Author: thewriterinblack

I originally wrote this when my daughter was starting middle school.  She has just graduated from middle school and is already “attending” high school (online course) even before the official year begins.  So, time for a reprise:

1.  Goths embrace pain and suffering.  Hurt my daughter and I will embrace yours.
2.  Tears are nothing to be ashamed of.  Make my daughter cry and I will demonstrate this by making you cry.
3.  While black is always in fashion, pants hanging around your knees are not.  If you insist on this fashion faux-pas I will use my staple gun to give you a nice set of piercings to hold up your trousers.
4.  I hang out in graveyards for fun.  Think about it.
5.  Goths flirt with death all the time.  Touch my daughter inappropriately and I will flirt with yours.
6.  I know every dark, secluded spot in the city where no one could hear someone scream in agony until their voice is gone.
7.  Black doesn’t show bloodstains.
8.  I have a fascination with psychopaths.  Some of my best friends are psychopaths.
9.  Most of my best friends are psychopaths.
10.  Aw, hell, all of my best friends are psychopaths.

I look around at fiction and so much of it seems be be trapped in unrelenting darkness, the crushing distopia, heroes you can’t tell from villains (except by whose name is on the title page maybe).  Some folk have told me that this is a reaction, an introduction of “realism” to other fiction that is more Pollyannaish.  More real?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  As I have quoted elsewhere “the passionflower is as real as the potato.”

Stories of unrelenting darkness has a long history to it:  The Volsung Saga begins with the tale of how Andvaari’s Ring becomes cursed, and the rest is the horrible working out of that curse on the various possessors of the ring over time (and unlike another cursed ring, there’s no Mount Doom to see to the destruction of this one).  The various tales of the Greek Heroes are mostly tragedies, where despite initial successes the Heroes almost inevitably come to bad ends.

More recently, Le Morte de Arthur, the collection of tales of the legendary King Arthur and his knights, is well named: “The Death of Arthur” for it all builds to the destruction of the Round Table, the fall of Camelot, and the death of Arthur.

And so on.

In all these cases, overwhelming forces beyond the power of mortal men to overcome end up crushing the aspirations of mere mortals.

However, to a certain extent from that, but also in parallel to it we’ve also seen the rise from this, a different literary tradition, tales of folk who rise above the forces opposing them and opposing, overcome.

I think part of that, not all certainly, but a large part, comes from the ideals of the Enlightenment.  New understanding of the natural world, new technologies that new knowledge.   This period saw the Age of Exploration and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, bringing with it the idea that we were not helpless before incomprehensible forces but that we would instead overcome them.

Even then, much literature was, like the tales listed above, about the inevitable fall of its heroes.  The D’Artangnan Romances (“The Three Musketeers”, “Twenty Years After”, and “The Viscount of Bragalonne:  Ten Years Later”–this final one often split into three or four parts of which the last is titles “The Man in the Iron Mask) is very much in that mold.  Don’t rely on movie versions for these.  They often–particularly in the case of “The Man in the Iron Mask”–retain nothing but titles and character names.

And don’t get me started on “Frankenstein.”

But there were other tales as well.  Any of Shakespeare’s comedies (with The Tempest being my favorite) generally have the main characters emerging happily however daunting their trials before might have seemed.  Jane Austen is reputed to have things work out well for her characters in the end.  And Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre even pulls in a bit of a miracle to allow Rochester to witness the birth of his son.

However, I’ve never been much for 19th century and earlier literature.  I’ll read it from time to time, but generally prefer more recent items.  Indeed, we’re well into the 20th century to get to the stuff that I read, and re-read, for enjoyment.  And in particular, early in life I discovered Science Fiction.

And here, I think is where things went off the rails.  While Science Fiction has always had its cautionary tales (going all the way back to Frankenstein), a lot of it made certain assumptions, particularly about the supremacy of, well, not always human life but intelligent mortal life in the Universe.  We had writers who based their stories on the presumption that if we encountered alien life they would be so beyond us that we would be nothing but gnats to them and any attempt by a human to comprehend them would drive one mad (H. P. Lovecraft).  But we also had others who presumed that even if the aliens were more technologically advanced than we were, we could learn what they had and, eventually stand up to them as equals if not superiors.

As an example of this, the late Isaac Asimov in his autobiography told of the also late John W. Campbell had a policy that for a story to be acceptable to Astounding Science Fiction humans had to be superior to any other life forms.  This was why the Foundation stories were set in a humans only universe so as to avoid the need to have any aliens be somehow inferior to humans.

Along about the time I was getting into science fiction, reading old books mostly (it’s what the libraries had), certain writers and editors decided that science fiction was too “stodgy” and “adolescent” and started a “New Wave”.  And part of that was stories that were decidedly dark in tone.

