Friday, October 23, 2009

In honor of the holidays...

I might be writing about monsters and strange places soon-ish. It's one of the projects I mentioned in my last post and things are advancing on it at a decent pace.

So yeah, coolness.

Which means I really need to sit down this weekend and push through some of my short story. Luckily though, I wasn't stupid and didn't agree to do so much of this new project I couldn't do both.

Which is a real danger when you're between gigs actually. You want to work, work, work and sometimes agree to budget your time for sleep, sleep, sleep, and food, food, food. To say nothing of actually being social and stuff.

On the fun side of things:

1) I've been enjoying Borderlands on the 360. It's a fun shooter with a ton of guns and a decent sense of humor. It's something to have fun with while I take a break from Champions Online, which I love but know I'll be playing more soon when the holiday events start popping up.

2) I've also been reading a book called Leviathan (no, not the Hobbes one). It's a fun alt-history with steampunk mecha and genetically engineered monsters set before WWI. It's nominally young adult/teen fantasy but honestly I think that's more because publishers and bookstores say "Oh, the main character is a teenager! Put it in YA!" In any event its a fun read and one that I recommend.

3) TV's been pretty darned good this season. House has been great. Heroes is good this year too. Sanctuary and Stargate Universe both show a lot of promise. And Supernatural and Sons of Anarchy...oh, how good are these shows? There's barely any words to do them justice. Sons is probably a bit better overall, but Supernatural has maintained 5 years of quality and for that I will always love it- no Supernatural equivalent to Buffy Season 6 or Angel season 4 in sight.

And a bit more on Supernatural:

And Whedon fans reading this can just start calling me names now, as much as I loved Buffy and Angel I think Supernatural is a more consistent and well put together show. If nothing else, it has a few less repeated themes and better soundtracks. Also, I really love using actual folklore and legends in the show. The Buffyverse tendency to make everything up was fun, but it meant that no matter how much of a folklore and mythology geek you were you had to have the show explain things to you (except for a handful of creatures like vamps and werewolves). Supernaturals melding of myth and American culture really hits home with me. From Wendigos to H.H. Holmes, the show takes the viewer on a tour of the US through this weird mystical lens that I really appreciate and which often I can figure out while watching. Which makes it also a sort of detective show. Admittedly we've lost a bit of that in the most recent season, but it's still angels and demons and the like and not Glornebian Demon Weasels or whatever (which is fun, but not really the part of Buffy I felt was the actually the best).

Plus Supernatural really made me appreciate classic rock again...which is nice.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

I am terrible...

About updating this thing. Really.

But anyhoo, managed to not sleep for two days, go to two parties this weekend. One of which lasted for 12 hours. So yeah, I guess I've still got it, by some definition of "it".

Anyhoo, onto something more serious. I'm in process of writing a horror short story for an upcoming anthology. I'm still working out a few niggling details but it looks to be coming along okay. It certainly is the month for it.

Also might have another gig. It's for a line of licensed products but I can't say more than that right now.

And I'm trying to get another person to return my emails. I don't think I'm being snubbed or anything, I just think that he hasn't gotten around to it. The good news here is that one of the other writers for this company has said some really great things about my work and that's always nice.

So yeah, busy and all that. Legal work continues to be more about getting work than making money at it, but then that's far from uncommon in this economy. On the plus side, I've got lots of time to write and do other things.

I'm actually going to try to update this thing a bit more often. I usually have at least some stuff to say...but I often don't talk about it here. Which is sad because I've got such a great title for this thing.