Losing It, Slipping Under. Gotta Make A Change | Carnivore | Week 82 Roundup

I used dairy products as a crutch to get past a craving last week, but now it's coming back to bite me. I have no off switch when it comes to dairy, and so this whole week, I let it run amok. I gotta do something to get myself back under control...

The Mercy Of Gods

I love James SA Corey (that's the pen name of the writing duo, Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham). The Expanse is probably my favorite book series of the last ten years. I loved the finale of the story, but mourned when the world came to an end. So, the minute I heard that there was a new series by Corey, I jumped at the chance to get started on it.

I couldn't believe, therefore, that I didn't like it. I listened to the audiobook, read by Jefferson Mays, the same guy who did the Expanse books. I was hours in, and had yet to find anything that I liked. There were no characters I liked, no situations I liked, no storylines I liked...I was completely confused at how such a thing could happen.

I got despondent, and let my hold on the book lapse without finishing it. I went book free for quite a while, but then a month or two later, I finally got back to reading, and after doing that, I decided to give the book a second chance.  I mean, I'd quit the book right as the aliens invaded. The book was about to completely change, I assumed, so I ought to try again. Besides, it was James SA Corey!

Sadly,  despite the humans becoming slaves to an unfeeling alien race, the book didn't completely change. None of the characters became interesting. Nothing ever gave me that feeling that I couldn't wait to get back to listening to the book, that I hated having to stop and do things like go to work or feed myself or sleep. Books often do that to me, and those are the ones I remember fondly. Sadly, despite my love for The Expanse, I don't feel that way about this book. I slogged my way to the end of it anyway, because I'm masochistic or something. I should have given it up once and for all and let it go much earlier. I suspect I won't bother reading the second book in the series, but you never know...I mean, it's James SA Corey!

A Little Too Late

I was filled with the Christmas spirit this month, I guess, and I thought it would be cool to put together a new collection of Christmas stories like my already released Christmas Creatures. I do like to write Christmas tales during December, so I didn't have to be cajoled into it. The trouble is that, because it was already December, I couldn't get all the stories out in time for folks to read them during the season. 

Today's post is the case in point. I just published three stories yesterday. All Christmas stories. All published after Christmas. Whoops! I'll tell you about them anyway. The first one is called "Eve of the Living Dead." 

Here's what I wrote to tantalize the reader without giving away the plot too much:

The zombie holocaust has descended on the world and Gage is on his own, all his friends and family gone, looking for a reason to go on with the necessary struggle to survive in this harsh situation. Winter has come to Wyoming, where he'd fled in hopes of finding a place with less of the shambling undead, and Gage finds a farmhouse where he can shelter from the weather. Inside, there is a big surprise waiting for him. He also learns that Christmas is here again, and jolly old St. Nicholas is still making his rounds even in this world of never-ending horror.

That probably needs some work. Just because I can write doesn't mean that I can write ad copy. That's a different skill, and I think I need to learn a lot more about it if I want to be a self-published author.

That one is a big, full-sized story, 13,984 words, and I think it's pretty good. I really like that one, and I bet you will too.

Next story I published was "Frosty Force."

Here's what I wrote to tantalize a reader about "Frosty Force" without totally giving it away again.

When Dixon inadvertently offended an unhinged and aggressive kid at school, the boy shows up at his house with his two brothers to get revenge. This kid and his family are into witchcraft. Dixon and his father assumed they were crazy, but are they...

This one is shorter. It's a flash fiction story that only runs 1,557 words. I forced myself to write something much smaller just to prove that I could still do it since everything I write comes in around 15,000 words these days. I priced it down at 99 cents, although, I wonder if a shorty like this is supposed to be even cheaper. Pricing of eBooks seems a little crazy to me sometimes. I guess if you sell a lot, it might be worth it to lower your price to fifty cents or twenty-five cents.

The last story I published today was "Artificial Christmas."

