Newsletter? Yes, You Can Get Newsletter!

12 02 2023

My publisher wants me to assemble material to give newsletter subscribers, and I’m having a blast.

If you subscribe to my newsletter, you can look forward to a cut scene from “Fazgood” and “Leadership Advice From The Earl of Weiquand”. Or how about “Fazgood” details translated for AD&D 5e:

Educated Wind

Minor Air Elemental

Armor Class 14 (natural armor)
Hit Points 30
Speed fly 120 ft.
Damage Resistance +1 or better weapons to strike
Damage Immunities poison
Condition Immunities exhaustion, grappled, paralyzed, poisoned, restrained, prone, unconscious
Senses darkvision 90 ft., passive Perception 16
Languages Aerial, Common
Challenge 2 (700 XP)

An Educated Wind looks like swirling columns of cloud with a winsome happy face. Educated Winds are used as messengers by all countries, and as mounts by the Empire of Birqmuir’s Elite Holy Geeks.

You can see drafts of yantra from the “Flesh” books:

Or see those characters and qualities in AD&D 5e:

Astral Projection

1st Level Abjuration

Casting Time: 1 hour

Range: Touch

Components. V, S

Duration: One hour per level unless dispelled or killed.

The caster and one person per five caster levels transcends to the Astral Plane. They are naked and bear no equipment. They replicate their game statistics. Any damage incurred while Astral will reflect in their physical body. Anyone physically encountered while Astral may be brought to the plane if desired; again, one person per five levels of caster. Those Astral may affect their size and perceptions down to the subatomic level, or up to fill the sky. They gain True Sight, including alignment and health.

Plus previously published stories, updates, drawings, and the stuff one gets in a newsletter.

Do you have any suggestions about what to put in my newsletter?





Three New Movies! Would I Have Changed Them?

7 02 2023

Infinity Pool examines of the impact that wealth has on the psyche, and it doesn’t bring any new revelations. The acting is great. Direction is competent. There are two montage segments that needed shortening. Somehow it makes sex with Mia Goth boring. The ending leaves you bleak and gutted.

Writer/director Branden Cronenberg made Antiviral, which had a great premise with a confusing crime plot, and Possessor which is frigging great all the way around. Both deal with the impact technology has on identity and social responsibility. It seems Cronenberg breaks new ground here, but doesn’t provide a new path.

Infinity Pool takes wealthy tourists in a fictitious Balkan nation, allows them to bribe their way out of murders while specially created clones take their punishment. Obviously, it plays more as parable than plausible. Unlike his other movies, Infinity Pool adds nothing to their examinations. What would I change?

“Infinity Pool” would make a neat premise for the next Marvel Deadpool movie. Wade gets a blood transfusion from Lobo. Whenever Wade fights, he bleeds new Deadpools, all of them hostile wiseasses. He would enlist incredibly dangerous, absurd characters to try to wrangle the clones. Eventually, he gets help from someone telepathic to control them, then does some genetic handwavium to reset his blood, and no one learns anything. Damn thing writes itself.

Seriously…. What would I have done? First: the movie leaves you angry at economic disparity and despairing over human corruption. It keeps the story tight and close, over a month’s time following the downfall of a single protagonist. Cool. It really hits its marks there. I’d leave its intentions alone.

The problem is that “clones” are a well-worn idea. Could the author pay to create a hitman and kill the other tourists? He lacks the skills. Could the protagonist to dialogue with himself and reason his way out of his despair? He could discover, no, he could not. This could comment on “self-help” movements, but I believe that Michael Keaton movie did that.

As it stands, I lack the imagination to deepen Cronenberg’s treatment of his premise. A mini-series might allow that, but then it may remind one of the Westworld series.

SKINAMARINK

Skinamarink is bleak, too. Two children awake in the middle of the night to find their parents missing and the doors, windows, and toilet gone. It takes its premise from nightmares and should be viewed not as a movie with a plot arc, but a rendering of a child’s subconscious. When you were a toddler, remember how weird your house was in the middle of the night? How little control you had over anything? How you could just experience the moment, no matter how bewildering the moment?

So an hour and a half of that. The space of the ranch home is almost liminal and the very grain of the darkness is its own character, changing shape and pattern.

In its own way, Skinamarink makes its own statement of love versus existence. The sister’s mutilation is a jump scare. The mom vanishing before our eyes is a slow, gut-dropping shock. But when asked to join them, the boy says “no”. Because leaving known existence will probably be worse.

Knock On The Cabin

This movie examines love versus existence directly. A family must murder one of its members or the world ends. Shaymalan sets his intrinsic Speilberginess to fight his intrinsic Hitchcockiness. If you’ve watched his movies, you already know which wins.

The directing starts out labored (the extreme close ups scream “Look at the tension I’ma buildin'”), but recedes well enough.

Does anyone ask “Hey visionaries? After I’m dead, what happens next?” No, no one does.

What we have here is a dearth of style. The Hollywood releases are elevator pitches, not just plot driven but plot-exclusive. They have no space for mood. I would like to see Skinamarink handle disparity or identity, or more deeply, the value of love over existence.





Preparing for My Improved Writing Career

7 02 2023

It’s a damn truism that to be a successful author, an indulgent spouse can help. They pay the bills. Their job provides health care.

cheerful mature couple dancing and laughing against beige background
Photo by Alex Green on Pexels.com

Presented to illustrate “indulgent spouse”. Not me. Not my spouse.

Lacking a supporter, I stumbled into another truism: you can be your own indulgent spouse if you prepare. I had no idea I was preparing all these years, but it turns out I can now access my mutual funds and 401K and only pay income tax on withdraws. So I have money.

I just got a new job at Redacted Retail. This new place is fantastic. The employees are happy. I’m making more here than I did after nine years at my last job. My shift is evening, which leaves my productive afternoons free. Most of all, I have control over my hours: I can work as few as 24 hours per week and still get health benefits. Which is nice, but I may not need them because I qualify for Medicare.

Getting old was not my idea, but it does seem to have some benefits.

So I’ve set up some conventions! To visit! Where?

Horror on Main – May 26 to 28 Delta Marriott • 245 Shawan Road • Hunt Valley, Maryland 21031

StokerCon – June 15 to 18 Sheraton Pittsburgh Hotel – Station Square 300 West Station Square Drive Pittsburgh, PA

World Fantasy Convention – October 26 to 29. Sheraton Crown Center – 2345 McGee Street, Kansas City MO

I’m lining up a reading or group talk for Horror on Main, “Saints of Flesh” is slated to launch at StokerCon, and the Fazgood novel will launch at World Fantasy. Maybe I can get a reading at StokerCon? I’m new at this and have to see how to line that up.

What else am I doing? I need to clean up my Goodreads and Amazon pages. I’m working with my publisher on my upcoming monthly newsletter which will include nifty giveaways. Want Fazgood, Olivia, or other character stats to use in AD&D 5e? Am doing! How about out-of-print published stories brushed up and improved? Will soon be doing!

Meanwhile, I am annoyed with the Safari browser because I could not access my website dashboard for a week. Google Chrome is a pain on this OS. I’m editing the videos for Galactic Philadelphia and barely have enough hard drive for everything. So a new laptop may be in the offing.

This is quite unnerving, but I am taking all of these changes a day at a time. I’m glad you’re interested enough to come along. Together we will learn some new things.








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