The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Pointless Animal Cruelty

Spain, Spain, Spain.

What am I going to do with you?

First you insist on not only retaining but celebrating the barbaric spectacle (I am not going to call it a sport) that is bullfighting.  Frankly, that's bad enough.  Some nights, when I have trouble sleeping, I stroll down to my secret subterranean lair, pull up a world map on the UberComputer, and put the crosshairs on Spain while I fiddle with the ANTIMATTER ANNIHILATE button.

I haven't pushed the button.  Yet.  Mainly because of Penelope Cruz.  She's Spanish, and up until now that was reason enough to sway me from pushing the button.

But now I see this. Be warned, the link is quite gruesome.  Allow me to summarize for the tender-hearted -- horse abuse is now rampant in Spain, as the economic calamity there renders droves of the newly rich suddenly poor.  Which means thousands of horses are being abandoned at stables, left to starve, or left to suffer any number of other cruel and undeserved fates.

I'd probably have skipped over the story with a shake of the head had a Spanish vet not remarked that she'd seen numerous cases of horses with untreated gunshot wounds to their legs.

Gunshot wounds received when revelers fired shotguns close to the horses' hooves in order to make then dance.

Let that sink in.  There are people out there who find it not only acceptable but amusing to wound horses just to make them dance.

Elsewhere in the article, someone theorizes that the horses are being abused in response to some sort of repressed rage on the part of the formerly wealthy owners.

So again I ask -- Spain, what is your freaking problem?

Spanish crowds mob stadiums to watch some latex-clad jackass prance around and stab a bull until the poor thing bleeds to death. The crowds throw flowers.  Despite dressing like Pee Wee Herman, Spanish matadors have somehow achieved rock star status in Spanish culture, all while performing acts that result in swift arrest in civilized parts of the world.

I'm not sure who disgusts me more -- the crowds or the matadors.

I'm sure you'll all seen those videos of bulls managing to skewer some slipper-clad twit of a matador.  Or videos of an enraged bull leaping into the stands and trampling a few 'spectators.'

I cheer at both.  The video I really want to see is the one in which a bull gives a bovine colonoscopy to a matador before flinging him into the crowd and then leaping atop the shrieking mob until blood and cheap wine run down the stands.  Followed by a rushing inferno that roasts each and every 'fan' while they crush each other in a vain attempt to escape.  And then maybe a news helicopter crashes into the fire, just to make absolutely sure there isn't one single survivor.

I'd get the Blu-Ray of that.  And laugh for the full length of it.

I know full well Spain doesn't have a monopoly on animal cruelty.  Americans fight dogs to the death every day.  But at least we arrest them when we catch them, and we don't set the dogfights in arenas and praise the courage of the idiots running the shows.

I think I've had it with Spain.

I think the next time I have trouble sleeping, I'm not only going to press the ANTIMATTER ANNIHILATE button but hold it down until all those geologists who've spent years wondering what Earth's mantle looks like can stroll over to the edge of the smoking crater and have themselves a look.

Yes, Spain, even Penelope Cruz can't save you from my wrath now.

MidSouthCon 29 Roundup, With Pics and Darrell Award Goodness

It's a cold windy day in Mississippi, and the travelling Tuttles are home after enjoying the many sights and sounds of MidSouthCon 29.

I've got pics!  They're below.  I'm using them a bribe, hoping you'll stick around for the text too.

My big news from the Con is of course the Darrell Awards for 2010.  The Cadaver Client won the 2010 Darrell Award for Best Novella.  And much to my surprise, The Banshee's Walk won the award for Best Novel.

First of all, I need to thank my editor at Samhain Publishing.  Without Bethany Morgan and her patient, wise editing, the Markhat stories and books would all still be languishing on my hard drive.  So Beth, a huge thanks to you!

And of course a huge Elvis thank-you-very-much to the hard-working Darrell Awards folks, who read huge stacks of entries every year with little or no thanks.  So thanks, all!

Now, about the Con.  I had a great time, met some gracious and fascinating people, talked to a zombie or two, got to rub elbows with other writers and publishers, and sat in on some great panels.  I was reassured to hear that no matter our places in the publishing food chain, we writers all seem to struggle with the same issues and jump much the same hurdles.  At least that hasn't changed.

I was surprised to see so many publishers walking around above the ground.  To hear the news coming out of the Big Six, you'd think the publishing industry was nearly as decomposed as the zombie pictured below.  But the small presses at the Con appeared to be doing just fine.  They're selling new books and signing new writers.  That's good news indeed.  Check out Yard Dog Press for a great example of a small press doing big things (wave to Selena!).

I'd need a kick in the head if I didn't also mention the artists.  Look, I've got a couple of Michael Whelans, a signed Vincent Di Fate, some pretty good stuff.  But the Art Room at the Con was a real eye-opener this year.  There are some fantastic artists out there, doing incredible work.  We grabbed a piece and even got to meet the artist, which as a blast.  You should check out Nene Thomas online.  Wow.  Just wow.

Pictures, I promised you pictures, didn't I?  Okay.  Here they come, in no particular order...

Fig. 1, A Zombie.  

He was cool.  He followed people around the lobby until they noticed he was behind them.  The Con-goers would smile and laugh.  The insurance salesmen from Duluth stood there wide-eyed, which is why the only people who will survive the coming zombie apocalypse are are science fiction and fantasy fans.  We know better than to stand s;till when the zombie closes in.

