Jack-o-Lantern

Happy Halloween everyone. I carved this pumpkin just for you.

Snake Eyes?

Tornado warning in my little suburb right now. My kids are in shelter in place at school, and we’re all here hoping that our roll of the cosmic dice doesn’t come up Snake Eyes.

**Edit: We turned out fine. As Rish said, the roll of the dice came up Duke instead of Snake Eyes.

 Yo Joe!

Cover Version

I've written a whole book's worth of Christmas stories in the recent years, and I've threatened to put them out in a nice collection that could be bought at Amazon. However, I didn't have a cover that I thought would suffice, so I used that as my excuse for my inertia.

My daughter, however, is trying to exert some force on my inertia and transform it into movement.

She's an artist, and my birthday is coming up. She wanted to make me a present that I would appreciate more than just another random tie or pair of socks. So she offered to draw something special for me.

I asked her to do a picture of a creepy Elf on the Shelf for my book cover. She took me serious, and is working on it already. She sent me this picture today. Early stages of the final cover.

It's going to be so awesome. It's probably a little late for me to get the book out this Christmas, but if I apply myself, it ought to be good by next yuletide, right?

Still They Ride

I did a story for Marshal Latham's contest over at the Journey Into Podcast. While it didn't win...I think it came in tenth place--out of ten entries--Marshal still thought it would be worthwhile to put on his other podcast that he does about Star Wars called Delusions of Grandeur.

If you want to check it out, subscribe to the podcast. You can also just hit play below.

Skeleton Crew

There's these Fortnite guys called Skull Troopers. I got a few of them to put up at Halloween time, and I really like them.

But, as is my wont, the next thing you know I had started making up a book idea to go around them. I came up with some basic character ideas, a little bit of plot possibility and so on.

Now I want to see if I can't get more characters to go with them. Especially since I came across this figure the other day.

Do you think I could manage to paint the skeleton on her outfit and make her a part of the team too? Painting her face would be the hardest part, though. I just don't have any confidence in my abilities to do that. We'll see, I guess, but I think I will buy her and give it a try some time.

Stalker

Stalker's name doesn't work as well these days, now that the word has a different cultural connotation. Nonetheless, I love the character. He was always one of my favorites from all the way back in the original mini-series.

So, when I didn't find anything that I wanted more while out cruising for toys, I decided to buy it. My unnecessary splurge.

I don't really collect the 3.75 inch figures anymore now that the six inch ones are out, but I do still have some of the old ones around. And now that I have that extra shelf space from my garage sale find, I guess I can put him up next to my Gung Ho and Roadblock that I have there.

Yeah, that looks good.

Plague Birds

New episode of The Dunesteef up on the feed for y'all. Rish and I got together with one of our favorite authors, Jason Sanford, and talked about his debut novel with a title you might recognize, Plague Birds. 

Jason Sanford recently published his first novel, and it has a title that might sound familiar to long time listeners of the Dunesteef. His new book is called “Plague Birds.” That’s right, the book is the further and expanded adventures of Crista and her AI symbiote that we first brought to you back in episode 92 and then continued their story in episodes 125 and 126 with Jason’s sequel. Now you can buy the novel length story which further explores the detailed and fascinating world the characters occupied, expands the story of Crista, and uncovers an extremely personal conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions.

We got the amazing opportunity to sit down and talk with Jason about his novel, his process, and pitfalls of the industry. Listen to (or watch) the interview, and be sure to support Jason by buying the book.

P.S. – Sorry about my microphone. I thought I was getting the sound from the nice mic you can see in the shot, but I was actually getting my sound from the built-in mic on my computer, recording all the echoes bouncing around that big study I'm sitting in.

Check it out! (EDIT: Now that the feed is gone, the only way to hear the show is over on the Dunesteef Podcast YouTube page, which I am embedding below).

October Display

After doing the last video tour, I took a lot of things off my shelf, and replaced them with my Halloween toys. So, now I needed to do a new tour of the study. Hope you like it. This one isn't quite as long, so less of a marathon.

Armored Pumpkin

At Ross, I found this Titan Heroes figure of War Machine, and I thought, I wonder if I could take that and make it into a Halloween themed armor. Tony Stark has so many different suits in his armory, why wouldn't he have one that is a themed suit. Heck, he ought to have one for every holiday.

