The Guy Who Pays The Nickle

When I spoke about a nickle, I really meant metaphorically.

The guy who buys the bulk of my services is EP Blingermeyer, a guy who loves a thrill.  He bungie jumps, sky dives, kite surfs, runs, jumps, etc etc.  You get the idea.  He has extremely skewed luck, but it is so extremely skewed that when he is up he is able to get rich rediculously fast, but he doesn't keep it long.  Like me, he's fascinated by your world, but unlike me, he doesn't astrally project.

He physically goes there.  He'll take the bridge.  He waits for it to come at the break of day or at sunset, then rushes right backward toward Wonderbreadland and then half way through leaps off of it and into the nearest river.  Like TC did when he was escaping to home, once.  It messed him up quite well, you can only imagine what it did to EP.

It's a self fulfilling cycle, the more he does it, the more he wants to.  He loves the stories in your world, but also loves the venues where they exist; bookstores, plays, movies, poetry slams, museums.  You name it, he wants to experience it.  He's quite an affable fellow and has made several very good almost friendships.  Of course, TC was a native.  EP isn't and when he goes there, he's often forgotten immediately afterward.  He's a fictional character from your perspective after all.

TC tried to help once with a trick he read in a book about helping to invent a non existant person, but it didn't take.  You will never find a person who claims that EP Blingermeyer is a real person.  Though, your reality is strange enough that you might actually find an EP Blingermeyer.  Only it wouldn't be the one who pays me.

Most people who are determined to see the bridge on a thrill, I will, in fact, charge a few samoleans for my time, teach them how to see it, how not to get run over and more importantly how not to get eaten by whatever comes from the other direction.  Most people, most SANE people simply want to see a Sasquatch, or a troll or god knows what. 

That isn't the case with our friend.  So I charge him for it.  He wants details, precise details about what comes and goes, stray broadcasts, dropped artifacts.  He collects and catalogs all of them you see.  Its quite lucrative, even if I have no idea what he does with all the things he collects. One of these days he won't come back from your world. I'm amazed every time he does actually.  When he stops, I'll have to get a real job.

Call Me Rhombus

The New Podcast Owner Speaks

Check out this episode!

There Shall Be No More Sound Suckage

Podcast ownership is changing.

Many things are changing.

 

Including no more sucktackular sound quality.

Check out this episode!

How I Met Tom

The boy in the Graveyard Book didnt have a normal child hood.  But it gave him extraordinary abilities because of how he was raised.  He learned to become invisible and could see and speak to the dead.  Though if you ask him, he would likely have chosen his parents, despite all the good he had done.

I met Tom long before he met me.  You see, being raised in Wonderbreadland, with no magic was unbearable.  You can't live without magic and you can't live without dreams.  Its why the rest of Tom imported the dreams of someone else who was almost him as kind of a pace maker.

Let's just say Tom has seen what happens when most parts of a soul die.  Especially the dreams.  But where was I?

When the only place to find magic is in your head, you project outward, into realms that never were.  Far more good was done in places that you don't think matter, "not real" than you can imagine.   More than one kind too.  Word began...to spread.

But you can't leave the body behind.  Wonderbreadland land was a chain that corrupted him just as much as everyone else there.  I saw him once when he was twelve.  He sent a duplicate of himself to the Bayou.  And ....

:)

That's another story. 

But many years later, when I found him dripping wet and dry with sand on the bridge,  I knew right away who he was.   I told him the truth and helped him get home.  We stayed in touch.  He didn't really know me from Adam still, but a friend suggested a nome de gure.  And it stuck.

Hey, not all worlds echo throughout all creation like yours does.  But sometimes they do leak back.  Good thing too.

Perfectly decent human being.  Quite creative and capable.   One of the symptoms of escaping Wonderbreadland can be the inability tobself decieve.  Ever see The Invention of Lying?

Sometimes we have to lie to ourselves to try the impossible.   Ee need to.

Elsewise....

Elsewise our temple of clouds becomes a bowling alley.

Watch Pleasantville, you'll get it.

Later.

