Anybody want to play???

Looking for some folks that like to play with/against tropes…

I’m going to see if we can get enough interest for a twisted anthology playing with tropes. Take a trope, twist it, play with it, play it straight, however you want to do it.

5000-8000 words, entertaining, and having to do with a trope from… whatever genre you choose!

Writers Write has a great list of various tropes by genre HERE if you don’t already have one in mind.

I’d like to get this out by Christmas, so we’ll call it a fifteen November hard deadline. doc or .docx format, sent to oldnfo at gmail dot com.

Projected title, ‘Just Troping Around’. Have a lady doing a cover for it now that is… interesting! 🙂

Unintended consequences???

Or purposeful cancellation under the color of law???

Several historical reenactments in New York have been canceled in recent weeks over concerns that participants could be violating the state’s restrictive gun laws.

A law that took effect Sept. 1 prohibits carrying weapons in “sensitive locations,” including public parks, sport fields and museums.

Full article, HERE from Town Hall.

What makes this more interesting is that it de facto means no more reenactments of any type in NY by any organization that uses guns of any type, so Revolutionary, War of 1812, Civil War, WWI or WWII reenactors, etc. are done for.

And no WWI/WWII or later airplanes that have weapons (unless they are dummies) in the wings or turrets.

So by default, no more learning from living/moving history…

Dammit…

Snerk…

For all those writers out there…

Author unknown

  • An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
  • A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
  • A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
  • An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
  • Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
  • A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
  • Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
  • A question mark walks into a bar?
  • A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
  • Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”
  • A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
  • A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
  • Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
  • A synonym strolls into a tavern.
  • At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
  • A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
  • Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
  • A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
  • An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
  • The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
  • A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
  • The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
  • A dyslexic walks into a bra.
  • A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
  • A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
  • A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
  • A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

Actually, good examples… LOL

FenCon AAR!!!

TL;DR

Survived… 🙂

This was our booth!!! MUCH CREDIT to Jonna, Cedar, and Kortnee for all the work that went into it and running it for the weekend!!!

Twenty plus books from our group, artwork, wearables, and Wendell shirts!!!

And I got to watch Larry squee!!!

He’s holding a real ‘Abomination’ from the MHI series, built by Alex at Dreadnaught Industries! There is still a ‘bit’ of a problem with the bayonet (now on ver. 6), but it is almost complete!!! And YES, everything on it works!

Our first panel was Friday afternoon… Future of Firearms. Sadly, Chuck Gannon isn’t pictured, as he was running a bit late, but we packed the room (literally standing room only), and over 30 more people turned away! Larry, Lawdog, Kal Spriggs, Alex Wakel, and me…

And yes, Larry was the moderator, even if he was the Guest of Honor! LOL

I was asked more than once if we could do it again, but sadly, due to space availability and timing, we couldn’t pull it off.

All of us did a bunch of panels, talked to friends/fans, met other authors, and generally had fun in spite of the hotel issues!

We did a No S**t- There I was Saturday night, and I got stuck moderating that one…

Myself, Kal Spriggs, Kelly Grayson, Lawdog, Alex Wakel, and Bart Kemper. We…um…might have run over a ‘bit’… Called that one at midnight, after 2 hours and people seemed to enjoy it! Definitely a NSFW panel… LOL

My last panel was ‘fun’ too, for versions of fun.

How Hard Science is your Sci Fi

Nothing like trying to moderate Monalisa Foster, Rob Hampson, Kurt Gallagher, and Stephen Patrick in front of a room full or science nerds… Sigh…

I’ll probably still be asleep when you read this, because I’m flat wore out, my back hurts, and my ass hurts from the lousy conference chairs. But the con was great fun!!!

Book promo…

It’s ladies day!!! And all these ladies will be at FenCon this weekend!

Just in time for FenCon, Alma TC Boykin has the newest in the Familiars series out, Preternaturally Familiar

As always, click on the cover for the Amazon link!

The blurb-

Where is home for a Hunter?

