Those Words

Robert Heinlein has five famous rules for writers.

They're all valuable, but today, I just want to talk about rule two. I've really been working on rule one this year. Every day I write. That wouldn't be as useful, however, if I didn't keep rule two.

Well, today I achieved another victory in the fulfillment of rule two.

Yessir, that's my baby! No sir, don't mean maybe. I started a story called "Digital Wizards" on the 30th of March. I expected it to be a relatively short story, but it didn't cooperate with me. Yesterday morning, I typed "the end," and checked the word count. The story ended up at 36,235 words. That's even a titch longer than my last overly long novella "The Elephant in the Room" that I wrote in January.

That's pretty exciting. It's always exciting to reach the end of a story. Unfortunately, it's a constant process. It doesn't work like this:

Instead, it's like this:

So, tomorrow, I'll have to go back to Heinlein's rule number one, and write another thousand words. I'm a little nervous about that, as always. Will I be able to? I think I'm going to go back to the book that I began when Marshal did his "Journey Into Journey" contest. He gave me the song, "Still They Ride" for my inspiration. I came up with an idea that was basically The Lone Ranger in space. I started it, got about 5,000 words in, then realized that it was going to be a novel and not just a short story, and I needed something else. So, I quit...or shelved it anyway...and wrote a cheesy Star Wars story about some old imperial biker scouts after the empire has fallen who love the rush of riding speeder bikes so much that they'll risk it all to go out and zip around on them from time to time.

I had an idea about how to make the original Lone Ranger idea work this month, and I guess I'm going to see if I can't put that into practice, and write the original book from beginning to end. If that works, it'll be the second story that Marshal got me started on that I finish in this writing every day process. Thanks, Marshal. The book is going to be called "Still They Ride: A Lazerfist Story" or something like that. Lazerfist is the main character...The Lone Ranger. If it goes well, maybe I'll do more tales about him in the future. Who knows?

I Guess It's My Thing Now

In 2019,  we were at a Buc-ee's, and I saw a shirt there that I liked enough to buy for myself. It had an image of Sasquatch with the words "Into the Woods We Go" over the top of it. I love camping and hiking, and a sasquatch is kind of an avatar of the woods, so I thought it would make a fine shirt to wear around, so I bought it.

Later that year, after I lost a bunch of weight, I even bought a new, smaller version of the shirt that I could fit at that size. I regained the weight, and the shirt remained in pristine condition with no use until now that I have relost the weight. It has remained one of my favorite shirts through all that time, and owning it in two different sizes meant that I was able to wear it continueally even through my covid-depression induced weight gain and my determined second weight loss.

Well, the other day, and I blogged about this one though I don't usually talk about clothes on here, I found another shirt with Bigfoot on it. This time, it was a shirt with Sasquatch and the words "Believe in Yourself, Even If Nobody Else Does." It reminded me a lot of the days when The Anklecast was all about inspirational quotes and music to get myself to write (of course, none of that worked, and I almost never wrote, but still...). With Bigfoot and an inspirational quote like that, I had to grab it.

So, fast forward about a week, and I go into work yesterday. I'm even wearing that white Bigfoot shirt you see above. My friend, Murray, comes in and tells me that he was at Marshall's and he saw the coolest shirt ever. He had to have it. He looked everywhere for one in his size, but they just didn't have it, and he was bummed. The did have a size large, however, and he thought, "Big Anklevich would love this shirt too."

He pulls it out and hands it to me. He bought me a shirt just because. He's like that. He's a really cool and very generous guy. I look at the shirt and can't help but laugh.

It's another Sasquatch. Another camping Sasquatch at that. He's out int he woods sitting in a camp chair with a water bottle and his phone, a VW Bus in the background, chillin'. It is a pretty great shirt. And now, it looks like I'm starting to build a collection of Bigfoot shirts. I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened organically.  Maybe I need to make a Sasquatch BDA logo shirt. Something like this:

Eh? What do you think? That would look cool on a shirt, right? I think I could have my daughter whip one up in a minute. She has a vinyl T-shirt making machine. She made me a straight BDA logo shirt already. This one could be pretty rad, huh? I mean, since it's turned out to be my thing...

Under the Covers

I made an appearance on the Rish Outcast that is now available for all to download, listen to, and enjoy. It's a discussion about the process of making covers for publication. Rish and I have been frantically publishing away recently, which is a process that requires a cover image. Those can be daunting (especially for Rish) and we talk about it and how we've managed to make it work.

Make sure you go to the blog post HERE to see the images that go along with what we're talking about.

You can find the episode on the Rish Outcast feed or you can follow this link over to Rish's blog to see his post. You can download the show by right-clicking HERE. Or, possibly simplest of all, you can just click the play button below and give it a listen now.

ADF & BBBE Carnivore | So Close I Can Taste It | Journey to One-derland | Week 47 Roundup

I'm a hair's breadth from One-derland. This week I stuck with my plan and clamped down firmly on it. How did it work for me? Did I lose some more? Is One-derland within my grasp?

The Witcher Series

The Witcher is an interesting book series. It began as a bunch of short stories, and eventually blossomed into a five book series (a quintology? No, internet says pentology) that then ended and was followed up by a standalone novel that was set back in the midst of the short stories.

