Reading, nonfiction – Confessions of an Alien Hunter: a Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute

Fiction – Coyote Horizon by Allen Steele and The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six by Jonathan Keats, it's a book of Jewish folklore about the thirty-six righteous people that justify humanity in the mind of God. It's not what you think, these people aren't so virtuous...

Happy Festivus :)   I'm preparing for the feats of strength :b

I picked up a couple of books from the library last Friday to get me through this week. All nonfiction selections: Paul Newman, a Life by Shawn Levy, The Last Indian War, the Nez Perce Story by Elliott West, and Bad Girls, Outlaw Women of the American West by Michael Rutter.

I finished the rewrites and got my short story back from my proofreader this weekend and will do a little polishing before I send it out to Writers of the Future next week. I'm also working on details for a RPG campaign I'll be starting next month (the players are ready to start last week). I don't think some of them realize the work and time involved in creating an original story. Plus I'm futzing with a rules system that I haven't GMed before.

This weekend, at the Sandbaggers Game Club, we finished the Deadwood 1876 RPG. Only one player character was killed in the finally. I tried to get a few more, I really did. But they foiled the plans of the men from Yankton to fix the elections for mayor and sheriff and take over Deadwood. We will return to Deadwood in the future.

Plans for Spring 2010: finish a 3500 word short story for MisCon writer's workshop. shadowhelm , Patty Briggs and Harry Turtledove are a few of the attending pros who will be critiquing manuscripts this year. I also promised a C.J Ruby original One-Shot RPG for MisCon, I've had requests for a western or zombies... I haven't decided which.

Brrr... did I mention it's cold.

It doesn't replace Tombstone as my favorite modern western. I don't know if it even cracks the top ten (I'll have to think about it), but it certainly deserves an honorable mention. If you haven't seen it I recommend you give it a chance.

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson – I read his first novel Elantris, it had a very cool premise, but I thought the story broke down in the end. I'll let you all know how I find Warbreaker.

Drood by Dan Simmons – Dan Simmons has been producing acclaimed novels for decades. Hyperion probably his most well known. His last novel The Terror was a historical horror/fantasy about the tragic Franklin Arctic Expedition of the 1840s and its search for the northwest passage. I thought it was a great read, I had a fascination with the fate of the Franklin Expedition before I read the novel and Simmons' deft handling of the real drama of men struggling for survival in the Arctic and the fantastic really drew me into the story.

Drood is a novel about the historical Charles Dickens, the last five years of his life and the muse that drove Dickens to write his last unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Non-fiction: Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb by David C. Cassidy. Quantum Physics, the A-Bomb and Nazi scientists – how could I resist this?

I'm working on two RPG projects:
A dark Wild West rpg for my Sandbaggers Game Club role-playing group based on kmarkhoover Kenneth Mark Hoover's Haxan. I really love Mark's writing style, his characters have a dark depth to them. His Haxan stories have a lot of the same texture and flavor that I remember in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

The other project I'm working on is adapting the Pathfinder Roleplaying system to my own fantasy world Lustra. The biggest hurdle is the overhauling and revamping of the magic-user's rules, especially the Acane magic rules. I have a completely different view of how magic works in Lustra and it doesn't fit the Pathfinder/D&D system. But I've adapted rules systems before to fit my vision of how a “World' works and I think I've got a handle on it. I am getting some help from fellow Sandbaggers and professional game publishers,4windsgaming Robert and Connie Thomson, who will be playing in my Lustra campaign. I'm a play-tester and player in Robert's weekly Pathfinder game.

Writing:
I'm still plugging away, 300 -1000 words a day, on a story about a child's view of the waste of war. I've also dusted off an unfinished fantasy short story based in the World of Lustra (I got inspired with some new ideas working on the RPG) . I'm on my second revision and hope to send it out to Writers of the Future by the end of December.

Jessica jessica_de_milo is still in the ICU at St Patrick Hospital in Missuola, MT. Her family and friends that are close to the situation have posted updates at St Patrick's Caring Bridge . A guest-book is available to sign and post a message for Jessica and her family. There are pictures of Jess for those of you who met her once or twice at MisCon and those of you that have only met her here on lj.

Jessica's condition is still unpredictable, but this morning's update was more positive.

I have to thank Maggie shadowhelm and Di difrancis for keeping us updated on their blogs.

Please keep Jessica in your thoughts and prayers.


Jessica near Grant's Creek
behind Ruby's Inn at MisCon

I was looking at my Home page on LJ and under Friend Updates is this message: jessica_de_milo has added you as a friend, and under Birthdays: jessica_de_milo Nov 30.

It broke my heart to see that this morning.


Di Francis difrancis posted that Jessica is in a coma and in grave condition after a terrible automobile accident that left a projectile lodged in the frontal lobe of her brain. Di tells us that she has been operated on, but that there is little hope that she will ever awaken.

