Blood Dragons versus Robocop versus Honor Harrington LOL!

Work tally for this week. Progress on sourcebooks – 0%. Progress on short story - ‘Legend’ 100%. Progress on free conversions for the website – ongoing.

As much as I would like to work on the Armor and other sourcebooks, they keep getting pushed back so that I can work on my fiction. I really don’t know how my readers are going to react to that.

So this week I am going to force myself NOT to begin work on the third of eight short stories that I have planned to help promote ‘Sword of Kos: Dark Inheritance’. I’m going to work almost exclusively on the Armor book and see how much work I can finally get completed.

Chris Van Deelen is the author of the Skirmisher Publishing LLC sourcebook Creatures of the Tropical Wastes sourcebook, co-author of its Wisdom from the Wastelands game supplement and contributor to the 'Sword of Kos: Hekaton' Anthology.

Work tally for this week. Progress on sourcebooks – 0%. Progress on short story - ‘Legend’ 100%. Progress on free conversions for the website – ongoing.

As much as I would like to work on the Armor and other sourcebooks, they keep getting pushed back so that I can work on my fiction. I really don’t know how my readers are going to react to that.

So this week I am going to force myself NOT to begin work on the third of eight short stories that I have planned to help promote ‘Sword of Kos: Dark Inheritance’. I’m going to work almost exclusively on the Armor book and see how much work I can finally get completed.

Speaking of short stories, ‘Legend’ is complete (if you couldn’t figure that out already). It’s 10,560 words long. I had originally set a limit of about 10,000 words for each of my stories. However since ‘Reunion’ tallied just over 8,600 words, I decided that if a few stores go slightly over, then so be it.

Then again - I am not going to limit my stories. I feel that if I have lots to say I should be able to say it without having to worry about self-imposed limitations!

And all things considered I was quite happy with how it turned out. Quite funny in a few of the scenes and it gives some good background on the three main characters from my novel.

On top of that, earlier today I posted on this site the second of three short stories that I wrote that were to go along with my zombie trilogy. This one is called ‘Blood Ties’ and, like ‘Training Day’ was a gift for a friend of mine. Next week I will post the last of the three stories that I wrote. That particular story is really long, and it is called ‘Payback’.

Speaking of stories, over a year ago I posted a short story I wrote based in the Alien’s Franchise. I figure since I’m promoting the material that I posted what the hell I might as well promote it as well. The story is called ‘She Who Gives Life’ and was written from the Alien’s point of view.

Sorry about promoting the Wisdom from the Wasteland issue covering advanced rules for radiation. As it turned out my editor was not quite finished with it and as such it got bumped back. The next issue out will be in the next few days if I’m not mistaken and covers the third ‘Plant Mutant’ issue by Derek Holland. My editor has let me know that due to this unforeseen circumstance both of my radiation issues will be back-to-back.

The young Filipino artist Giorgio Alfonso Maesa, who I keep promoting in my blog will find that he has more work cut out for him. I’ve already let him know that I will be commissioning one image for the three zombie stories, and of course one for all of the short stories that I am writing. So once he has finally finished his exams and passes later this month, then I’ll get him to start work on these.

For those of you who happen to be longtime readers of my blogs, you will recall that last weekend I finally got around to setting up my own personal author page on Facebook. It can be found here at Chris Van Deelen.

Anyone who happens to be a friend will also notice that many of the posts will crossover from my personal page to my author page. My personal page will remain just that… personal. That is where I will be posting about my life and my family.

Some things I just don’t honestly feel like sharing with the whole world. Which that in on itself is quite strange because I share so much of my personal life here!

Go figure, eh?

One thing that I had discovered last week was that Image comics is now producing a comic series based on the most excellent Honor Harrington novels by David Weber. The series is called ‘Tales of Honor’ and I picked up the first issue yesterday. The art is by Jung-Geun Yoon and adapted by Matt Hawkins.

Anyone who has read the series will be slightly confused as to how it starts. The comic deals with events that took place in book seven ‘In Enemy Hands’ but also tells the story that started in book one ‘On Basilisk Station’

The art is extremely good and this is a great way to introduce new readers to what is known as ‘Honorverse’.

And for those who are already fans of the series there is an game coming out called ‘The Secret Fleet’. Supposed to be out this month, but when I searched for it through the Apple Store, it was currently not available.

Today my wife and I went to see the remake of ‘Robocop’. As is always the case I was quite skeptical when I heard about it. I’m of the mind that is constantly wondering why Hollywood has to remake movies instead of producing new material. There are countless untold stories out there that are just begging to be made into movies – so why rehash something?

I won’t deny it. We both really enjoyed this movie. The original was extremely violent, was gory as all get out, and very tongue in cheek. It had its own charm. But if I would be honest with my readers, I actually preferred this to the original. I just found that since it did away with the whole tongue in cheek and gore, and concentrated on the story, it was better.

There will be many who would disagree with me on this, but as I have stated in other blogs, this is my personal opinion.

Speaking of 80’s cheese, I have been playing ‘Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon’ for the past week. Take every cliché you remember from 80’s action movies and this has it. The gameplay is fun, and the one-liners, as well as the dialog will bring back fond (or maybe not-so-fond) memories for those of us who grew up with this sort of thing back in the day.

One last thing before I sign off for another week. I have noticed over the past couple of years that many people (not all, of course) are constantly using LOL or ‘laugh out loud’ to finish almost any post that the make on Facebook, forums or other such venues.

I really wish that people would stop and speak out loud what they are typing and then, quite literally, laugh out loud when they have finished speaking.

Many of these people will quickly discover just how incredibly stupid they actually sound. For the hell of it on the way home from the movie earlier today my wife and I were talking about this and we did just that… we spoke a sentence and then laughed.

Yeah, we sounded like a couple of mentally deranged individuals.

I also shared this on my Facebook page and as I had expected I got quite a few people making the typical comments involving lots of LOL. Then again I think I would have been disappointed otherwise.

Just something to mull over folks.

And on that note, until next week, peace!

P.S. This week's image is from the Epilogue. A couple of characters that will have quite the impact in the sequel I will be writing.