Now, in addition to the science fiction I was reading (old stuff that was “juvenile” and “adolescent”?  Well, I was juvenile and adolescent so…) I was also into comic books.  I started reading them sometime in the mid to late sixties–basically as I learned to read–and that carried on into around 1987 or so (more on that in a bit).

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really get into this “new wave” at the time.  As I said, most of what I said was old stuff and newer stuff that I read?  Well, it was far and away outside the “New Wave”. (Drat Prescott–probably the last great “Sword and Planet” series, was certainly not “New Wave”.)

However, as it happened, comics, which I was reading as new stuff.  Getting old stuff back then was expensive!  This was before digital editions, graphic novel collections and so forth.  If you wanted an old story you had to go browse specialty stores and dig through their boxes of back issues and pay a small fortune (or a large fortune for particularly rare and popular issues) to get a copy which you hardly dared to read for fear of damaging it.

Fortunately, for me, the same forces that created the New Wave in science fiction waited a while before hitting comic books.

Let me give you an example:  Batman.  Most people these days have a view of Batman that’s either a cowled psycho, monomaniacally obsessed, with plans for everything so that he could apparently single-handedly take down all the other superheroes in that universe, who drives sidekicks like some martinet and will “fire” them for the least mistake, barely if at all better than the criminals he fights–a character so dark he makes pitch black look white.  Or they think the campy 60’s TV Batman (which is a tribute to that series’ popularity as people still recognize it today).  But the Batman I grew up with, the one I came of age with, was neither of those things.  Driven, yes.  But not to the extent of that psycho I just described.  His parents’ death got him on the road he was on but he continued because he was good at it and, indeed, had mostly come to terms with their deaths…mostly.  See “Night of the Stalker” for a very good example of that “mostly”.  He was clearly a “good guy” even though he would bend/break the rules as needed.  You could tell him from the bad guys.

Let me offer a slight digression here.  In art there’s a concept called “chiaroscuro”.  This is basically the interplay of light and dark. It’s in this interplay that you make interesting things happen. “If you want to paint pictures like that, you’ve got to use some dark colors.” (A great line from an otherwise “meh” movie.)

This is what “grimdark” misses.  It’s not dark alone that makes for exciting, compelling stories with depth and richness, no more than it is light alone.  It’s the interplay between the two.  An unrelenting grim story, a hopeless dystopia, inevitable doom which cannot be stopped, simply does not compel.  Even those mythic tales of the past had the doomed hero rise above their troubles for a time.  Bellerophon did defeat the Chimera before attempting to ascend to Olympus and fall.  Sigurd did defeat the dragon and win its horde before the curse (from the ring that was among the horde) brought him down.  Roland was a mighty and successful knight before the battle of Roncevaux Pass and his defeat and death.

I suspect back then most people stopped the stories on the success rather than carrying through to the end, much like the movie “Jason and the Argonauts” stops with Jason and Medea sailing away from Colchis (and thus avoiding the really grim follow on to that story).

You can’t have just the dark.  You must have light in it.  Now, going back to Batman, back in the days I read, the villains, particularly Joker and Two-Face, were incredibly dark.  Gotham was a pit of darkness with corruption and rampant and only Commissioner Gordon on the side of law trying to stem that black tide.  Yet despite the dark-colored costume, despite his back story, despite his use of fear as a weapon, Batman was a beacon of light in that darkness.  He’d long since grown passed displaced revenge for his parents death to protecting the people of Gotham for their own sakes.  And while some have pointed out that Bruce Wayne could do more good with his wealth than Batman could ever do with his fists and gadgets, the Batman/Wayne of that era did both.  The Wayne Foundation on one side, and Batman on the other.  The serial format meant that he could never completely clean up Gotham, and the popularity of certain villains meant that they could never be permanently taken out of action. (“Why doesn’t Batman just kill the Joker?” “How many times has the Joker ‘Died’?”) But in the individual stories he wins.  People saved (not everyone, every time, but enough to create some hope).  Bad guys put away or “dead” through misadventure (for now, anyway; the future will take care of itself).  The stories were about hope and victory–traveling through the dark to reach the light.

And that is why I can still go back and read some of these old stories with pleasure today.  The dark that I travel through in the reading lets me worry to be relieved by the light at the end.

So remember, you need the dark to make good stories.  But you also need the light, if only a single candle, working against that dark, to make them great.

 

People keep making the claim that a gun in the home is more likely to be used to kill a friend or family member than it is to be used in self defense.

This all derives by a “study” by Arthur Kellerman which has long since been debunked but its fake statistics nevertheless continue to be cited by anti-gun propagandists.