Uneasy rests the head upon which rests the leadership of the River County Hunter clan. Arthur Saldovado’s older brother grows distant and untrusting. Arthur must balance his duty to the senior Hunter with protecting the shadow mage Hunter in Shadows and preventing strife within the clan. Arthur’s adopted daughter, Lelia Lestrang, watches and worries. That is, when she’s not trying hard to keep from ordering her children to marry (she wants grandchildren!) and sighing mightily when her much loved husband leaves his clothes lying in front of the laundry hamper yet again.

Then a sorceress discovers the remains of a gate between the worlds, cast with blood-path magic.

Where can an out-cast Hunter find shelter, save for the grave?

“I wish something would happen and clear the air!” When the storm breaks, Lelia, André, their Familiars, and their family pull together to fight a battle Lelia though had ended fifty years before.

The end of an era? Or the start of something Preternaturally Familiar?

And Rita Beeman has her first book out! Mabel Murkwood and the Overly Familiar

The blurb-

Mabel Murkwood has trouble keeping a Familiar.
Hugh, a stately raven from England, lost his master in the Blitz.
Warm conversation, a shared passion for botanicals, and many cups of tea forge a bond between this unlikely duo.

However, life in East Texas isn’t always easy, especially after a World War that left scars in the hearts of many of its survivors. While Hugh finds his footing in a new land, he also finds a new purpose helping his East Texas Witch. 

And Sarah Hoyt has the first of her Darkship series up under her own imprint now- Darkship Thieves

The blurb-

Athena Hera Sinistra never wanted to go to space. Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. She never had any interest in finding out the truth about the Darkships.

You always get what you don’t ask for. Which must have been why she woke up in the dark of shipnight, within the greater night of space in her father’s space cruiser, knowing that there was a stranger in her room. In a short time, after taking out the stranger—who turned out to be one of her father’s bodyguards up to no good, she was hurtling away from the ship in a lifeboat to get help.

But what she got instead would be the adventure of a lifetime and perhaps a whole new world—if she managed to survive…

A Prometheus Award Winning Novel, written by a USA Today Bestseller.

If you haven’t read this series, you need to!

Off to FenCon!!!

Here’s the link to my schedule for FenCon this weekend!

J.L. Curtis

JL Curtis has novels out in three different series, The Grey Man (urban fiction), Rimworld (military science fiction), and a new series, Showdown on the River (western). He has written a number of novellas and short stories for a number of anthologies. A retired Naval Flight officer, he spent 20+ years in the Navy, then worked as an engineer with a defense contractor for another 20+ years. A long-time shooter and NRA instructor, he now lives in North Texas and writes full time.

Share and enjoy!

Other panels with J.L. Curtis :

Future of Guns
Friday  4:00 PM  Galleria 4
Autographs
Saturday  10:00 AM  Grand Atrium
Reading
Saturday  11:00 AM  Southlake
No Sh*t – There I Was
Saturday  10:00 PM  Grand 3&4
All My Stuff is Smarter Than I Am
Sunday  12:00 PM  Lakewood
How Hard Science is Your Sci Fi
Sunday  2:00 PM  Lakewood

Future of guns should be fun, Lawdog, Larry Correia, and I are all on it…

And I have no idea why/who would want my autograph, maybe I can catch up on my napping… LOL

Probably won’t be blogging this weekend, since I’ll be a tad busy. Probably next blog will be Monday the 19th. Go read the folks on the sidebar!!!

Oopsie…

So… The administration has ’emboldened’ the unions these days, and now it’s coming back to bite them in the ass…

A 30-day moratorium that has so far forestalled a strike is set to end Friday for members of the two largest U.S. freight rail unions, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, or BLET, and SMART Transportation Division. Both have yet to reach deals with rail carriers, which have struck or are close to reaching tentative agreements with the other 10 of the country’s 12 rail unions.

Full article, HERE from NBC News.

Per one of my HS classmates, who is a retired railroad engineer, it’s the lack of work/life balance. Always on call 24/7 for days, weeks, months on end, with no way to schedule time off for family things.