Here's what I wrote about it to entice you to check it out:

When I met Santa on a beach in Tahiti, I knew something was wrong. Christmas had changed forever. Things would never be the same. Oh, did I mention, Santa wasn't in Tahiti for his post-Christmas retreat, oh no. He was there on Christmas Eve, the very day he should be out in his sleigh delivering presents...

This one is also shorter, but not flash fiction levels. It's 3,252 words. I really like this one too. It's about AI, robotics, and what the future has in store for humanity, and it's something that I think about a lot. Hopefully, you'll find it interesting too.

The worst part about all of this is that I'm still not done. I have one more Christmas story that I'm writing now. I'm 7,500 words into a tale called "Unmaking Memories" that I should hopefully finish by New Year's Eve. My plan is to start into a novel on New Year's Day, and begin my new push for 2025, so I need to get there. Of course, that means that I have one more Christmas story to put out after Christmas has passed us by. Oh well, I guess you do what you gotta do.

The Pagan Lord

I went back to this well for my next book. I love to have them there as a go to any time I need a palate cleanser. I keep running into books that don't excite me like I want them to, and Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories series always pleases. It's a really long series, but I'm getting closer and closer to its finale. I'll be sad when I've finally made it to the end of Uhtred's story.

I got the new Brandon Sanderson book on my Audible as well, but my son wanted to listen to it right away, so I let him go at it. I didn't want to be losing his place every time I listened. Listening at the same time just doesn't work.

So, The Pagan Lord it was. This one was very interesting, and took Uhtred farther than any of the other books up until now did. In fact, the ending was even a little bit ambiguous. I wasn't quite certain what had happened to our hero at the end. All the same, it was fun and satisfying. So far, not a single one of these books has let me down. They've been great all around.

Friends?

My daughter went to the library the other day, and came back with this book called Six Wakes. I was unfamiliar with it, and I asked her if it was from that I Am Number Four series that made it big enough to be made into one movie, but not a series of movies. She said no, and told me the basic premise of the story. It sounded pretty good.

Then, a little while later, I got a closer look at the book:

Oh, it's by Mur Lafferty, I thought, I know her...except I don't. I've never met Mur Lafferty. I kind of feel like I do, because we were both involved in the same scene at the same time, but I don't think I've ever even exchanged an email with Mur. I listened to her shows, both I Should Be Writing and Pseudopod. Hell, I even narrated a story or two for Pseudopod over the years...although I don't think I did that until after Mur had moved on and Alasdair Stuart took over.

We were both on a similar path in those days. We were doing podcast versions of short stories while trying to launch a writing career as well. I feel a kinship with her, but I guess I don't actually know her...but I feel like I do. Seeing her name on that book makes me smile and think, "One of my friends did it. They made it!"

I guess that's what a parasocial relationship is. since the advent of mass media, people started developing those kinds of relationships, and that has only accelerated the more and more technology advanced. Rish always liked to talk about how he had that kind of a relationship with the radio DJs that he listened to a lot, and he was hoping that a similar thing would happen with The Dunesteef.

I don't know. It's not really worth a blog post, but I did it anyway. Mur doesn't know me, probably doesn't even know the name Big Anklevich at all, but I still think of her as my friend, and I like to be able to see her name on a book cover that just randomly made its way into my house, so that I can say, "Good job, Mur. I'm proud of you. Hopefully, I can join you someday as someone making a living as an author too."

We'll Have Halloween On Christmas...

One of my presents this Christmas was something that I needed for Halloween.

This past October, I found the figures of Frankenberry and Count Chocula at Ross, but Boo-Berry never joined them. I was kind of sad, but I figured I could deal with it. My daughter decided that I didn't need to deal with it. She bought Boo-Berry for me and gave it to me for Christmas.

He's great. I can't wait to set him up along with Frank and the Count this upcoming Halloween. The one weird thing is that the box that he came in is much smaller than the box of the other two. When I set them up for Halloween, I put their boxes behind them, because they look like the cereal boxes.

