Well...Posting To A Blog...Who'd a Thunk It Was Tuff?

Here it is, more than half way through January and not a single post.

Huh....

Yassee, I'm being promoted at work and I'm in transistion between one position and another. I am taking on new responsibilities while still keeping up with the old ones. I have to train my replacement when he comes along. We've rolled out a new and extremely complicated tracking process for new orders that I had to go through training on, and then go back and train my people on it, then follow up and make sure that we placed it in effect and that we were doing it according to SOP, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

The short tale is that I've been away from the computer in general, I haven't had a lot of time to read, and I've been playing with my Christmas present - an Ipod Touch. I've now just about filled my hard drive with videos of Farscape and Andromeda and I have 3 seasons of Andromeda left to watch.

I've finished about 6 chapters of Fatal Revenant and I just can't seem to stay with it. (Its a VERY heavy read).

Soooooo...

I'm going to chunk Revenant for awhile and read Jennifer Rardin's Once Bitten, Twice Shy and see how that goes. I'll let you know as soon as I can. I'm not quitting, I've just had other priorities temporarily. Things should calm down in February and I'll be boring you once again with my opinions.

Holidays Are Almost Over...Sequel Time!

Let Me In - An Opinion

SQT sent me this book because she was so overwhelmed with books to read, a move to complete, and a life to get back in order after moving. All I can say to that is "Thank God!" (You can catch her blog here)This is an excellent book by a new author. Dang, am I glad she was overwhelmed.

Let Me In is purportedly a vampire novel. And it centers around the life of an 11-year old, very human little boy who has no life, no friends, no hope. That is until a child vampire befriends him. Throughout the whole book, the reader is constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. The characters are self-centered, self-serving, are incapable of any type of lasting, loyal relationship. Those that are are trying to build relationships with those that aren't. Its a hopeless, bleak society in very modern Europe.

Into that comes a 200 year old vampire, and all that this condition entails, that inhabits the body of a 12-year old. The vampire has known loss, betrayal and must feed on human lives to survive. But the author conveys that this might be the only character worth surviving. I don't want to give away too many details, but the vampire and the little boy have the only redeeming relationship in the story. It pulls at the readers heart-strings that a little boy, who only wants to be loved and accepted has to work so hard to emotionally get by. There are tragic characters in abundnace in this story, but it ends on a note of hope and redemption.

My recommendation? Read this one. Its not the most descriptive of literary efforts, but the ideas come across and the caharacters are the people you live, work and play with everyday. It will definitely give you pause to think - my highest form of flattery to any story.

Well, I finally managed to finish reading this incredibly complex tale. I am both floored by the sheer magnitude of this undertaking and a little weary. This turned out to be a LONG book. But don't let that stop you. It is the most imaginative and compelling fantasy I have read sense Tad Williams published Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. I regret that I cannot, in good conscience, give it an all out 5-star rating. But . for me, it lacked a certain joy in the reading that all my 5-star ratings give to me. I remained aloof from the characters, just not quite able to identify completely with any of them except perhaps the tragic father.

Acacia is a kingdom that has, for generations, ruled the Known World. They have subjugated, through combat. magic and treachery, all foes that they have ever come up against. But that was long ago and Acacia has devolved into an extremely corrupt bureaucracy with a weak and accepting monarch who is the current hereditary ruler. He lives with his 4 children and his memories and is ineffective as a ruler. Unfortunately, the conquered have not forgotten their subjugation and one peoples, up-rooted and disinherited after their defeat by the Acacians, have generations-long memories. Part of their defeat was a curse that doesn't let their dead leave the world. They remain conscious and able to communicate their dissatisfaction to their heirs forever. As you might imagine, the heirs find this highly motivating. These heirs form alliances and make deals that are even more heinous than the political expediencies the Acacians have used to hold on to their power over the years.

Oh my goodness, is there a list of intrigue here; Alliances and deals formed with never seen, but assumed evil foreigners; a trading monopoly with allegiance only to its own interests, and a promise of payment for a drug that keeps the populous unrebellious and working for its next fix...a payment in children; a mortal and deadly enemy with alliances with stronger, and more demanding cultures. All of the players have differing emotional baggage, and all have strong and strongly written characters. This is an epic fantasy novel that covers a broad and diverse history of a unique and vastly corrupt world.

My only problem is that there are no innocents, no nobility, no lifestyle worth sacrificing for. Frodo saved Middle Earth, but Frodo essentially did it to save the Shire and the Hobbit lifestyle. While the lifestyles in The Known World are diverse and fascinating, they are all corrupt and vain, except where they are pathetic and miserable. I found it hard to identify with any of the characters that survive long enough to make it to the end of this first piece of the story. All that noted, I still give this a very strong "Read" recommendation. This is only the first part of what promises to be an extremely well-written, well developed story. My feeling is that it is going to be "required" reading for the self-professed fantasy fan. And, at The End of this first book, there are still some fascinating stories that leave you wondering what is going to come next.

Arrrghh! Only 2500 Words and Writer's Block?