Kids and R2

There were a lot of kids at this Con.  Normally, I'm not all that enthused when I see a nunch of kids areound, but these kids weren't the yelling-shrieking-running-amuck sort.  They were well behaved and having fun, and R2 was a big draw.  I talked to the guy running R2; it took him three full years to build the little droid.  And believe me, it was movie-quality.  R2 moved, reacted, had all the right lights and sounds.  Heck, I doubt anything actually used in the movies was half as cool.

Steampunk Cowboy

Okay, you all know I've made some Steampunk stuff myself.  But sheesh.  These guys are artists.  Look at that gun.  It's [powered and lighted.  The vacuum tubes glow.  All made by hand, just because it's cool.

The Power Pack

Above is the backpack for the guns.  It lights up too.  The awesome generated by this piece cannot be measured by the instruments of Man.  And this wasn't the only piece of hand-made art roaming the halls -- no, it's just one I managed to get a picture of.  There are some insanely talented people out there.  

Ghostbusters!

Who you gonna call?  Well, if you're me, you'd call Room Service for another pizza, but these guys are handy if you've got haunts.  All their gear was movie-quality or better.  All handmade.  I wanted so bad to steal the PKE Meter, but they kept a sharp eye out for potential thieves, darn their hides.

Fig. 3B, Serious Business

Of course it wasn't all Steampunk and robots.  Above are the authors who presented the Different Flavors of Fantasy panel -- Stephen Zimmer, Jeannie Holmes, Ruth Souther, and Violette Reid.  I was hiding in a crawlspace to the right of the table.

You Really Need a Caption Here?

Above is Wonder Woman, and why not?   Pssst -- she told me Supergirl dyes her hair...

Storm Troopers.

No SF/F Con is complete without the diligent presence of the hard-working minions of the evil Galactic Empire.  And we had quite a few Storm Troopers, all arrayed in brilliant white.  They help out with crowd control at the Masquerade, and there's nothing more fun that being told to 'Move along' by a Storm Trooper's crackly little helmet radio.  

Darth Vader Searches for the Men's Room

I times are tough for the Empire too, because Darth was poking around without a single minion.  I saw him slip into a bathroom.  I'm not sure he heard me say 'Look out, it's a trap!'  but maybe that's for the best.

Finally, there's this guy.  No, that's not a photo from the Con.  We ran into him in a Chevron gas station just off I-240 in Memphis.  Lucky for us, he was almost immediately brought down by stray small-arms fire from a  club across the street.  Stay away from the airport frontage roads, kids!  

I had a blast at the Con.  The people are fantastic, the programs and panels are worth their weight in Unobtanium, and here's a big huge thank you to all the people who worked hard to make MidSouthCon 29 another complete and total success!

And thanks again to Beth!

Live From MidSouthCon 29!

I'm surrounded by Storm Troopers and Hogwarts staff and even a few Ghostbusters.  So I'm either hallucinating (again) or I'm at the Con.

It's been a blast.  I've managed to meet Laura J. Underwood and Angelia Sparrow, and a few others. I sat in on a humor in horror panel and listened to the adventures of some real-life ghost hunters. We've got a bid in on a brilliant piece of artwork down the Artist's Room.  Tonight is the Darrell Awards ceremony.

It's busy but it's fun.  Here are a couple of pictures, just to give you an idea of who's wandering the halls:

Guest of Frank Tuttle (lol) strikes a pose

Small Con-goers meet a fully animated R2

Who will you, in fact, call?

Will post more later, have to get to a panel now...

More Con Ramblings -- WITH EVIL!

Well, I've packed up my business cards, my zoot suit, my spare eyeballs, and my extra skin in case the skin I'm wearing starts turning green early.  So I'm as ready for MidSouthCon as I can possibly be.

As promised, I'll be blogging about the Con, and posting pictures.  If I spot you at the Con with your Kindle you'll be immortalized in medium-resolution pixel fame on my blog, right above a snappy caption.  Show me one of my books on your Kindle, and I'll bump you up to a hi-res image and shower you with praise and as many of those little packages of crackers restaurants put on tables as I have in my pockets at the time.

Yeah, baby, that's how I roll.

I'm really looking forward to the Art Show, which I think I neglected to mention before.  There will be an entire room devoted to SF and fantasy artists and their works, and I saw some amazing items there last year.  Sadly, security in the room was competent, and I didn't manage to leave with any art, but this year I'm bringing money, just in case.

And of course I'd be remiss if I didn't notice people in costumes.

Do I wear a costume?  No.  Mainly because my usual workaday appearance is cartoonish enough.  I'm a middle-aged white dude with greying hair and what is kindly referred to among smaller folk as 'a few extra pounds.'  Sticking orange horns on my head or wrapping myself in a cape isn't going to fool even the most myoptic of observers that I'm anything but a bookish IT guy who refuses to act his age.

I do like the costumes, though.  It adds to the fun, looking up and realizing you're standing between a towering Klingon complete with filed incisors and a pair of slave Princess Leias.  And while some of the costumes are last-minute affairs worn just for grins, quite a few people devote considerable time and effort to their rigs.  Who doesn't enjoy a free art show?

The news people will drift around, of course, spend a few minutes laughing up their sleeves at us, get a brief clip of Storm Troopers mugging for the camera.  And in most cases media coverage doesn't go any deeper than that; after all, they're just looking for a 25-second short to stick between News and Sports.

But there's a lot going on, behind the elves and the aliens.  An industry  is rewarding its fans for their support, and giving the writers and the artists and the editors and the publishers a peek behind the curtain.

It's great fun.  Hope to see you there!

