StanleyWheeler

I don't know where I found this, but Halloween time seems like a good time to use it. I'm not sure if it was a photo taken at a Star Fleet party, or an image from an unaired episode involving the Enterprise returning to earth circa 1800 and Kirk having difficulty remembering the finer points of that Prime Directive thing.  In addition to writing a very satisfying chunk of the new novel, I caught a couple documentary movies on Prime, and finished a very good book.  This movie was great if you're into history in general, and the French Revolution in particular. I didn't realize that it is the 2nd part of a two part deal. The movie appears to have been filmed in English--but is in French with English subtitles. It features Jane Seymour as Marie Antoinette, and Sam Neil appears briefly as LaFayette. There are others I recognize but I don't remember their names at the moment. Perhaps the first half provides more explanation; this part begins in the terror w...

The four musketeers are painted. I must say that my painting skills occasionally soar to heights very nearly approaching the underbelly of mediocrity. This wasn't one of those times (I'll aspire to mediocrity another time), but sometimes it happens. Aramis, Porthos, Athos, and D'Artagnan. More importantly, the manuscript for Justice Resurgent is (I hope) being proofread by one of the extremely talented people who suffer though such things for me. But the most fun I had this week was writing on, not one, but two novels. A while back I started writing a new novel, but I felt guilty that I had not yet done the sequel to my YA Fantasy  Finding Jack Book One The Orb ( FJBOTO , or The Orb ). More importantly, a particular fan of that book keeps insisting that I write the sequel right away. So, I decided to ease my conscience, get that fan off my back, and work on the sequel:  Finding Jack Book Two The Rod ( FJBTTR or The Rod ). I can't stop the new novel either, s...

No miniatures painted this week, very little proofreading, and little writing. I did get some reading done. I finished a book--review below. New books started include The Elven , The Red and The Black , Young Washington , and Napoleon: A Life . Le Loup Blanc remains on the list, but I didn't make any progress on it; The Colonization of North America is also in the currently reading file, but I didn't read much on that one this week either. I did autograph a few books on Saturday at the local coffee shop. Sometime this week while wondering about words, I had reason to suspect a thing that I had not previously expected. In retrospect, I wonder, by way of a little introspection, why I had not considered the prospect. I inspected, and can only respect the results from Meriam-Webster Online: Suspect: Middle English, from Latin   suspectare , frequentative of   suspicere   to look up at, regard with awe, suspect, from   sub-, sus-   up, secretly +   spec...

I've had some musketeer miniatures from Redoubt Enterprises for some months and have never got around to painting them. One reason being that I'm not a gifted painter. My paint jobs are best observed from a distance in dim light. I did three this weekend. Below are Rochefort, Richelieu, and Aramis. Only about 20 more of those to go. Last time I mentioned this movie. Empires Collide  - That's not actually the title; it's what I remember of the title. It's really a documentary with a lot of computer animated sea battles; there is also some live action that's not particularly well done. As entertainment it's only a couple notches above a cat video. As for being informative and interesting, a Ken Burns' film it's not, but I liked it very much. A year or so ago, I was wondering about the fall of the Dutch Republic. While this documentary doesn't address that particular question, it does explain the Anglo-Dutch war(s) and how the Dutch ...