A Vague Announcement and Three Minor Book Reviews
Another week has come and gone, and the reason this blog is a little late is due to it being a holiday here in Canada.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I know the holiday for my American readers is still a little off, but don’t fret, it’ll come soon enough.
Before I get into my usual features, I would like to talk about something. I may have discussed it before, and considering I’ve had a blog going for nearly three years on a weekly basis, odds are pretty good I would have touched upon it before.
I would like to discuss loyalty.
This is something very important to me. I for one am loyal to my friends, the few I call friends. I am also typically loyal to the company I work for, although I have discovered over the past few years that showing loyalty towards a business you work for garners you nothing in return.
I am loyal to Skirmisher, and at this point in time all the gaming material I write I will be giving to Michael for consideration for publication. I will not go to other companies and offer my work to them.
Even if they would end up offering me more money in return.
It’s all about loyalty and sticking with the company I started with. I do what I can to promote my work, and try to garner extra sales, and actually listen to what is suggested to me as ways to increase profit and market ability.
Novels on the other hand… I’ll be going elsewhere. It’s not an issue of loyalty in these cases, it’s a matter of the type of books I am writing not really fitting in with the company.
This also stems to real life. As my readers know, I train and teach Shaolin Kung Fu and have done so for numerous years. When I have a student turn his back on my studio and go to another, I feel a complete lack of loyalty and honestly rightfully so.
Long story, and I really don’t feel like sharing it here, but I am using this to make my point.
Stay loyal to your friends, to the company you work for, to a studio you happen to train in. If you don’t, then at least have a good reason for turning your back on people – let them know when you’re doing such a thing.
Anyhow, on a more personal note, after 12 years of trying to control my glucose levels with medication, I finally had enough and decided to just go for insulin. I’m in great physical shape, but my body has just grown too used to the medication and I’ve already robbed myself of probably about 20 years due to the high blood glucose.
So today I started with the injections. Well… I’ve had mosquito bites that caused me more discomfort. So here’s to me feeling better in the very near future.
My three usual entries for New Mutant Monday went up last week. As of last week I’m up to 74 entries for this year. Well, that’s pretty damn close to 75% finished! They were the Abyssal Biter, Doppler Mullein, and the Horrible Adaptor. The next three are written and have been posted, but I won’t mention them until next week.
And I’m now up to 1200 followers on Twitter. One trend that I have seen as of late which I do not like in the least is how I’m getting people following me who have zero tweets, or have zero followers and are simply looking for followers, or those who have nothing but click-bait links on their pages.
Screw all that shit.
Oh hey – if you haven’t already done so, it would be pretty nice to get a few new likes for my personal author page on Facebook!
And I really need to block Kickstarter posts on my Facebook page… I’m trying to stop from contributing, but there always seems to be a new Kickstarter I want to help with! Here are the Kickstarters I have backed. Most are pretty reasonable when it comes to prices, except for one…
Tavern Masters Card Game, Star Saga, The Pioneers Program, and The Refuge.
Enough already! I’ll need to work overtime in order to pay for these games! At the very least I should have a mess of board games and RPG books coming next year!
Rose and I watched only one movie this long weekend. I ended up watching nearly the entire first season of Luke Cage, and have two episodes left for that show. We watched the Pixar movie ‘Inside Out’.
It was a very well done show, and it did make me laugh a few times, but frankly the show would have been a little too intense for younger viewers. Don’t get me wrong it was a delightful show, but I can see it freaking more than a few kids out.
And if you have a phobia when it comes to clowns….
Before I go over my typical brief reviews of the novels I finished last week, I am announcing here and now I will be commencing work on a new novel at the beginning of November. I can’t really go into details about the book, other than its science fiction, but this is going to be published as I already have a publisher for it.
I figure… two whole months, at the most, to write this book. It also depends on how much time I decide to put into it next month, as NaNoWriMo in 2014 I totally beat, writing 80,000 words in 30 days.
I wonder if I could do the same with this one?
We shall see.
I finished a couple of books last week. First was the third in the Undying Mercenaries series by B.V. Larson called Tech World. It continues to flesh out the universe Mr. Larson has created in which Earth is part of a Galactic Empire and their main trade good are legions of Mercenaries. Specialist McGill finds himself embroiled in cloak and dagger situations while trying to fend off natives who have gone berserk, and are throwing their lives away to destroy the mercenary companies which were brought in to protect and guard their massive trading habitat.
I liked it and already have the 4th book in my wish list for download.
The second book I finished was called the Rings of Haven. This is the second in a series of SF novels in which Earth’s first FTL ship has been thrown far out into the depths of space, far further than ever imagined, and have run into other humans from lost colonies. They need to find supplies, allies and people to man their damaged ship and get it back to Earth as soon as possible.
In this book they head to a system called Haven – pretty much an outlaw system where people come to mine the lucrative rings to make a quick buck.
Allies are found, and the survivors of the Aurora likewise encounter formidable enemies and realize just what kind of situation they are in.
Shorter than normal when it comes to words, but I enjoyed it and will be continuing with the series.
Finally I finished a third novel called Ghost Run, which is an unexpected forth novel in the Day by Day Armageddon series. The stakes are raised even higher when it is discovered a ‘cure’ for the zombie plague has been discovered and it is up to the Commander to make his way inland in order to try and retrieve it.
Lots of action, and although I found it ended far too soon, I would very much like to see this series continue!
I almost finished a fourth book, but it’ll have to wait for next week’s blog.
Oh yeah, the guys had a blast with this week’s D-Infinity podcast ‘Give us Paws’. All about playing animal characters in your favorite game.
So that covers it for this week.
Election time is rapidly approaching, so I hope you folks are ready for it. No matter what, try to stay happy and sane!
Until next week all my best to you!
