This week we've been working our way through the Lord of the Rings again. I absolutely love those movies (even, dare I say it, more than the books), but haven't watched them in the past few years. Most importantly, it was the first time I'd seen them since reading the Silmarillion, Tolkien's history of the First Age of Middle-Earth.

I didn't care too much for the Silmarillion when I read it - it was okay, but uneven, and read very dry. Having read it gave me a much deeper appreciation for Tolkien's world as presented in LOTR, though - it's clear there's a lot of depth to it, but knowing the exact details of that depth made me enjoy it a lot more. I would recommend it to fans that haven't read it already.

Another #fridayflash original by Ryan Harron:

Just as Norman had gotten himself settled in, the man in the tall hat sat in front of him. It was curious, as far as hats went; obviously something that at one point had been popular, but not a style that he was familiar with. The stylishness of it wasn't really the point, though. Norman's main concern with the hat was that it was completely blocking his field of vision.
He checked his watch. Norman's usual behaviour, when this sort of thing happened, was to just suffer in silent indignation. He had had many experiences, in theaters, cinemas, and concert halls, where he was only ever able to see the edges of what was happening. This was a special occasion, however. He had come too far to miss out on this one.
Working up all the courage that he had, Norman tapped the man on the shoulder, which was promptly ignored. He tapped again, this time clearly his throat as loudly and as obviously as he could.
The man turned around and stared ruefully at Norman. “Do you mind?” he asked, in a way that made it clear to Norman that was he actually meant was “fuck you”.
“Could you, uhm, maybe, possibly, take your hat off?” Norman asked.
The man stared at him for a moment. “No, I'm afraid I really couldn't,” he finally said, his slow, British accent revealing him as being from the Victorian era.
“Why not?” Norman asked, surprised.
“I'm afraid,” the man said, “that my physician has advised me I must keep my hair covered at all times. doing otherwise causes a chill on the brain, you know, and who knows what sorts of nasty complaints that could give rise to?”
Norman sighed. Victorians were always terrible about this sort of thing.
“Well,” he said, “it's just that ... Well, I can't really see what's going on. Your hat is getting in the way.”
“Oh, dear boy, that is terrible,” the man in the hat said, shaking his head slightly. “Could you maybe move to another location?”
“There's nowhere else,” Norman said. “All the other seats are taken.”
“Oh, that's terribly unfortunate,” the man said. “Wish there was something I could to be of assistance to you.”
“Well,” Norman said, “you could always take the hat off.”
Norman received another of the “fuck you” looks. “I'm afraid not, as I have explained to you,” the man said. “Now, if you don't mind, the show's about to start.”
The man turned around, ignoring Norman. Norman once again tried the tapping and throat-clearing techniques, but again nothing happened. Norman then went to extreme measures, grabbing the hat and lifting it off of the man's head.
The man quickly turned around, snatching the hat away from Norman. “What do you think you're doing?” he half-asked, half-yelled.
Norman had had enough. “Listen, buddy,” he said, “I didn't travel back to the dawn of time just to look at the back of your fool head! Take the damn thing off!”
The man took the hat off, and as he did, Norman felt a wave of accomplishment roll over him. Then, without any warning or ceremony, the Big Bang began. All of the spectators stood up, rushing to press themselves against the glass of the temporal observation booth to get the best view possible. It was all more beautiful than Norman had imagined it would be, and he was so glad he'd devoted his life to building that time machine..

Just in time for Hallowe'en, Damnation Books has released a new collection of poems and short stories called The Zombie Cookbook.

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This one feels a little unfinished, but I've run out of time to edit it, so it's going to have to be good enough :o)

"The Family Stew"
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I've entered the seventh-inning stretch of pre-fatherhood; our baby's due in only another nine weeks. Generally, I think I've done a fairly okay job of preparing myself mentally and emotionally for what's coming next: I've acknowledged that I won't be perfect at it, and that that's okay, and have thought about the sacrifices I'm going to have to make. I know that there are some things that I won't really be able to prepare for, and will have to just pick up on the fly after the baby's here. That all being said, there are a few essential Dadly areas that I am still woefully unprepared for.
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These are all essential components of dadhood, doubtlessly, but I've luckily still got a few months left to improve on them.

I've never believed in love at first sight, but there she was, staring at me from across the piazza as I sipped a glass of '97 Tunina. As soon as my eyes met hers I knew that everything that I had ever thought about love was going right out the window.

She slowly walked across the Piazza de Spagna. I could hear her every step, the heels of her shoes creating a rhythm that my heart raced to match. All the other sounds throughout the piazza fell away, and I knew that she was crossing it just to talk to me.

I rose up from the cafe table just as she approached, bowing to her.

“Buona sera,” she said with a voice that was sweet, yet raspy. The words seemed to dance off her tongue and across her lips, mamboing into my ears with a gentle caress.

“Uh, hi,” I stammered out in response. Even after all these years in Rome, I still default to English when I get nervous.

Our timeless moment was shattered by the shrill sound of a police whistle. She snapped her head around in the direction of the whistle in a way that told me that, whatever they wanted her for, she was guilty. I didn't care. In that moment I would have fought Rome's entire police force to keep her safe.

