August was vacation month for my wife and me. We spent three weeks back in the UK, visiting family, Cardiff, and London. We normally go back at Christmas so this was the first time we’d been back in the summer for something like seven years. Of course, the weather didn’t cooperate. It didn’t rain all the time, there were some very sunny days, but as the photos show, it was fairly grey for our trip to London. We had a good time though. I’ll probably post more photos from the trip (including a visit to The Doctor Who Experience) in future. There was writing, of course. Total word count for August was 17,038 which is the lowest word count since March. Most of that time was spent on random scenes for a possible urban fantasy series. They were a lot of fun and I may well try writing a novella to see how it goes. I did finish a new short story that I wrote specifically for a very cool anthology. I submitted it a couple of days ago so now I have my fingers and toes crossed that the editor likes it. Time will tell. Talking of short stories… my … Read More
Super by Ernie Lindsey
I’m not really a superhero guy. Growing up in a small market town in the UK, American comics were not readily accessible. One local newsagent did stock a random selection but there was no rhyme or reason to the issues available and certainly no consistency. Which meant that if I did buy one I got the middle of a story arc with no possibility of reading the rest. With two notable exceptions, the comics I bought were quickly forgotten. Only the one issue of Sandman and the one issue of Hellblazer I found stuck with me. I think I still have them somewhere. It wasn’t until a good friend of mine opened a comic book shop – Comic Connections – that I actually got any real exposure to comics. By that time I was firmly entrenched in the goth sub culture and it was the Vertigo titles that caught my attention. I was the guy in black reading Preacher and Sandman and Hellblazer. The superheroes just passed me by. More recently, I’ve added Locke & Key, a bit of manga and one or two Batman one shots to my shelves but that’s about it. I’ve dabbled with superhero movies and enjoyed some (Batman) and been bored by others (Superman … Read More
What I did on my Holiday – Part Two
As I mentioned yesterday, I did quite a bit of reading on my recent trip to the UK. First up was Pwned (Lexy Cooper Book 2) by Christa Charter. I don’t read a lot of mystery books (and I’m not really sure what the difference is between a mystery novel and a crime novel) but the Lexy Cooper books are set in the world of videogames and that was enough to tempt me into trying them. I read the first Lexy book, Schooled, the week before I left for the UK. Schooled has Lexy working with detective Mike Malick to solve the murder of one of Lexy’s coworkers. Lexy works as a community manager at Xenon, a very thinly veiled version of Microsoft. Coincidentally, Christa Charter used to work as a community manager for Microsoft’s XBox console and she’s used that experience to create a fun “world” for Lexy to play in. Schooled was a quick, fun read so I picked Pwned as my first “holiday read”. I didn’t enjoy Pwned quite as much. There’s two separate plots in the book – Mike’s murder mystery and Lexy’s personal life. The two barely intersect and the Lexy plot veered dangerously close to cheesy afternoon TV territory. That said, I still enjoyed it enough to buy the rest … Read More