OK, if anyone wants to read my story “What Happened To The Huntsman?” in its entirety (which I excerpted yesterday), send me an e-mail and I’ll send you a copy. Make sure you specify a preferred format, because otherwise I will simply assume that a Word document is OK. And I’ll send it as an attachment.

(I still have markets to whom I want to submit this story, so I can’t post the whole thing here as that counts as “publishing”, and thus screws up some of the “rights” stuff that publishers think about and which I hope to have to think about someday.)

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OK, the folks over at TheForce.net need to do a better job at marking the types of spoilers in their Episode III page. When reporting spoilers, they simply say “Spoilers here” and then post away using inviso-text, so you have to click-and-drag over the text to reveal what’s written there, which is a fine system, as far as I’m concerned.

The problem is, they inviso-text nearly everything to do with the upcoming film, and they don’t discriminate the Big! Honking! Spoilers! (like how certain characters meet their doom, if they meet their doom at all) from the minor interesting tidbits (like the possibility of a lightsaber duel mimicking the classic Errol Flynn “dueling shadows” thing that happened in The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk). It’s the difference between this:

SPOILER: Darth Vader is Luke’s father!

and this:

SPOILER: There’s a chase through an asteroid field!

So there’s me, with my basic inability to not read absolutely everything they post over there, learning stuff that I’d at least have liked to agonize over before eventually giving in and reading anyway. It would be nice if they’d mark the spoilers accordingly, letting me know when they’re spilling the beans on some nifty bit of design or when they’re unmasking the key plot element.

And yes, I would like some cheese with this whine, thank you very much.

(EDIT: Broken link rendered not-broken.)

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Street Sign Mandala. Check it out, and make sure to click through to the large version.

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I got a search hit today for someone apparently looking for an online map of The Land, the fantasy realm that is the setting for Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series. Well, just such a map can be found on this Thomas Covenant tribute site. The map there is of The Land as it exists in the first trilogy; there are changes to the locations in the second trilogy — some places no longer exist, for example — but most of the locations are the same. (I didn’t dig around the site much, so I don’t know if there is also a map of locales for the fifth book, The One Tree, which chronicles a sea voyage far beyond the confines of The Land.)

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Via Atrios, I see that President Bush has finally reached his limits of tolerance for unnamed sources in his Adminstration telling things to the press. We know this because…jeez, this is too funny…an unnamed source told the press about it.

The grown-ups are in charge. These folks know what they’re doing, so trust them. Heh. Indeed.

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This just in: apparently Megan McArdle is…how can I put this, using my standard level of eloquence…well, she’s friggin’ hot.

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Fly-out to left, and for the Chicago Cubs, it’s “Wait’ til next year” once again. But while I don’t like the Cubs, I know damned well how watching your team lose a Game Seven hurts, especially after your team had a 3-1 series lead and was only six outs away from winning the pennant in Game Six. I watched my Pirates lose consecutive seven-game NLCS’s in 1991 and 1992. And in football, everyone knows what happened to my beloved Bills in four consecutive Super Bowls. And I know what it’s like to watch other teams’ fans, like the California Angels fans, or the Denver Bronco fans in 1997 or the New England Patriots fans in 2001, and think: “I wonder what that feels like.”

When the Cubs advanced to the NLCS last week, I wondered how Cubs fans would adjust if their boys won the World Series to the end of the “Cubs Cult”, when years of “Wait ’til next year” had ended and the Cubs became just another team that’s won a recent Series. It didn’t work out that way, of course, so the Cubs’ mystique keeps going. But this wasn’t just watching the Cubs flirt with first place only to finish out of the pack; this wasn’t watching them get bounced in the first round. This was as painful as it gets.

My favorite Cubs fan (whom I goad for liking the Cubs, but I know that he’s followed them at least as long as I’ve known him, which is longer than anyone in my life outside my immediate family) wrote yesterday about the feeling that “It’s just a game”, but he felt physically sick after watching the Marlins explode for eight runs in the eighth inning in Game Six. It does sound trite, to a certain way of thinking, but I don’t think that way. Rooting for sports teams is something that gives continuity to our lives, and it’s something that helps forge bonds across generations and across wide spaces of geography.

The Buffalo Bills’ run of four straight Super Bowl appearances took place while I was in college (the first three, anyway), and I went to school 800 miles away from Western New York where people thought Buffalo was close to New York City, if not one of its actual boroughs. I was usually pretty good at avoiding homesickness, but still, it came up every once in a while, and for half the year at least there were the Bills. They were a tie to my home, something I could point to with pride. That’s what sports teams give us, even if we’re fans of a team that plays in a city we’ve never been to: a sense of belonging and commiseration. Even when our teams lose, we are secure in the knowledge that there are thousands of people across the country who are feeling the same damn way we are. And when they win, it’s almost like we’ve joined some secret society of people who know, because they went through all the crappiness too.