The Bridge in the Bayou

The name of the state changes from place to place.  There's a spectrum...no, strike that, there's a million spectrums, but the one that matters in this story is from what's real, to what isn't.  I know you'd like to think that your world is the most real that there is....it isn't.  There are more boring worlds, more ordered ones where there is no magic at all.

Think your world is boring? Imagine a world without rainbows or the wonder of a child's laugh.  There are worlds where that illusion you can tell yourself that there is a hidden power behind your life guiding you to destiny simply doesn't even have that much room. 

T.C. Ricks was born in your world, but he didn't stay there.  He was kidnapped at the age of eight and taken after stumbling into a Bridge, the famous Bridge of the Bayou.

In my world, like I said, stories are real things, that most folks don't acknowledge are real, but everyone knows are.  Your world is an awesome place, because you're safe.  What supernatural things there are hide in the shadows because they have to.  It helps you have more wonder and appreciation for stories than you could ever have if something came out and ate you with scales and fangs and claws that doesn't appear on National Geographic.

I know you disagree.  But I've lived in both worlds? Some of you can claim that, but most can't.  To travel to another world, you have to have a way to get there.  Some are physical, like a portal or a sled or a closet or a blue box....but most are mental.  Astral projection is a time honored method of moving from one world to another.  Hell, it happens every time you open a book.  What? You thought books were safe? Of course they're not safe.  Every time you open one, part of you goes to another place...and part of that place comes back with you.

But there are almost no physical portals in your world.  T.C. stumbled into one by accident.  There he was in Wonderbreadland.  That's the best name for it.  A very ordered place that seems mystical but isn't.  Everything is so safe, predetermined and ordered that you wouldn't know real magic if it went and bit you on the face.  T.C. got out, which is good for him, but it left him a little funny in the head.

Dreams are important things, a part of your soul.  You have multiple parts.  But different dead parts do different things to different people.  Some people lose their heart's....they're just....they have no kindness in them.  Least n unless they are kin, and really, that's just a kind of self interest.  True empathy requires heart, and some folks have none. 

Dead dreams are truly sad.  You can see a kind of shuffling that goes on in their lives.  But there is only so much broken heart a person can take.

The Bridge is kind of like one of your Mystery Spots, well known and the most obvious proof to anyone not an idiot that there are physical ways out of the world, it pulls back and forth like the tides on the moon.  Sometimes, when the stars are just right, it shoots straight on past your world and into Wonderbreadland.  That's where they came, and cut a hole in the bridge and stole T.C. 

Let me tell you....magic can kill, just by knowing it exists.  To touch it for so long but not be able to taste it is one of the saddest things you can imagine. 

It's an interesting thing, the Bridge, there among the misty swamps. I study it, sometimes warn folks away from it.  I'll charge a nickle when I can, but an empty window can be an opportunity.  It lets me peep into your rather interesting world and see an index of all the places the Bridge might go.

Greetings From Another World

Hello.  My name is Rhombus.  Rhombus Ticks.  Pleasure to make your aquaintance.

Greetings from another world.  I am not T.C. Ricks.  The official cover story was going to be that I "bought" the blog from him but its infinitely more complicated than that.  

You see I am what you would call a fictional character.   But I don't consider myself fictional.   I just consider myself more fictional.   Stories in my world are physical things.   There are far more fictional places.  My world is very close to your own, but not as safe.

English is a class more like typing.   And the only stories we have around are the ones that make our world work.  We have the catcher in the rye, and Harry Potter and Uncle Tom's Cabin, but nothing like Terry Pratchet or Jim Butcher or Elizabeth Moon.

Don't worry.  Tom is still around, just the part of him that died isn't there any more.   It's a sad complicated story and I will tell ot to you some time.  It involves a bridge and a changling.

But I thought I would introduce myself and say hello.

Hello.

I hope we can get to know each other.

The podcast and blog

The scripts will reappear soon as will the podcast.  The problem id quality and my last unshared script is in celtix which is a pain to tramsfer to word which means acrobat reader.

I am not releasing another podcast without quality editing so next week, the first half of gmvz chap 9 may be the last in a while but weird snafus to contact my editor will not continue now that i am not ill or traveling. Watch this space.