I was talking to Rish about that the other day, saying that Lara & the Witch could be that if he wanted it to. He's written a bunch of short stories in the world and at least one novel as well. Compile that shit together and you might have something just as impressive.

Well, I listened to the audiobooks of the whole Witcher series in late 2022 and early 2023, and I put the books on my list to acquire. I have recently managed to achieve that goal. So, here's that series. First is Blood of Elves.

Followed by The Time of Contempt:

Next is Baptism of Fire:

Then The Tower of Swallows:

And the last book in the Pentology is The Lady of the Lake:

Then, just yesterday, I acquired the last book, the prequel tale Season of Storms:

The art on all of these covers is really magnificent. It reminds me of when I was a child, and I got various Piers Anthony books and would sit and stare at the amazing things depicted on their covers. It was an easy sell to get me to read the stories within with art like that, and these Witcher books are no different.

The interiors are nothing special, just standard book stuff, but they look good together on my bookshelf.

Sadly, a quirk of my shelves leaves them split up on either side of the Lego Scout Walker.

As I add books and sometimes subtract them as well, though, things shift, so they might be reunited someday. Who knows?

Anyway, I recommend reading those books if you are in the least interested. They were a great series. The TV show was okay, but I didn't even watch past the first season. I'm mostly a fan of the books.

The Illustrated Editions of The Witcher

On Friday, I talked about my Dune book, and showed off its lovely features. I don't have many books like that. Most of them are used books that I got as cheap as possible. I do have a few, however, so I think I'll hightlight a couple more of them today.

Back in 2022, my nephew was sharing his Audible password with me, and allowing me to listen to all the books he had on his account. He had a job where he drove around all day every day, and so he had a great deal of time to listen to audiobooks if he wanted to. So, his collection was pretty vast. He decided to listen to the Witcher series, I suppose because the Netflix show had made them into household names, and I was happy to hear it. I had attempted to check out the first Witcher book on audio from the library, and the wait was something like six months, so if I actually wanted to listen to these books, this was a much more likely way to make it happen.

Well, I friggin' binged the hell out of those books. I loved them. I listened through them so fast that smoke was rising off my phone by the time I was done. It hadn't taken long for me to decide that I wanted to add them to my shelves...oh, that's how I usually do my book collecting, by the way. I listen to the audio from the library or Audible or wherever I can get my hands on it, and then if I like it enough, I put it on my list to acquire for the shelves.

This Christmas, I put the Witcher books on my list, and my daughter bought me one of them...not the first one, though. It was the most expensive one. She bought me the second one instead. It was a really nice fancy one as well. Here it is:

The Sword of Destiny, the Illustrated Edition. That second part is what made it so expensive. It wasn't just a book, it was a picture book. Not a complete picture book like, say, those Harry Potter editions are, but it had a lot of fancy stuff, like the Dune book I mentioned on Friday. The inner covers were printed with colorful designs.

That main blue color is used throughout the book, on every single page, which surely costs more to print, I assume.

The start of each story got a fancy title page.

And there were several images printed in those colors throughout the pages of the book as well.

I started saving up money to get the rest of the books, and before too long, I got book one, The Last Wish, Illustrated Edition.

This one was the perfect companion. As well it should be, since the second book was made to compliment this first one. It had all the same stuff, only done with a different accent color. Red for this one. The interior cover was the same.

The book was printed with the two colors.

And the illustrations were placed throughout.

They're great books. I'll have to go back and read them again and again over the years to make it all worth it. The stories were good enough, that in a few years, I could see myself doing just that.

I have also recently acquired the rest of the series, though those aren't fancy illustrated editions. I guess maybe I'll talk about them tomorrow.

Battalion of Ideas in Paperback and Hardcover

Yesterday, I started doing posts about my book collection. You should start a collection of these books, which are available in paperback and hardcover on Amazon.

The most recent of which to arrive on the shelves is A Battalion of Ideas: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two. The paperback and hardcover versions of that book just went live this week. I slaved away on them last week until I had it all done, then put them in Amazon's hands. They took a day or so, and then they were live. I'm pretty excited about it. This is the full front/spine/back cover of the book.

I made sure to have it match the first volume in the series as close as possible, but one thing that I added was the volume number up in the top of the spine. I liked it so much, that I redid the cover of Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume One and added that little bit in.

Now, when people buy them, they'll match perfectly on their shelf. I love it...particularly because I'll have copies of them on my own shelf. Hey, I'm a book collector too, right? I can't skip my own books.

Anyway, if you're like me, and you like collecting books, feel free to head over to Amazon and grab a copy of my three short story collections that are now available. 

Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume One

Battalion of Ideas: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two

Christmas Creatures: A Twisted Christmas Story Collection

I guess, since I showed the full cover of the other two, I'll throw the full cover of Christmas Creatures on here as well.

This week, I've been slaving away at getting Rish Outfield's new collection ready for paperback and hardcover publishing. So, pretty soon, you'll be able to start collecting books of his as well. I'm doing it for free, although I did request an author signed hardcover copy as my payment for the work of making the book exist. I mean, come on, I'm not going to let my shelves be devoid of Rish Outfield books. So, watch for Female Protagonist: A Short Story Collection to become available soon.

Also, I have my third installment in the short fiction collection coming soon. I've already decided what stories will be in it. I just gotta get some of the audio versions of those previous books finished before I move on. So, I guess, watch for that too.