Before I tell you of the wrestle I had before the Craftsman war machine in preparation for an attack upon the green horde which has my castle nearly encircled, I must clarify the progress of Clamorous Harbingers (not to be confused with Glamorous Hamburgers). Having utterly failed to justly render an exciting conclusion to the trilogy at less than 100K words, I've decided to triumphantly end the book with not only the cataclysmic battle for the original McGuffin, but also with the clash in the caverns. I had thought to wait on the telling of the clash in the caverns until the next book, the beginning of the next trilogy, which I'm tentatively calling Wings of Rebellion, but it makes this conclusion perfect if I include it in this trilogy. My new goal is 120K words. I'm currently at around 105K, and each chapter is more awesome than the last.

It will blow you away!

Maybe not quite so literally as shown in this GIF, but, as Yoda would say, upon you a great impression made will be.

***

     I had a date with Destiny. On this day, Destiny had a mind of her own. It pained me to do so, but I had to cuff the dame around a bit to get her to see things my way. I set the date a couple weeks ago when I mowed the yard for the first time this year. The grass towered; the mower blades had all the sharp, incissive, trenchant characteristics of a wad of chewing gum--not a great combination. The war machine didn't so much cut the grass as give it a good roughing-up and warn it about what could happen next time. I had resolved to sharpen the blades before mowing again.

     The morning broke cool and clear like that first pointed paper cup of water from the cooler. The scent of insecticide wafted in from the neighboring field, and I relished the bitterness in my nostrils. I tightened my belt a notch, or I would have if I had been wearing a belt. Instead, I thrust my thumbs into the waistband of my Levis and drew them up an inch. This pair is a little loose in the waist and frequently cause me to feel like they might fall off. My wife bought me 3 pair of the articles (back when we had the brisk discussion about how I was patching my old jeans, as some of you may remember). Each pair is supposed to be the same size. One of the three fits snugly, the pair in question fit a bit loosely, and the third pair fit too tightly to comfortably wear--that's some kind of quality control they have going there. Anyway, as is my wont, I have digressed. Let me resume: I drew the jeans up an inch and strolled to the shed to select a number of old 2x6s to use as a ramp. Four was the number of the boards that I selected because I wanted to be certain the boards would hold; two felt flimsy, so I doubled them up. I lowered the tailgate on the pickup and placed the boards.

     With the table set for my date with Destiny, I confronted the Craftsman war machine. It started on my command. That's the sort of relationship we have: I command; it obeys--sometimes. I was relieved to discover that this was one of those times. I drove it part way up the ramp, enough to expose the deadly underbelly of the beast. I set the brake, killed the motor, and made a perfect dismount. Only the Russian judge marked me down out of spite, and the war machine rolled back down the ramp.

Destiny can be a fickle lass, retracting her favor just when victory seems assured. As she withdrew her favor, I slapped the retreating hand by insisting on victory: I would take advantage of the angle of the war machine and jack it up and tip it backwards to rest upon braces at the rear. Destiny laughed. When I jacked the monster higher, using two cinder blocks as the base for the jack. I raised the machine from the ramps sufficiently for it to begin to tip to one side. Not only did my blocks and jack prevent me from accessing the underbelly from the best position, the thing would never stay in place once I started twisting the bolts. I had to rethink the attack.

With Destiny's cackling laughter still ringing in my ears, I allowed that I would have to do what I had hoped to avoid. I moved the pickup to the back of the house where the ground falls away in a short but steep slope. With the boards in place, I drove the machine upon the ramp once more and set the brake. Now that the ramp angle was much less than the roughly 60 degrees (maybe less than 30 degrees here) the machine did not roll back. I had access to the mower blades. The 5/8th socket from my grandfather's old socket set proved to be the only socket that would fit the two bolts which held the blades in place. With the a hearty taunt, I showed Destiny the back of my hand, and removed the mower blades.

I thought I heard a faint giggle as I took the first blade to the bench grinder my father-in-law had given me some 30 years ago. The grinder had seen little use, but it had served me well when I had needed it. The grinding wheels didn't turn when I hit the power switch. They groaned like a sick bison in labor, but they refused to turn--which is something you expect wheels to do (turn, I mean, not groan like a bison). I assisted the wheels and got them going. When I touched the metal of the mower blade to the spinning wheel, the wheels slowed, and stopped--not the most desired result, not in the top three, in fact. Destiny loosed a peal of laughter which clawed at my ears like a wildcat with a migraine.

     I was not to be deterred. I knew how to solve this problem. I pushed Destiny away. She tripped on the hem of her long gown and fell to the ground in a sullen heap. I stepped over her to go for the secret ingredient, that salver of wounds, saver of days, and repairer of broken tangibles: money. I grabbed a modest handful of cash and headed to one of the local hardware establishments. Once upon the premises, with neither mask nor scrip, I might add (well, maybe scrip or sorts; I had cash), I confronted a dilemma. (Would a dilemma, be two lemmas?) Should I get the bench grinder for $50.00, or the hand grinder for $30.00?

     Upon reaching the checkout with my purchase, I faced another difficulty. Only one register was open. One guy was at the counter where the clerk stood behind a freestanding sheet of plexiglass, but neither wore a mask nor had any other sort of microbial protection. That wasn't the problem. The problem was figuring out who was ahead of me in the line. Someone stood on a piece of red tape on the floor. A guy in a hat stood farther way to the side, opposite of my approach. I figured I would wait casual like to see if the hat guy planned to approach the checkout. I could only hope there weren't more people lined up behind him, ready to pop into view like clowns from a tiny car, if I tried to approach the register. I learned all I needed to know when a masked lady carrying a small potted plant marched toward the counter with the intent of stepping up behind the guy on the tape. As she passed me, she suddenly drew up when realization that these were strange times tapped her on the shoulder. She looked at the guy in the hat.

