Good Saturday

Friday was Good Friday, but for me, yesterday—Saturday, was the good day.

Yesterday was a good day, because this happened.

That is the end of a novel. I just finished writing what I have been calling "Love Walks In." That title comes from a Van Halen song that is referenced several times in the book. That is, however a terrible title. It doesn't work for the book at all. The only people who might read a book called "Love Walks In" are the kind of people who would hate my book called "Love Walks In." So, though I wrote "THE END," I'm not actually done. I still have to figure out the title of the damn book.

Otherwise, though, it's a time to celebrate. That is my sixth finished novel now. In order of completion, they are: Sunny & Gray, Part 1: Sunny; Sunny & Gray, Part 2: Gray, The Gauntlet, A Fire at the Center of a Million Universes, Caught Up In Christmas, and now, Love Walks In. That's pretty cool, right?

Maybe someday, I'll make one of them available to actually read.

One More Story

I've been waiting to post about this one for a while. I tried to publish it back near the start of the month, but I got an email from Amazon saying that I couldn't, because someone else had already published this story, and I had to prove that I had rights to publish it as well. Of course, the other person to publish, "Last Contact," was Rish Outfield, my co-author.

Our idea for how to deal with the whole collaboration co-author thing, rather than going through the pain of trying to track the profits (ha ha!) of the story and split the money between us, we would just each publish the story and then whoever buys it from him gives him their money and whoever buys it from me gives me their money.

Amazon insisted that I send them documentation of this, so I made up a contract and had Rish sign it for me so I could send it to them. They immediately denied my request, which was confusing, and I replied and asked why, and they replied and said, "Please send us the documentation." I suspect they didn't even look at the documentation the first time around when they denied it. So, I resent the contract, and they told me I needed to wait five days for them to determine if it was legit. Well, the other day, they finally responded and said my story was published.

So, here it is, my version (which is only different because it has a different cover image) of, "Last Contact."

The story won us a Parsec back in 2015, so it's pretty good...of course, a Parsec is an audio podcast award, so it could be due to the audio production as much as to the text itself. Who knows what inspired them to give us the award.

You should check it out over on Amazon. It's available for the low, low price of $2.99.

A Fruitless Trip To Ollie's

For some reason, I got it into my head that I ought to take a drive all the way up to the Ollie's near me. Now, when I say near me, that is relative. It's a 35 minute drive from my house according to Google Maps, but it's the closest one there is, and every now and then, I figure I'll run out and check what they've got. Usually I don't bother, though, unless I hear on a YouTube video or something that there is a toy that I particularly want showing up there.

But, I went out and did it this past Saturday, and what did I find? Well, nothing. Sadly, it's kind of what I expected too. I don't know why I even went out there when I expected it to suck, but I still did.

As I was leaving, I decided to buy a two pack of figures from Solo: A Star Wars Movie. I just didn't want to go home empty-handed after that long drive. So, here's what I brought home.

It's Chewie and Han all covered in mud from the part of the movie where they meet. I figured they could be anything in Ankletown station, because the Han doesn't look at all like Han, and the Chewie, since he's covered in mud, looks like he could be a totally different wookiee too.

It also came with a gun for some reason, but that could be a useful thing on Ankletown Station too, so I'm glad to have it.

It comes apart in three pieces, and if you use them in some other context, then they could simply appear to be futuristic machinery, maybe plumbing or something like that. It will definitely be worth something, so I guess it wasn't a complete waste of time, just mostly.

I think what I need to start doing is taking the time that I spend running around town looking for toys to put in Ankletown Station and dedicating it to actually building Ankletown Station instead. Why do I have drawers full of figures if I'm never going to build this stupid space station?

Anklecast 65 - Servants of the Master Up on Patreon

Okay, the new episode is up and available on Patreon.

In the story, Jerome and Kirk embark on a mission to save their loved ones from vampires. They venture into their sanctuary and attack them where they live...and they were armed with expert advice from the one and only Johnny Staker, YouTube star and legendary vampire hunter.

