Year in Review

2014, its been different.

I married my gorgeous wife just before Christmas last year - and we met through this very blog via my sharing a short parody video she made back in 2011.

By New Years last year me and the kids were living with her in LA, I fixed up the condo, we sold it for a very good price and by July we were in Utah, much bigger house and all of us starting over somewhere new. I haven't posted good pics of my new library/office yet but I will soon when I feel like I have my books put away just so...

So, I haven't read as many books this year as I used to, its been crazy busy most all year, and I didn't do as much writing as I should've but I did still get quite a few things out = Bless the Child my Spartan historical fiction was finally released, it hasn't sold as good as I would like especially considering ts for charity - but hey it is my wife's favorite work of mine, so that counts for something, I released Whispers of the Goddess and its gotten some favorable reviews, then my Weird Tales of Horror has done a bit better all things considered and I've sold quite a few of them at the local cons too. And lastly as far as my writing goes, I've the ongoing fantasy serial Walking Through Walls in UGEEK Magazine, it does feel good to be a pulpster. 

As for my favorites of anything, its a little tough to figure out.

Favorite fiction reads is real tough: I have to plug D.J. Butlers City of the Saints, - so good! 

 Half a King by Joe Abercrombie was amazing. I also greatly enjoyed Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International, Mark Lawrences King of Thorns, JP Wilder's novellete The Crusader, and I have so many other books by new friends I need to read and review and just couldn't get to yet this year.

For Non-Fiction, I think Rober McKee's Story wins it this year for me. But I really enjoyed Hunters S. Thompsons Songs of the Doomed, and David Mamet's Some Freaks. 

I'm also a bad friend in the non-fiction department because I actually gave a back cover blurb to Morgan Deane for his military history treatise Bleached Bones and Wicked Serpents and crappy friend that I am I have yet to publicly review the book - that's all on  me and being a flaky poster - sorry Morgan! 

I think my favorite movie of 2014 is Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which surprised me because Cap just isn't one of my favorite characters. But to me it touched on the truth, a spy movie that happened to have super heroes.

I got to meet some really cool people this year including, Peter Beagle, Ron Perlman, Ivy Doomkitty, Kato, Frank Frazetta Jr, Donato Giancola, Brom, John Rhys Davies, Angie Everhart,

I also finally got out to multiple cons and its only gonna get better this coming year. 

All the best in New Year to you my friends and lets all get that creativity out of the bottle and into print! 

How Captain America Helped Make Me Who I Am

I still remember my first Captain America comic book. I don't remember which issue it was or the cover and I have tried in vain to find it again online, (I'm sure a major Cap buff will easily be able to tell me-but I couldn't find the issue)  but the real point is the story moved me, it informed me and granted a portion of my hunger for knowledge and sense of true history.

Yes, I got all that from a comic book.

I was likely under ten years old, I collected the bronze age Spider-Man, Hulk, Star Wars and was just starting out with G.I.JOE. I knew who Captain America was but didn't regularly read him. I have always been fascinated with history so I liked that this was another WW2 comic along with Sgt. Rock and the Haunted Tank type others.

I recall Bucky, who would eventually become the butt of every Wizard magazine joke, looking for a heart doctor to save someone? Maybe it was even Cap, I'm not sure. Bucky was told that nobody at this hospital in LA? was skilled enough to help but a nurse took Bucky aside and whispered that there was a Doctor who could do this surgery BUT he was in a Japanese Internment camp!

This floored me when I was under 10, we did that? I did the research - back then it all had to be done in a library - and LO we did do that!

That began a great trip for me on how comics while fantasy and science fiction can inform us of things and give reflection on human nature, because it is still written by people who have the same feelings good bad and ugly that we all have. It showed that those first Dr.'s Bucky talked to were too bigoted to help or even think that that Japanese Dr. could be an option, but that nurse knew and said it! And Bucky went to the camp (which was shown perfectly squalid) and was able to get that Dr. to help whomever it was.

I didn't regularly follow up on that storyline (and that's not the truly important thing, what is-is that it has always stuck with me, it opened a paradigm in a boy under 10 to think about more answers outside the usual paradigm.

Going along that line, I have nothing but great things to say about Captain America: The Winter Soldier, great film and great messages that also show a dark side and lead you down that rabbit hole to think about What have we done and what will we do when faced with it. I think that through great fiction we are seeing things as they really are.

Strange Sights of the Week

I am a big fan of the Avengers movie. Its a classic.

 I try to tell my kids this all the time.

 Just where in Middle Earth is this restaraunt?

 Infinite mocking ahead.

 YES!

I am on an Avengers kick.

 I can't believe how behind I am on season 2 of Game of Thrones.