Boo-Berry's box is about half the size of those two. That'll be weird...then again, maybe it'll be good. I could put it in the middle in front of the other two boxes, and I could fit all three boxes without needing to expand the footprint required to fit them all. I guess we'll see come next October.

A Christmas MIracle

This was Monday night, 12/23, after I finished writing:

That's right, folks! I made it. 400,000 for the year of 2024, and I still have a week to add to it.  Oh, and Merry Christmas to all.

Hanging On By A Thread At Christmas | Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | Week 81 Roundup

It's the week before Christmas, and temptations abound. Normally, I don't have much of an issue with that kind of thing, but something shifted inside me this week, and I worried that I might blow it. The tactic that I took to fight it was unorthodox, and it made the rest of the week a continued struggle. To hear the story, hit play and watch the week unfold...

I Got My Christmas Goose Early

On Saturday afternoon, just a few days before Christmas, Rish's present to me came in the mail. He sent me out these three guys for use on Ankletown Station:

I was unfamiliar with these guys, but Rish found them at Ross, texted a picture to me, and asked if I thought they'd be cool on Ankletown Station. I guess they are Pacific Rim Jaegars reproduced in 4-inch scale.

They are interestingly weird figures. That one feels relatively normal, but look at this guy:

He has three arms! Not two. Not four, but three. Two on the right but only one on the left. Where have you ever seen anything like that before?

My favorite guy, though, is still this one:

I think it's because of the fact that it looks like it has a trash can or a mop bucket for a head that makes me appreciate it so much. It's definitely and interesting looking robot. And it's cool, because they shrunk them down to where they can stand beside any Star Wars figure or, in this case, a Fortnite guy.

So, once I get started on Ankletown Station, these guys will be interesting robots/droids to slot right into their place in the crowd. Thanks, Rish. And a Merry Christmas.

Special Playground

Freya, our younger kitten (we've had her for just under a year) is having her first Christmas with us. She's having plenty of fun attacking the ornaments on the tree, and here is a picture of her turning the presents on the tree into a special cat playground.

I wonder how fun the world would be if I was the size of a cat, and every little change a human being made was like a new playground was built in the park nearby. We humans can do it too. This makes me think of when Little Anklevich was still a baby, and we were having our backyard landscaped. They came in with a big machine and dug away at the hill, and left this giant hill of dirt behind.  Of course, Little was out playing on it as soon as the workers drove away.

Hats

Last year, I talked about wanting to get Santa hats to put on the action figures on my shelf that don't get removed during Christmas decorating. I saw a listing on Amazon where you could get sixty of these hats for $15. That seemed like a really good deal, but I was afraid that the hats would be too big, and would be a waste of money. Then, just the other day, I saw that those hats got marked down to $10. Well, I decided it was time to pull the trigger and buy them.

They came Thursday, and this is what size they are.

They are, sadly, bigger than I hoped they would be. But they still kind of work. When I got home from work Thursday night, I spent several minutes trying to put them onto figures that I thought they'd look good on.

I started with the Incredibles. It was harder than I thought.

Dash has a pretty big head, so it looks pretty good. Others have smaller heads. Bumble Chewbacca has a goodly sized head, so he looks good.

Darth Vader has a big helmet, so it's not bad, but Obi-Wan doesn't...not as good.

I couldn't get it to fit on Russel's head, but it did good on Dug.

Not as good on K-2SO. I tried to squash it down so that the long side hangs out the back where you can't see it, but it's still not great.

Threepio's head is too small for this, but it doesn't look too bad anyway.

I figure I'll see if I can't put hats on Luke, Leia, Han, Lando, Chewie, and probably even Artoo. I'll get them onto all the others as well. It's sadly, not as easy as it seems. The hats constantly fall off, and the figures fall over all the time too. I'll get there, though. After all, I have a lot of those hats.

