It’s Sunday and as such that mean’s it’s time for me to put my weeks’ worth of thoughts, work and encounters all together for your reading pleasure.

This week saw the completion of my 9^th short story entitled ‘The Gift’. Like the previous story, this one involves Jaeger’s background. Well, there is a lot more to it than that of course. I really don’t want to discuss it all that much as it would give away far too many spoilers.

So with Monday rolling around, that means I will be starting work on my 10^th story. I’m undecided if I’m going to go for the story that I have tentatively entitled ‘You’ve got some ‘splaining to do’ or ‘School of Hard Knocks’.

Ironic that I would come up with such a title for the second one, considering that my novel and all my short stories have been about and involving martial artists.

I’ll decide tomorrow which I will start working on. After that I have two more that I wish to write, one entitled ‘The Challenge’ which will involve a group of Drow coming the monastery to challenge Jaeger to a fight. Kind of inspired by the classic Kung Fu plots you see in the old martial arts movies that came out in the 70’s. The other is ‘Meeting’ that involves Jaeger meeting his mother for the first time.

No matter which I decide to start writing, I know ‘The Challenge’ will be the longest out of all the shorts. I think that will be sometime in August that I start that one. I am really hoping to write the first two stories I mentioned before the beginning of August. If I can accomplish that, it will be a total of 11 out of 7 that I wrote in the time period I set for myself.

As for my actual Role Playing work, I added Wisdom from the Wastelands issue 22: Personal Shields to Bookforge last night. I’ll be slowly adding the next issue during the week.

Also I did get one new conversion written and posted today, this one inspired by a villain named Miss Arrow from the Spider-Man comics. A nasty little colony of spiders that can take human guise that I named Ero.

Despite how long the novel is, I decided that I was going to listen to book five of A song of Ice and Fire:  A dance of Dragons. It’s a damn long one, being six parts in total and each part averaging 9 hours in length. I finished two parts last week and I hope to finish the rest of the novel by the end of this week. At least that way I can get one, possibly two more listened to by the end of the month.

And I have a neat movie to recommend. Well two if you want the truth. Last night my wife and I watched ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’. It was very well done, albeit quite cliché when it came to the overall plot. I never bothered watching the second one, having had a serious dislike for the first remake that came out several years previous. After watching this one however, I might have to go and pick up the sequel that came out a few years back.

The other movie was called ‘Bad kids go to Hell’. Think of six kids that are in detention for various misdeeds, but things are not what they seem and stories when seen from a different point of view suddenly take on a whole new meaning. It was quite entertaining and I can’t really say all that much about it without giving away some serious spoilers.

Normally I would have skipped over this flick if it was not for the fact that the guy named Spat (yes that’s his name!) who made my totally awesome Colonial Marine armor from Aliens was the makeup effects wizard on this movie. In fact he’s nearly finished making a set of Recon Armor for my wife and will be shipping it off later this week. I’m quite pleased by this, since he will be heading out for about a month to work on ‘Bad Kids go to Hell 2’.

You know, considering how much I enjoyed the movie, I will be watching this when it becomes available on DVD or hits the theater.

I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Alfonso Maesa to the Skirmisher family! This is the young man from Manila, who I hired to do the cover and the interior work for my novel ‘Sword of Kos: Dark Inheritance’. The work he did for my upcoming novel has been partially (as in cropped) used in the latest Skirmisher release ‘Lives of Kos’.

I really hope that this will mean more work for him in the future. As it stands by this time next week he will have 10 more images to work on for my short stories.

Anyhow, time for my weekly musings. First this week is about the way we talk, and the way characters are portrayed talking in novels.

In many ways I prefer to communicate through this medium. I like to use emails, chats and so forth (although if you ask people who are friends with me on Facebook and other social media outlets, I don’t talk much at all!).

The reason is very simple… I am far more eloquent when I write than when I speak! Many of the words that I know how to use in a sentence and the meanings I have a difficult time in pronouncing the words in real life. Ask me to explain what the word means and I would be hard-pressed to do so – although I could easily use a word in a sentence!

When I do talk I often stammer, sputter, pause, go ‘um’ and so forth. Sometimes my train of thought gets horrifically derailed and I start off on another topic altogether. Frankly I’m not the only one who does this… many people have that issue. I’m certainly not the only one.

And yet in novels the vast majority of the time people are able to speak eloquently and precisely, and never have issues getting across a point or communicating what they want to say.

Kind of unrealistic when it comes right down to it, but that is just the way it is. I am pretty sure that if the characters spoke in a novel the way they would in real life it would be very tedious and annoying.

Just food for thought.

My second rant involves a troll attack that took place last night involving my wife. Let me set a bit of background for you on this. As many of my readers know, I’m into cosplay, and as such I was able to get my wife involved as well. She has shown up at two conventions now dressed as Korra from ‘Avatar: The Legend of Korra’.

I recently began to follow a particular Avatar page. This page often posts photos of people who follow it dressed in Avatar costumes. So I figured, what the hell. I’m a bit of an attention whore, and I admit it. I sent the picture of Rose and I from Comicpalooza in May.

The moderator posted it and the photo got a lot of likes, and several comments about my sneakers. Of course they did not really fit with the Amon costume I was wearing. But it was all good. 

Then some asshole decided to post ‘she should have been wearing the mask’. Say that to me, whatever. I don’t care. I’ve got fairly thick skin. But attack my wife and literally ‘fuck you asshole!’

Still I managed to bite my tongue and I just posted ‘Jealous much?’ Frankly you can say what you want about me. I’ll take it and give it back to you tenfold. But never, EVER insult my wife or my son. Do that in real life and you’ll find yourself in for a world of hurt and that is not simply an threat, that’s a promise.

Anger aside I took a look at the profile of the attacker. Some loser kid. A typical internet troll who has such low self-esteem that the only way the pathetic little loser can feel better about himself is by attacking others from what he assumes to be the safety of his computer.

Fortunately before things could escalate and get ugly, the moderator was kind enough to remove the offensive post.

You may think that my reaction is too much, too strong for such a little insult. As I stated, I have pretty thick skin most of the time but when it comes to my family that’s another story entirely. I have never hidden the fact that my wife means the absolute world to me and that I love her dearly. Simply put we’ve been together for coming on 22 years now and that is an accomplishment very few can come close to.

Anyhow, that’s the danger of the net. Dealing with trolls who have serious personality disorders that can only feel good about themselves when they are causing strife and pain in others.

On that note, it’s time to end this week’s blog. I hope that I haven’t scared any of my readers away after that little rant and rage.

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!