She didn't seem to agree that that was the best courses of action, however. As quick as she could, she reached into her purse, pulling out a pendant on a simple gold chain, a blank business card, and a pen. She hastily put the pendant around her neck, and then wrote something down on the business card.

“We'll have to continue this another time, mi amore,” she said, a smile breaking across her beautiful face. “Meet me here,” she said, handing the card to me. “Meet me here, and meet me then.”

I looked at the card – it had a set of latitude and longitude coordinates, as well as a date – March 14, 1956. I paused for a moment to marvel at how exquisite her handwriting was, even when she was so rushed, and then looked up from the card in just enough time to see her clasping the pendant around her neck. There was a bright flash of light, and then she was gone.

Crap, I thought to myself. I'm going to need a time machine.

(author's note: this story's doing double-duty as a 100_words story and a fridayflash!)
(autho's second note: this week's story contains scenes of violence against cloned dinosaurs. Reader discretion is advised. )


Louis watched through his rifle’s scope as the Velociraptor fell to the ground, and then gently lay the rifle down on the ground. Perfecting the cloning process was, by far, the best idea that the ranch had ever had, and the hours he had invested in waiting in the clearing had definitely proved themselves worthwhile. He licked his lips as he heard the dinosaur’s death rattle, and approached the still-warm body. Let PETA and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dinosaurs hew and cry all they wanted – the taste of theropod steak would be well worth it.

FanExpo is this weekend!  There's a lot of stuff I'm looking forward to see, including:

Friday
4pm - PocketModels is doing free demos of the Star Wars collectible miniatures game, which is kind of like another game I like (Pirates of the Spanish Main) but with, obviously, Star Wars. 
7pm - There's a panel called "literary monsters" that's looking at modern horror fiction
9pm - Star Trek: Of Gods and Men screening.   This is a modern kind of fan fiction but kind of not thing with Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koening, Tim Russ, and other DS9/Voyager people which was written by some former DS9 writers.  Could be interesting?

Saturday
11:30 am - Q&A with Max Brooks (author of the excellent Zombie Survival Guide and the I'm-told-it's-excellent-but-haven't-read-it World War Z)
12pm - more game demo stuff with Monsterpocalypse, a daikaiju-themed tabletop game
1pm - DCU Editorial Q&A
1pm - Magic the Gathering tournament that I'm not sure if I'll be going to - I love playing Magic, but whenever I go to events like this I end up with a "it's not the band I hate, it's their fans" kind of feeling
 4:30pm - screening of "Heart of an Empire", a documentary about Vader's 501st Legion.  Not sure if I'll be going to this one either, as I've got to get down by the CNE before 7:30 for the show we're going to see.

Sunday's kind of up in the air - not entirely sure if I'll be going.  Might have other stuff to do, but there is some cool stuff happening, at the same time.  Looking at the schedule, though, I'm not sure how people handle larger cons like Dragon-Con and San Diego.  Even with this there's enough happening that I can't see everything I'd like to.
(Actually, Friday's kind of up in the air too, as my pregnant wife will be with me and might not want to do too much walking around and will have little interest in the panels I want to see)

There was some brief discussion of reincarnation on twitter earlier today, and I was completely remiss by not mentioning the Gnostic understanding of it.

Basically, Gnosticism posits that there's two gods: a god of light and a god of darkness, eternally in conflict with one another. Our universe began when a piece of the god of light was separated from the whole, and the god of darkness created our world in order to confuse and trap the light. That light continues to exist, and is constantly being reborn into new bodies and diffused as more and more humanity comes into existence (because when there was 1m people on Earth, each of us had 1/(1.0x10^-9) of The Light inside us.  With 6 billion humans on Earth, we each have 1/(6.0x10^-12) of that same original light.  In order to rescue the piece of the light that was trapped in Earth, the Light sent an avatar to us to teach us the correct way to live and return ourselves to the light rather than getting eternally caught up in in the entrapping cycle of death and rebirth.

(Basically, the whole story's a retcon of Genesis - Yahweh is the "dark god", and the avatar of light is Jesus. It is also the basic plot of The Matrix.)

I'm not sure how many wine connoisseurs there are on my friends list, but I figured I would ask anyways to see if anyone has any thoughts on the matter.

So, with the baby coming later this year, I was hoping to commemorate the experience, by  purchasing some wine near the time of the birth, and allowing it to age until the child's 21st birthday.

Now, the only problem with this is that I have absolutely no experience keeping wine, or knowing what wines would be good for an experiment like this.  Would anyone have any tips for a neophyte on wine storage, or recommendations on what varietals of wine would be good for this (a white would be exceptionally good, but I understand they don't age well)?

(I was posting about this on twitter earlier today. Sorry to anyone bored by the double posting).

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: The Vampire Squid.






Some interesting facts about the vampire squid (taken from its wikipedia page):

• Its body is covered entirely in light-producing organs that are capable of producing disorienting flashes of light for fractions of a second to several minutes in duration.
• It can survive at depths of up to 900 metres; at this depth, oxygen levels are at only 3% of surface oxygen saturation
• If threatened, instead of ink, a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus containing innumerable orbs of blue light is ejected from the arm tips.
• Reproduction occurs when the male squid hydraulically injects a satchel of sperm into the female
• Newly-born vampire squid are completely transparent.

