Bad Joke Friday
Something for Thursday
It’s the third installment of our music challenge! This one is apropos, given that today is the coldest day in Buffalo Niagara since February. Our high today is to top out at 21 degrees, and when we roused ourselves from our warm bed (such rousing coming via two dee-oh-gees who had to pee) was a nicely balmy 7 degrees. Today’s category, then, is “A Song that Makes Me Think of Summer”. Well, the very first song that leaped to mind is this oh-so-Seventies tune by Mungo Jerry. Enjoy! Summer is only mumble-mumble months away!
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Thankfulness in 2018
So we’re nearing the last phase of 2018, and today is Thanksgiving. Today will be a day of food and drink and rest and, I canna lie, feeling wistful that we’re not in New York City for the day. Here, as always, is my ongoing list of things for which I am thankful this time around.
Carla, the new dee-oh-gee
Cane, the not-as-new dee-oh-gee
Lester and Julio, the really-not-new cats
Rum
Bourbon
Scotch
Gin
Sparkling wine
Hard cider
Paula’s Donuts
Ithaca, NY
Autumn Leaves Books
The Rochester Lilac Festival
Knowing where a bunch of gluten-free restaurants are between here and the Finger Lakes
The Finger Lakes
Letchworth State Park
Taughannock Falls
The Ontario County Antique Mall
Finger Lakes wineries
Fountain pens
Fountain pen ink
Making waffles
Popcorn with butter
Kettlecorn
Corn dogs
Chiavetta’s chicken barbecue
The Erie County Fair
Hot dogs at Taffy’s
Hot dogs at Ted’s
Hot dogs at home, on the grill
Star Wars
Casablanca
Hayao Miyazaki and the rest of Studio Ghibli
The Scarlet Pimpernel
88 Cups of Tea (podcast)
Functional Nerds (podcast)
Sword and Laser (podcast)
Writing for The Geekiverse
Our backyard firepit
All my various methods of making coffee (pourover, French press, Moka pot)
Mississippi Roast
The Instant Pot (which I still don’t even use as much as I should)
Art and craft shows where I can buy gifts right from the person that made them
Picking out jewelry for The Wife
The Great Lakes region
Pittsburgh, PA (honorary Great Lakes city in my heart)
New York City
The two friends of mine who are finding a lot of new purpose in their lives of late
Chestnut Ridge Park
Sprague Brook Park
Emery Park
Canalside and the Outer Harbor
Knox Farm State Park
The Mill Road Overlook in East Aurora
Roads: US 20A, NY 240, NY 39, Girdle Road, Two Rod Road
Fried chicken
Chicken and waffles
Hot sauce
John Oliver and Last Week Tonight
The Blue Wave
The Resistance
Hector Berlioz
Sergei Rachmaninov
Alexander Borodin
JS Bach
Ludwig von Beethoven
John Williams
Jerry Goldsmith
Max Steiner
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Howard Shore
James Horner
All the new authors on my shelf whose works I an thrilled to read
The ongoing emergence of so many authors of color and the opportunity to read them and learn from their experiences and perspectives
Goodreads
Twitter (the parts without Nazis)
Harry Potter
Star Wars
Star Trek
The Last Jedi
My Fair Lady
The Chilling Killing Wind
The Song of Forgotten Stars
Princesses Tariana and Margeth Osono
Lieutenant Penda Rasharri
The characters you haven’t met yet
The characters I haven’t met yet
The days when the writing is easy
The days when the writing is hard
Pies on the table
Pies in my face
Well-worn bib overalls
Stiff raw-denim bib overalls
Vintage bib overalls
The Daughter
The Wife
The world
Our universe
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Tone Poem Tuesday
Some Berlioz this week, and one of his most frequently performed works: the Roman Carnival overture, which is a concert piece comprised of repurposed material from his opera Benvenuto Cellini. Berlioz is not generally considered one of classical music’s finest melodists–his themes tend to be long and require a bit of unpacking to find their emotional center–but the melody of the slow section of this piece, first played by the English horn, is one of the most beautiful creations of Berlioz’s life. The following carnival dance bursts with energy.
This particular performance features Charles Dutoit conducting the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. This particular combo once produced some of the finest performances of Berlioz ever.
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Updates and stuff!
I have a new post up on the Official Site! It’s not long, but it’s an update on some stuff I’ve been working on of late. Check it out!
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Checking In….
Hello, Y’all!
It’s been another month and here we are, right in the middle of NaNoWriMo. How’s it going for me? Pretty well. I’m well over halfway to 50,000 words, which is the target for NaNo–but not for the book in question.
And what is my project? I’m returning at last to Orion’s Huntress, the space opera novel set in the Forgotten Stars universe but in no way narratively related to that series. It is, in truth, my way of writing another space opera without having to build a galaxy from scratch. And hey, galaxies are big, so they can contain a lot of stories. I got about 80,000 words of this book done two years ago before I stalled out with no real notion of where to go with the story. This time I’ve put a lot more thought into things and I am hoping to actually finish the draft. So that’s where things are with that.
What else is going on? Well, over on The Geekiverse, I have a column up extolling the virtues of Die Hard, whose thirtieth anniversary is this year. (Thirty years of Detective John McClane? Wow….) Check that out!
I have other items on the way, including a cover reveal and the first chapter for The Chilling Killing Wind. Those items will likely run sometime the week after Thanksgiving, as I plan to actually issue the book in December! Huzzah!
So that’s what’s been going on. More to come in the next few days, I hope…including a tribute to a couple of storytellers who left this world last week after long, wonderful lives of some of the best storytelling ever. More to come on those.
As one of those storytellers liked to say, “Excelsior!”
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Bad Joke Friday
Something for Thursday
It’s Week Two of the challenge-thing I launched last week! This time we need a song with a number in the title, so here’s one!
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Something for Thursday
OK, I’m going to try something new! Here’s a 30-Day Challenge of the type that often shows up on various social media thingies. The idea is quite simple: Each day you post according to that prompt.
Well, I’m going to use this not as a daily prompt, but a weekly one. Each Thursday for the next thirty Thursdays I’ll use the next prompt to select that week’s song or music choice. By my calculations, assuming I don’t miss any Thursdays, this will wrap up on the last Thursday in May, bringing us more than halfway around the calendar. Cool, huh?
No?
Well, I’m doing it anyway.
Day 1:
A song with a color in the title.
(It specifies “a song I like,” but I’ll just take that as a given.)
Here are the Lemon Pipers, with “Green Tambourine”.