The Silver Shackes Blog Tour - The Buck Stops Here

When you steal from faerie queens, the consequences are painful and sometimes deadly.

Were-jaguar and TV personality, Riley O’Rourke, has been looking over her shoulder ever since she stole from the Dark Queen of the Unseelie faeries. When Riley is contacted by an informant with knowledge that can blow the lid off the story of the year, she can’t pass up the opportunity to investigate. What she finds instead is something that puts her at the mercy of the Dark Queen, who is not known for her compassion.

When Riley’s boyfriend, David, realizes she’s missing, he’ll do whatever it takes to get her back, including starting a war with the Unseelie. The balance of power among the Fae courts is shifting, and if David makes one wrong move, Riley could end up crushed in the struggle. But after being the subject of the Queens’s legendary cruelty, will there even be anything left of Riley to save?

The second book in the Revelations Trilogy continues the story of Riley O'Rourke, David Lo, and Neve MacAlpin. Buy it here.

Taming Shadows is the first book in the Revelations Trilogy and introduces us to Riley, David, and Neve. Buy it here.

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Disclosure: Fiona has been the editor of choice I have had since using an editor.  I have written a short story in the Night of Revelations Universe.  I have also written a previous very favorable review of her Novella. 

Second Disclosure: I am in a very toxic place right now.  I had hoped to move this review but apparently could not.  So mote it be.

Take both as you will....

Spoiler Free:  I recommend reading this book.  There are problems early on in some idiot decisions made by the characters but the wait is worth the payoff.










Spoilers:  Every author has an author avatar character, or one who seems the most likely in the work.  Often authors deny this but if you have been a writer then you can spot it a mile away. Period.  But in Urban Fantasy there is a tendency to make the protagonist special, and 'suffer' but not really.  Pain is hard.  Pain hurt.

Pain is the crucible through which characters are transformed.  Personally, if I ever meet the person writing my story I will kill them.   Painfully. Any writer of any skill knows you have to make your character suffer or the reader won't give a crap.  Don't become too attached to your characters.  Kill your darlings.

Everyone hates George R.R. Martin for killing his characters, but they keep reading him.   (Well, we'll leave out episode 8 of season 5 but that's another topic.)  They do because the suffering of his characters is real. The outcome of any story is never guaranteed.  It is ENTIRELY possible that the bad guys will win.

Fiona does in the first novel what Jim Butcher does in Storm Front...make a compact potentially stand alone novel with a tangible victory, with open ended questions and a million ways to go.  In Silver Shackles she does what Jim Butcher did in Grave Peril by not just having an interesting stand alone conflict, but also setting up the ground rules for everything nasty that is to come.

Fiona has done her homework in terms of mythology.   Her fairies feel like fairies.  Her vampires have echoes of Dracula upon them.  She has studied the physiology of the animals that bond with critters.  And the golem acts like a golem, hidebound and lacking in creative thinking at first to his own peril.  He is easily tricked, too easily tricked, but when you realize he might look human, but isn't, it is more acceptable that he forgets all of the things the thing murdering children could be besides a Critter.

There is no clean resolution here.   Riley does the kinds of things that a true victim of the Fey would do.  She is fucked up.  She is put through the ringer and David, being almost human, handles with attempted sensitivity and a sledge hammer.   I want to hit Riley in the back of the head with a clue by four.  I want to do the same with David.

That's a good thing.  They do not make these decisions because they are stupid, they make them because they are not human, and Riley finally comes to terms with this.  Fiona is making hard choices in her signature series and it shows.  These hard choices will not leave you with a trite feeling of satisfaction at the end of victory with shallow cost, but this is so often what  I read in so many urban fantasy novels.  Popcorn is great, life is suffering, and by the time Fiona is done the characters feel more alive than they ever did in Night of Revelations.

Revelations is going places.  You should go with it.

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ABOUT FIONA SKYE

Fiona Skye is a fantasy author, currently living in the deserts of Southern Arizona. She shares a home with her husband, two kids, three cats, two rats, a betta fish, and a Border Collie.