Holiday Extravaganza: The New Stuff

I haven't done any posts like this yet this year, so I thought I ought to publish a couple of pictures of my Christmas decorations from my toy shelves. To start with this year, I figured I'd do a post of any of the things that are new for this year. First of all, my favorite new addition, the zombie Santa Claus and his little zombie elf friend.

This figure actually inspired the short story that I am writing right now as my final Christmas tale for 2024. I'm calling it "Eve of the Living Dead."

The elf probably needs something of a weathering, because he looks too clean next to Santa, but they look good, don't they? Fun stuff. I'm sad, because this same line had a Terminator Santa Claus too, but it sold out just before I decided to buy it...boo!

I also got several new elves from the Naughty or Nice collection to put with my standard Santa Claus.

I think I only had two last year, and now I have six. That might be a bit of an overkill, but I just like them. I only wish they were more poseable. The Santa is super poseable, but the smaller figures they articulated like classic Star Wars figures. 5POA only. Boo!

Since I got all these new elves, I got a bunch more accessories to go with them. Last year, I had stacks of presents all around Santa, but they wouldn't fit there this year since I had all the new elves, so I distributed the presents around to the other displays on the shelves. For example, I took all those Star Wars holiday figures I got last year, put them into their own little cubby holes, and gave them presents to give. Like the Bumble Chewbacca:

His present even matches his coloring. Pretty cool, eh?

Then there's the snowman snowtrooper:

There's the Santa Jawa and his collection of droids that he's selling for Christmas...nope, not giving away. This is a Jawa, he ain't giving away anything, no matter how much he looks like Santa.

Then there's the festive K-2S0. He came with a present too.

Most of these figures aren't made to hold anything other than a gun, so let me tell you, it was pretty hard to get them to grab a big square box like this.

That was it for the Star Wars Holiday figures, but I did have the new Mandalorian figure that Rish custom painted for me last year. I set him up with a present, too.

That other Mandalorian in the back is just a regular old figure, but I thought he would go so well with Rish's custom guy that I had to grab him when I saw him for cheap at Ross. This is the way...to the Christmas party, right?

I still had more Christmas presents, so I decided to start giving them to my non-Christmas figures. He-man brought a present.

So did Snake Eyes.

And even Cobra Commander is getting into the spirit.

Oh, I almost forgot about these Star Wars guys. I found them at Ross just after Christmas passed us by last year. I was amazed to find three of them.

I love the gingerbread look. I have big plans for these guys in a future year, I'm going to make a gingerbread version of the Endor bunker as their gingerbread house, and have them there guarding it. I know it's not quite right, because they're clone troopers, but it's close enough.

I only have a couple more new things. This here is a Starlord Funko Pop that I found at Marshall's, and I decided I couldn't pass it by. I don't even know if it was a good deal, because I don't buy Pops, usually. But I liked this one.

The one problem with Pops is that they could be anyone. Does this figure really say, "Starlord," to you? Me neither, but at least it has a big Santa hat on, so it definitely says, "Christmas!"

Lastly is this goofy Fortnite guy:

This is their character called Doggo. They made a Christmas version of him. I gave him some Fortnite gingerbread cookies to hold, but in general, I think he's kind of lame. I wish they made some of the more standard figures in Christmas skins instead. The hot chicks in Christmas sweaters and pajamas would work for me.

They did do the gingerbread girl, and I got that one. Hopefully, I can show you what I did with it soon. Gotta finish that, and I just never put the time in, but if I get around to it before Chriastmas, I'll definitely post about it here.

Well, that's all the new stuff, I think. I'll surely have another post later with more of my decorations. I really love them, so I love to show them off. I'll definitely be back.

Use The Force, Justin!

I saw this add online for the Thursday night football game.

Is it just me? Or does it look like the quarterbacks on those adds are wielding lightsabers? Particularly Justin Herbert, because of the way he's turned to the side like he might be holding it over his shoulder.