I didn’t root for the Cubs, but I know damned well how their fans feel. I see shots on TV of old people sitting in the stands at Wrigley, wiping their eyes while the visitors pile upon each other on the mound in celebration. I see Dusty Baker walking off the field with that little boy of his in tow, after yet another Game Seven loss. And I remember the unforgettable words of Terence Mann, in Field of Dreams:

“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers; it has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and raised again. Baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and could be again. Oh, people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”

Think about that: Baseball has marked the time. That’s why we root for sports teams: to have some way of marking the time other than the day-to-day, year-to-year minutiae of our own lives. Baseball marks the time, and though I am not in their number, I know damn well that Cubs fans have marked the time more than any others.

And the Red Sox fans.

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For all of my newer readers, I also post to a group blog called Collaboratory, which was originally the brainchild of Sean (who, incidentally, is the owner of the first blog I ever saw, so in a sense he’s to blame for all the mischief I do here). Anyway, Collaboratory tends to go through spikes of activity when I and my fellow members post a lot and then we slacken off, for no particular reason. The idea of the site is to both generate conversation and just put up neat stuff, either in seriousness or in fun — kind of a smaller-scale MeFi. Go have a look, and if anyone’s interested in joining, drop Sean a line. He’s kind of the “Captain” of the thing.

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I seem to not have much to say today, so I’ll just do something I haven’t done in a while and stick up a portion of a story of mine. Here’s the opening to my “Snow White”-inspired story, “What Happened To The Huntsman?”, in which I explore, well, just what befell the Huntsman after he tricked the Evil Queen. Enjoy.

—BEGIN—

“You are clear on what you are to do, then?” asked the Queen, as she leaned forward on her throne.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the Huntsman replied.

“Say it.”

“The girl’s heart,” the Huntsman said. “In here.” He held up the box in his hand.

“Good,” said the Queen. “Then go.” She rose and vanished through the doorway behind the throne. The Huntsman shuddered. Sometimes he had nightmares about where that door led.

He looked down at the box. Such a lovely thing – red cherry wood, impeccably carved and fitted together, with polished brass hinges and a clasp in the shape of…a heart. Her Majesty had been keeping this little trinket for years.

One of the guards cleared his throat, and the Huntsman turned to leave. In the anteroom, he stopped to check his reflection in the mirror.

“She’s going mad,” the Huntsman said softly, so the other guards would not hear.

“’Tis true, I’m sad to say,” the mirror replied, its ghostly face appearing in the center of the glass. “But she’s our Queen, come what may.”

“She is our Queen,” the Huntsman agreed. “But killing girls and keeping their hearts? This is dark madness. Far worse than usual.”

“On this matter you seem conflicted,” the mirror observed. “With what doubts are you afflicted?”

The Huntsman considered the box again. He also considered the gold the Queen paid him for each item he brought her, usually for a deer or boar, though. Being the Queen’s Huntsman was a good job, no question about that. It was certainly better than being one of the Prince’s guards. What a bunch of dullards they were…

“None, really,” said the Huntsman. “I’m sure the girl’s blood runs as red as a stag’s.”

“Skin of white and blood of red,” said the mirror. “No matter, though – she’ll soon be dead.”

The Huntsman stared at the mirror. “Why in God’s name are you speaking in rhymes?”

The mirror sighed, an odd sound for a mirror to make. “The Queen requires it. She thinks it makes me sound more mystical. But it’s not easy, rhyming everything, so I was practicing. But to return to the subject, you should do what is right.”

“Does not the Queen decide what is right?”

“Her power rises,” the mirror said. “But the Fates are beyond her. Wickedness shall fail.” Suddenly the mirror’s face brightened. “Did you like that? It is called a haiku.”

“It was wonderful,” the Huntsman replied. The mirror is mad as well, he thought. And then: But I’m the one talking to a pane of polished glass. Who’s mad here?

“Fare you well,” said the mirror.

“Thank you,” the Huntsman said, and he took his leave. On his way outside, he passed by a window overlooking the courtyard. The girl was down there, singing away. She was always singing, just like that fool Prince. But not for long, he thought as he glanced yet again at the box.

—END—

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Today I am enjoying the year’s first cup of steaming tea sweetened with honey. Mmmmmmm.

(For the record, it’s Stash Fusion Green and White Tea. Stash makes some really nice teas; my favorite is the Licorice Spice, but that’s a caffeine-free herbal blend, and in the afternoon I’m a caffeine guy.)

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