Here are a few of the debunkings:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/01/william-c-montgomery/editorial-deconstructing-kellermann/
http://www.guns.com/2015/08/24/kellermanns-gun-ownership-studies-after-two-decades/
http://guncite.com/gun-control-kellermann-3times.html
http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/doctors-epidemic.htm
http://www.thegunzone.com/rkba/rkba-43.html

Some of its flaws:
On the one side: He only counts as “defenses” dead criminals when in truth in most cases where a gun is used in self defense merely presenting a gun is sufficient to end the threat. When the gun is fired, most of the times the person shot survives. This is even more the case in defensive shootings because when a person means harm, they are more likely to keep shooting until the target is dead whereas in a defensive shooting a person generally stops when they believe the threat is ended (and, in fact, is legally required to do so). So, the number of uses of a gun in self defense in the Kellerman study is low by orders of magnitude.

On the flip side: The original study spoke of victims known to the attacker. People citing the statistic morphed that into “friends and acquaintances” and then later to “friends and family”. But the statistic being cited as “friends and family” is actually “person shot by person known to them”. In a drug deal gone bad, the persons are known to each other. In a gang war, the members of the gang are often known to each other. An abusive ex shot in self defense is known to the person doing the shooting. And so on. So a lot of the things being included in that statistic are things that simply are not relevant to a law abiding citizen owning a gun.

The other thing that gets added in is suicide.  However possession of a firearm only really affects choice of method rather than suicide itself.  Japan, for instance, with its essentially gun-free society has a suicide rate higher than our suicide and homicide rates combined.

Looked at dispassionately we find that studies of gun use in self defense produce a low value of about 800,000 per year. The high value is 2.5 million. It’s hard to get a definitive answer to the question because see above: most times in a defensive use the gun is never fired. As a result, this means that most gun defenses are never reported to the police. In any case, most studies of the issue return results of 1 to 1.5 million gun defenses per year. However, even using the lowball estimate of 800,000 that’s quite comparable to the number of times guns are used criminally in the US. So, far from having a gun in the household making one at increased risk, one is instead about as likely (again, using that lowball result) to use a gun in self defense as to be threatened by a gun. More, actually since “gun owners” (the only population where one is able to use a gun in self defense) < “total population” (the population at risk for criminal use). Being criminally threatened with a gun has a risk of about 800,000 out of 321 (or so) million. Using a gun to defend oneself has a risk of about 800,000 (lowball again) out of 70-100 million. The latter is at worst three times the odds of the former.

Or look at it more simply. Gun ownership in the US has grown by leaps and bounds. The spread of “shall issue” and more recently “constitutional carry” means more people are carrying more guns in more places than ever before. If the “gun ownership increases risk” had any merit then we would be seeing homicide and violent crime going up. But that’s not what’s happening. It’s been going down since the 90’s and is currently at a 100 year low. [Ed. Since that chart was created, violent crime and homicide rates have mostly leveled out with small variations from year to year, still far, far below 1992 levels.]

 

The simple truth is, the violent have been with us since the beginning of humanity. The violent have several inherent advantages. They get to choose time and place. They get to choose victims (generally choosing those smaller and weaker than themselves). What firearms do is level the playing field. With a gun, aged Aunt Millie is the equal of 6′ 4″ 300 lb, Joe Thug on Steroids. Guns are, therefore, a net good to society.

“God made man short and tall. Samuel Colt made them equal.”

“Be not afraid of any man, No matter what his size; When danger threatens, call on me — And I will equalize!

The Battle of Machias was the first naval engagement of the American Revolutionary War.

On June 2, 1775, loyalist merchant Ichabod Jones, with two merchant ships, the Unity and the Polly, arrived in the port at Machias, Maine.  He refused to sell and unload his cargo of pork and flour unless the local town would allow him to take on a load of lumber for Boston, then under siege by Colonial forces.  Negotiations apparently took some time because on June 6 the local townspeople voted not to do business with him.  Jones responded by calling on the British armed sloop, the Margaretta, under the command of Midshipman James Moore, to come in and “encourage” them to decide otherwise.

The threat of the sloop, brought into firing range of the town caused the townspeople to hastily have another vote.  This time, with guns pointed their way in the harbor, they voted to allow trade.

Jones apparently wasn’t entirely satisfied with the enforced change of heart and announced that he would only do business with those individuals who voted for the trade.  This angered the folk who had not only lost the vote, but were not able to gain even that much from the result.

As a result, militia leader Colonel Benjamin Foster collected like-minded militia members not only from Machias but from neighboring towns.  The plan was to arrest Foster and Moor at church on June 11 but they failed when Jones noticed the men approaching.  Moore escaped across the harbor while Jones fled into the woods where he remained hiding for the next two days.

Foster’s men regrouped from giving chase to the two men the next day.  Foster took 20 men to the neighboring town of East Machias where they seized the sloop Unity as well as the local vessel, Falmouth Packet.  Other militia members traveled overland to adjacent to where the Margaretta lay anchored and demanded her surrender–a demand that Moore (now back aboard his ship) refused.