I met Jessica a couple of years ago at MisCon www.miscon.org/. She was hanging with Di, who had been her teacher at the University of Montana Western. We all hung out at some panels and some parties and became friends, sometime during that weekend Jessica convinced me to start a blog and get on LJ. She said it was a terrific community. Maybe I did because she was really cute and really sweet, but I did and never regretted it. She was the first person to add me as a friend and she is almost always the first to comment and give me encouragement when I send out a story or receive a rejection letter.

Jessica is a Christian and she lives her faith, she doesn't hide her light from the world. Di Francis describes her as an “old soul”and a magnificent person. I concur. Jessica is just starting out on her life's path. She has tremendous ambition tempered with true kindness and charity.

My own faith is a tattered torn remnant from childhood, but I'm praying for the first time in a long while that my dear friend Jessica de Milo will recover. The world will be a darker place without her light.

I'm right in the middle of Allen M. Steele's Coyote Trilogy. They take me back to when I first read Niven, Pournelle and Barnes's “The Legacy of Herot” and Beowolf's Children” and also Larry Niven's “Destiny's Road”. Great memories, thanks Mr. Steele for weaving some great yarns taking me back to the joys of my childhood (or at least young-adulthood).

“Best of Weird Tales” edited by John Bertancourt. Lots of great short stories here by Robert Bloch, F. Paul Wilson, Tanith Lee, Gene Wolfe, Harry Turtledove (who will be the GoH at MisCon www.miscon.org/  this spring), and many others.

“Metropolis” edited by John Scalzi with stories by Jay Lakejaylake, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, Tobias S. Buckell, and Karl Schroeder

[Nonfiction]
 
“The Men Who Stare at Goats” by Jon Ronsom, I saw the commercials for the movie and thought that it must be a book. So I checked it out. It's a tale of the strange things the U.S Military and Government Intelligence has been up to since the mid nineteen seventies, after Vietnam. The book seems to be more serious than the movie trailers I've seen. Tidbit: The tactics of playing music like the Barney the Dinosaur's “I Love You” song for hours to prisoners is an idea that came from one of the subjects in Ronsom's book.

“The Finest Hours” by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman, is the true story of the U.S. Coast Guard's daring rescue of two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, off the coast of New England in the winter of 1952, during a brutal nor'easter.

“The Day We Found the Universe” by Marcia Bartusiak. It's about Edwin Hubble and his observations that ultimately established that the universe was trillions times larger than previously believed.  The author draws you in and the story is much more exciting than you would think it should be.   

I held two gaming sessions of “A Deadwood Halloween”, one on Friday night for my regular gaming group and an impromptu game on Saturday night with guests who wanted an original RPG experience. Everyone said they had a good time and I got some nice compliments from the players.  One told me, “I really can't stand Western/Cowboy shit, but this game was really fun.” The player who wrote that comment was voted best role-player of the session by his peers. That is about as good as it gets, when somebody hates a genre, but your storytelling turns them into a fan - at least for an evening.

“Cthulhu” Bob Lovely (President of MisCon)www.miscon.org/, “Quasi”Joe Taylor (Gaming Vice-Chair of MisCon), and Stewart “Admiral of the Fleet” Fleming (MisCon Game Chair) drove up from Missoula and seemed impressed by our “Gaming Treehouse”. They mentioned numerous times that they would like to have a setup like we are fortunate to have.

Saturday afternoon“Cthulhu” Bob ran his original  Call of Cthulhu scenario “Snowblind” and a couple of Sandbaggers (Erica and Connie) got to have the C-Bob gaming experience for the first time – both said the loved it. I think one player (Ben) got away without going completely insane or getting killed – a typical Call of Cthulhu outcome. (Oh, Erica and I shared the best RP award and won prizes from Chaosium www.chaosium.com/index.php– “Cthulhu” Bob's games are sanctioned events.)

I went home early Saturday night, around 11pm, the party and games were still going strong. Sunday I got my heart ripped out by “the Purple Judas”, Brett Farve, as he whipped my beloved Green Bay Packers. But all in all the weekend was great fun and my Packer pain is already easing (they play Tampa Bay next week).

difrancis

Absolon stopped pacing and rummaged in the depths of his trunk, after a moment, he plucked out a copper bowl. It had a thread of q’rel inlaid in a spiral pattern at its base. He cleared a space and placed it on his cluttered writing desk. From a pocket within his robe he produced a small green vial. Averting his head in order not to inhale the noxious fumes, he uncorked it and decanted its viscid contents into the bowl. He bare his left forearm, took a razor and placed it to the vein. He began to chant the words of power. Blood dripped into the vessel, hissing as it came into contact with the fluid. A sour-green vapor coiled up from the bowl as blood dripped from the incision.