Gosh, I'm barely through introducing my main characters and am trying to set up the background on which the story plays out, while building personlaity into the non-narrative characters...and BAM! I can't think of a word to say or rather type. I can go into rather boring detail on the world I am building, but that would actually detract from the story. I need to build indentifiability with one of the main characters - a females character - and I am just drawing a blank. I am going to try jumping ahead in the story and write later chapters - see if that works. Will keep you informed.

I have joined in the race to see if I can write 50,000 words by the end of November. I proabably will win a Pulitzer for best novel, or a Pftui for best cat tray liner, but either way I'm going to write this month just for the pure pleasure of finding out if I can do it.

Its evidently quite the big deal (those in the know already know I'm a rookie - nonw of the proper in-speak patios is issuing from my fingertips), and it looks like the guys that do this go way out of their way to make it fun. Check it out: National Novel Writing Month.

I have posted the first few paragraphs of my epic on site. You can find me as - of course - Texasboyblue. Then you can read it and tell me it sucks...or not...depending on your perspective. I'll keep posting here and making the rounds of blogs, but if its a bit slower than normal, you'll know why.

A Rose by Any Other Name...

I posted on another blog a few days ago in a thread about "Nerd Chic". (If you want to see the post, head on over to Fantasy and SciFi Lovin' Blog.)My user ID on the blog sever is "texasboyblue". One of the other posters asked where I got that moniker. He likened it to a porn star stage name. While I am flattered (sorta), as my grandfather used to say, "It just ain't so."

I am the rarest of American breeds. I am a native Texan having been born in Austin, Texas over 40 years ago. I have lived all my life in one Texas municipality or another and I am guilty of being as over-weeningly proud of these facts as any other native Texan you might meet. That at least explains the "texasboy" part of my ID...

Several (don't ask for a specific number) years ago, I began playing spades (the card game) at The Zone. It was a Microsoft site, so you had to have a Hotmail ID. At the time I was living in San Antonio, so my user ID was texasboy_sa. Years later, I was needing a new user name for a website I was playing with and darned if texasboy_sa wasn't already taken (by me). So, I came up with a variant: texasboyblue. It became, as these things do, my default username. I use it on all kinds of accounts.

So, when I signed up for Blogger.com, it was the handiest tag. Pretty mundane, I know. Maybe I'll tell everybody its my stage name in my next blog...

Bionic Woman Worth Watching...Sorta.

I have DVR'd every episode of this new series (I work every Wednesday night) and loved the darker tenor of the remake. The pwers that be at NBC seem to be moving away from the internecine, internal struggles of the characters and into more "mainstream" drama. I liked it better when the bad guy might not be the bad guy and the good guys were definitely not so very nice sometimes. The last two episodes, there has been no such confusion presented to the audience.

But its a great action series, none the less. How do I know? Simple. My wife hates it. She says I just watch it to watch Michelle Ryan (Jaime Sommers) and Katee Sackhoff fight. While that does make good TV (ahem), I am afraid that I need at least a linear plot in order to stay interested. This one has some depth, with the potential for much more, if the producers will just use it. But, if its action-adventure and the wife hates it, then either its a T&A teaser (which I dislike almost as much as my wife) or else its got some real action to it that makes my wife uncomfartable (she really hates violence). This one is strictly PG, so it must be the latter.

I like it. Its not my favorite show this fall, but its good and I'm gonna keep DVR'ing it...for now.

Reaper Has Me Hooked

I started off watching the premier and have watched it every since. Its hysterical! I hope you have a DVR, because I have learned to stop the action and read the signs in the background - a trick my wife taught me when we were watching "Chuck". We actually read the Buy More motto off the front door when Adam Baldwin walked by it. The hero in "Reaper" hasn't walked by the motto of the Work Bench yet, but some of the thing tacked up on the bulletin board are hysterically funny.

Now, to be truthful, it may be that I can relate to the hilarity at the job so well because I work in a box - the Orange Box - on which the Work Bench is probably conceptualized. It hits dead on excpt that these guys get away with WAY more than anybody where I work. But be that as it may, the real kickers are the tete-a tetes with Satan.

When our hero, whose parents sold his soul to the devil, gets his first vessel to recapture an escaped soul, the Devil offers him the casket with the words, "This was wrought in the bowels of Perdition by the vile and the iniquitous.", Follwed closely after a glance at our hero with, " Oh, that's right. You scored a 600 on your SAT, didn't ya?" And that just sets the mood. Each week, we learn more and more about our heros, his friends that are in on his secret (one of whom asks him "How come nothing cool like that ever happens to me?"), his girlfriend, his parents, and most importantly, The Devil. They give him all the funniest lines.

Kevin Smith is the director/producer (Silent Bob of Jay and Silent Bob fame)and his eye for the funny hasn't dimmed a bit. Ray Wise, who plays Satan, carries it off with impeccable timing and flippant jabs at virtually everybody.

Watch this one and see if its not the sitcom that you wish you could have seen when you were watching "All in The Family".

Wow! Another win of a book!

Many, many thanks go to Tia at The Fantasy Debut for allowing me a chance to win The Book of Joby. Even better, thanks for letting me win! Anyone interested in what looms large on the horizon in terms of Fantasy books should add The Fantasy Debut to their favorites. October Rocks! And so does The Fantasy Debut!