, so the producters, writers, and voice actors must all do this for free. Heck, this sounds like it would be a ton of fun, so where do I sign up?

If you’ve got any inclination towards audio dramas, I encourage you to check out Pendant Productions. Besides their original productions (which I haven’t checked out yet…one audio drama at a time), and the ones I mentioned above, they have Catwoman, Star Trek, Star Wars, James Bond and Indiana Jones.

How cool is that?

EDIT: As I’m currently listening to the crossover, I must say Superman will be next on my list. He’s entertaining, and he’s got a good voice actor.

8, 497.  That’s the word count for my short story, “The Black Widow,” which I wrote several years ago. That is my best word count. Now, I’ve written more words than that, namely for character and background development for gaming. But those are what we’ll call “shorts.” They are not whole stories, even tied together. So, 8,497.

I topped 10k words today. 10,935 to be precise. I beat my best by 2,000 words. If that’s not an achievement, I don’t know what is. The best part though?

This story isn’t done. Nowhere near. The story is shaping up to be an amazing tale, and I’m excited about it. Click the “Demonbane” tab at the top for some more information.

I wrote a scene today that I’ve been having trouble getting myself to write. It’s not an easy scene. It is, at times, quite painful, and until today, I just couldn’t see it in my head. But I needed that scene, because it’s where we begin to understand the main character.

It’s a beautiful scene. I’m sure it’ll get better once I come back to it at revision, but overall, I’m very pleased with how it came out.

Ah, Ohio History…

While working on something today relating to Ohio history, I came upon these interesting pieces of information, copied from the Wikipedia entry on Ohio:

On February 19, 1803, President Jefferson signed an act of Congress that approved Ohio’s boundaries and constitution. However, Congress had never passed a resolution formally admitting Ohio as the 17th state. The current custom of Congress declaring an official date of statehood did not begin until 1812, with Louisiana’s admission as the 18th state. Although no formal resolution of admission was required, when the oversight was discovered in 1953, Ohio congressman George H. Bender introduced a bill in Congress to admit Ohio to the Union retroactive to March 1, 1803. At a special session at the old state capital in Chillicothe, the Ohio state legislature approved a new petition for statehood that was delivered to Washington, D.C. on horseback. On August 7, 1953 (the year of Ohio’s 150th anniversary), President Eisenhower signed an act that officially declared March 1, 1803 the date of Ohio’s admittance into the Union.^[22]

Emphasis mine. You can’t say we Ohioans don’t understand the use of good dramatics, huh? Speaking of drama, I then read this:

In 1835, Ohio fought with Michigan in the Toledo War, a mostly bloodless boundary war over the Toledo Strip. Congress intervened and, as a condition for admittance as a state of the Union, Michigan was forced to accept the western two-thirds of the Upper Peninsula, in addition to the eastern third that was already part of the state, in exchange for giving up its claim to the Toledo Strip.

See, the Ohio-Michigan blood feud existed long before the Buckeyes and the Wolverines! It’s in our blood to dislike those Michiganians–they tried to steal land from us!

Further investigation finds that both Ohio and Michigan to be a bunch of whiney pansies. I mean, come ON! They basically yelled at and insulted each other across imaginary and fluctuating borders.  The ominously named Battle of Phillips Corners was, in fact, a group of Michigan militia chasing after a group of Ohio surveyors, with the militia firing their muskets into the air. No one died–no even even got hurt. But, Ohio and Michigan stood on the brink of an all-out war. (Imagine it–maybe we’d throw chickens and launch cows at each other. Or, even better, build corn missile launchers!) Finally, after a series of one-upmanships by both states, blood was shed–Two Stickney (…were the other two sons named One and Three??) was stabbed–with a PEN KNIFE. His injuries “were not life threatening.”

President Andrew Jackson (who had been siding with Ohio the whole time in a political move to get Ohio’s support in upcoming Democratic elections) eventually saw the whole affair to an end with Ohio getting the Toledo strip, and Michigan getting the rest of the Upper Penisula.

By the way, Ohio ended up voting for the Whig Party’s candidate in the 1836 election–NOT with Andrew Jackson as he’d hoped. Go figure.

And the moral of the story?

When you put Michiganians and Ohioans together, rivers will run red…

…with something that probably smells like, and looks, like ketchup.