Afterward, Rish and I talk about vampire tropes and their use in media, working on author-ly activities, and getting feedback. Enjoy the show!

As always, thanks to Kevin McCleod at incompetech.com for the music.

So, head over to Patreon and check it out. If you're not a member of the Patreon yet, you can join for as little as $1.

As You Wish

In 2022, my wife got me all five of the Princess Bride figures that I wanted for Christmas. It was a really great present. The most I expected was one or two of them, but she searched the internet for a toy store that was selling them at a huge discount and grabbed them all.

So, when it comes to The Princess Bride, I'm good. I'm pretty much good.

However, some of the variant figures that McFarlane made are starting to show up at Ross, and they only want $5. I bet that's even cheaper than my wife got all the figures for in 2022. So, when I saw the Westley variant without the mask on and with the bloody shoulder from his escapades in saving Buttercup, I figured I had to grab it.

I took the traditional picture in my car before driving home to show it off. It's pretty cool, but I hope to find the Buttercup in her wedding dress, or else I'll feel like I don't really have enough to put it up on the shelf. I suspect that I'll find it though, so I'm not worried.

BBBE Carnivore | Refueling or Digressing? | Journey to One-derland | Week 43 Roundup

I decided to feed myself every day this week instead of conducting a few alternate day fasts. How did it go? Did things improve or did they get out of hand? Am I heading in the right direction? Find out on this week's exciting episode of Journey to One-derland.

The Wave

Yesterday, I talked about Yak Face, and how I found him at a local Ross. About a week ago, Rish told me that he'd found Yak Face as well as the rest of the wave of figures at his Ross and bought them all up. The rest of the wave consisted of the characters that we knew as children as Klaatu, Barada, and Nikto. This got me excited, because I didn't have those guys...I almost did, but it's a long story, and I don't.

So, I went out, drove around to all the Rosses nearby, and found nothing. I was frustrated and vowed to stop wasting so much of my time running from Ross to Ross in search of things I might never find. I needed to cut back and just go when I usually go, and if the things I wanted were there, then they were there.

So, I did that, and yesterday, the first breakthrough occurred. I found Yak Face...or Saelt-Marae if you'd rather. That meant that the wave of figures was showing up in my Rosses now. This morning, after dropping my kid off at school, I figured I'd run to Ross, since I was halfway there an all...really I was more like 1/5 of the way there, but who's counting?

It was miserable weather, pouring rain the entire time. There was standing water on the roads everywhere, and I had to splash through a thousand puddles to make it to Ross, and of course, they had nothing. Discouraged, I got in the car with the full intention of going straight home, but instead, I turned the other way and went to the next Ross.

The weather continued to be terrible. I could barely see out the window. "Why am I doing this?" I wondered. Watch me die on my way to Ross, and that'll be just what I deserve. I took this picture of the rain, just to show y'all that I'm not making it up.

I made it to the next Ross, which had a pretty full parking lot, requiring me to run through the parking lot while getting thoroughly soaked because there were no parking spots open close to the store. However, inside I found some Star Wars Vintage Collection guys! 

Of course, they had Yak Face, who I had already decided I wouldn't buy again, because I just don't like the character's design enough to try making customs. They also had Barada and Nikto, however...although now they are called Kithaba and Nikto (Skiff Guard). That was pretty exciting. They actually had two Niktos and one Kithaba, so I bought them all.

Here's the traditional picture in the car.

It was kind of dark, because of the cloudy skies and rain, so I decided to wait until I got home to take a picture of all of them.

The Nikto (Skiff Guard)s cat take their hats off, so I did one with the hat and one without for the picture. I'll probably see if I can't paint the clothes on one of them to set them apart in case they ever appear onscreen together. Or maybe I'll just take that Nikto head and put it on some other body. We'll see. As time goes by, though, I'm really gathering a bunch of aliens for my Ankletown Station. It's gonna be pretty darn good when all is said and done.