He continued the incantation as he bound his wound. Absolon took out a slender copper tube and immersed it into the swirling liquid. Gently, he blew into it. The foul mixture gurgled and bubbled. He withdrew the tube and finished the spell.

“Now we’ll see what comes?” he muttered, ever the skeptic.

The scarlet, stygian liquid continued to gurgle and churn. Gradually, something began to swell and slither from the ichor. A tiny head and shoulders emerged, and then wet useless wings rose from the bowl. The repellent creature gibbered timidly as it opened its jet eyes and fixed them on its maker.

Absolon unbound the wound and extended his arm to the abomination. It greedily latched on to the offering, sucking voraciously. Its form filled out, its limp wings increased in mass, arched high and unfurled. They were large in proportion to its body.
 
Feeling a bit light headed and sensing it was satiated, Absolon snapped the suckling on the snout and said, “Enough, you would drain me if I allowed it.” It pulled away with a hiss and sharp bark of annoyance. Absolon cooed soothingly to the homunculus to calm it, as he again wrapped his oozing wound.

Softly, he said, “Creature of my essence hear me and obey.”

I'm putting the finishing touches on “ A Deadwood Halloween” a RPG one-shot that will include the historical characters of Calamity Jane, Wyatt and Warren Earp, Sheriff Seth Bullock, and Judge Granville Bennett, along with the usual players who play in my Friday night “Deadwood 1876” game. The story will involve pumpkins laden with dynamite, Lakota raiders, and a Headless Horseman, late of the 7^th Calvary, terrorizing the “peaceful” citizens of Deadwood on October 31, 1876. It should be a lot of fun. If there is enough interest we'll play this Friday after we finish decorating the game room for Saturday's party.

We spent this evening cleaning up and reorganizing the game room. And then my gaming group finished up a Pathfinder test game. After that we played some “Deadwood 1876” and tied up some loose ends.

Next weekend for Halloween I'll be running a “Deadwood 1876 Halloween” for those who like blazing six irons as their tricks. A bunch of other games will be planned and in the evening we will play party games like “Apples to Apples” which is a blast. We played it this year at MisCon and had a great time.

Happy Halloween everbody.

I read my friends blogs everyday, but I have not posted for a long time now. So here's what's been happening.

I've been working on a story that is semi-autobiographical based on how I spent my summer when I was four and five in a military hospital getting tested for a heart related birth defect. The Vietnam War was in its worst years and the hospital was full of casualties and I was the only child in a ward full of wounded soldiers who weren't much more than children themselves (there were no other kids at the hospital at least not where I was). I had no concept of war, except that I do remember the nightly "body counts" on the evening news. I can remember vividly many of the things I saw and did those two summers. I've interviewed my dad who went along with me on those trips to the David Grant Medical Center at Travis AFB in California. He was very helpful with details about the military and holes in my own memory. Many of the wounded soldiers were very kind to me, reading stories to me and playing go-fish, checkers and chess (which they taught me and I'll always remember fondly how hard it was for me to grasp which way the horsey moved).
             I remember being fearful of walking past some of the patient's beds, it seemed as if a dark cloud enfolded them and that an angry beast had consumed much of their humanity. I was quiet and walked circumspectly as far as possible from them so as not to awaken the beast that cursed and threw bedpans at the nurses and orderlies. Their anger was understandable, some had lost limbs or had terrible scars encased under their bandages. 
            Also, during the second summer I spent there men first landed and walked on the Moon, now as a child that wasn't very remarkable to me – I simply thought men had always been there. In fact at the time I insisted I could see them up there. But the successful Moon landing brightened the mood of everyone and it was a day of celebration. Although I'm sure that I was unhappy about missing the Flintstones and Mighty Mouse that day.

Anyway those experiences are the seed of my story, I've struggled with it for a long while now trying to figure out a point of view and a compelling plot. I didn't think it would work as a memoir since many of my memories are incomplete or merely feelings and impressions from the experience. I want to convey a child's view of the war through the lens of when I became aware that men killed and maimed one another, even though at the time I couldn't firmly grasp it.

That's where I am at in my writing, had a few other stories that started but fizzled out. I've been keeping creative writing RPG stories for my “Deadwood 1876” wild west game. And I've been playing in Robert and Connie Thomson's 4windsgaming.livejournal.com/ “Pathfinder” game 4windsfantasygaming.com/  . Our gaming group at the Sandbaggers Game Club has been play-testing it all this summer and fall. Ben Donnelly resumed his World of Darkness chronicle “The Fellowship of Fang and Fur II” this past weekend and the Air Force guys just returned from Iraq and Afghanistan in time to join in. Am happy to report that every member of their unit came back safe and whole.

The Sandbaggers Game Club will be celebrating our Twentieth Anniversary as an organized social club this Halloween and it should be a hell of a bash. All my LJ friends are invited to attend as well, just click on our website http://www.sandbaggersgameclub.org/ for details.


