Zombie PI’s, Horns and all about Tieflings!
I certainly hope that 2016 has been good to all of my readers thus far! I know it’s been pretty good for me, even though I’ll be on the hunt for a new job after mid-April.
Long story, not worth my time or effort to repeat it here.
So anyhow it’s been a busy week for me. I was not able to write as much as I wanted to for the compilation book, but that was due to my evenings being taken up with various tasks, including preparation for our impending trip overseas for a month.
I have been able to post a few new conversions – The Crimson Horror, The Guardian Tree, and the Eternal. All three are from various movies.
On Monday two more New Mutant Monday entries were posted as well, and yes – big shocker here – two more will be going up tomorrow. I posted the stats for The Siponer and the Sea Tyrant.
Did I misspell the first name? Maybe I did intentionally, maybe I didn’t. I’ll leave that for you to decide. Heh.
The funny thing is, one of my readers sent me a mess of chimera pictures that he wanted to see me stat up, so I am obliging him, and for the next month or so, one of my new creations will be one of these chimera’s.
I’ve even named the group that created them – The Chimerians. I know, wow… original. Maybe someday I’ll get around to writing them up as a faction.
Who am I kidding, we both know that I will. It’s only a matter of when I could find the time to do it.
We finally had a new release this week through Drivethrurpg! This week saw the release of 100 oddities for a Wizards Tower.
And to make matters even BETTER, Skirmisher is now listed on the left hand side under the Publisher list! The company keeps getting bigger and better, and thus my work gains all that much more exposure!
I know, egotistical and kind of greedy. Hey I’ll take what I can. If it means more sales for my work, the better.
Also I posted another original short story this week – it’s a fan fiction, one of the few I’ve written. It’s called ‘Second Encounter’ and it is my tribute to Jonathan Maberry. I know he’ll never read it but I certainly hope others will, and that they will enjoy it.
To be honest it’s some of my best writing!
Next week I’ll be posting another original short story, another fantasy story. It might go up on Friday, it might go up on Saturday. We will see.
Now I have finally started the rewrite on the first of my two zombie novels I have had a chance to see just how much my writing has changed in five years. It’s going to take a month or so for me to re-write this book, as there is a lot of work for me to do.
Least of which is taking proper notes!
Once it is done I will begin to search for an agent. I’ll probably go back to writing a few short stories while I wait or who knows, there are a ton of options open to me right now.
Writing for a friend who is starting a new series of SF adventure novels, working on a SF military novel with another friend, writing more Zombie novels, writing something brand new, finishing book two of my fantasy series… tons of options.
And while I’m on the topic of novels, I managed to finish ‘Slimy Underbelly’ book 4 of the Dan Shambles zombie PI series by Kevin J. Anderson. These books are a great deal of fun to read and I have thoroughly enjoyed all of them, and I have every intention of getting his compilation ‘Working Stiff’ in the very near future.
I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to read next though, going to have to check my list and decide what I want.
Of course now it’s time to bring up what movie or movies I caught over the past week. I got around to watching a movie called ‘Horns’ starring Daniel Radcliffe. I really enjoyed this movie about a man who loses the love of his life and is accused of her murder. The next thing he knows he sprouts a pair of horns from his head and is able to bring out the worst in those he meets, while also being able to see into their minds.
Twisted, funny, and heartbreaking all at once – I really liked this movie a lot!
I guess anyone who has followed my blog knows that I have a thing for Tieflings. One of the three main characters in my two fantasy novels is a Tiefling. The series of short stories that I have been writing is about an Elf who adopts a little Tiefling girl and how much it changes his life.
So earlier this week I saw a post on Facebook about Tieflings. A few people were discussing the creatures and their appearances – after all, many artists over the past couple of editions of D&D have taken a standardized look – tails, long backward-curving horns, typically black eyes and dark red skintones.
The thing about the Tiefling is that they should have a multitude of physical appearances, since so many demons have such varied physical appearances. Why not have a mixture of looks instead of just one type?
If I ever played a Tiefling I would determine what demon was the characters ancestor, and then submit a rough idea of what the character would look like to the GM for his approval. A good GM would help with such a task.
They should look as different from one another as possible! But that is just my view.
Since I’m on the topic of races, a little quirk of mine are some of the completely off-the-wall racial mixtures that some people come up with for their stories, characters or even for publications.
It’s bad enough that all three of my main characters in my fantasy novels are all mixed-breeds. A Tiefling, a Half-Orc and a Half-Drow. But I’ve seen people talk about their half-pixie, half-elf, half unicorn characters (that’s ONE character, so wouldn’t that make it 1/3rd each species, and I pity someone that had sex with a horse!). Or like a book I have that is called Bastards and Bloodlines that have some real doozies like Half-Eagles and Half-Blink Dogs.
The latter… um yeah, guess that Halfling woman shouldn’t have been bent over when a horny blink-dog was around.
God above, what the hell are some of these people thinking?!? There is questionable, and there is ‘okay, that guy must have been toking on a big bong when he came up with that idea’.
Maybe I’m just jaded. And don’t get me started on daughters of famous Drow and the daughter of a Dwarven king that has one eye the same as the mothers, the other the same as the fathers…
And finally before I close this week’s blog there is another topic that is causing an itch in the back of my mind.
Why do some people assume that a strong friendship between two characters of the same sex automatically means they’re gay? I’ll give you two perfect recent examples. Look at Avatar: The Legend of Korra. Just because Korra had a strong friendship with Asami, it doesn’t automatically mean that they’re lesbians! Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. Maybe they’re just really good friends.
Too many fanboy wet dreams?
And now we have the whole Finn and Poe. What is wrong with two men building a strong friendship through adversity? I’ve already seen a lot of pictures of both in gay situations.
Look – I don’t care if someone is gay or not. I will admit that seeing a couple of guys making out is gross to me. I won’t deny it, just like I won’t deny that watching a couple of girls getting it on is the exact opposite and that’s something that I don’t mind.
But Jeeze people, they’re friends! And besides – Finn seems to have the hots for Rey! Can we please just lay off assuming that they’re now friends with benefits?
I can only imagine the kind of slash fiction being written right now.
Actually – forget that… I don’t want to imagine it.
And that’s it for this blog. I hope that everything is going great for all my readers and that this year will hold nothing but good things for each of you.