I still haven't found Klaatu, so I guess I'll still keep circling around all the Rosses looking for him. Maybe I'll get lucky or maybe I won't. When it comes down to it, beggars can't be choosers. If I insist on only paying $4 for my Vintage Collection figures, then I'm bound to miss out on some. I guess that's the breaks...at least I don't break the bank that way.

Yak Face

When I was a kid, there was a Star Wars guy named Yak Face. Later, they gave the guy a real name, and it is Saelt-Marae, but I will always call him Yak Face.

He's one of the most valuable of the original figures, because he was from the last wave of figures that barely saw any time on the store shelves before the line was canceled and pulled out because of lack of sales. Star Wars had run its course...in the 80s. They would obviously be back.

Now, in the 20s, they've got a new Saelt-Marae, and I found myself one at Ross the other day.

I buy every alien Vintage Collection figure I come across, but I have to admit that Yak Face isn't really one of my favorites. He doesn't look like a Star Wars alien to me. Instead, he looks like he belongs on a movie like The Dark Crystal or one of those other Jim Henson movies with characters that have crazy exaggerated feautures like that gigantic nose and mustache.

That's him in Return of the Jedi, though, so he's real. Doesn't mean he has to be my favorite. He'll be fine with the other aliens on Ankletown Station, though.

Dr. Claw

We're not talking about this guy here:

Though the title of the story is an obvious reference to the Inspector Gadget villain. Instead, we're talking about one of the last stories that I am publishing on Amazon...in this particular marathon, anyway. I'm sure there will be plenty more in the future, but this one is one of the last of the ones that have been waiting around to get published.

Back in 2014, Rish and I thought it would be fun to write a story on our blogs. We would do a Broken Mirror Event-type thing where Rish came up with a prompt, and each of us wrote a story based on it. The twist was that we wrote it live on the blog...as in, each day, we had to publish whatever we wrote for everyone to see. People could follow along and read our stories like a serial or something.

It was a fun exercise, and it's still up on the blog. You can find the label for it on the side panel. Or you can just click this link here to see all the posts. They'll be in reverse order, sadly. I don't know how to change the search so that it goes from oldest to newest instead of the other way around.

Better yet, you could go over to Amazon and buy a copy of the story, which is now available for just $2.99. That way the story will be in the proper order, and you won't have to read in reverse.

As for the cover, it was another struggle, like it was for yesterday's post about "Unfortunate." This time, it seems that the AI doesn't know what a claw machine is, so I had to go to Unsplash and use a regular old photo.

It's okay. I think it still looks pretty great. At least it's an actual claw machine. The AI was in the ballpark, as it was with fortune cookies yesterday, but it just couldn't quite get close enough. Instead, this is what I got:

If only they were claw machines, they would have made some fine covers. Oh well. I've gotten a lot of winners out of the AI, so I'm bound to have some losers too.

An Update On The Elf

Yesterday, I talked about some of the Christmas stuff I got for the upcoming (like, it's just around the corner, isn't it?) season, and I mentioned that one of my elves came with a bit of a defect. The guy had a third eyebrow painted right across his nose. It looked pretty bad, and I was a little bummed about it.

Well, today I decided that I would send an email to BigBadToyStore, the company who makes and sells the figures, and ask if there was any way I could get a replacement head. I didn't really want to get another figure (I particularly didn't want to pay for another figure), I just wanted a replacement head.

Well, I feel like I have to come on here and let it be known that these guys made it right. I got an email back from them within an hour, and they thanked me for telling them and for sending a picture to demonstrate, and they refunded the money I spent on the figure as store credit immediately. I could use that to buy a new figure that would hopefully not have a third eyebrow going down the tip of its nose, or I could just save it and it would be applied to my next order.

Well, since I'm a crazy nerd, I immediately bought a new figure. So, sometime soon, a new, hopfully unblemished, head will arrive...along with another whole body and set of accessories...and I can use that one for my display. They didn't even want me to return the figure I had...which was good, because that is a big hassle.