MidSouthCon 29

Science fiction and fantasy fans are a unique breed.  We have a subculture all our own.  And like any subculture worth its weight in fluff news stories and the occasional police report, we have our culture-specific gatherings -- in our case, cons.

'Con' is short for 'convention.'  There are numerous science fiction and fantasy cons scheduled for many times and places all across the world, but when I say 'the con' I mean MidSouthCon.  MidsouthCon is nearly 30 years old, and is held in Memphis, Tennessee, former home of Elvis.  This year the Con is at the Hilton, which has yet to be renamed the Frank Tuttle Hilton.  I suppose they're waiting for the opening ceremony at the Con for that.

Click the con link above if you're curious.  I went last year, and had a blast, so naturally I'm heading back this year too.

Part of my reason for going is business.  I like to see what other writers are doing, hear publishers talk about the industry, listen to authors talk about publishers.  There are panels about everything from aardvarks in fantasy to zombies in romance, and you'd be surprised who leads the panels sometimes.

I've also been nominated for the Darrell Award, and as a self-aggrandizing hog for attention, there's absolutely no way I'd miss being there in case my name is called.

I'm going to take my camera and blog all about it, so be on the lookout for that.  And if any of you are planning to make MidSouthCon 29 in Memphis this year, please, look me up!  I can usually be found clinging to the pant-leg of a hapless publisher or being escorted to the lobby by Security.  In the case of the latter, please wait until the tasing wears off before initiating a conversation.

Those things sting no matter how many times you've endured them.

Hate-Filled Spew

I'm messing with you.

I can see how many times each of my blog entries is read, you see.  And I've noticed a distinct correlation between inflammatory titles and the number of hits.  So I decided to test my observations with this blog entry.

Thank you for your kind participation.

Of course, if I wanted to actually write a hate-filled spew, I'd find no shortage of material or targets.  Heck, as long as professional idiot Glen Beck has a TV show, the field is bursting with ripe, tender targets.

And I do owe you something for clicking.  Hmm.  Very well, gentle reader.

There.  A quick Google session, and I found that just yesterday Beck was ranting about how rival network MSNBC was a tool o' Satan.  Which is funny, because I'm pretty sure the Prince of Darkness could pull in better ratings.  The average re-run of a three year old episode of 'SpongeBob SquarePants' scores more viewers than MSNBC's highest rated show, and if you're the singular embodiment of all the evil in the universe, you've simply got to do better than that.

Beck then went on with some bizarre rant about end times prophecies and famine.  Well, Beck should take a close look at his best buddy Rush Limbaugh, and that should pretty much alay any fears about famine, because Limbaugh is still finding the caloric equivalent of an entire Denny's each and every day without any apparent difficulty.  Let's not start worrying until Rush loses a couple of chins, mkay, Glen?

Honestly, I wondered how Beck and Limbaugh stay on the air.  Then I went to Wal-Mart and had a look around at the mouth-breathing troglodytes waddling through the aisles and it all made perfect sense.  Again.

Does that satisfy the minimum requirements for a hate-filled spew?  Please say it does.  Don't make me drag Michael Vick into this.  That makes my right eye twitch.

Enough.  I've got work to do, and by work to do, I mean a new NCIS to watch.

Peace out, fellow babies.

Now for the Nook!

I have a Kindle e-book reader.  I love it, too -- Amazon sells more e-books than I'll ever be able to read, and I can grab anything I want with a couple of clicks and be reading it in minutes.

But the Kindle isn't the only game in town.  Barnes and Noble has the Nook, and now Barnes and Noble has e-books for the Nook written by none other than me.

So if you've got a Nook and the subliminal mind-control programming built into this blog post is working, you're now feeling a powerful urge to head on over to Barnes and Noble and load up your Nook with my books.  

Helpful guy that I am, the links to Nook e-books are below.  Don't fight it.  Browse...buy....obey....

The Banshee's Walk -- Markhat's latest case starts with a possible land-grab, but ends with his discovery of a banshee.  Does the banshee's cry sound Markhat's doom?

The Cadaver Client -- Rannit's most skilled finder is hired by a dead man to locate the wife he left behind.  Or so Markhat is told -- but do even the dead tell lies?

Hold the Dark -- When Markhat's world falls apart, he's left with nothing but a burning desire for vengeance, even if it costs him his soul.

The Mister Trophy -- Will a rich man's trophy room re-ignite the War that Markhat still struggles to forget?

Dead Man's Rain -- A dead husband.  A rich widow.  Scheming heirs.  And one very haunted mansion -- all brought together for one dark and stormy night...

Of course, all these titles are also available from Amazon, for the Kindle (just click on the cover pictures to the right).

Want a format other than Nook or Kindle?

No problem.  Head on over to Samhain Publishing.  They've got my titles in every format imaginable, including plain HTML and pdf.

What I'm Reading Now: Pale Demon

Nope.  No spoilers here, because I'm only a quarter of the way through the book.  So don't feel like you need to hit the back button if you're a Kim Harrison fan who hasn't read Pale Demon.

If you're a fantasy reader who isn't already a Kim Harrison fan, you should be.  She writes a great yarn -- fast-paced, unpredictable, imaginative, and just plain brilliant.  Her Rachel Morgan character is every bit as much fun as Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden.  And from me, that is high praise.

The Rachel Morgan books are the books I thought Laurell K. Hamilton was going to write with her Anita Blake novels.  I stopped reading the Anita Blake books after book three, I think it was -- too much were/vamp romance and angst and not enough, well, anything else.  Anita is in love with this guy, and this guy, blah blah blah.  If I wanted Twilight with an R rating I'd -- well, I have myself beaten to a pulp, that's what I'd do.  Twice.