Fiona’s passion for story telling began early in life. She loved playing make-believe and inventing elaborate fantasy worlds for her friends and her to play in. At age twelve, she wrote her first short story, which was based on a song by a 1980s hair band. After giving it to her English teacher for editing and rewrites, she learned to love the entire writing process, and has dedicated her life since then to writing, only to be occasionally distracted by her insatiable love of yarn and crochet, and the dogged pursuit of the perfect plate of cheese enchiladas.

She counts Diana Gabaldon and Jim Butcher as her favorite authors and biggest influences. Joining these two on the list of people she would wait in queue for a week to have a coffee with are Neil Peart, Kevin Hearne, and Brandon Sanderson.

Fiona is online -

Website & Blog: http://fiona-skye.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fionaskyewriter

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/fionaskyewriter

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/FionaSkyeWriter/

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/fiona_skye

The problem

I have seen what happens if you don't have a dream...and the poet in me is a bit too...ecclectic...to have that really count...granted, helpful to always avoid dying a spirit death but...still.

I think as long as we understand these little things of mine are basically stillborn abominations....and while painting them up pretty with my spare change is nice, major investment is.....purely a vanity project...like pimping my car...

Which means waiting until I rebuild my reserve.  And until  I find another outlet like film making or sculpting or god knows what.

The Story of My Stories

I am not my title character.  Frank Noble never gives up....not ever.  He is the exception to the rule that says that we have have flaws; he has flaws, but he does not give up.  He is special and there is a reason the Helm of Mambrino works for him.

I have kept writing through a lot.  "You'll always have your day job."  Many many rejections, the understanding that my early stuff was awful, being told not to write by professionals, (seriously, like actully told not to), repeated non reads by friends and family (Though many have also been very helpful in this regards), non sales, non increases in the listenership of the podcast, the rejection of guesthood, now twice....

But this last time....

I've gotten better...exponentially better, but the repeated traige of friends and family....the repeated manifestation that they regard my contributions and ideas as valueless....

This is not all my family nor is it all my friends but you must understand it is a huge number.

Then I look at the success of people who aren't really that much better than me...some of them are...some of the aren't.

Mostly its because they are slightly better and more likable.

I try VERY hard to be likable...but it is not enough.

I can't just writ for me.  I know that's wht I'm supposed to do....its why the best writers are introverts...they could give a fuck about the outside world....

i...just.....amtired.  I am tired of losing friend, of dleted manuscripts, of rewrites and needing one more edit, and finding out that that isnt enough and you need another pass or another specialist or a better cover...if you go it on your own and just sync some more money into it...

I haven't completely shut the lights off but I'm damn close.

Who am I kidding?

The podcasts in the queue are it.

Its been real folks.

Grenademan vs the Zombies Chapter 8 Part 2

Jarvi the warlock wants to initiate chaos.  Grenademan and a rag tag group of gamers mean to stop him.

By T.C. Ricks, Performed by Matt Frankin

Check out this episode!

Unfood Part 3 of 3

Freight has to make tough choices to survive. 

Written by T.C. Ricks, Performed by Matt Frankin

Check out this episode!

[Script] Tossing Grenades at Windmills - Page 84

CHAINSAW FRED

My brother died saving his life. I’m going to make sure it amounts to something. 

DOC SHADOWS

I suppose you have a point. I suppose you have a point indeed. 

Hawkqueen

Do you think he’s really out there? 

DOC SHADOWS

Oh, I’m sure of it. The more I think about it, the surer I become. 

FADE TO BLACK

GRENADEMAN

(offscreen voice)

GREETINGS CITIZEN KNIGHT. WHAT IS THE NAME OF THIS PLACE? 

Knight

(Offscreen Voice)

Camelot strange one. 

GRENADEMAN

(Offscreen Voice)

FORSOOTH! IS THERE ANY EVIL ABOUT? 

Knight

(Offscreen Voice)

Indeed, evil abounds across the land. 

GRENADEMAN

(Offscreen Voice)

THEN LET US BE OFF….THAT WE MIGHT FIGHT THE FORCES OF EVIL!

Roll Credits.