What a week! As I stated last week, with it now July we’re in the hottest month of the year. I am not complaining, believe me. Sooner that I would like to admit it we will be dealing with the cold and snow yet again.

Hate that stuff, thus why I will eventually be snow birding it to the Philippines with my wife so I never have to deal with the winter again!

I digress.

This week saw the completion of ‘Death and Life’ and a little bit of a re-write on ‘Reunion’. I have every intention of starting my 9^th story either tonight after I’m done posting this blog, or tomorrow.

My other RPG work involved getting the last of Wisdom from the Wastelands issue 21: High Tech melee weapons  posted on Bookforge.

I did manage to convert one nasty critter from a series of god-awful but entertaining horror fests called ‘Feast’. I hope to write up at least one next week, but as is always the case, only time will tell in the end.

Also I am going to get Wisdom from the Wastelands issue 22: Personal Shields posted to Bookforge this week. Maybe if things go well I can get two issues. It all depends on how much time I have after work.

Now typically my week is usually very busy and I have movies that I wish to discuss, books that I have read, and so forth.

This week was really quiet for me. I have not seen any new movies – although there are a couple currently in the theater that I would not mind catching, and the only books that I finished were ‘The Walking Dead: Fall of the Governor parts 1 & 2’, and ‘Shattered’ book 7 of the Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne

I was not really impressed with the Walking Dead novels. Since I read the comics and I already knew how things turned out, it was only an average read. It was kind of cool seeing behind the scenes to the events that were not covered in the comics however.

Still – if you want the honest truth, I would like to see new stories set around the characters that we all know and love (or in some cases, hate). Behind the scenes are cool, but not what I want.

As for the Iron Druid novel, I don’t know what it was about the book, but I really found my interest waning. Several times I had to go back and re-listen to a section as my mind drifted away from the book. That is not a good sign, which is more the pity since I really enjoyed the series up to this point.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that most of the series it was all about Atticus, and this time he was switching the point of view between Atticus, Granuaile and Owen.

Am I getting bored? Possibly. I certainly hope that is not the case and that whenever the next novel is ready for release that this does not happen again!

Hey, at least I never have to worry about being disappointed by Harry Dresden! Only downside is the wait between books.... Could be worse though, could be one of the fanatics waiting for the next Song of Ice and Fire novel!

While I was working on my latest short story something occurred to me. Many novels that I have enjoyed have three central characters. That is of course not the rule, but I have seen that trend quite often. A few examples are ‘Outlanders’ by Mark Ellis, The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, the Original Star Trek series, and even The Iron Druid series. All these have three central characters.

I wonder why that is? I have done that myself with my novel and series of short stories. There are three central characters and a plethora of other characters but only three major ones.

Was I influenced by what I have read over the years? That is quite the possibility of course, but who knows.

Just food for thought.

And while I’m at it, one other topic that made me laugh was how grenades, explosions and combat is often portrayed in novels. I have seen the effects of grenades going off on Youtube and other forms of media and let’s just say this – the way Hollywood portrays the effects, it is not the same.

Yes I can understand why it is done that way in movies – you want the scene to be spectacular and keep the masses happy. When a grenade goes off and people get wounded and fall down, not so spectacular. When it goes off with a massive explosion that can lift a car 50 feet into the air and cook the meat off the bones – that is spectacular.

I have grown to accept it but honestly the way many weapon systems are portrayed in not only the movies but in novels it can be really annoying. 

Same with when someone or something is hit by a bullet. More often than not the victim drops like a puppet with the strings cut, but it’s always portrayed with the victim being knocked back a dozen feet in a spectacular fashion with gouts of blood spraying all over the place.

Neat effects, but not realistic (well, that can be argued, depending on the caliber of the weapon being used!).

I try not to follow this pattern with my work, but I’m pretty certain that I’ve made a few mistakes like what I just described.

And while I’m at it, one last thing… never call a magazine a clip!

Anyhow, that’s pretty much all I have to say this week. As always I would like to invite my readers to like my personal Facebook page, and maybe follow me on Twitter if you would feel inclined.

Until next week, peace!