But Harrison has avoided the bogged-down-in-drama pitfall.  I love the way she takes a simple premise and weaves a whole book around it.

I'm not giving anything away that isn't on the book blurb by saying this much.  Rachel, Jenks, and Trent wind up taking a very unlikely three-day road trip across post-Turn America.  There may or may not be assassins on their heels.  Trent and Rachel may or not be at each others' throats most of the time.

I'm only a quarter of the way through, but man is it good.  Magic is flying.  The tension is palpable.  The stop in St. Louis?

Somebody please make a movie out of this.

Most of the time, when I read a book, I find myself picking it apart, chapter by chapter, word by word.  If it's good, I want to dissect it, see what makes it tick.

I can't do that with Pale Demon.  The pages won't let you not turn them.

I'll probably read it a second time with an eye toward stealing Miss Harrison's pacing tricks.  But for now, I'm just sitting back and enjoying the ride!

The Little Things

Writing is a solitary pursuit.  There is me.  There is the keyboard.  There are dogs, and desks, and chairs.

But mostly there is a lot of silence, some eye-rubbing, some frowning.  All that is interspersed with furious spates of typing, followed by more frowning, stabs at the DELETE key, and then it's back to silence and eye-rubbing.

Rinse and repeat until you hit 100,000 words.  Then start all over with the editing, which looks just like the writing except for the muttering and the scribbling of cryptic notes on a paper notepad beside the keyboard.

My point is that it's easy to forget why, exactly, you're hunched over a keyboard for hours on end.  I get so wrapped up in the process, sometimes, that I forget all about the most important part of the scene, which is of course the reader.  Sneaky of me, wasn't it, to never mention the reader?

Because all this eye-rubbing and typing is nothing -- less than nothing -- if no one ever reads the book.

But people do.  I just got an email, minutes ago, from a reader who just finished the most recent Markhat book, The Banshee's Walk.

This intrepid soul finished Banshee while they sat in a rental car on a hill in Hawaii, waiting for the tsunami to hit the coast.

I'm not a big fan of the water.  The nearest coast is more than 400 miles from me, and that's just the way I like my coasts. Because if I was anywhere near the beach and I heard a rumor of a rumor that a wave more than knee-high was on the way, I'd be hijacking planes and heading for the Himalayas before you can say 'run-on sentence.'

So for me to learn that someone out there chose to read 'The Banshee's Walk' while nature threw a deadly temper tantrum across half the planet, well, I am deeply and profoundly touched.

So thanks for the email, Mo.  I am thrilled that you like the Markhat books, and I'm honored that you or anyone for that matter devotes some of their time to read the things I write.

It makes all the scribbling and the muttering truly worthwhile.

The Ghost of Freddy Jackson

People ask me things all the time.  Mostly it's "Why did you just run over me?" or "Don't you think you've had enough to eat?", but sometimes I'm asked about things that go bump in the night.

No, not that.  Get your minds out of the gutter.  I'm talking matters paranormal here.  Specifically, ghosts.

Do I believe in ghosts?

No.  Or yes.  It's too early to say.  Because what I do believe in is evidence.

And there are solid pieces of evidence which appear to support the supposition that deceased persons do indeed make the infrequent visit to this side of the veil.  I'd like to discuss just one such piece of evidence now, which is a photograph taken in 1919 that may depict the face of one Freddy Jackson, deceased but notably not absent.

Freddy Jackson was a soldier in the British Royal Air Force in World War I.  He served as a mechanic, maintaining combat aircraft aboard the HMS Daedalus.

Freddy didn't die in battle; instead, he had the (rather common) misfortune to walk into a moving airplane propeller.  He died, and was buried, and that should have been the end of his tragic if all too common tale.

But on the day Freddy Jackson was laid to rest, his squadron mates assembled for a group photo.  No one noticed anything out of the ordinary until after the photograph was presented back to the squadron.

They quickly realized that Freddy Jackson's face is there among them, plain and clear.

The photo is below.  Freddy's face has been enlarged; he appears to be peering out from behind one of his fellows.  The men of the squadron were adamant that the face is that of Freddy Jackson, deceased, who was being laid to rest when the photo was taken.

I've found nothing to contradict their assertion.  And remember, this was 1919.  Photoshop was sixty-plus years away.  Photography itself was a cumbersome art, and while fakery was indeed being practiced it was usually obvious and often clumsy.

This image is neither.

Is it the face of a dead man, returned to join his squadron for one last time?

I simply don't know.  But I find it intriguing.  More than intriguing.  It may even be suggestive of a phenomena beyond the realm of traditional science.

What do you think?  Do you have odd photos or ghost stories of your own?  If you do, and you'd like to share them, email me!  I love ghost stories, and I won't breathe a word of it here, if you ask that your experiences be kept quiet.

That's all for today.  The Secret Writing Project is proceeding nicely.  Ask me what that is too, but know that I won't tell!

Glenn Beck, Man of Intellect and Wit!

I don't listen to Glenn Beck or Fox News for much the same reason I don't shove sharp pointy things in my ears -- it hurts, and it serves no good purpose.

Even so, a headline sneaks through sometimes, as happened just now.  "Glenn Beck: Japan Earthquake might be a message from God."

