The Alliterates

A Life Measured in Books and Cats

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:18:41 +0000

Okay, I know this is not a great follow-up to that terrific series with Ed Greenwood, but life brings wonderful things followed by terrible things.

This morning, my cat Merlin died.

Eleven years ago, a gray tabby kitten followed a 32-year-old man who was taking his three-year-old and one-year-old boys on a walk in their wagon. The kitten walked half a mile behind them, looking them in the eyes and yowling the whole time. This man and his boys had recently lost another wonderful cat, run down in the road because he had followed them across the highway in front of their house. The 32-year-old decided if this little gray creature followed them across the same road, he–the man–would have to adopt him–the kitten.

He–the kitten–did, and he–the man–did.

Merlin arrived while I was writing my novel Mad Merlin.

Merlin was a remarkable creature. He looked humans in the eye. He spoke to them. We had a neighbor that we rarely spoke to but that Merlin often did because he saw the man through the window and struck up a conversation. Merlin even consoled the heart of an eighty-pound border collie who was still mourning her last cat.

And later, when the collie was gone and we adopted another cat, Merlin became a father to the new creature. Three years later, Merlin did the same for a third cat–Sherlock.

Sherlock arrived while I was writing my Sherlockian novel, The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls.

Yes, authors measure their lives in books and cats.

Two days ago, the eleven-year-old Merlin was avoiding us. One day ago, I held him in my lap as I worked on a novel, and he endured my touch only a couple minutes before leaping away and withdrawing beneath the dresser. This morning, Merlin was having seizures. An hour later, my wife and I stood beside a stainless steel table while a vet shaved Merlin’s arm and found a vein and put in the juice that would kill him.

Merlin died this morning.

This was the kitty who followed me home. This was the one who looked me in the eye and spoke to me. This was a living soul.

Some would balk. They would say the death of this cat shows how nobody really has a soul. Cats and people are just bodies with consciousnesses riding them. When the bodies fail, the consciousnesses are gone. Souls are simply wish fulfillment.

But there’s another thought here. It’s not that animals prove we are nothing but meat. It’s that we prove that animals are more.

Merlin knew how to speak to me. Maybe it was because he was a writer’s cat. He spent so many hours on my lap as I wrote novel after novel. He had no one to talk to except me and my bereaved collie, so he learned to talk to us, both. Merlin proved that he and all cats have a soul–or none of us does.

Rest in peace, my friend, Merlin. My life was richer that you were in it and is emptier that you aren’t anymore. And when it is my turn to be lying on the towel, gasping, biting my tongue, I will take some comfort to know you have done this before me and found out what awaits us all.

Grab Bag

Jeff_Grubb — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:01:00 +0000

First, I'd like to welcome author and 4E game designer Rob Heinsoo to the blogroll on the right. Rob promises more entries if I add him, so I'm going to hold him to this.

Also, I've been spending a lot of time with Steambirds, a brilliant little game by Andy Moore and Daniel Cook that evokes everything I like about Crimson Skies. The central conceit, that there is a more powerful engine available for flight, allowing heavily armored planes, fits nicely with the game itself. The interface is simple and the rules capture the basics of dogfighting while the alternate universe setting allows for non-standard weapons and attacks.

Finally, I've mentioned before that I've been listening to a lot of lectures on tape from the Teaching Company. One of them I enjoyed was on Lost Christianities, by Bart Ehrman, who is also the author of "Misquoting Jesus". Here's the first part of lecture by him that captures the gist of his larger lectures, and well worth listening to. You can follow the other sections on YouTube.
More later,

Nimby

Jeff_Grubb — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:34:00 +0000

So I've come across two things recently, involving unwanted businesses, affecting the communities to the north and south of where I live.

For the newcomers, the home office of Grubb Street is located near Panther Lake, in unincorporated King County, between the cities of Renton and Kent, in the state of Washington. Renton is to the north, and I shop there, commute through there, and for a time worked there. Kent is to the south - I lived there for a time there and this is where I can find my doctor and some pretty nice restaurants. Because of our recent vote, the Panther Lake area will be annexed by Kent in the middle of this year.

Which brings me to the first item - I got a note from Kent laying out a number of meetings leading up to the annexation, and two of these meetings deal with casinos. Kent prohibits them, but there is a casino already in our previously unincorporated territory. It is up on Benson, a former pizza place on a slab away from the rest of the strip mall. It is (I assume) far enough away from the nearby Panther Lake School, though you can see one from the other. It is a squat, hermetically sealed bunker of a building, and I've never had the interest in seeing what changed from the days when I ordered pizza there.

