StanleyWheeler

We lost a man of steel this week. I attended his funeral yesterday. Don was born in 1930--you can do the math. He was a metal welding wizard. He worked in metal with the ease that the more skilled members of my family work with wood and concrete, or sarcasm. I always thought that he looked like Will Rogers; he also had friendly philosophical thoughts from time to time. He and his wife were friends of my parents and they played cards together when they lived close. I worked with Don one summer back in 1978 or 79. He managed a farm and I did the unskilled labor: moving sprinkler pipe, fixing fence, clearing the broken straw, hauling and stacking hay and a thousand other tasks. I got $4.00/hour which was rather good wages for an under-size high school kid at the time. He never looked over my shoulder but would sometimes let me know how I could improve on a task when he examined it later.  I remember one time when we were stacking a load of hay. We had to use the hay elevator of t...

Before I get to  Solo: A Star Wars Story Speaking of enterprises of great pith and moment (and that's not meant to be a Star Trek reference), I've hit the 60K word mark on the novel in progress. I still haven't decided upon a title that I like for it. Please feel free to send suggestions for the title of a best selling flintlock fantasy novel to be published this year. I could tell you something about it but that would inhibit your imaginative title suggestions. I've found that writing dialogue is how I discover my characters. The characters ask questions that I had not previously considered. Answering those questions helps develop depth and motivation. Action scenes are fun to write, but conversation is the fertile soil in which the seed of character is best sown. *** Aside from the writing, which went extremely well, the week included a game with these figures from Bronze Age Miniatures and the musketeer figures that I've posted earlier. It was Barsoom mee...

Let's begin with the book review and see where it goes from there. Death's Angels by William King. I got this book for free and it is still available at that price. I picked it up because my new novel in progress is in the flintlock fantasy genre and also has dragons. I wanted to see what this book did with similar components. This book and my book are nothing alike. What I liked : King is a very good writer. I never felt that I was reading something that could (as I've noted about many fantasy books) have been written by a fairly talented 5th grader. He can put a story together and his sentence structure and word choice never annoyed me -- except for the occasional use of profanity; that annoyed me (I nearly put it away without finishing). I continue to believe that the best writers don't need to use profanity. I won't say it's a substitute for talent in King's case because he's very talented and that type of language is infrequent. But I digr...

Before the cavalcade of other items which may or may not be included in today's post, let me address  ERB's The Moon Men.  On second thought, this will be first (except for what I said above which actually came first but referred to something which will not in fact be first, except for the mentioning thereof, which was in fact first). I must say that the novel writing went exceedingly well this week. I passed the 50K word mark. More importantly, two epiphanistic* breakthroughs combined to remind me why I love writing (and the 150 copies of the books that sold this week didn't hurt either). As you may remember from last week (or not), the antagonist was locked in combat with one of the good guys. I had left the combat unresolved on a cliff hanger and moved on to the next chapter. Some things had to happen in that combat to make it serve a higher purpose. I hadn't put those things together in my mind until on my way to the shower I fell, striking my head on the toilet ...