First of all, Glenn needs to check his boundaries, because making ludicrous, asinine statements ascribing mass deaths to a petulant deity is Pat Robertson's territory.  Robertson is probably not happy that Beck beat him to the punch, and he might just decide to get himself a chalkboard and start scribbling nonsense about Masons and the Trilateral Commission on it in a tit-for-tat retaliation that could lead to a <gasp> Chalkboard Showdown of the Paranoid Delusions!.  Okay, that might actually be funny, especially if someone out there made a mashup video out of them going at it laid over a Nine Inch Nails song backtrack.

Seriously, though -- ten thousand people are dead, a nation lies in ruins, and Glenn Beck wants to gloat and make scary noises about divine wrath?

Glenn, I know you're not a big fan of bad ol' Science, but you might want to Google the Interwebs someday for 'Ring of Fire' or 'tectonics' or heck even 'Remedial Geology.'  You'd look less stupid.  And you could certainly stand a reduction in Stupid, pal.

I simply don't understand the popularity of Beck and his porcine running buddies.  Rush Limbaugh?  A huge fat oxy-addict with obvious insecurity issues and the brains of a fruit-bat.  Hannity?  A noxious little wisp of flatulence right out of Limbaugh's massive nether regions.

Why does anyone waste their time listening to these prancing imbeciles blather?

Beck's time at Fox is obviously on the wane.  That alone says something -- when Fox News hints that maybe your grip on reality is slipping, it's got to be because you just showed up in the studio with a live stingray strapped to your head and lit fireworks stuffed up your pants while you swallow live snakes and claim to be Batman.

Even then, I think you could get a pass, if your ratings were good enough.  It certainly hasn't stopped  Bill O'Reilly, who thinks tides are inexplicable, unpredictable supernatural events, and that each and every sunrise is a random chance event.

So why does it bother me that an idiot such as Glenn Beck spouts nonsense about the tragedy in Japan?

First of all, because it's a stupid thing to say, especially when people are hurting.  And people are hurting, Mr. Beck.  But I guess that doesn't mean anything to you since they aren't Fox viewers.

Next, it bugs me because I know that despite the blatant and profound idiocy of the statement, people out there were spitting tobaccy into their Dixie cups and nodding in beady-eyed agreement.  And that bothers me because these people breed.  We have enough stupid people already, thanks. We don't need another million trailer parks full of them.

Finally, it bugs me because Beck is actually getting paid to spew odious crap such as that.  The man gets a check.  Granted, no matter how much the check is for, it isn't enough to buy him brains, but still.  Stupidity should never be rewarded -- certainly not with talk shows or public forums.

In the end, it doesn't matter what Beck said.  Morons say moronic things, and the Japanese are neither helped nor hindered by some wild-eyed crying idiot sputtering into a microphone half a world away.

But still.  Why so many ignorant voices?

Oh.  Fox.

Never mind.

Movie Review: Battle Los Angeles

Will aliens never learn?

By now, you've probably seen the trailer for Battle: Los Angeles.  The trailer looked great -- a sky filled with marauding alien aircraft, strange figures moving stealthily through the smoke of battle, the pound and rattle of heavy artillery and automatic weapons fire.

As a sucker for effects-filled run-and-gun alien smash-em-ups, I awaited the opening of this movie with unseemly glee.  I was there opening night, crossbow loaded and ready to (quietly) dispatch any cell-phone talkers in the theatre, eager to finally see a movie that rivaled Aliens for sheer effects-laden fun.

Battle: Los Angeles did not disappoint.

There's no long windup.  We are briefly introduced to the small Marine unit we'll be following throughout the movie, and then the aliens just drop out of the sky and wreak epic havoc upon the city of angels.

We're also told the same thing is happening across the globe.  Cities are being wiped out as the aliens drop into the seas just off the coast and begin their deadly march inland.  No warning, no demands, no communication of any kind -- they just smash down, stand up, and start the slaughter.

The Marines are ordered to head beyond the defensive line, into the battle zone, to rescue a number of people trapped in a police station.  Go in, get them out, get them back to safety.

Of course, things don't work that way.  But enough said about that.

The action is intense and non-stop.  I mean it.  Non-stop.  These poor slugs don't get a minute of peace.  And the effects are miraculous; short of actually blowing the crap out of a none-too-affluent section of LA, including the freeways, I have no idea how they did this.  The look of this film is amazing.  I swear I was covered in a gritty layer of concrete dust by the time the credits rolled.

Do our brave Marines survive?  Does the obligatory child survivor oif the attack make it?  Do we finally show these upstart aliens how we do things downtown?

See the movie.  You'll have a blast.

That was the good.

Now for the ugly.  There may be spoilers ahead, minor ones, but if you're sensitive to these things please stop reading now and look to your right and click on a book and buy it.  Yes.  That one. Now buy another...


Nearly every alien invasion movie ever made shares some of the same dumb-headed flaws, which I shall enumerate below:

1) The aliens want our water.  Yes.  Our tasty, tasty H2O.  Forget the fact that the cosmos is literally awash in the stuff -- there's even plenty of ice on the Moon, for Pete's sake -- but apparently ours comes from sparkling artesian springs and lizard-faced space bugs just find the stuff irresistible. NOTE TO MOVIE MAKERS -- anybody with a high school chemistry lab can *make* freaking water.  Anybody with a space armada can just fly around and scoop the stuff up.  Fighting for it is just dumb.  But not as dumb as using water for fuel.  ANOTHER NOTE TO MOVIE MAKERS -- The amount of energy (chemical, kinetic, thermal, what have you) available in water is well-known.  You can break the chemical bonds between H and O all you want, but you're not going to power starships or weapons with it.  And even if you could, just grab it from places where heroic Marines won't fight you to the death for it.  Duh.