But Kent does not allow gambling establishments, so when we join Kent, the casino goes away. Well, not so fast. Legislation exists to grandfather in existing structures and businesses, in part to facilitate annexation of those territories. Kent is going to hold meetings to see how they want to proceed. My opinion? Despite its location, it is not calling a lot of attention to itself, and the local Jack In The Box seems to attract more sketchy types than this tightly-shuttered gambling den.

Then, within the day, comes another bit of news picked up from Renton Councilman's Randy Corman's blog, that a strip club is planned to open near the junction of SR-167 and I-405 (while not being easily accessed from either). The site is tucked in a corner near the interchange, currently occupied by a closed Half-Price Pots store (I have a theory about Half-Price Pots as well, but I won't bother you with it here). It is close to a couple hotels and no private residences, but is also close to several businesses with day cares, including the FAA and Wizards of the Coast. I'm sure that the strip-club owners would be very disappointed to learn that they've moved into a nerd-abundant neighborhood.

The sign for the club is already going up, but city of Renton has put a six-month moratorium on new clubs, and looks like it is planning to make things as uncomfortable as possible for any ecdysiastic activities in the area, including enforcing the four-foot rule that went into the books in the first place to encourage clubs to go elsewhere (like, say Seattle).

Personally, I find I'm less easy-going about strip clubs than gambling houses. Not so much for the activity of the dancers, but because the strip bars dodge personal responsibility by making their entertainers "independent contractors" - like they were writers or something. Call me odd, but that sort of company behavior makes we go all wobbly and want to dig out my Pete Seegar union songs. Maybe found the International Sisterhood of Stage, Pole, and Lap Dancers (Local 112).

One of the concerns for the strip club is the clientele that it will bring to a insufficiently-desolate corner of Renton (There is already a (closed) casino along that stretch of road already). The Great American Casino/Former Pizza Place location at least has an established record for how disruptive it can be (and they should pull the police reports for the local, along with other nearby localities, including that Jack in the Box). Though the strip club (I roll my eyes at the euphemistic "gentlemen's club") missed a chance in naming the place.

Given its location, I would have called it the Renton Curves.

More later,

Wonders

Bruce R Cordell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:01:00 +0000

"Coalesced from a collapsing cloud of dust."

Archived Tweets for 2010-03-06

Lester — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

from savage nature / build a fire, a fence, against / forests prime evil // #haiku #micropoetry (for an "evil" haiku contest) #
RT @storykim: It’s Haiku Friday! Today’s topic: Evil. Write your own haiku, maybe win a prize. http://tinyurl.com/co3tha #fb ^LS #
RT @jrobertking: Death's Disciples got it right for Chicago. @GreatDismal Test a nuclear weapon, anywhere. http://bit.ly/csqurg #

Archived Tweets for 2010-03-05

Lester — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Did I miss a memo re obsoleting 1024×768 screens? You kids with your Twitter feed overlapping your photo & horizontal scroll are killing me. #
The work day endeth satisfactorily. (Love my job.) Time to head home & finish the character-creation chapter I've been promising @Jamie1km. #
RT @baffled "antique charm bracelet ~ Nana wistfully clicks clasp ~ young girl’s excitement" – @4haiku http://tumblr.com/xfk71newe #

The Perils of Publishing

Jeff_Grubb — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:38:00 +0000

On the announcements here and here, I've gotten two questions:
1) Why didn't you tell us about this sooner?
2) Didn't I read somewhere you were working on a Star Wars book?

Here's my answer to the first question: A lot of writers post about their ongoing writing projects. I'm not one of them. Now, I admire those who keep the public informed with word counts, with the state of revisions, with feedback, and with each and every twist and turn on the way to publication. But I dislike raising false hopes, and in particular I hate admitting that a particular project "just didn't work out" or that I can't find a home for the cool work I've been telling you about.

In my long years toiling in shared world fiction, often while working for companies that manage those worlds, I've seen a lot of stuff happen. Ideas that sound good turn sour, or move down unintended passsageways. Good writers have bad patches. Bad writers have worse turnovers. Writing teams at the start of the project are no longer speaking to each other by the end. Computers crash. Deadlines loom and are missed, and sometimes by large margins. Cover art and artists switch. There are sudden changes in direction. Companies discontinue lines that novels are created for. Companies disappear. Plagues of locust. Rains of blood. Cats and dogs, living together.You know the drill.

I have a trunk book for a line that was published but the novel support was killed. I have another one for a publisher that has since vanished. I have had a project I referred to as Schrödinger's Book for the amount of time it spent simultaneously alive and dead. I have had projects in limbo. I have had things disappear into the aether, never to be seen by mortal man again.

