Music Blog: Iron, by Within Temptation

Yes, I know I've posted this before.

It is still awesome.

And this time, I made certain to post the lyric video.

If you haven't already, check out some of the books below.

And if you have, please leave a review.

    

CLFA book bomb, February 2017

It’s the February 2017 CLFA Booknado! Feel the rush as a fresh, bold breeze blasts away tired, stale, establishment fiction and blows in the new, the independent-minded, and the Kindle bargains, too! Read on for this month’s featured titles, and click on any book image to shop.

NEW RELEASES

Live and Let Bite (Love at First Bite Book 3) by Declan Finn

The third book in the Dragon Award nominated “Love at First Bite” series.

The Undercover Captain (Captain Nancy Martin Book 2) by Henry Vogel

It will take every bit of skill Nancy and Erica have to track down the evil genius behind the disappearances. Defeating them will be a different matter entirely.

Letters from Aztlan by John L. Wolf

In a dystopian, post-meltdown United States, a cynical, aging gunfighter receives a letter from an old friend in desperate need of help. He must fight his way across cartel occupied territory to find her.
$1.99 OR LESS

For the dates February 12 and 13, 2017, as reported by book author.


 

99¢

The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin by L. Jagi Lamplighter

Fringe meets Narnia at Hogwarts

 

99¢

The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel (A Book of Unexpected Enlightenment 2) by L. Jagi Lamplighter

Rachel Griffin returns for more rousing adventure and humor!


 

FREE


Tears of Paradox (Storms of Transformation Book 1) by Daniella Bova

America has fallen to a Marxist bureaucracy, and the parents of an unborn child go underground to keep their baby’s existence a secret.

 

99¢

A Place Outside the Wild (Z-Day Book 1) by Daniel Humphreys

Eight years after Z-Day, the surviving remnants of mankind face the unknown. The scars of the long war run deep. And hope is a dangerous thing when the real enemy might just be the survivors themselves.

 

FREE

Bulletproof Vestments (Father Jay Book 1) by Jane Lebak

A former gang member has tracked down the man who ratted out his brother 10 years ago. It’s time for some good old-fashioned revenge, except the man in question is disabled. And he’s a priest. And no one’s going to let him go down without a fight.

Review: Appendix N, by Jeffro Johnson.

This is a review of Appendix N, ... or, Jeffro Johnson's big book of SFF.

My experience with RPG's boils down to video games, and I don't even mean Final Fantasy (I've only played VI and XII), but Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (which inspired my system for vampires).

So I went into Appendix N could, with no idea what the title referred to. I knew very little about Dungeons & Dragons, and even less about Gary Gygax, and no idea of the differences between version one, version two, and version nine (Is there even a version nine? I wouldn't even know one way or another).

For the record, the title refers to the Appendix N of the original D&D dungeon master's manual, wherein Gygax highlighted and cited all of the various and sundry works that inspired the facets of the world of D&D.

It's a reading list.

APPENDIX N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons is a detailed and comprehensive investigation of the various works of science fiction and fantasy that game designer Gary Gygax declared to be the primary influences on his seminal role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. It is a deep intellectual dive into the literature of SF/F's past that will fascinate any serious role-playing gamer or fan of classic science fiction and fantasy.

Author Jeffro Johnson, an expert role-playing gamer, accomplished Dungeon Master and three-time Hugo Award Finalist, critically reviews all 43 works and authors listed by Gygax in the famous appendix. In doing so, he draws a series of intelligent conclusions about the literary gap between past and present that are surprisingly relevant to current events, not only in the fantastic world of role-playing, but the real world in which the players live.

And this spans .... everybody, really. Edgar Rice Burrows, Fred Saberhagen, Robert E. Howard. Lord Dunsany, Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Fredric Brown .... I'm not listing all of them here. Many of them I had barely heard of, and some I had never heard of. The end result of a series of critical essays into a -- by and large -- literary world of pre-Tolkein fantasy.

This not only provides the footnotes for Gary Gygax's world, but a meticulous study of each element thereof.

At the end of the day, this is also a study of what has been lost, buried alive under a mountain of grimdark, postmodern feces claiming to be "edgy" fantasy, while they are merely just indulging in the miserable. George RR Martin, I'm looking at you.

Appendix N shows just how fantastic fantasy can be when not bogged down by the arbitrary and capricious rules of "reality," where "the real" does not equal "the true and the beautiful," but equals the miserable to such an extent that it thus becomes unreal.

Imagine the epic rap battle of history between Tolkein and Martin, only imagine it done across an entire genre.

This is an impressive work of literary history. In fact, the only problem this work has is in its footnotes. Yes, just the footnotes. You can tell that this is based off of a series of blogs, since some of the footnotes refer to works covered in other months instead of other chapters. And .... that's it. Considering the effort it takes to make a book out of blogs posts -- and trust me, I know -- this is quite impressive.

Five stars all the way. For anyone who wants to see the entire history of a genre at a glance, you need to own this one. Buy it now.

And, while you're buying this one, f you haven't already, 
check out some of the books below.

And if you have, please leave a review.