2) The aliens want our women.  Maybe they don't have any of their own.  Or maybe the entire alien attack fleet is composed of loser aliens who couldn't get dates.  But seriously?  I think maybe this speaks more toward the social lives of the script writers than anything else.  That wasn't a part of Battle: Los Angeles, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

3) The aliens want to eat us.  Again, the critters in Battle: Los Angeles showed no desire to do anything to humans but shoot them in the head.  Which is refreshing, since people don't taste too good and anyway they blew up all the liquor stores, so where would you get enough red wine to go with your meal?  Silly aliens.

Of the items above, only #1 applies, and that's if you count a news report blathering away in the background in a single scene.  I dismissed it, and enjoyed the movie despite it.

Favorite scenes from the movie:

1) The impromptu alien autopsy, conducted by a veterinarian and a seriously disgruntled Marine on a still-living alien.  Cutting up a twitching, chittering space baddie with a k-bar knife, looking for interesting organs to shoot -- that's just good fun.

2) The driving-an-armored-vehicle through a mob of surprised aliens scene.  Think octogenarian at a street market, but with .50 caliber guns blazing.  Hey, aliens!  What weighs six tons and just ran over your freakin' head?  This guy!

3) "We already ate breakfast."

So I give Battle: Los Angeles two furiously grinning thumbs-up.  It was loud, it was fast, it was fun.

Un-American Activities -- Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid!

Pick pretty much any moment from any day, and you'll find a group of highly-paid Congresspeople sitting in a room and wasting their time and our money.

And that's fine.  I long ago reconciled myself to the notion that government is the well-dressed equivalent of a dog's breakfast.  Nothing of note ever gets done, but the messes left behind are always epic.

But there are days such as today, where even my abysmally low expectations are set far too high.

I speak of course of Representative Pete King, and his hearings on the subject of Muslim radicalization within the US.

You'd think these imbeciles would learn something from the asinine antics of their brain-damaged forebears.  Joseph McCarthy, anyone?  Communists hiding behind every shrub, every fountain, every comic book?  Except of course there weren't any.  McCarthy ruined lives and careers but his army of hidden Communists never materialized because they never existed in the first place.

Sigh.  Pete King probably has a brass bust of Joe McCarthy on his mantel.  Or full-length nude photos of McCarthy in his desk.  Because King is determined to not only follow in McCarthy's footsteps, but actually exceed the man's dedication to the ideal of finding monsters hiding in every corner.

This time around, it's not Communists, but....<gasp> Muslims.  Or, as Joe King doubtlessly prefers to pronounce it, moo-slims.  They're radicalized, infers Pete.  Radicalized and ready to throw down some jihad any second now!  Blood and apple pie will run in the streets! Hide the wimmin and grab yer guns, boys, 'cause the mooslims is a' comin!

So what does Pete do?

He drags Muslim Americans onto the Hill, and grills them, ostensibly in the hope that they'll get distracted by the cameras and blurt out their sinister plans to blow up the nearest Dunkin' Donuts before nightfall.

That's what outrages me.  No American citizen -- be they Muslim, Baptist, Hindu, whatever -- owes Pete King or anyone else an 'explanation' of their beliefs or their patriotism.

That's supposed to be one of the central perks of being an American -- that you don't have to explain your beliefs to anyone, least of all a bunch of jackbooted government thugs.

I've worked in a university setting all my life.  I've worked with Muslims.  I've worked with Hindus.  With Buddhists.  I've even worked with members of even more exotic sects, such as Methodists and Presbyterians.

According to Pete King, I should have been blown up years ago.  Or if not blown up, converted to radical Islam.

Oddly enough, neither has happened.

Not even close.

Okay, I have developed a fondness for Indian food.  Maybe that's the sinister gateway to terrorism.  From Chicken Korma to radical Islam, in five easy steps?

Want to know about the people I've worked with, laughed with, talked with, over all these years?

They're just people.  The Muslims wanted to go home and see their kids like everyone else.  The Hindus, ditto.  Aside from differences in lunchtime preferences, and who drank coffee and who didn't, I didn't see any significant variations in behavior.

Just what am I supposed to be afraid of?

These 'hearings' are ridiculous.  Ridiculous and insulting.  And as far as I can tell, the only people engaging in overtly un-American activities are Pete King and his cronies, who are obviously engaged in demonizing Muslims as part of a painfully transparent effort to revive the post-911 paranoia just in time for the 2012 elections.

To my Muslim friends out there, I apologize.  Fat lot of good that does, huh?

I Spy

One of my favorite blog-related activities is checking the 'audience' monitor to see where readers of this blog are from.

This week, we've picked up readers in Iran, India, Singapore, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and Spain!  So hello to all you folks, wherever you hail from.

I imagine quite a few of my international readers first starting reading the old blog (may it rest in peace), which was basically a non-stop rant against a certain former presidential Administration and its penchant for instigating pointless military escapades.  I also devoted several hundred pages to describing the overly carnivorous eating habits of former Vice President Dick 'I Crave the Blood of Infants' Cheney, who I still consider one of the most evil men to have ever gutted a live wildebeast for his midmorning snack.

Well, sad to say, I've calmed down a bit.  Not because I'm a huge fan of the current occupant of the White House, but because I've decided it doesn't really matter who's sitting behind that desk.  They aren't the ones running the show.