It's stuff like this that makes writing fiction difficult in some ways, because no matter what weird, bizarre stuff you come up with, there's something out there in the real world that's even weirder.

First, an explanation about this week's story: my twitterpal Jennifer Hudock posted a blog entry yesterday about writing prompts, and included an example prompt of
Main character: A jealous husband
Antagonist: A Giant Squid
Setting: Outer space

I decided to use that prompt in my story this week. The end result was ... let's say "a little unusual".
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I've created a profile on www.smashwords.com, an online service that allows authors to sell ebook versions of their works. No 'new' content on there, just some of the same short stories that are available on my website, but formatted in a way that they can be read on your Kindle, Iphone, PDA, and etc. It seems like an interesting and useful service.

Check my work out, if you're so inclined, at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/harron

Note: this week's story contains some bawdy humour, as well as (arguably) Grecian blasphemy. It's based on a writing prompt that a writing colleague of mine posted to the Flash Fiction Friday group: Start a story with the line It was a dark and stormy night..
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It was a dark and stormy night. They all were now, Zeus thought to himself, now that she had left. He stood out in the storm for hours, hoping that the rain could drown him and free him of his pain.

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Flash Fiction Fridays are still going well - So far we've had 22 people join the Google group that I set up for it, and we're getting, on average, around a half-dozen submissions each week - around 1/2 from Nano people, and the other 1/2 from people that aren't, as far as I'm aware, regular writers.  There's been some really great pieces posted in the group so far

What's really interesting, though, is that for me the google group was something of an afterthought - I had originally thought it would primarily be a twitter thing, with people posting their stories on their blogs/websites and hashtagging them with #flashfictionfriday on twitter, but someone asked about having a dedicated space for them, and the google group was formed.  Just this Friday, though, I learned that there's another twitter hashtag going around, #fridayflash, of people doing pretty much the same thing, and that one started only a couple of weeks before the one I started.  I don't know if it's an example of synchronicity, or just coincidence, but either way I get a bunch of new fiction to read every week, so I'm not complaining :o)

Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing, a weekly podcast on the world of (wait for it) science fiction literature, has returned after a brief hiatus. This is very good news, as AiSFP has become one of the main ways I find out about new and upcoming books that I might like.

Their first episode back, for example, featured this really interesting-sounding book called Norse Code, by Greg Van Eekhout; I'm a sucker for puns as titles and stories featuring Ragnorok, so this one is definitely on my radar.

Check their return out at   http://www.adventuresinscifipublishing.com/2009/07/aisfp-78-greg-van-eekhout/ if sci-fi literature's your bag.

In some circles, it's a little dangerous to admit this, but I'm a Monopoly fan. I'm willing to acknowledge some of the problems that the game has, especially with regards to its length, the fact that players get eliminated, and the role that luck plays in the endgame. I realize all those things, but I like it all the same – it's the game that I first cut my gaming teeth on, and as such I'll always love it. So, when I heard there was a new iteration of the game called Monopoly City that came out, I had to give it a play.

 

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So, I mentioned in a post last week that I was planning on listening to all of the Polaris shortlist entries before the awards are handed out in September.  Not only that, but I'm planning on doing it along with a few other Toronto-area music fans and writers, AND we're going to be doing a blog about it.  I'm seeing this as a great music-learning opportunity for me, as I have only one of the albums shortlisted (Metric's Fantasies) and aside from Metric and Joel Plaskett, the other shortlist nominees are all cyphers to me.

http://www.polarisprize.blogspot.com

So, if you have an interest in the Polaris Prize, and want to learn some more about the nominees from the perspectives of people who are fans of music, rather than being music industry professionals or critics, check the site out over the summer.  We'll be picking one album per week (starting this week with Hey Rosetta's Into Your Blood) and each providing our thoughts on it.  This could end up being something really damn cool.

I realized that I started using fff as a journal tag for flash fiction Fridays, but that's not going to work, as other people already use that acronym.  F3 sounds nice, so I'm going to use that instead.

( And now, on with our story! )

We went down to Fort Erie last night to see the Trews.  It was a great show by them, as always, although Colin sounded like he's coming down with a cold or something.

Opening act was a group called Crash Karma:
Which was a little weird for me, but kind of cool at the same time, because it featured Jeff Burrows from the Tea Party and Edwin from I Mother Earth (among others).  Tea Party were the first band that I really got into the habit of seeing repeatedly (21 shows, I think, by the time they broke up?), as well as being the first band that I got into trading bootlegs of and of being part of a 'fan community'.  I Mother Earth was one of my favourite mid-90s rock bands as well.  So it was kind of interesting seeing them in a "whatever happened to" sort of way.

At the same time, I got a bit of a feeling that they weren't really using their talents to their fullest (JB especially), so it was a little sad - I think I would have enjoyed the band a lot more if there were other people involved, because  I wouldn't have had the same expectations.