So, I guess I'm here to tell my story of being a satisfied customer. BigBadToyStore isn't the cheapest place to buy toys, but I've bought several things from them over the years because I like their policies and now I like their customer service as well. No paid endorsement here, just a story of customer satisfaction.

Unfortunate

I'm almost done here, folks. I've just about published every single story I have...save a scant few that will never see publication...or even the light of day...in fact, they'll probably be deleted outright, to make sure that no one can even find them after I'm dead.

Anyway, today, I'm highlighting my story, "Unfortunate." This little stinker...I mean fun piece of flash fiction was released as an exercise over on The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine. We needed an episode, and rather than send emails out to all our producers who were in the process of preparing episodes for us to run, I decided that I would just look up a prompt and write a story based on it, and then we could put the result on the show.

Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of this story. I suppose that's why it's getting released near the end of the line. It's about a guy who goes on a date, and when his fortune cookie comes at the end of their meal, the message inside is very different than what one might expect.

Also, this cover I made stinks.

It's as basic as can be, but I didn't want to waste much more effort on it, so I just left it. I tried to get the AI to give me a better image, but it doesn't know what a fortune cookie is, and gave me things like this:

Those are all great pictures...but not of fortune cookies, and I did need a fortune cookie. Thank you.

So, I'm sure by now I've fully persuaded you to never read this story, but if you are the possessor of a strong stomach, head over to Amazon, where you can purchase the eBook for a ninety-nine measly cents.

A Few More Christmas Additions

A few years ago, I picked up my first Naughty or Nice Santa figure. I got a couple of elves to go with it, and I thought it looked pretty good.

The elves have a couple of different head options you can pick from, but there's only a very few different looks. Recently, however, they added a new option. I picked up these two elves to add to the group.

That top one has the same head as the female in the picture above, but the other one...Tommy the Elf...has an all new head sculpt. 

Yeah, I think he's called Tommy because it's meant to look like Tommy Chong, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, he's an all new elf, so I grabbed him, but why did I grab the blue and red elf in the top picture? Well, this one came with another head that I could swap out for a young version of Tommy the Elf.

I don't know what happened, though. The guy who painted the eyebrows onto my head must have sneezed or something, and accidentally splattered black right across its nose. I'm not sure what to do about it. I guess maybe I can try to paint over it with some kind of skin-colored paint to save it. I"m pretty irritated. I wonder if I could complain to BigBadToyStore about it and maybe they'd send me a new one. Who knows, but I'm a little upset.

One thing I do know, I've got a good number of elves now to hang out with my Santa. I think I'm probably full up at this point.

That Damned Cat

I've noticed that, in today's world, many people have trouble separating art from its creator. Even going so far as to associate the opinions of a writer's characters with the writer himself. For example, once on the Dunesteef, Rish shared a story in which a character made a joke about a person being like a member of a certain political party. In the comments for that episode was a person calling us names for not believing in and being aligned with that certain political party. 

We were both a little shocked. How could someone be that unhinged? Don't people understand that characters in stories are not the author? Do they think that there's nothing in literature but blatant self-insertions? What the hell was going on here?

That was almost fifteen years ago now, and I've noticed that things have only gotten worse, so  it is with great trepidation that I release this story that I wrote many years ago but have never shared with more than a couple of people called "That Damned Cat."

Taking you back in time to the Dunesteef days again, let me remind you of a story we did called "Like Cat and Dog." When we did that story, we talked about cats and dogs afterward as Rish and I tended to do. We are both the kind of people who prefer dogs, and made many jokes about the worthlessness and unsuitability of cats as pets and the like. 

They were all tasteless jokes, but that was nothing new for our show. Well, it turns out there are just some subjects you can't joke about, and it seems that cats are one of those. There was a mini-uprising among our listeners. They wanted our heads for making tasteless jokes about cats. I believe one person even commented on the episode claiming that it was okay to make jokes about almost anything, even rape, but not about cats.