But for my international readers, I will offer a brief summary of the current state of affairs here in the States.  To wit:

1) American Foreign Policy -- Troops in Iraq?  Check.  Troops in Afghanistan?  Oh yeah.  Billions poured daily into wars without goals or end?  You know it.  Payments to 'allies' such as Pakistan, which are immediately funneled into supplying the very people shooting at us?  Made daily.  The only conclusion I can draw is that American foreign policy is still being drafted by a super-secret combination of Ouija Boards which channel deceased Halliburton executives and are operated by meth-crazed Rhesus monkeys.

2) American Domestic Policy -- This one is easy.  400 -- that's four hundred -- Americans have more wealth than 155 million other Americans combined.  Which makes it easy for the super-rich to buy more than enough congresspeople to keep tax cuts for the rich and the industries they favor firmly in place, while the middle class vanishes like snow in a blast-furnace.  Everything else revolves around this simple axis of wealth.  Coming soon:  You'll either be rich in America, or very very poor.  Welcome to Third World Homeland.

3) The 2012 elections?  Get ready, folks, because this will be the single most stunning parade of sheer idiocy that you've seen since, um, 2008.  Gingrich, Palin, Santorum -- forget the carnival freakshow, because this is going to have it all, and then some.  And, as I said before, the real icing on the cake is the futility of the whole wretched star-studded spectacle.  It doesn't matter who wins.  The 'winner' is just a cardboard cut-out propped up on a stage for the rubes to throw things at.  The real decisions are made quietly, without any fuss, in a cherry-paneled room somewhere over snifters of brandy and five hundred dollar cigars.

See why I basically stopped even mentioning politics?

Anyway, welcome to the blog.  Drop me an email at franktuttle@franktuttle.com and say hello!

MidSouthCon 29 Approacheth!

First, a reminder -- hotel registration for MidSouthCon 29 is open until the 11th at the Con rate.  Eighty-five bucks a night for the Hilton isn't too bad, either.

This will only be my second convention.  I'm really looking forward to it -- it's fun to hang out with with my spiritual kin.  Too, I love the costumes.  And the dealer's room.  And the art show.  And the awards banquet, and the panels, and meeting various luminaries in the field.  It's a good time, and if you've never been to a SF/fantasy convention, MidSouthCon is a great first stop.

By the way, if I spot any Kindlers at the Con, I'm going to ask to take your picture (with your Kindle) and post it here on my blog.  I'm just curious about how many SF/fantasy fans are also e-book enthusiasts.

In other news, Markhat fans can expect the print version of The Banshee's Walk to hit the stands on June 7 of this year.

That's about it for now.  Time to get back to work!

Lots O Links!

If you hooked me up to a brain activity monitor right this moment, all you'd see are nice flat lines.  I don't know why, but I'm just spent.  There's not a clever thought or catchy phrase anywhere near my noggin now.

But a lack of anything significant to say has never left me silent before, and I'll be darned if I'll start now.

So -- links!

Passing the Narrows.  This is one of mine.  If you've got a Kindle e-reader or you have the Kindle app on your phone or other device, you can grab this for less than a buck.  It's a quick read, about a crew of desperate Confederate war vets taking their steamboat down a haunted stretch of the Yazoo River.  It first appeared in Weird Tales a few years back, and it's always been one of my favorites.  Guess who the character Swain is based on!

World War Z.  Yeah, this is zombie fiction -- but hang on a minute.  That's just the backdrop.  The book is nothing short of brilliant, in both its depiction of a world mauled nearly to death and the tiny acts of heroism and sacrifice that always go largely unnoticed in any massive catastrophe.  Read it, and I promise you'll never hear wind in the trees at night quite then same way ever again.

Living Ghosts.  This is music; specifically, the Amazon MP3 album by band Absinthe Junk.  If you want the iTunes version, well, search iTunes for Absinthe Junk -- if there's a way to link to an album in the iTunes store it's unknown to me.  But it's worth the effort!  Junk is sort of the angry love child of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

The Black Company.  This is an old-fashioned paper book.  It's fantasy, but unlike any fantasy you're likely to have read before.  Gritty, unflinching, brutally honest -- this is war in the trenches.  Not for the faint of heart.

Fark.  We're painfully aware that the world is a chaotic, dangerous place ruled only by the laws of Whim and Caprice.  Fark is a weird news website that collects the freakish best and random worst of Planet Earth and lays it all out in a neat column for your perusal.  With snarky one-line descriptions, and a weekly Friday game of 'Match the Mugshots With the Crimes.'  If you don't Fark, you should...

Regretsy.  You've probably never heard of a website called 'Etsy.'  I hadn't.  Etsy dot com is a marketplace for hand-made items of all sorts.  Think about that for a moment.  Yeah.  Exactly.  Etsy may have started out as a showplace for folk art, but wide swaths of it quickly devolved into a hilarious free-for-all of hilariously mis-shapen pieces of 'found art' which appear to have not been crafted by hand but rather with foot.  I know, I know, it's not nice to mock the clumsy and the inept, but man is it fun.


Enjoy!

Signed and Away

Just signed the contract for The Bonnie Bell! 


Which makes the sale officially official.  Stamped and sealed, even.  I'd have sealed the envelope with a big red glob of hot wax, but things are done electronically these days and it's impossible to scrape all the wax off the monitor.

So that makes six entries in the Markhat series, with another already in progress.  I'm happy about that.  Happy and a little frightened, because we all know what happens to most series after a few books.

Seriously.  Take Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books, for instance.  The first three were great.  But something happened after that, and I've not been able to follow the later books.  I'm not knocking Ms Hamilton; but for me, the series evolved into something I don't care for.