That is a dangerous thought, of course, because now, that's what I want to do. I grabbed that War Machine, and I'm on the look out for others as well. I could easily make a Christmas one by taking a red and gold Iron Man and switching the gold out for green. Heck, I could probably leave some of the gold, after all that's a Christmas color too.

Anyway, I brought this War Machine home, and got to work. Here's my first coat. How does it look?

I painted the arc reactor orange, and after I get it filled in better with later coats, I'm going to see if I can paint a tiny jack-o-lantern face on it. I think I'll make the silver section all around it green too, to be the stem. I guess I'll post the updates as I get it done.

Mint-In-Box

I was wandering through the store today, and I saw these boxes in the collector toy section.

It made me chuckle. It's got to be a direct shot at those mint-in-box people who display their toys in the box...although it seems weird for a toy company to be trying to smack down possible customers. 

I don't care, though, because this phrase reinforces my worldview, and that's what humans like best, right?

People who display toys in boxes are weirdos...I mean, unless you do that. You're the exception. You're alright. The other ones are weirdos.

Frio River Trip

We went to the Frio River this weekend. A beautiful place with lots of fun to be had. I thought this stack of rocks in the middle of the river was pretty cool.

Here’s some more perty pictures. The Frio River was beautiful. We floated down it on blow up tubes, which is one of our favorite Texas activities.

Not Finished After All?

I told y'all in my last post that I was finished with my bookshelves on the one side. Totally done. But then something happened.

We went to a garage sale across the street from our house, and our neighbor had two Ikea Billy CD towers. If you didn't know, my whole bookshelves are Ikea Billy bookshelves, so these CD towers match perfectly with my present setup.

On top of that, I have a narrow little area between the wall and the bookshelves I could fill:

Ever since we set up the bookshelves in my study when we moved out here four years ago, I've thought that one of those CD towers might fit in here nicely. There were two problems though. They cost $40 or so a piece, which wouldn't be that big of a deal, but they also didn't make extensions for the CD tower to make it go all the way to the ceiling like I'd used for the other shelves. If I was going to try to fill in that tiny little spot, I would have to buy two towers, and cut the top off of one to make it into an extension.

That didn't seem worth the risk, so I just figured I would live with the open space. But then we found someone trying to unload the CD towers at a garage sale. They were in great shape, the same color as my bookshelves, and, here's the clincher, they only wanted $1 for each tower.

I bought the towers to fit in that spot for $2. They fit great in that little section:

And, I have two of them, so I can cut the top off of one, and use it as the extension.

Now, I just have to avoid effing it up. I'm going to have to cut the top off with our Skil Saw, making two separate cuts, one on each side, that line up evenly. Hopefully I can manage that. It would suck if I screwed it up, and the extension leaned to one side or the other. Measure twice cut once as they say.

This will give me another whole section of ceiling to floor space to put toys. I could put some books in there as well, but the CD towers aren't as deep as the regular bookshelves, so the books don't fit quite right. Paperbacks would fit in there pretty well though. We'll see.

Finished With This Side

I may be almost done with the Wall of Voodoo, but I am completely finished with the other wall. It doesn't have a silly name for it, but maybe I can come up with something. I was thinking I could call it the Wall of Words, since the toys are side by side with my books. If you have a better suggestion, feel free to comment.

Anyhow, since I'm done, I decided I would give y'all a tour of it. I think it's pretty rad. I don't know what y'all will think though.

I made a video where I talked about all the stuff on the Wall of Words, which turned out to be really long. Sorry about that. If you have the stomach for it, the intestinal fortitude required to make it all the way through to the end, enjoy the video. Also, I suppose, you could quit at any time, or watch it in shifts, a little bit at a time until it bores you silly, then come back again later. It's up to you. Enjoy?

Yummy, Soda!

I came in to work today, and there was something on the table where they put free food that anyone can take if they want it. Some Jones soda.

I love soda, so I looked closer. What flavor was it?

Wait, what?

What? Has pumpkin spice run its course, and now we've got to find a new fall flavor to push?

Now, I try to be as adventurous as I can when it comes to food. I want to be able to say that I at least tried it, even if it was gross. But I just couldn't do it this time. I left it behind for the next guy.

Although, now I wonder if that was a mistake.