Sunday, October 13, 2024

The Fate of an Inconvenient Premise

I Got Staked by a Texan and Sent to Another World Where I'm Still a Vampire but There's Garlic in the Air So I'm Weaker Than a Normal Human
Volume 2

"This quest reward magic item negates my vampiric weaknesses!"

Finis

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Friday, October 11, 2024

Addendum

It's as if everyone had a marathon of Star Wars and Back to the Future and realized having a 3D blurry picture of a guy is of no use whatsoever, to say nothing of aesthetics.

Ephemeral Technology

Isn't it strange that television, a younger medium than movies or radio, to say nothing of literature, is almost dead already? It had close to a single human lifespan. Who would have predicted that in the 60s without saying something about holograms? Those don't seem as popular as they used to be.

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Use This Now!

"Fantasy" is too broad a term. From now on, call the genre "magispec" so we can call James Bond fantasy and nobody will be confused. You might think nobody is confused already, and you're right, but think of all those poor souls who pushed "speculative fiction" and couldn't get it done. What's wrong with a little compromise?

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Novel Formatting

How about we put the main narrative on every other page and then fill the other one with a chorus commenting on the action? That's hard to do digitally, which means physical books can have a point again.

Sunday, October 6, 2024

The Cursed Voyage of the Ancient King

"Preserve our heritage!" "Save our king!"
Protestors stuffed the streets, they stuffed the waterfront and the piers. The supervisors and bureaucrats in charge of moving the mummy to the ship and away shook their heads and said they would try again later, knowing the futility of it. The protestors did not disperse before the sun's rays did. Even then they left sentinels.
Every protestor who went home fell promptly into a satisfied sleep, and every one had that sleep disturbed. They dreamed together of an empty chamber, bare but for a terrible presence too noble for eyes belonging to people of their sort to resolve into a person. "A curse," the figure proclaimed. "A curse on all who interrupt my vacation. An unyielding curse!"

* * * * *

"Preserve our leisure!" "Save our king's plans!"
Protestors stuffed the side of the streets, they formed lines to the pier. The supervisors and bureaucrats acquiesced to their demands to move the mummy posthaste, wholly mystified.
Finis

Proper Halloween Titles

Sure you want to have skeleton kings and vampire kings, but is king a scary title? How about kaiser, doge, pharaoh, or potentate? Really it's just kaiser, but I wanted to see how the others look in print. Very plain. My goosebumps are gooseflat.