It doesn't happen with every series, of course.  Rex Stout managed seventy-odd Nero Wolfe books without a single fatal mis-step.  Jim Butcher's wizard-for-hire tales are bumping along as good as ever.  Kim Harrison and her Hollows books haven't jumped the shark.

Still, I worry.  But until I start getting rejections instead of contracts, I'll just stay the course and trust that Markhat and the gang know what they're doing.

Too, I have another project in the works.  A secret project, one that has absolutely nothing to do with finders or haunts or Trolls.  I think people will be surprised -- nay, amazed.

But that's a story for another time.  Right now I need to finish proofing the print galleys for The Banshee's Walk.  That involves reading the whole thing yet again, character by character and word by word, looking for any remaining hidden typos or sneaky format errors.

I live a life of glamor and excitement, I do!  Look -- is that a dangling participle, on which light yonder breaks?

The Lazy Man's Lament

The flu is gone.  It's time to get back to work.

I only wish my brain worked that way.  You see, being sick completely wrecked my self-imposed work regimen.  I didn't write; I couldn't.

What I could do is lie there and watch junk TV while all those fissures in my brain smoothed themselves out.  I had a solid week of nothing but the worst of the worst -- COPS.  Las Vegas Jailhouse.  Operation Repo.  Even, heaven help me, World's Dumbest.

And I loved it.  I loved every glorious empty moment of it.  I didn't have to create, or critique, or even consider.  All I had to do was watch.  Slime mold should learn to me as passive as I.  I was flatlined.  Coroners gathered at my door.  Undertakers made measurements.  Crows stood on one foot, ready to snatch up a tender eyeball at an instant's notice.

That is my natural state.  Mouth slightly open.  TV flashing.  Eyes blank and staring.  Nominal heartbeat and respiration, just enough to keep the TV remote in play.

Top of the food chain, Ma!

But now that my traitor body has fought off the invaders, I can no longer claim fever and fatigue keep me from the keyboard.  So here I am, fingers poised, ready to create Deathless Prose and Salable Manuscript.

I get as far as 'The' before some little voice whispers 'Hey, isn't 30 Rock on about now?'

It's a long slog back to productivity.

But here goes...

How Not to Survive the Flu

If you've been wondering where I've been, well, that shaking, coughing mound of what appears to be dirty laundry, over in the corner, covered under used tissues and empty bottles of Vicks NyQuil?

That's me.

I'd back up a bit if I were you.  That's better.

What felt like the onset of a mild cold last Monday evening was bone-aching, muscle-spasming flu by Tuesday morning.  I haven't been really sick in quite a while, but I'm making up for lost time.

I don't know what strain of flu this is, or what 4-letter acronym it goes by.  I'd suggest PAIN or HURT.  It starts with a few innocent seeming sneezes and then your brains are leaking out your nose and that cracking sound you hear when you cough is your sternum finally cracking.

Then it gets really bad.

The doctor put me on Tamiflu, which certainly put the flu in a bad mood.  My own efforts to self-medicate have been less than successful, possibly because in my delirium I mixed up a book of old folk remedies with a Betty Crocker cookbook and wound up trying a lot of chicken-based casserole poultices.

Here are some other treatments to avoid, during the flu:

* The old adage 'drink plenty of liquids' doesn't extend to include grain alcohol or Febreeze.
* Chicken soup does give me energy, because if I see another cup of it I'm going to throw that crap outside.  And believe me just walking to the door right now takes quite a burst of energy.
* Get plenty of rest, they say.  Oh really.  Because I was thinking about going outside and chopping a couple cords of oak firewood, but if prevailing wisdom says I should lie here and shiver in a pool of my own sweat, well, okay, I'll do that then.
* Zinc is said to have therapeutic benefits during colds and flu.  You know, I could eat my entire set of zinc cookware right now, and I don't think it would do anything but dull my teeth.  Okay, I ate a ladle, just in case, and nothing happened.

I'd write more, but I have to go huddle in a corner and shake now.  Am I not supposed to be at the top of the food chain?  All this over a microscopic twist of proteins, a mere virus, a thing with fewer brains and less muscle than Charlie Sheen?

I'd shake my head in disbelief if that didn't require so much effort.

Send pudding and potable beverages.

BP Kills Gulf, Delays Payments to Residents. Cartoon Villains Everywhere Green With Envy

We haven't heard much about the Gulf of Mexico lately, and what we have heard from BP is a cheery line of 'Well, back to normal!' that is <gasp> slightly less than true.

Vast regions of the Gulf are covered in a thick layer of crude and dead animals.  See for yourself here. But because the damage isn't visible from the top, BP and their best buddy Feinberg have been accused of underestimating the damage and dragging their heels in paying Gulf residents who lost everything in the spill the money these people were promised.

Now, to make matters worse, BP is complaining that Feinberg is being too generous in his meager payouts.  And that's while BP is flooding Washington with lobbyists and paid 'scientists' who are actively working to reduce the official total volume of oil spilled -- because that number directly affects the payouts.

Read about it here.

BP is doing precisely what Exxon did in the wake of the Valdez spill.  They drag their heels, throw legions of lawyers in every direction, and bide their time, knowing their petro-pockets are deeper than any of the plaintiffs'.

It's despicable.  But that's way big business is done.

BP and all the rest will be drilling in the Gulf again, before the summer is out.  And they'll be cutting corners and taking risks and generally acting like boozed-up seventeen year olds with their first taste of whiskey and freedom.

Live and don't learn, that's us.