The Margaretta sailed to where the Polly was anchored and attempted to recover her.  There was an inconsequential exchange of gunfire with militiamen on the shore and the Margaretta turned and sought a safe anchorage.

Unfavorable winds and the loss of his boom and gaff to same hampered the Margaretta’s navigability.  Once he reached Holme’s Bay, however, he was able to capture a sloop and took it’s own spar and gaff to replace his, also taking the sloop’s pilot, Robert Avery, prisoner.

The Unity, now under the command of Jeremiah O’Brien, sailed in pursuit of the Margaretta, followed by the slower Falmouth Packet.  The Unity soon caught up to the damaged Margaretta.

When he saw the Unity, Moore opened full sail and cut away his boats in an attempt to flee.  When this proved fruitless, he opened fire.  The Unity, nevertheless, pulled alongside the Margaretta and the militiamen of the Unity boarded the Margaretta.  This provided an opportunity for the Falmouth Packet to catch up, pull along the other side of the Margaretta, and the combined militia crews of the two Patriot vessels were able to take the British ship.

In the course of the fighting, Moore was severely wounded by a musket ball to the chest.  He was taken to shore and given to the care of Ichabod Jones’ nephew, Stephen Jones but nevertheless died the next day.

 

From my recent release “Alchemy of Shadows”.

Paperback: $10.99
Kindle: $2.99
Kindle ebook free with purchase of paperback from Amazon

An 800 year old alchemist collides full-tilt into 21st century college life.

---

I pulled into the parking lot for the apartment complex near downtown Indianapolis about ten o’clock. I removed a new flashlight from where I kept it tucked between the seat cushions—out of the way but still handy—and dropped it in my pocket. Two magnesium flares followed. I still did not know what had happened to my previous flashlight and wanted another way of making a lot of light.

I had picked up the keys to the small student apartment the previous weekend, a one-bedroom that would have been luxurious in my youth but served for a struggling college student in the present.

I opened the trunk and removed the first of my two large suitcases. I hauled the suitcase around to the front entrance to the apartment building and set it down so I could open the door.

The sound of music blared from inside, some current fashion involving dissonant chords and excessive volume. Alcohol fumes wafted out the door to assault my nose.

The noise increased as I climbed the stairs, dragging the suitcase behind me.

As I reached the second floor, the door to the stairwell banged open and a young woman barged through it. She wore shorts with big pockets on the thighs, a style called cargo shorts and a T-shirt tied under her breasts, leaving her midsection bare. Sneakers of a garish purple covered her feet. No socks. I could not see her face as her head was turned to look back through the doorway but her hair fell in thick brown waves to just below her shoulders. Her right hand braced open the door while her left held a red plastic cup.

“Be right back, Vonnie,” She said.

“Whatevs,” someone in the hallway beyond the door, a woman by the sound of the voice, said.

The young woman stepped clear of the doorway, letting the door close behind her before turning round to face forward. Only my own prompt step back prevented her from colliding with me.

“Whoa!” Some brown liquid sloshed out of her cup. “Oops. My bad.”

Waves of dark hair framed her olive-brown face. Her eyes were the color of dark chocolate. A subtle use of gloss darkened and added shine to her lips. I saw no other makeup. Her T-shirt was blazoned with the logo of some overly loud band barely discernible above the knot. Like most people, she was taller than me, but only by a few inches.

I stood stunned. She was absolutely the loveliest young woman I had seen in decades.

“It’s okay,” I said at last.

“You here for the party?” She frowned. “No. Wait. Just moving in?”

“Yes, I…”

“That’s an awfully big load. Hang on.”

She opened the door a crack and stuck her head through. “Hey, Jeff. Fresh meat. Could use some help with his luggage.”

She pulled back and another head appeared in the doorway, several inches higher than hers. The man had likewise had olive brown skin, his a shade darker than the young woman, his eyes a shade lighter. He wore his hair cropped short. The resemblance of his features to hers spoke of close family ties.

“Come on, Becki, they’re just about to start…”

“Don’t care. Guy needs a hand. Look at him. That suitcase is almost as big as he is.”

She looked at me and an expression of chagrin crossed her face. “Oh, I’m sorry. No offense.”

I forced a lopsided smile. “None taken.”

“So, come on, Jeff. Help the guy out.”

“Becki, I…”

She grinned. “I’ll owe you a solid.”

Jeff’s eyebrows raised. “You’ll owe me? What about him?”

“I’m asking. He’s being entirely too shy to ask.”

She was wrong. I am not shy. I simply choose to keep a distance between myself and people so very much younger than I am. Saves trouble in the long run.

Jeff pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped through. “Fine.”