    

The Catholic Geek: Love and SCOTUS 02/12

The Catholic Geek: Love and SCOTUS 02/12 by We Built That Network | Culture Podcasts:



At 7PM, EST, author, artist and paralegal Dawn Witzke will join us for a special Valentine's Day episode. She will offer commentary on President Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, and then she and host Declan Finn will discuss romance writing. Witzke promises that she will then pontificate on the virtues of Valentine's Day. Finn will try not to scoff.

If you haven't already, check out some of the books below.

And if you have, please leave a review.

    

Superversive SF Roundtable - Romance in SF & F

Yup. I'll be here at 4PM, EST.

And these are my claim to romance.

If you haven't already, check them out.
And if you have, please leave a review.

    

Music blog: Over the Hills and Far Away

A while back, I was looking up the song "Over the Hills and Far Away."  It's an army song from the Napoleonic wars, and was first introduced to most people through the British tv movie series "Sharpe's Rifles." Richard Sharpe, the main character, was played by Sean Bean.... coincidentally the one who played Boromir in the video below.

"Over the Hills and Far Away," by Nightwish.  I found this one song while looking for the it's partner above. And, wow, was I in for a surprise. This was actually how I was introduced to Nightwish ... despite Ringo having them in several of his novels.

If you haven't already, check out some of the books below.

And if you have, please leave a review.

    

Baycon, Extra Crispy

Jon Del Arroz

I'm used to having rumors thrown at me. Not the first time. Won't be the last.  I'm easy. Use me as a punching bag. Declare me the bad guy. Declare an easy victory. Big deal. I'll live.

Author Jon Del Arroz is an acquaintance of mine. We say hello to each other on posts. He seems to be a fan of my blog, if not my books. I'd go so far to consider him friendly, if not a friend.

I don't have many friends.

I have fewer fans.

Touch them, and I break you f**king fingers off, one by one, and shove them up your @$$.

You see, Del Arroz has been a long-time supporter of his local convention scene. He's been on panels even before he was published. He's been doing this for a decade.

And now he's been blackballed from one of his home conventions, Baycon, dedicated to supporting the local authors.

What crime did he commit? What terrible sin?

Baycon is for the Bay Area. As in San Francisco.

Del Arroz is a Trump supporter.

See the problem?

And people wonder why I have no love for San Francisco. It is such a perfect example of left-wing, moonbat policies run amok, where politics chokes, strangles, and suffocates anything that disagrees with the general atmosphere of hate and disdain, even when it claws its way out through the marijuana haze.

Ah, Baycon, you blithering dolts. You inept, ham-fisted bumbling idiots. I've seen stupid before, but this takes the cake. Blackballing someone for their political views? Couldn't you have at least come up with a slightly more plausible reason? Fake something?

Then again, given the current rash of polite and civil discourse sweeping the country -- you know, like rioting at Berkeley because they dislike the gay Brit who likes Trump -- I'm surprised they didn't cite safety concerns. Maybe he would start a riot just by the negativity of his aura, or whatever other new age hippie crap they're preaching these days in the church of San Francisco Neo-pagans.

And yes, yes, I know, Del Arroz lives in the San Francisco area. What else did he expect? Well, I live in New York City, so shut up. We're still more civil here ... thus far, anyway. Give it time, we'll get there eventually.

Personally, I'm surprised that Del Arroz has ever had that much time and energy invested in Baycon, given how they're slanted. An SFF con with panels like “Combating Creationism,” “Climate Change Scenarios,” or “Diversity and Women” sounds boring, especially when the panels that might be saner actually star folks like David Gerrold, The Ever Living. "ranting about evil conservatives and hijacking innocuous topics. Looking at the Twitter feed of this year’s guest of honor, 95% of his posts are political attacks, so we can expect more of the same."

And then, oh, and then, there was this BS.

What’s lacking is energetic talks about fun of Science Fiction. Ironically, when I first came to the scene, organizers saw my name as Hispanic and knowing little about me, placed me on programming that amounted to an hour and a half of complaining about how hard it is for minorities in fiction. 

What.

The.

Hell?

Yup, there are those kind, gentle, loving lefties again, slapping labels on anything that's a slightly darker shade than white, and promptly ghettoizing them to only speak about being a minority.

Funny enough, Baycon has apparently been losing attendance year after year .... while doubling down on their politics, year after year.

I mean, even Marvel's failing book sales have finally made them call into question their Social Justice Whining.


Perhaps -- just a suggestion, mind you -- Baycon might want to focus on being ... what is that f-word?  Oh, yes, FUN.

But, no, just like everything else they touch, SJW douchebags have decided that they have their stranglehold on something, and they've latched on, and they're going to continue their parasitic leeching until the desiccated corpse turns to dust at their feet, and then move on, searching for other prey. You know, like they're doing with WorldCon and its falling attendance rate, until a certain movement propped up their failing numbers for a few years.

And, as Del Arroz pointed out, attendance at other local, non-political cons are going up, while the political ones just can't understand why they're losing people and money. Hey, I know, let's have another panel on gender identity, that'll bring them in.

Sigh.

Anyway, buy his book, or spread his story, or do both. Bastards like Baycon think they can get away with crap like this without repercussions.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

If you haven't already, check out some of the books below.

And if you have, please leave a review.