So, I suspect that this is a story that I shouldn't even be sharing at all. It is the story of a guy who hates his family's cat. He wants it dead, and puts a plan into practice to rid himself of it...except the cat comes back the very next day. Not only that, but the cat is changed. It's not right. The rest of the family doesn't seem to notice, but the guy is sure that it is actually a zombie cat, and he's afraid that it's come back to take its revenge.

Check it out if you like. If you suspect that you will be enraged and out of sorts for reading it, though, maybe skip this one. It's on Amazon if you like.

Two Thirds

Okay, the second third of the month is over. That's a weird sentence, right? Anyway, we've made it two thirds of the way through March. How is my progress coming along on the goals I set for myself with writing and publishing? Well, here's my chart for the month so far.

I've managed to plug away each and every day until I made it to my minimum words, which is 1,333 right now, so that means I'm still ahead of my goal to outdo my biggest month ever. As long as I don't falter, I should beat my previous record month...which was January. That month, I wrote 41,309. So, my goal is to get to 41,310. What's my percentage? Let's look at the writing meter.

28157 / 41310 (68.16%)

So, 68% is a little bit above two thirds. That means I'm doing just fine.

How is the whole year coming along? Well, let's look at the full chart.

Alright, so I'm at 172,986. That's a pretty big number. That's a pretty good ways toward achieving my final goal of 304,475. Not that I need to, but I'll show the meter for that too.

172986 / 304475 (56.81%)

56% of the way there on that one. It's a long way from halfway through the year too. So, I'm doing great.

Looking at that number of 172,986, I can see that I'll be over 200,000 by the end of next month. That's going to be pretty awesome. I'm excited to reach that. I'll make sure to make a celebratory post when I hit that landmark.

Also, even though my goal for each day of March is 1,333, my average is actually above 1,400. That's pretty awesome. I'm going to see if I can't keep it up there. That would be neat to finish out the month at that point...although I was thinking of making 1,400 my goal for next month. Maybe I should purposefully throw it, so that seems like a good goal to shoot for instead of me not stretching myself.

So, what have all those words gotten me? Well, since starting this, I've written a novel, a novella, and a novelette. Those are "Caught Up in Christmas," "The Elephant in the Room," and, "Karma Is My Boyfriend," respectively. I'm getting really close to finishing up my second novel of the year as well, which still doesn't have a satisfactory title, but has the working title of "Love Walks In." That's a pretty good output, right?

Okay, now, there's a few other goals that I set for myself in March. They involved publishing stories in one form or another. First of all, I was supposed to publish at least eight stories as eBooks over on Amazon. Of course, if you read my last report, then you saw that I am way above that already. As of last time, I had published 15 stories in March. 

Since that day? Well, I've gotten four more since that day...with a fifth published, but still not listed because it's in limbo with Amazon. They don't want to let me publish "Last Contact," because Rish Outfield already published it, and they think I might be trying to steal his work and pass it off as my own. I've been trying to appease them with a signed contract from me and Rish that says we each have non-exclusive rights to publish the story, but so far, they haven't budged. We'll see.

That means that I've done 19...basically 20 stories this month. There's really only one more to go. I wrote a novelette called "Undo," about a kid who finds a magic stopwatch that gives him the ability to go back in time one minute. However, he doesn't really have a strong moral compass, and it takes him down a very dark road. That story may possibly be published before the month is out. I'm going to have to do a little editing on that one. I haven't looked at it at all since I finished writing it a few years ago.

Beyond that, the only other non-novel that I have finished but not published is "The Elephant in the Room." That one definitely won't make it out this month. It'll take at least another month to get that one ready, but that may be one of my goals for next month. I really want to have all of my work published, and I'm determined to keep at it. Once the short stories are done, I'll get working on the novels.

So, I had already crushed that goal of eight stories in March by last update, but I crushed it a little further, grinding it into the ground mercilessly in the time since.