Jeff stood a bit over six feet. I could not guess his weight with the baggy sweatshirt sporting the logo for the IUPUI Jaguars—dressing for comfort rather than appearance.—but he was big. Despite the differences in their sizes, there seemed to be a certain similarity in their faces. The shape of the nose, the curve of the lower lip, they shared that.

“So,” Jeff said, nodding at my suitcase. “Need help with that?”

“No,” I said, my voice soft, “I’m fine.”

Jeff grinned. “I insist. Becki will beat me with a stick if I don’t.”

Becki punched Jeff in the arm.

I found myself returning his grin. “Wouldn’t want that. So, please.”

I dragged the suitcase up the last step and set it on the landing.

Jeff reached out a huge hand. I let go of the handle. Jeff picked up the suitcase as though it were empty. He paused for a moment then turned to Becki. “That loser boyfriend of yours called. He said he’d be late.”

“Jeff!”

“Hey, I calls ’em as I sees ’em.” He turned to me. “Which room?”

“Three Oh Eight,” I said.

Becki punched Jeff in the arm again.

“Where are your manners? Introduce yourself.” She turned to me. “I’m Rebecca Pierce, Becki to my friends. This is my brother Jeff, dumbass to people who know him.” She grinned.

“I’m Adrian Jaeger,” I said. “Ms. Pierce. Mr. Pierce.”

“Oooh, all formal,” Becki grinned. “Don’t be silly. Ms. Pierce is my mother. Becki.”

“I dunno,” Jeff said. “I kind of like ‘Mr. Pierce.’”

“Be nice, Jeff,” Becki said. “Or I’ll tell Mom about Candy.”

I watched the byplay with amusement. I’d seen so many dysfunctional families over the years, so many youngsters steeped in selfishness that it was refreshing to see a brother and sister that not only openly cared for each other but were kind and helpful to a complete stranger.

Jeff put his foot on the first step of the stairs up. “Three Oh Eight is up here.”

I nodded and gestured for him to lead the way.

Over on FaceBook, these “sponsored links” keep showing up in my feed.  Mostly I ignored them, as one does with most advertising.  But after a while, I started having a little fun with them.  Some of these are poking fun at the link.  Some are self-deprecation.  They’re all in good fun.  Hope you enjoy them:

Sponsored link: “What would your job be in the Roman Empire”.

Um, statistically it would most likely either be “peasant” or “slave”.

Sponsored link: “A quickfire 100 question personality test to find out who you really are.”

I’m going to go with “someone who doesn’t look for online personality tests to find out who I am–at most they’re entertainment, nothing more.”

Sponsored link: “These teachers were secretly paparazzied by their students.”

Yeah, those poses sure look like they were candid shots taken in the middle of class.

Sponsored link: “We know how old you are by how many life skills you have (answer should be exact ages)”.

No you don’t.

Sponsored link: Men get real about breast size.

Like that old saying goes, A-cup in the hand is better than a picture of a bush or something like that.

Sponsored Link: “How much do you remember about 70’s pop culture.”

Well, I’d managed to purge that horror but you had to bring it back.

Sponsored Link: “Can we guess how old you were when you first got high?”

Well, you can guess.

Sponsored Link: “Where do you fall on the scale from vanilla to kinky?”

Uh, where does “willing to learn” fall on that scale?

Sponsored link “42 devious facts about espionage.”

Oh, please. I could tell you but then I’d have to…

Sponsored link: “Can we guess the last time you got laid?” (Is it just me or are these things getting more and more ridiculous?)

No. You can’t.

Sponsored link (pretending to be liked by some of my friends): “Studies have proven that women all around the world tend to fall in love with a certain type of man.”

I’m going to go with “almost, but not quite, exactly unlike me.”

Sponsored link: “What type of girl do you repel.”

I’m going to have to go out on a limb and say “breathing”.

Sponsored link: “What type of girl do you find most attractive.”

Uh, “breathing” ranks high on the list. (See:  works the other way too.)

Sponsored link for a Facebook group “Heathen firearm enthusiasts.”

Trying to figure out how that shouldn’t just map to “Heathens.” (What with that whole “die in battle” and “Preparing for Ragnarok” thing.)

Sponsored link: “Brides give advice on how they got over their cold feet.” Small text “I was too sore to be nervous.”

Do I want to click? A deep and disturbed part of me says “yes” but I think I’ll pass.

Sponsored link: “What kind of viking would you have been.”

Given the assorted issues that I have, from being nearly blind without glasses to various allergies to not being anything like a “prime” physical specimen, probably a dead one.

Sponsored link: 25+ books everyone starts bit no one finishes.

Okay, this one I clicked. Every one I started, I finished.

Sponsored link: “502 bad gateway”

Yeah, I’m not going to bother clicking on that. 😉

Sponsored link: “Date or Dump these pop stars and we’ll guess how desperate you are.”

