As I’ve mentioned before, I have finally found and destroyed McClane-wasp, but he was a worthy foe. So it is with a heavy heart that I must link to this post, which points out the many ways in which the upcoming Die Hard movie will fall short of the original.
McClane wasp deserved better, and so did the human McClane. Bruce Willis, on the other hand, is apparently on board with this thing, and I only hope the wheelbarrow loads of money he gets for it can assuage the guilt to some extent.
The air seemed to be made of soup, between the cloying heat and the fuzz in her own head, but the shots finally spurred JT to heave herself unsteadily to her feet between the second and third shots. Not the best time to finally get off the floor, most likely, she realized as she swayed there for an instant. The shots were coming from one of the cloudy windows, its glass now hanging in shards, and as she watched Israel let out a cry and fell to the floor. Laurent spun and fired the shotgun at the window, blowing out the remaining glass, then dropped the weapon. She couldn’t understand why until she saw him pulling the flute from his pocket. She shouted wordlessly and started toward him, then changed her direction and staggered for the open door as he raised the artifact to his lips.
She caught a glimpse of Angela bursting through the door at the back of the room with a pistol as everything went to hell again. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: Road Trip, Part 22’
Come now, having a little piece of a canister fall into the garbage disposal so I have to grope around and fish it out?
That is even more cliched than the thing trying to get into my window at night. Besides, I don’t do splatterpunk. I’m one of those classy horror authors who explores, I don’t know, themes of alienation in modern life and stuff. I have to admit, though, that the bit where the electrician who did the wiring was fairly vague about labeling the circuit breaker was a nice touch.
That’s an Edison quote up there, and I kind of like it.
Thomas Edison used adverbs all day long
I get exposed to some fairly silly writing strictures now and again (note I don’t say “advice” – I see excellent advice all the time – what I’m talking about are things presented as iron-clad rules). Continue reading ‘Hell, There Are No Rules Here – We’re Trying to Accomplish Something’
Laurent stepped toward the door as JT tried to gather the strength to get up. Nearby, Israel stirred, but Laurent ignored them both, standing near the open doorway with his head cocked to one side. The rain had slackened a bit, and the thunder moved off, but as JT looked toward the doorway she saw a flash of lightning. It was several seconds before the thunder from the strike rolled, and simultaneous with it, JT saw a flash of movement in the doorway.
Laurent fired, and the form staggered backward with a cry. He turned back toward JT, who was still trying to get to her feet, but the noise seemed to have finally roused Israel, who was struggling to sit up. Laurent backed into the room, keeping his shotgun up and switching his gaze between Israel and the doorway. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: Road Trip, Part 21’
So now we’re getting a hurricane. We aren’t supposed to get earthquakes or hurricanes in this part of the country. Now, I realize that those of you in who live in hurricane-prone or earthquake-prone locations may poo-poo the severity of our little disasters (although I defy to to listen to this story and not shudder in fear at the part about ‘there were Hot Wheels everywhere’)
but when was the last time any of you folks in California or the Gulf Coast had both in one week, hmmm?
Anyway, the deal I make living here is that I live through six months with the constant threat of Nor’easters, blizzards, and lake effect events with snowfall measured in feet, and in exchange I don’t deal with earthquakes, hurricanes, or wildfires. Unlike some people around here, I don’t even complain about massive snowfalls and howling blizzards. I even enjoy driving in blizzards and ice storms. I assume that folks living in the Gulf Coast enjoy the excitement of watching the occasional splinter driven through tree trunks by high-speed winds but I don’t, thank you very much.
As frequent readers will know, I’ve had a few terrifying experiences that will some day be short stories. The latest may be the bone-chilliest yet, though. It all began with my spotting a wasp in the bathroom, where it clearly did not belong. I fetched a rolled-up newspaper, as one does in these circumstances, and took a mighty swing. The wasp completely disappeared, leading me to believe that I might have vaporized it, but I took a look around to see if its crippled form was staggering about somewhere. I had just about given up on the search when it announced the fact that it had managed to make its way over from the wall to cling to my very clothes. I managed to get clear of the creature by hurling the article of clothing it was on across the room (I won’t go into what this was). Then I left for more clothes and a heavy pair of gloves, ready to deal with this wasp once and for all, only to find that it had disappeared, having survived a smack with a newspaper and a few rather frantic-barehanded slaps as well (this is why I don’t like wasps – I find it difficult to maintain my normal stoic mien when they land on me).
So now I’ve got the John McClane of wasps roaming my house, plotting revenge
Yipee-ki-yay
I have dispatched my minions to deal with him, but I’m not particularly confident in their chances. One of these days I’m going to get a bonechilling idea from a safe distance.
Update: I found the McClane-wasp and finally dispatched him. At least I think it was the same wasp. A constant stream of new wasps popping up in my bathroom is an idea too terrifying to contemplate.
“That was impressive,” Laurent said. He took a few steps away and set her shotgun down on one of the easy chairs, then turned back, looking at her with what JT thought was a curious expression. It was hard to tell through the blurriness.
“That was your first time, obviously, and I can tell you it takes a while for the effects to ease,” Laurent said. His voice was muffled, and JT felt a wetness on her cheek. She managed to get a hand up to the side of her head and stared dully at the blood mixed with sweat on her fingertips for a moment. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: Road Trip, Part 20’
For whatever reason, the latest crop of comment spam to hit this blog has all come from various places set up to to sell essays to credulous and somewhat dim students. One of these places has “expert” in their URL (another, rather amusingly, actually has “plagiarism”), but I assume they are all run by the same bunch of halfwits. “To reach A+, different students must state if they are willing to compose the buying essays papers”? Really? “No one which achieves achievement does so without recognizing the assist of others. The knowing and certain admit this support with thankfulness.”? That last one sounds vaguely like a fortune cookie written by someone who just took a sharp blow to the head.
My point being that I, as a semi-professional writer, find this a bit insulting. You want to spam the comments with pitches about buying stupid hats, stupidhats.com? Fine, I’ve got no dog in that hunt (okay, I did blackhole you, but it was all in good fun). But if you’re going to spam about writing on a writing blog, bring your A game, man.
My old nemesis, rich text format, has struck again, I fear. I’m sympathetic with the general goal of text formats being as simple as possible, and I try to keep manuscripts as unadorned as possible anyway, so you’d think we’d get along quite nicely. For some reason, though, despite my degree in computer science, I can’t get the damn format to work properly.
No matter how I perform the conversion of a manuscript from some other format, and no matter how many times I check and re-check how it looks in various editors, it always seems to end up looking weird in some other editor, which of course I don’t discover until after I’ve received a terse rejection and I’m fixing to send it somewhere else. For some reason, the formatting is always inconsistent, too. A typical game is for the first paragraph to be double-spaced and look tickety-boo (I assume this is so if I glance at the first bit in a given editor nothing will seem amiss), then subsequent paragraphs change to singe spaced, with paragraph indents sort of wandering hither and yon as they please. I’d show you, but WordPress is very skilled at cleaning up formatting, so I can’t rec-create it easily.
I have no idea why this happens, despite my aforementioned expertise in all things computational. It isn’t like I’m going hog-wild in my word processor, using headers and different text colors and so on. But now I get very nervous when I see a magazine that demands rtf attachments for their submissions.