What else? Anything? Oh, there's one more thing. I made the goal to publish my first audiobook over on Audible this month. I was working on editing the last story for it when the month began. I finished that before the last update, and all I needed was to set up an account and do a little editing to portion off the chapters into separate files for upload. However, I did none of that in the last ten days. Instead, I put all my work into getting my podcast episode ready for this month, so I'm no closer to achieving that goal than I was last time. 

I gotta get going on this one, or it's going to be the one that got away. It would be kind of dumb to go so overboard on the publishing eBooks goal as to do 20 stories when I only had to do 8, but fall flat on my face and do nothing with the other goal. Gotta get moving.

The Frayed Ends of Sanity

Rish Outfield loves having some kind of prompt or contest to write stories from. We've done several exercises together where we give each other a prompt and then both write a story based on it. If you're a listener from the Dunesteef days, then you might remember the various Broken Mirror Story Events that we did over there. They were based on this.

Well, one time Rish got the idea that it would be fun to have a Broken Mirror with me where we each wrote a story that uses a Metallica song as its title and inspiration. Rish chose "My Friend of Misery," from the dark days when Metallica lost their way in the 90s. I chose, "The Frayed Ends of Sanity." Rish wrote a 149 page novel based on the idea he came up with. I wrote a 32 page short story.

But hey, we both had another notch on our belt, another credit to our name!

"The Frayed Ends of Sanity" has languished on my hard drive ever since, but in this process of publishing as much as I can, I've finally unearthed it and put it out in the wild for anyone to consume it if they'd like. It's never been seen anywhere else. The only way you can get it is by buying a copy over on Amazon and reading the eBook of it, so for once I don't have to say, "if you don't remember the podcast that it came from you can buy it and refresh your memory, I guess."

So, I invite you to check it out and do your level best to enjoy it.

"The frayed ends of sanity, hear them calling...hear them calling me."

It's Always Christmas In Philadelphia...Er, For Big Anklevich

I'm always amassing more and more stuff to put up at Christmastime. It doesn't matter what time of year. I'm always adding more. Today, I've added some of the Naughty or Nice Collection. I love these figures. It's a whole line of action figures based in Christmas, and they're doing every variation of Santa, elves, and even reindeer now. I've wanted to buy tons of them, but, of course, money is a prohibitive factor. I only have a few things, but I saved up, and added a few more this week...starting with this:

I jumped at the chance to get this guy, particularly because there was another Santa variant that I wanted, but it sold out while I was saving up, and I missed my chance. I was afraid this one might sell out too. Glad that it didn't before I got my chance to grab it...I suppose I could have waited all the way until November before there would be any worry of that, but why wait?

It's a pretty great figure. I suppose I could even put it up at Halloween time as well. I'll have to think about that.

I also got zombie santa an elf to go  with him.

Okay, this guy is a gremlin, but it comes with an alternate head that you can use, and that was always my plan.

I like this guy. I wish the elves came with elbow and knee articulation, but that's not an option. The trouble is that this guy looks pretty clean beside our zombie Santa.

I'm thinking about doing a black wash on the elf to make them go together better. It's a fun couple of figures. I wonder how Santa here would look with my zombie Captain America, Iron Man, and Scarlet Witch. Maybe that's how I could display Santa during Halloween.

Long Term Memory

Today's selection for newly published story is "Long Term Memory." This one was part of a thing that Rish, Marshal, and I did. There was a contest that they learned about at their writer's conference they attend each year, and they thought it would be fun if each of us put in an entry. The prompt for the contest was "be careful what you wish for." Turns out, what they meant by that was, be careful when you wish for a writing contest, because the people running it may never even judge the contest and pick a winner.

None of us ever heard back from that contest, and we checked on it and never found that they had declared a winner, but it doesn't matter. We have stories that came out of it, and that's good enough for me. I can publish it on Amazon and then nobody can read it there instead of nobody reading it for the contest.

Anyway, it's about an old man named Eddie, who always wished to be with the love of his life, a woman he knew in college named Fernanda. He wanted it so bad that he invented a time machine to travel back and make it happen. Unfortunately, he hadn't thought of everything...