Don’t need to take the quiz. Pretty damn desperate.

Sponsored link: “She was voted as the most beautiful celebrity you’ve never heard of.”

Um. “Celebrity” “You keep using that word…”

Sponsored link: “17 confessions from couples who are engaged with no plans to be married.”

Um, “engaged” “You keep using that word…”

Sponsored link: “Girls confess: Guys, I’m not your booty call.”

Here’s a hint: if you’re putting out easily enough that he thinks you’re his booty call, you are.

Sponsored link: “Men and women tell why they won’t date a virgin.”

Um, I wouldn’t say I wouldn’t, but if I were with someone old enough not to be really creepy, and they were a virgin, I’d probably want to know why.

Sponsored link. “Amazing things couples do to turn each other on.”

So, saying “Ya wanna?” 😉

Sponsored link: “Dear Prudie: My partner wants to fix our relationship, but I want to end it. Will it be easier if I admitted that I cheated? Help!”

Yes, demonstrating to the person of integrity that has the great misfortune to be committed to you that you are an oathbreaking slut might convince he or she that you aren’t worth spitting on if you were on fire.

And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Sponsored link on things wedding guests do that brides hate.

Yes, banging the groom is on the list.

Ya think?

Sponsored links: “15 confessions from sugar babies.”

Sugar Babies? That’s a cute name for “whore”.

Sponsored link: “20 steamiest pictures of Game of Thrones stars”.

Um, never mind the fact that these things are rarely all that “steamy” in the first place, considering that a number of the cast members of Game of Thrones come out of a porn background I’m sure they could do a lot better on that score.

Sponsored links: Quiz “What is your redneck name?”

Um, I’m gonna go with “David.” 😉

Sponsored link: “15 images X doesn’t want you to see” the number and who the “X” is changes.

Okay. I’ll respect that and not click on the link.

Sponsored link: 9 best nude beaches.

I will be avoiding all of them.

You’re welcome.

Sponsored link: The 31 most terrifying images on the Internet that you wish you never saw.

And by not clicking on that link, my wish can be granted. See how that works?

Sponsored link is “how to become a first time author.”

Awesome! Someone has a time machine?

And that’s all I’ve got for now.  Hope you enjoyed them.

The ceremony was yesterday, but between my computer and the connection uploading videos is glacial so here it is today.

Athena filing in.  They kids were left pretty open in what they could wear here on the last day of school.  Athena chose to wear one of her Japanese yukata for the day.

I did a quick sweep with the video camera to show the size of the venu and the number of people present.  I was stainding at the end here because by the time I got inside there was no more seating and, indeed, the standing room at the back of the hall was already full.

They had the usual speeches.  Some eye-rollingly political.  Then, finally, they started having the kids come up to accept their 8th grade diplomas.

I didn’t record the whole thing, just the beginning to a bit after Athena selected hers.  She is decidedly unimpressed. (Actually, she started a new ballet class they day before and was still quite sore from that.)

That evening, after Athena changed (She didn’t want to risk getting her yukata dirty), we went out for a celebratory dinner.  Any place Athena wanted to go.

She chose IHOP.

Stuffed French Toast topped with glazed strawberries.

My daughter’s eight grade graduation was today.  It will take time for the video to upload and process so I’ll put that up tomorrow.  Today, I’ll talk about my current reading.

The book is “Fredericka” by Georgette Heyer.

Quite a few years ago (late 80’s), I “dipped a toe” as it were into category romance.  I even had a subscription where I’d get a half dozen a month.  I found them entertaining in small doses but only in small doses. (The subscription was too large a dose.) Eventually I went elsewhere.  More recently I’ve picked up an interest in Paranormal Romance (and whatever category you’d call it where instead of “Paranormal” it’s Science Fiction–there doesn’t seem to be separate marketing category for that but apparently readers do consider them different genres).  I can take larger doses of Paranormal Romance, possibly because the “Paranormal” pushes it higher on my interest level.  Or maybe my tastes have changed over the year.  The other was a long time ago.

But, since my own characters insist on having relationships that impact the story I have felt the need to learn to write romance as Romance–particularly since there’s little from my own life that I can draw on in that respect–the handful of relationships I have had over the course of my life have never gone well.  That would suggest that the problem lies…well, that’s not the subject of this post.

Friend and writer Sarah A. Hoyt suggested that if I wanted to learn to write “Romance” I would be well advised to study Georgette Heyer’s Regency Romances. (Others have suggested Heyer as a good author to study for plot and character.) So I’ve been adding them in between other books.  What I’ve generally done, with one exception (A Civil Contract, specifically recommended by Ms. Hoyt), is basically just search on her name on Amazon and pick up whatever’s at the top of the list that I didn’t already have. “Fredericka” is the latest.