For this reason, I am very wary of announcing things way in advance. Too much changes, even after an announcement. We all work on shifting ground, whether we are writing or editing. I usually keep my peace until there is some type of formal announcement, and even then, I hold my breath until I have the physical book in my hand, or the pixels on the screen.

And if it means that I am late to the party talking about, say, that I have an essay in the upcoming Family Games: The 100 Best, at least you'll know you're within guessing distance of holding the book in your hand, which strikes me as being better for both you and me.

And as far as the second question is concerned: Yes. You've heard somewhere that I'm working on a Star Wars novel. And that's where I am leaving it for the moment.

More later,

Press Release

Monte Cook — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:52:07 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MONTE COOK’S DUNGEONADAY.COM IS ONE YEAR OLD!

Site offers game fans a daily dose of adventure.

March 4, 2010 (Milwaukee, Wis.)—Dungeonaday.com, Monte’s subscription-based adventure site, is celebrating its 1 year anniversary this month. The web site, known for offering great game material and DMing advice to its members, introduced Dragon's Delve, a vast dungeon with a complex history. Along with the nearby town of Brindenford, it's the setting of an entire campaign. Some of the highlights have included:

The Font of Dreams, an intelligent magical fountain controlling an entire level of the dungeon.

The tesseract prison of the Red Saint, a four-dimensional dungeon level with twists and turns like no other dungeon before it.

The mystic island of Khorant, with pirates, dinosaurs, ape slavers, and a Cthulhuesque temple to the Old Ones.

The Venom Cult, which tied Brindenford directly to the dungeon, and added an aura of paranoia to each trip back to town.

And that’s just for starters.

As the successful endeavor looks forward to its second year, Monte’s making two different special offers. First of all, those interested in becoming members will find throughout the month of March that the yearly membership rate has been lowered to just $84. Second, existing members who get their friends to join will get an additional month added to their subscription for free! More details available at www.dungeonaday.com.

Dungeonaday.com will continue to be updated every weekday with a major encounter, plus frequent blog and podcast updates, monthly bonus encounters, and more. Members have access to an active forum where they can ask questions, give feedback to Monte, exchange tips and ideas with each other, and help build Dungeonaday.com into a community of dungeon (and dragon) enthusiasts. The site features cartography from award-winning artist Ed Bourelle. It utilizes the Open Gaming License and its 3^rd-edition compatible rules, but is easily used with other editions as well. In fact, Pathfinder fans will discover that Pathfinder designer Jason Bulmahn provides exclusive conversion notes for using Dungeonaday.com with the new game. The material presented on the site is suitable for characters of all levels and any fantasy campaign. Visitors can sample content for free at the website: www.dungeonaday.com.

Monte Cook started professionally in the game industry in 1988 and has worked for such companies as Iron Crown Enterprises, TSR, Wizards of the Coast, and his own Malhavoc Press. He co-created the 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons (the basis of the d20 System) and authored the Dungeon Master's Guide, Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved, Ptolus, Monte Cook’s World of Darkness, and designed the super hero miniatures game HeroClix. A graduate of the Clarion West writer's workshop, Monte has also published short stories and two novels. His humorous nonfiction book about conspiracies comes out in October of 2009. To read more biographical information or to sample his recent work, visit www.montecook.com.

###

©2010 Monte J. Cook. Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon Master, and Wizards of the Coast, are registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast Inc. HeroClix is a trademark of WizKids Games. Pathfinder is a trademark of Paizo Publishing. Malhavoc and Eldritch Might are trademarks of Monte J. Cook. All rights reserved.

GM’s Day Sale

Monte Cook — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:25:39 +0000

All Malhavoc Press pdf products are 25% off now through the weekend!

Enjoy!

Paranormal Romance

Jeff_Grubb — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:46:00 +0000

I have a new short story up on the Wily Writers site. Wily Writers makes electro-published speculative fiction available on the mojo wire, and my story, "Happily Ever After", is available both as text and read by the talented Scott McGough, who in addition to having a warm, reassuring voice, has written more than his share of Magic: The Gathering Novels over the years.

For other writers who this missive reaches, the Wily Writers site is an excellent place to engage in the act of the short story. Editor Angel Leigh McCoy picks a topic for the month as a "jump ball" and at the end of the month the site picks the top two contenders for publication. They are just closing out "Alienation" as their February reading topic, and next up is "Flash" fiction (what we used to call short-shorts back in the day - fiction under 1000 words). Back in January, the topic was "Paranormal Romance". I had an idea and crafted it into the story you see (or hear) on the site.

Check out Wily Writers, and check out my take on paranormal romance. Yes, I'm being cagey about what its about exactly - just go and enjoy.

More later,