Check it out over on Amazon if you'd like...if you haven't listened to the Anklecast that it was featured on already...or even if you have, maybe.

ADF & BBBE Carnivore | Plateau or Catching My Breath? | Journey to One-derland | Week 42 Roundup

This week was very similar to last week. It was a little difficult at times but mostly routine. I wasn't trying to get the weight off from vacation, I've cruised through that and am back on track and then some. So what happens now? Well, some might find it discouraging what came my way, but I don't.

Onward, To The Breach

"Onward, to the Breach," is a little flash fiction piece that I wrote years ago and ran on an early episode of the Anklecast. It basically comes from a line in a Sting song called "When the Angels Fall." Sting sings, "But perhaps the dream is dreaming us, Soaring with the seagulls. But perhaps the dream is dreaming us, Astride the backs of eagles." I took that line and ran with it, crafting a humdrum world of today, and then had the dreamer wake from that reality to return to his own. I've already given it all away, so there's no real reason to read it, but if you'd still like to, head over to Amazon and pick up your copy. It's super short, so I put it up for the extra low, low price of $0.99.

Young Jedi Chronicles

I think it's these toys are from a new show on Disney+ called "Young Jedi Chronicles." I haven't watched it, but what I gather is that it's Star Wars for toddlers...pre-schoolers. It's Teletubby Star Wars, I think.

Anyway, I found these ships at Ross and bought one of each.

I thought it might be possible to adapt them for use with 3.75-inch Vintage Collection figures. They'll pretty certainly require some modification. But they're not far from the right size. The cockpit is a little roomy, but not way too big or too small.

I could probably just put some plastic in on either side of the cockpit and it would look fine. Might need to do a little more than that, though, because they look a little babyish beyond that. Particularly those guns. Maybe drilling out the front of them to give them barrels and adding some greebles here and there would be enough.

Nothing could be done for the figures though. Is that thing supposed to be a blue ewok? Or something completely new?

I tossed those things out as soon as I got home.

From Another World

"From Another World," is a story that Rish and I wrote together...except we did it separately. Basically, Rish came up with a tale and made it into an Audiodrama. We performed that Audiodrama on the show with Bryan Lincoln and put it out. I told Rish that it was good enough that he should make a prose version of it that he could sell on Amazon. He didn't seem to interested in putting in the work it would require to take the story he'd already sweated over and make something else of it. So, since I was in the process of writing every day, I decided that I would do the prose part of the story for him. I don't think, however, that he's ever published it himself on Amazon, so up until now, it has been all for naught. But, I've got it published now, and you can get a copy of it and read if you're interested. Maybe Rish will even read this post, and realize that the story and the cover are ready to go, so he could publish it on his Amazon as well, and you could buy it from him instead. He deserves it more, after all.

Another Fortniter

I was at Ross the other day when I saw this funky little package of a Fortnite guy.

I've never seen any package like it. It's so small. It kind of looks like it must have been the driver of a vehicle, so it's just in a bubble that gets displayed next to the vehicle it came with...except it isn't. It's a completely self-contained product. It's weird, I looked it up online, and they didn't have any pictures of it in this packaging anywhere either, so I don't know.

What I do know is that this guy would look pretty good with the folks on Ankletown Station, so I made sure to grab him.

The jacket is cool, but it comes off, and it looks fine without it too, so I could swap it out to another character to give them a different look.

I've noticed that Fortnite figures often look like they're supposed to be their own version of some character from a different property. This guy looks so much like Snake Eyes from GI Joe that I can only assume that's what he's supposed to be. Although they have another guy in Fortnite whose name is Eight Ball, which seems like he also must be a ripoff of Snake Eyes, so who knows?

What I do know is that I'm irritated that I'm old enough that my eyes are so bad that I can't manage to get the weapons into the figure's hands without putting on my glasses.

But I can't see for crap long distance with them on, so I have to have them handy, but can't wear them all the time. Never get old, folks. It just ain't worth it.