I’m about a third of the way through it and, frankly, I find myself utterly enchanted with the title character.  Sarah said that the heroine of A Civil Contract was an “odd” (and I do see it).  I would submit that Fredericka is as well, although perhaps better adjusted than most.  What I like about it is that it plays a bit against what I’ve come to see as the standard tropes–where the heroine is a ravishing beauty and all that.  Fredericka is _not_, although she’s attractive enough.  It’s her sister who’s the ravishing beauty.  What Fredericka has is a remarkably capable and pragmatic mind (much like Jenny of A Civil Contract).

Frankly, its refreshing when set against all the drop dead gorgeous ravishing beauties and the studs who cause hearts to palpitate merely from sunlight shining from their oh-so-handsome faces.

I probably wouldn’t make a steady diet of these books but they make a nice change of pace from my more usual fare.

This evening turned out to be busier than I expected.  My daughter mislaid her leotard so we spent the time between her normal ballet class and her new pre-pointe class running around trying to where we bought the leotard so we could get a new one.  By the time we finished that, it was time for the pre-pointe class.  And that brings us to here, just getting home.  So here’s a blast from the past…slightly updated.

As a reader I’ll forgive a lot if you give me some thrilling heroics in your story.  Doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a TV show, a play, or an audio presentation.  Give me excitement.  Give me derring-do.  Give me reason to cheer.

Add in a love story, and you’ve got me hooked.

Sure, you don’t need to have fast-paced heroism, and clear heroes and clear villains, to involve me in a story.  I can and do enjoy methodical thought pieces.

But, to be honest, it’s just easier to bring me in with heroes and heroics.  Give me someone to root for, someone to boo, a threat faced, a challenge overcome, and I’m happy.

Does this mean that you can skimp on deep character development or involved world building.  Eh.  Not really.  Well, maybe a little but only a little.

The key there is thrilling heroics.  They can’t be thrilling if I don’t care about the hero, about those threatened, about even bystanders along the way.  They can’t be thrilling if I don’t believe the hero, and the villain, would act the way they do.  You can get away with less depth in lesser characters because by definition they don’t do much and we only need enough to fit what they do.  If the cab driver is just taking Our Hero from the airport to the hotel we don’t need to know that he washed out of law school, went on a month long bender that broke him up with his fiance and ended up in rehab before finally starting to put his life together and getting a job driving taxi (at least he’d never had a DUI even while drunk out of his mind).  But we have to believe that Our Hero is going to charge through machine gun fire into a burning building for someone he hardly even knows.  So you’ve got to have your character developed enough that when that happens we believe it.

Likewise with world building.  I’ve got to believe the threat.  And I’ve got to believe the actions available to the character.

A good example of that is the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  In a group devoted to discussing the series someone made the comment that it was strange that Buffy and her friends (collectively known as the “Scoobies”) didn’t use cell phones to keep in touch and coordinate their actions.  However, when the series was made, particularly the first few seasons, cell phones were still high end items and not in common usage.  I didn’t have my own cell phone until the third season was out.

So if your characters have cell phones (which here is a stand-in for whatever bit of worldbuilding might affect the plot) then either have your characters use them when appropriate or give them a good reason not to.

So, develop your character.  Develop your world.  Hell, put in a “message” if that’s what you want.  But wrap it up in something for me to care about.

And if you succeed in that wrapper, your prose can limp a little.  I can let the occasional lapse in other aspects pass.  I can even disagree with your message and still enjoy the story.  I’ve done it before.  I can do it for you.

So give me some thrilling heroics.  Give me big damn heroes:

And if you can throw in a love story.  That’s good too.

And if you give me that, well, that’s the kind of thing that gets me to give you money in return.

Yep, this is a blast from the past.

When ordered to attack the United States Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said “In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.” That proved prophetic as the turning point of the Pacific Theater of WWII happened almost 6 months to the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Going into the battle of Midway, the Japanese were suffering from losses from the Battle of Coral Sea.  That battle was ostensibly a Japanese victory but a costly one.  In contrast, the US was able to get repairs to the Yorktown sufficient to get her into action in record time.

In addition, thanks to code-breaking efforts, American forces knew where, and approximately when, the Japanese were planning to attack and could muster their forces to be ready.

Preliminaries of the battle occurred on June 3 when a PBY discovered a Japanese patrol force and a squadron of B-17’s was launched to intercept.  The only damage caused by this attack was a torpedo launched from a PBY striking a Japanese tanker.

The next morning, June 4, the Japanese launched an air attack against Midway Island.   Midway launched its aircraft, bombers flying off unescorted to attack the carriers while the fighters remained behind to defend the island.  The fighters, consisting of 7 F4F Wildcats and 21 obsolete F2A Brewster Buffaloes. suffered massive losses, losing three of the Wildcats and 13 of the Buffaloes with the remainder so heavily damaged that only two remained airworthy.