I saw that MisCon www.miscon.org/  has landed George RR Martin www.georgerrmartin.com/ as the GoH for MisCon 26 in 2012, which is HUGE for such a little Con (last year 580 people registered and that was nearly double the previous years attendance). And I also noted that next year's GoH, Harry Turtledove, will be critiquing stories in MisCon's writers workshop next spring, very cool.

That's all for now, will try and be a more frequent blogger.

I just finished Steven Brust's “The Phoenix Guards”, it was a fun rollicking romp. He wrote it in the style of his hero, Dumas, and at MisCon he said it was the book he had the most fun writing.


I've also been reading a number of history books on the 1870's Black Hills and Deadwood. The best with the most information has been Estelline Bennett's “Old Deadwood Days”. It was published in 1928 and is an autobiography of Estelline Bennett's young life. She and her family moved to Deadwood in 1877. Her father, Granville Bennett, was the Black Hill's first federal judge. I've been reading these stories for background for the new game I started running on Friday nights at the Sandbaggers Game Club called “Deadwood 76”. It's a role-playing game using a loose version of the World of Darkness skill based system along with my own home-brew rules.

I just finished Harry Turtledove's “The Guns of the South”. I didn't think it was that great, but it must be hard to write historical characters. Harry wrote Gen. Lee as a messianic figure and I couldn't buy into that characterization. Harry Turtledove is MisCon 24's (May 2010) Author Guest of Honor.

I'm picking up Joseph M. Marshall's “Hundred in the Hand” a historical novel of Red Cloud's war. I read his novel “The Long Knives are Crying” about the battle of the Little Bighorn and it was very good.

I am also reading Maggie Bonham's “Prophecy of the Sword”. It is packed full of action, a great sword and sorcery read. I am just finishing Tom Zoellner's “Uranium”, a natural history book about uranium, very informative.

My own writing has been slow, but I am still plunking away at it. I've started a faux diary for a character I am playing in Robert Thomson's Pathfinder game at the Sandbaggers Game club. Just for fun, but it has kept me writing. I was inspired by “The Phoenix Guards” and wanted to try something in a whimsical style.  If anyone is interested I could post it here.

MisCon 23 was a terrific convention. Nearly 600 people attended and I think they all came by the Sandbagger's room. We gave away 90 of our 20^th anniversary shirts and hosted two great parties. Fifteen Sandbaggers made the trip this year and everyone said this was the best MisCon ever.

I spent a lot of time at the writing panels and even was recruited by Justin Barba (Miscon's vice chair) to be on the opening writer's panel. He wanted me to tell the new workshop attendees what to expect at the writer's workshop.

Got to see a lot of old friends (Jessica, Sarah, Jane , Sharon, Justin, Stewart, Beth, Greg, Todd and many more that I'm sure I'm forgetting right now) and made a couple new ones.

I also spent a lot of time with authors Steven Brust and Maggie Bonham. Steven Brust turned his room into the con's smoker's lounge and many of us stopped in to smoke, talk, drink and listen to him sing. He knows a lot of humorous folk songs (many that he wrote himself). It would have been great to record some of them. I just have to say that it's very nice to meet one of your favorite authors and he turns out to be a terrific guy.

Maggie Bonham gave me a lot of encouragement and helped me work past a problem I have been having in one of my stories. She came to our Sunday night party and spent hours chatting with us (Sandbaggers) until well after midnight.

Came home Monday night wore out, but happy. I'm really pumped up to do more writing and submitting.

We have a lot of stuff going on at the Sandbaggers Game Club. Lee has been busy updating the web-site sandbaggersgameclub.org. , check it out.

I am involved in three ongoing games at the club right now: a Thursday night D&D game, a Friday night Werewolf campaign that I've been playing off and on in for sixteen years now, and a home-brew fantasy role-play using D&D rules that I run on Saturday afternoons.

The club members are very jazzed about the upcoming fantasy and science fiction convention in Missoula, Montana at the end of May. We should have 12-15 Sandbaggers making the trip over to MisCon this Memorial Day weekend (May 22-25). The Sandbaggers will sponsoring games and parties in room 260 at Ruby's again this year. We will be giving away prizes and t-shirt as always. If you plan on going to MisCon stop on by our room. We aren't trying to sell anything we are just there for the fun. We will be sponsoring an Authors and convention workers party again this year on Sunday night in room 260. Last year our theme was "Towel Day" in honor of Douglas Adams and the gathering was a big hit with everyone. Afterwards we played Kat's Buffy the Vampire Slayer game and had a great time.

Three of our members who are in the Air Force won't be able to make it to MisCon, they are in Afghanistan on a six month tour of duty. Steve, Kevin and Dave stay safe.