I don't know. Maybe not quite, but it's a little weird. They should have just left the last line in that series blue like all the rest if you ask me.

Early Christmas Present

My nephew, and fellow toy collector, John, just sent me a Christmas present the other day. I had a guess as to what it might be, because he had told me what he was up to in a text, but when I got it, I couldn't believe how cool it was. He sent me a 3D printed six-inch scale Skyhawk for my GI Joe classified figures.

This is an upsized reproduction of a toy they put out in the GI Joe line back in 1984, the height of my GI Joe collecting.

Here's a commercial from the day that shows it in action.

I looked for a video that shows it in the cartoon,  but, though I know it was in dozens of episodes of the cartoon, I didn't quickly find anywhere that someone had that information categorized, so I moved on.

There were a few problems that I ran into. Most notably was that one of the side panels of the ship broke in transit.

It glued back together pretty easily with super glue, though.

I think I'll give it a little weathering, and once that is done, I suspect you won't even be able to see the glue residue anymore.

GI Joe was, like Star Wars, a line a toys that centered around the vehicles. The figures were smaller than the standard had been, specifically so that you could put your guys into the turret of a tank or in the cockpit of a jet plane. 

They've made very few vehicles for the six-inch line, though. The scale of the figures seems to prohibit it. They started out making only the very smallest of vehicles...and charging you through the nose for the privilege of owning them.

First, was the Cobra Flight Pod, or Trubble Bubble. This is one of my favorite vehicles, and I owned one as a kid.

They also made Serpentor with his Air Chariot. Another favorite of mine that I had as a kid.

But I have neither of those things, because they wanted around $80 for the things.

It only got worse when they decided to make the first real vehicle for the line, the Cobra HISS tank. That was always one of my favorite vehicles from the 80s too. Usually, I only had the smallest of vehicles, like the Air Chariot or the Flight Pod because they were cheap, but I actually had a HISS tank as a kid despite its size. That wouldn't be the case with the new HISS though. They put it out as a part of their HASLAB setup, which is where they crowdfund toys. They wanted...I can't remember but it was either $300 or $400 for the thing. Sorry, but I have a mortgage to pay, and I ain't got money for something like a $400 toy, so I had to forego it again.

I think they've done one of the Jeeps from the line since then, but that was pretty costly too...not as bad as the HISS, but still beyond my abilities. I'll let the One Percent have those toys, I guess.

I did get the motorcycle they made for the line. That was the Ram Cycle, and my nephew, John, found that on clearance and picked one up for me and sent it out from California.

So, for the most part, I've been unfamiliar with the scale of the GI Joe Classified vehicles. The motorcycle didn't seem inordinately huge. I had heard that the HISS tank was huge, but I'd never really seen one.

The Skyhawk was always one of the smallest vehicles available for GI Joes in the 80s. It's kind of surprising that I didn't have one, because that seemed like the kind of thing my parents could afford as a present for me. So, getting this six-inch scale Skyhawk just kind of flabbergasts me. It's freaking huge! I took this picture to show the scale next to my 3.75 inch scale AT-AT.

It's basically as big as the whole body of the thing. Keep in mind that this AT-AT is an extra large, closer to actual scale AT-AT than what they'd given us back in the 80s Kenner toyline. Yet, it's still close in size...for the one man ship. It's so wild. No wonder Classified doesn't make a lot of vehicles.

It's pretty awesome to have a vehicle like this, and it automatically becomes one of the most impressive things in my collection. I'm not even sure if I have a space big enough for it on my shelves. I'll probably have to readjust some things to fit it. But I definitely will, because it's so neat. It's also great, because I didn't have to take out a second mortgage to afford it.

Although, in writing this post, I discovered that they have the Cobra Stinger for Classified now...oh man, do I want that thing.

They want $100 for it. I wonder if there's any chance I could raise that money...somehow...