He also said if the engineers and trainmen (conductors) go out, all the other unions will go with them. That would stop the RR cold, and that includes Amtrak, which is apparently already cancelling the long haul routes as of today.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have apparently been trying to get this resolved with no joy, causing Xiden to actually have to call the two union heads on Monday, for all the good it did.

The other wrinkle in this, I believe, would be the shutdown of most commuter rail services, like subways, metros, etc. And the costs would be around $2 billion per day, depending on which set of estimates you want to believe.

Here we go…

Again!!!

Buried deep within the massive infrastructure legislation recently signed by President Joe Biden is a little-noticed “safety” measure that will take effect in five years. Marketed to Congress as a benign tool to help prevent drunk driving, the measure will mandate that automobile manufacturers build into every car what amounts to a “vehicle kill switch.”

Full article, HERE from Daily Caller.

There are SO many issues with this one it’s not even close to being funny… 5th/6th Amendment violations to start with, 3rd party access???

WHICH 3rd party? .gov or Joe Smuckatelli your local hacker, or some rapist/robber/killer out to get somebody???

Just made the value of my old car go up!!! 🙂

I know what I’ve got, no lowball offers… Just sayin…

One to think about…

THE MAN IN THE GLASS

(Author Unknown)

When you get what you want in your struggle for self

And the world makes you king for a day,

Just go to a mirror and look at yourself

And see what THAT man has to say.

 

For it isn’t your father or mother or wife

Whose judgment upon you must pass,

The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life

Is the one staring back from the glass.

 

Some people might think you’re a straight-shootin’ chum

And call you a wonderful guy.

But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum

If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

 

He’s the fellow to please, never mind all the rest, 

For he’s with you clear to the end, 

And you’ve passed your most dangerous test 

If the guy in the glass is your friend. 

 

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years 

And get pats on the back as you pass, 

But your final reward will be heartache and tears 

If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

You can’t hide from him behind a computer, anonymous and unknown…

9/11…

Today’s media pushes the idea it is time to ‘move on’ that 9/11 should become a part of our ‘history’ rather than continue to be kept at the forefront of people’s minds…

I lost two good friends in the Pentagon, Retired Captain Jack Punches and Captain Larry Getzfred. I served with and crossed paths with both these gentlemen from the 1970’s until 2001. I went to Arlington, and stood there remembering these guys like it was yesterday- How good they were with the sailors, how they worked throughout their careers to succeed in the Navy culminating in command tours. Jack had VR-24 in Sig and was well respected and remembered by his sailors, Larry had VP-40 and was very successful during the end of the cold war.

THIS was the reality of 9/11/2001

Not sugarcoated, apologized for, sanitized talking points, or spun by whomever.  We, the USA were attacked on our home soil by terrorists who are STILL determined to bring America to her knees, since we are the “Great Satan”…  21 years later, the terrorists are still after us, and the Taliban/al Queda are back in charge in Afghanistan…

Today, Biden and the other pols will horn in on the various memorials for the obligatory photo ops. They won’t speak, and will keep those who actually DID THE WORK out of the memorials.

On 9/12/2001, the firefighters and military hung this flag on the Pentagon in honor of those who died…

Military service members salute as fire and rescue workers unfurl a huge American flag over the side of the damaged Pentagon, Sept. 12, 2001, during rescue and recovery efforts following the previous day’s terrorist attack. At about 9:40 a.m. local time, a hijacked commercial airliner, originating from Washington’s Dulles airport, was flown into the Pentagon’s western side. In his weekly address to the nation issued Sept. 10, 2016, President Barack Obama recalled the 9/11 attacks that struck the United States 15 years ago. He urged all Americans to honor the memory of the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks that targeted the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon, and another airliner that crashed into a Pennsylvania field. He also called on citizens to salute the efforts of the firemen, police and other first responders who risked their lives to help others in need that dark day, as well as the U.S. service members, diplomats, and the intelligence, homeland security and law enforcement professionals “who serve, and have given their lives, to help keep us safe.” Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Michael W. Pendergrass

Never Forgive, Never Forget!!!