The base, while damaged, remained usable as a refueling and staging area to continue to attack the Japanese fleet.

The bomber attack on the fleet was repelled with heavy losses at the cost to the Japanese of only two fighters.  However, one of the bombers, a B-26, severely damaged made a steep dive toward the carrier Akagi from which it never pulled out.  It nearly crashed into the bridge and this near-thing may have been a factor in Japanese admiral Nagumo’s mixed decisions to follow.

Nagumo ordered his torpedo armed reserve planes re-armed with general purpose bombs to use against land targets in order to make a second strike at Midway.  However, while this was going on he received word of a sighting of American naval forces.  He reversed his order for re-arming and switched back to torpedoes, causing further delays.  Incomplete information, including the lack of knowledge of whether the sighted forces included carriers, when combined with a doctrine that called for launching full strikes and not piecemeal forces led to further hesitation.

The hesitation probably did not really matter.  American aviation was already on the way.

Mixed communications and navigational errors led to some forces completely missing the targets.  Ten Wildcats from the Hornet ran out of fuel and had to ditch.

The first carrier force to meet the Japanese was a flight of TBD Desvastators led by John C. Waldron.  Lacking any fighter escort, all of them were shot down, along with 10 of the 14 Devastators from the Enterprise, and 10 of the 12 from the Yorktown without inflicting any damage on the Japanese.  Part of this abysmal showing likely stemmed from defective torpedoes, a problem that would yet take some time for the Navy to recognize, let alone correct.

However, American forces gained several benefits from the nominally failed attack by the torpedo bombers.  Dealing with this attack on their own ships meant the Japanese were unable for a time to launch an attack of their own.  Their Combat Air Patrol was out of position to respond to later attacks.  And many of their planes were low on fuel and ammunition and so were put temporarily out of action.

While Waldron and the others were being chopped up by Japanese fighters, a flight of SBD Dauntless dive bombers was also searching for the carriers.  Low on fuel they continued their search, finally spotting a destroyer steaming to rejoin the carrier forces.

The dive bombers found the Japanese carriers and attacked.  The Japanese fighters, out of place, many on the decks of the ships with fuel lines stretched to them, were at their most vulnerable.  Two squadrons attacked the Japanese carrier Kaga achieving several hits, including one killing the captain and most of the senior officers and starting several fires on the ship.

Others attacked the Akagi, scoring only one direct hit but a devastating one that penetrated to the hangar deck among armed and fueled aircraft causing secondary explosions.  Another missed to the rear, exploding under the ship close enough to damage both the rudder and the flight deck.

Still others hit the Soryu getting multiple hits and causing fires among the refueling operations on the deck.

Both the Kaga and the Soryu were ablaze.  The Akagi took longer for the fires to spread out of control, but eventually they did.

The remaining Japanese carrier, the Hiryu, launched a counterattack.  They followed the retreating American aircraft back and struck the first carrier they encountered, the Yorktown, hastily patched together after Coral Sea.

While American defenders inflicted heavy casualties on the Japanese, they managed to get several hits on the Yorktown, blowing a hole through the flight deck and extinguishing her boilers.  Admiral Fletcher had to transfer his flag to the heavy cruiser Astoria.

The crew on the Yorktown were able to make emergency repairs, patching the flight deck and getting three boilers into action so that the Yorktown was able to resume air operations.  Indeed, their repair actions had been so effective that the second wave of Japanese attackers on their arrival thought it was a second, undamaged carrier.

This second wave managed to get two torpedoes into the Yorktown, killing her power and causing a 23 degree list to port.

While the Japanese, thinking they had taken out two carriers, rearmed in the thought that they could scrape together enough force to finish what they thought was the one remaining American carrier, the Enterprise launched a final strike of 24 dive bombers, her own and those from the Yorktown left “orphaned” by the Yorktown’s damage.

That was pretty much the end of the main battle.  There were a few skirmishes.  A Japanese submarine managed to get close enough to finish off the damaged Yorktown and sink the destroyer USS Hammann.

In the end, the Japanese lost four carriers and a heavy cruiser, as well as sustained damage to other ships and had 3057 dead.  The US lost one carrier and a destroyer with a total of 307 Americans killed.

Some historians have argued that the battle could have easily gone the other way.  American reconnaissance located the Japanese carriers long before the Japanese discovered the Americans.  This put the Japanese on the defensive almost from the beginning.  Had the Japanese instead been the first to discover their opponents, that might well have turned around and it would have been American Carriers on the bottom of the Pacific with Japanese sailing away victorious.  While the US would almost certainly have still won the war in the end–the American industrial base and the coming of the Atomic Bomb made that a near certainty–the war would very likely have been longer and bloodier.