The third and final book in Howard Andrew Jones’ epic Ring-Sworn fantasy trilogy, When the Goddess Wakes, drops a week from today. And not only is the Kindle version of the first book on sale for $2.99 all through August, but St. Martin’s Press is also giving away a complete set of the trilogy to three lucky winners.
How do you enter? Just hand over your deets at the St. Martin’s website here, and then wait in breathless anticipation for good news.
For the past three years, Kickstarter has had an annual event known as Zine Quest:
Our annual Zine Quest prompt bestows creators with this valiant mission: Bring your RPG to life with maps, adventures, monsters, comics, articles, and interviews. To participate, launch a two-week project for a single-color unbound, folded, stapled, or saddle-stitched RPG zine on A5 or smaller paper.
The zines tend to be small in size, and thus relatively inexpensive. This year, I participated, purchasing a few supplements for Mothership (you can read my review of this RPG here) and Mörk Borg along with a few full-fledged RPGs. One of these was Bounty Hunter, which I received in PDF and hard copy a few weeks ago.
The game was created by Guy Sclanders, a personality on YouTube who offers often excellent advice for gamemasters (GMs) and reviews on his How to Be a Great GM channel. Bounty Hunter focuses on an original setting and a non-traditional mechanic for RPGs: it is diceless.
Been streaming a lot of shows lately, including on my Fire as ‘background’ to whatever I’m doing. Shows I’ve seen before, like the first one below, are great for that. It’s amazing how many old shows can be streamed now. I just found season one of Royal Pains, which I have not watched since the show originally aired. And Paramount+ has the original Twin Peaks. And there are quality new shows streaming, like Bosch, The Expanse, and Cobra Kai. It’s a great time for viewing.
MONK
I watched Monk back when it first ran. I’ve rewatched it a couple times since, including with my son Sean, who is also a fan. I’ve read all of Lee Goldberg’s books in the series, and most of Hy Conrad’s. I enjoy them. I decided to take a break from my ongoing viewing of Psych (I can’t even count how many times I’ve watched episodes of that), so I watched most of the ABC reboot of Columbo. They’re not bad, but further proof that the marriage of role and actor has never been better. And then I went back to season one of Monk, and started all over again. Monk is absolutely the successor to Columbo. I cannot imagine Columbo fans not enjoying the show. The show features recognizable guest stars, just as Columbo did. It’s one of my favorite elements of the show. And many of the antagonists are cut exactly out of the Columbo mold, including their superior attitudes and condescension towards the detective. I’m in the final season, in which Monk finally closes in on the person responsible for Trudy’s murder. Showrunner Andy Breckman did a wonderful job managing the entire series, including providing closure. I found it satisfying. And it was another great guest appearance. I think Monk is one of the greatest detective shows of all time, and I’ll eventually write an in-depth post about it. It’s streaming on IMDB/Prime.
The Citizen Kane of Big-Bug Movies. The first and probably the best, it set the template for all the rest. Superior script, superior acting by James Whitmore and James Arness, who actually gets to speak this time around. Keep your eyes out for a very young Leonard Nimoy.
Cast: James Arness: The Thing From Another World (1951).
Themes: Law Enforcement, New Mexico State Police, FBI. Military, Army. Scientist, entomologist. Settings, New Mexico desert. Los Angeles sewer system. Radiation, mutant causing. Giant Animal, ants.
The Magic Toyshop (Dell, 1969). Cover art by Michael Leonard
The Magic Toyshop, first released in 1967, was Angela Carter’s second novel. She eventually published over a dozen novels and collections between 1966 and 1992, when she died of lung cancer at the much-too-young age of 51. Three decades later she’s still remembered as a feminist icon and master of magical realism; in 2008 The Times ranked her 10th in their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.”
Kids and the supernatural have always had a connection. Maybe it has something to do with the innocence of youth making them more accepting and open minded. I clearly remember my friend Noona as the little girl who lived behind the headboard of my bed in the small apartment we called home until I was six. The apartment was the second floor of an old house that my Mom and Dad rented when they were first married. Mom was 22 when I was born and tells me I used to scare the crap out of her. She says she’d come in my room to check on me during the night, and find me sitting up wide awake, making happy baby noises to the wall at the backside of the crib.
When I could talk, these nighttime adventures turned into me whispering with Noona. When I was nearly 7, we moved into our newly constructed home a few blocks away and Noona stayed behind. Either I grew out of her, or she couldn’t leave that old house, or…
Once there was a young girl who lived in a large village surrounded by forests. Though these woods came right up to the village, and were of a pleasant nature, the villagers mostly ignored them. As the girl’s childhood progressed, she would venture further and further among these trees, until she had worn tracks through the nearby underbrush.
…she had established quite a maze…
It seemed to the girl that she knew the closest trees of the woods almost as well as she knew the homes and shops of the village. And so, as her childhood continued, she ventured farther and farther afield, continuing along the tracks she had worn in the forest floor until they faded from view, so new were they, and extending them into the unknown, or turning aside early, exploring some side way she had previously not thought to explore. And so, by the time she had become a young woman, she had established quite a maze of ways through those trees.
Of all the people in her village, only she bothered to follow those pathways, for the villagers, though kind, were uninterested in exploring the deeper regions of the woods, and quickly turned back as the shadows grew deep. Even if the young woman tried to guide them, she could never lead them very far before they turned back, all apologies. And so she walked the forest alone, always seeking new ways, always and extending her travels within the forest, trying to go beyond what was now known to her, as the lengthening pathways proved.
And thus it came as quite a surprise to the young woman to discover herself, after a period of meandering, having come upon a fairy circle. Though she had never seen such a thing before, the girl stepped forward at once, eager to enter the world of the fey.
Johnny Mayhem, man of a thousand faces, leaping from body to body, putting right things that had once went…no wait! That’s the television show, Quantum Leap, which ran from 1989 to 1993. Never mind. Decades before Sam Beckett went leaping through time, there was another bodiless adventurer doing much the same thing. His name was Johnny Mayhem.
Illustration from “My Name is Mayhem,” (Amazing Stories, September 1955). Artwork by Kotzky.
If you like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing you’ll like. Between 1959 and 1964, the leading genre of Italian adventure films was the peplum, or sword and sandal movie. The fad for these began in 1958 with the first Steve Reeves Hercules film, and there were a whole lot of Hercules films to follow, but we’re going to save those for another day and cherry-pick our way through the non-Herc movies. Peplum films tended to be made quickly and cheaply: indifferently written, poorly acted, and with weak production values. Even those with larger budgets often ran aground on the rocks of tedium and cliché. But there were a few silk purses among the sow’s ears, so this week let’s point out some fun exceptions that might be worth your time. If, you know, this is the kind of thing you like.
…And on the day two hundred There it stood white to the sky The house of the God of the cross Big enough to take two dragon ships inside All of Asa bay did watch The wonder raise to the sky Now must the God of the cross be pleased satisfied Just outside the circle of the crowd
