I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving today. My wife and I celebrated just the two of us because I’ve had a bit of con crud after 20Books and didn’t want to spread to family.
Wynnifred
Aside from that, it was excellent. We had steak, ham steaks, mashed potatoes, french onion soup, 2 kinds of cranberry sauce, veggies, a cheese plate, pumpkin pie, and oatmeal raisin cookies. We ate well, as did our portable black hole, Wynnifred.
As you can see, she’s still hungry.
Anyway, lots to get to this week. First, I had a great time at 20Books Vegas. Rather than going into detail here, here’s my AAR: robhowell.org/blog/?p=2950.
Side note: Welcome to all my new readers from 20Books. Thanks for signing up!
That leaves time to talk about Responsibility of the Throne, which comes out on Tuesday the 29th. This is the 2nd in G. Scott Huggins’ excellent Endless Ocean series. And check out this cover from the amazing J Caleb Studios.
Azriyqam is home, and discovering that princesses have to live up to their titles.
Responsibility of the Throne
Living up to the example of her parents involves more than she ever imagined, like inheriting the title of Holder of the Two Keys, who judges between dragons and humans, and keeping watch for Consortium agents ready to destroy her homeland.
While she’s being trained in the law she’s supposed to uphold, the people she’s supposed to judge are a far greater mystery. And though she’s received harsh lessons in the treachery of humans, she has not yet begun to fathom the motives and designs of the kingdom’s dragons. And these are the key to a challenge that could fracture the entire kingdom.
Can she stand up to the fire and destruction facing her, or will bitter enemies and cruel traitors send her sinking to the bottom of the Endless Ocean?
I got a decent number of words written before the con started, but between travel, recovery, the con, the holiday, and other work, I haven’t had a chance to touch anything since a week ago Sunday. I’ll get back on the horse tomorrow.
Finally, there’s less than a week left until the deadline for the 2023 FantaSci Short Story Contest open call. It’s due on the 30th. We’ve had a bunch of great submissions, but yours might just be better, so send it in.
And now, off to do more editing. Have a great rest of your weekend.
What I’m Listening To
It’s Thanksgiving. I’m a huge football fan. Soooo…, after watching the Cowboys beat the Giants (Go Cowboys), I’ve got the Patriots in Minnesota on right now.
Quote of the Week
I get frustrated at the blind stupidity of the NFL, but sometimes they get one right. They are honoring John Madden at all Thanksgiving games going forward.
He was such a fixture on this day for me, and he was always one of my favorites. Go he go too far overboard? Sure. But you never doubted his passion for the game.
“Since 1981, I’ve spent every Thanksgiving Day broadcasting a game, and it is one of my favorite days. You can say, ‘Woe is me, I never get to be part of the tradition,’ or you can say, ‘Heck, we’ve got our own tradition, and it’s pretty good.'”
– John Madden
The theme is Bonds of Valor, and you story must include deeds of valor centered around bonds between characters. This could be a romantic relationship, a buddy adventure, oaths to kings, or whatever you can come up with.
Deadline: November 30th, 2022
Word Count: 7-10,000 words
Specifics: Times New Roman, 12 point font, 1.5 line spaced.
This week we have the second book in D.T. Read’s The Seventh Shaman series, entitled Mountains of the Gods. How good is this? Chris reads more than a few books each year and he says it’s the best thing he’s read all year. Find out yourself here: amazon.com/dp/B0BMM99PPQ.
Let me know if you have any suggestions on the website, this email, or cool story ideas at rob@robhowell.org. Especially let me know of suggestions you have for the Spotlight section.
It’s been an oddly productive week. Productive in the sense that I got quite a few things worked on, but odd because they don’t all mesh yet.
For example, at the beginning of the year a friend of mine had a brain aneurysm. I offered to tuckerize anyone who donated over a certain amount to help him. I was pleasantly surprised at the response, and I spent much of last week starting those scenes. None of them are included in my listing for Brief Is My Flame, as I don’t know where they’ll go yet. Some might show up in None Call Me Mother.
Also, I worked on an especially large entry on the Four Horsemen Wiki. The entry is here: http://mercenaryguild.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=CASPer. CASPer is an acronym for Combat Assault System, Personal, and they’re basically power armor. They’re the central weapon system in the Four Horsemen universe and that entry is large and detailed. It’s probably the single most important thing to create in that world’s wiki, but it took forever.
I also started another novel, though this one is not set in Shijuren. I’m aiming for December with it. It’ll be listed below under TAV. I started one other project, at least in terms of laying out ideas. I’ll talk about that more next week.
All in all, a good week, but the true value won’t be readily apparent for some time.
In the meantime, I’m getting ready for the Super Bowl. Sort of. I’ve never been so unenthusiastic about a Super Bowl in my life. I loathe both teams. I’m rooting for the Patriots because I despise them far less than I do the Eagles. When this matchup occurred previously in 2005, I at least had the opportunity to host a Super Bowl party. That’s not an option this year. I’ll watch it, and I’ll appreciate the game as the last real example of football for some time, but it’s hard to get fired up.
At least good draft scouting reports are starting to flow in. This year, they’re holding the NFL Draft in Dallas and I wonder if I can finagle a way to afford going.
We shall see.
Current Playlist Song: “Three Days” by Jane’s Addiction. This actually one of my top five favorite songs of all time. It’s about 11 minutes long, but I will listen to it over and over. This update’s title comes from a line in the song: “We choose no kin but adopted strangers.” This quote resonates with me, given the family I’ve accrued in the SCA and am starting to build in the writing world. I love those actually related to me, but I have been lucky in the strangers who have adopted me.
Quote of the Week
Today’s quote comes from John Madden, because few people put more enthusiasm into the game.
“If you win a Super Bowl before you’re fired, you’re a genius, and everyone listens to you. But a coach is just a guy whose best class in grammar school was recess and whose best class in high school was P.E. I never thought I was anything but a guy whose best class was P.E. “- John Madden
Today an author friend of mine passed his dissertation defense. Congratulations Dr. James Young! He also writes alternate history besides his normal naval history, and you can find his stuff on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/James-Young/e/B00AVKCQZQ/.
Today’s Weight: 387.0
Updated Word Count: 11970
Shijuren Wiki: 736 entries
Four Horsemen Wiki: 82 entries
Let me know if you have any suggestions on the website, this email, or cool story ideas at rob@robhowell.org. Especially let me know of suggestions you have for the Spotlight section.
Have a great week, everyone.
Rob Howell
Author of the Shijuren-series of novels