     "Are you in line?" she asked of l'homme au chapeau.
     "I'm right after that guy," he pointed to the man waiting on the tape.
     She looked at me, "Are you in line too?"
     "I'm after him, unless there's someone behind him down that aisle," I replied.
     "Oh," She said. She moved back to stand behind me.

     Her confusion was understandable. Hat guy and I weren't adjusting ourselves to align with the tape on the floor which stretched down the aisle between us as we had approached from opposite sides of the register rather than up the marked aisle. That's the way we rolled.

     I paid with cash and didn't bother trying to stand behind the plexiglass as it would have been impossible to pass the money through the glass, there being no openings in it. The clerk didn't seem to care, and neither did I.

     As for the rest of my date with Destiny, that skirt snickered a few times as I assembled the hand grinder, but she was soon laughing out of the other side of her face. I ground cutting edges onto the mower blades that would make a sous chef squeal with delight, but, honestly, no one would want to cut their food with those mower blades. Not only would it be awkward, and gross because of the hardened residue of grass gore upon parts of the blade, because, although the edge may be sharp, the blades are too thick to slice meat, tomatoes, bread, and most other things--carrots, they might be okay for slicing carrots, or celery, but a knife would still be better. I see that I have digressed again. Please go to the next paragraph.

Destiny stood by in silence as I reattached the mower blades. She left and I had to lead the attack against the green horde by myself. Once more, the war machine and I took the battle to the enemy, literally mowing down the horde. The casualties were too many to number.

***

Bonus Shakespeare quote that is appropriate for the current time:

"And you all know, security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy." --Shakespeare, MacBeth, Act III, Scene 5.

A Flintlock Fantasy Book Review

And an Unexpected Gift

Rather than begin with the gift I received from a higher-up on Monday (I'll discuss that gift below), let me open with a review of Brian McClellan's Promise of Blood which I finished reading this week.

I've wanted to read this book ever since I first heard about it. However, I refused to pay ten dollars or more for an ebook in the fiction category. Fortunately for me, I got it for only $1.49 plus the $1.50 credit I had earned for choosing slow shipping on some other orders. Seeing that the price of the book had dropped to $2.99 for a short time--a day, a week, I don't know how long--I snapped it up immediately. Which reminds me: My flintlock fantasy novels and my western novels are available for only $0.99 for a limited time -- see the left side of this page and click on one of the books.

Let me be clear about one thing: I really enjoyed reading Promise of Blood. While the book fell short of my expectations in some respects--which I will discuss--I did enjoy the book and my complaints should be taken in that context.

In a nutshell, the story concerns the aftermath of a coup by a field marshal which topples the king. The marshal is a powder mage. These mages use gunpowder to enhance their natural abilities, and they have the ability to detect, detonate, and direct the blast of gunpowder. They can also direct, or redirect musket balls in flight.There are other magics involved that are crucial to the story and to the conflict between the powder mages and the old order. The main story involves Tamas, the field marshal who led the coup, and his efforts to stamp out the old order and to find the traitors still in positions of power before a neighboring nation with conquest on its mind invades and destroys everything. There's also the story of Adamat, a retired detective, employed by Tamas to learn the meaning of the cryptic message uttered by the dying sorcerers of the old order. The book doesn't wrap  up everything at the end, and the apparent resolutions may only be preludes to greater complications.

The story moves along at a nice pace. In my opinion it never drags or becomes bogged down in trivial detail or description. At least one reviewer has complained that the story depends too much on telling rather than showing as the author often tells the reader what the characters are thinking as opposed to letting the reader infer the character's thoughts by what they say and do. While the author does tell me what some of the main characters are thinking, I found that it helped move the story at a pleasant pace. I would complain that some authors frequently waste time and words in an effort to show (or pad the word count) when the showing isn't all that interesting, and telling would keep the story focused and progressing.

The author builds interesting characters. There are many characters of various figurative hues and professions. Most of them have virtues and flaws. Although I can't say that I really like any of them--in the unconditional way that one might like Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and others in the fellowship--some of them have redeeming characteristics and/or difficulties that make them sympathetic. Adamat the detective, and Taniel, Tamas' son, fall into this category. I suspect that Adamat may be one of the characters who survives to the end of the series--but I could be wrong.

The world building never becomes a slog. There are no info-dumps that bury the reader in strange names and bizarre histories. Strange names and bizarre histories do roam like fat cattle upon the fertile plain, but the author doesn't attempt to drive them down the reader's throat by the herd. Even after completing the book, I recognize that I don't understand much of the lore and history. I think some of the characters in the story don't understand it all either. I don't mind the background and larger setting being dribbled out over time. It's like savoring the flavor a new spice that had not previously been manifest in the dish.

Overall, Promise of Blood is a great book. Readers of fantasy, and the flintlock fantasy sub genre, should enjoy the book.

My complaints: The story has been billed by some as something like "The French Revolution with Wizards" but I didn't find that to be an accurate representation. I would have liked more flavor of the French Revolution and/or Napoleonic period than the book delivered. The guillotine figured into the story, and there were some public executions. However, the story never conveyed the terror of a changing tide and tenor, or the confusion and upheaval associated with the regime change. I also would have liked to have seen some large armies maneuvering for battle with generals taking the measure of opposing forces and throwing formations of men at one another in search of the weak link in order to render the enemy position untenable--perhaps those are in later volumes in the series. I would have enjoyed some small unit skirmishes described in detail. Most of the fighting described was rather disorganized and more dependent upon the magic users than the small unit tactics. What the author did was great; I came to the story with certain hopes which were left unrealized. Finally, there are actual gods involved (probably) in the story, and that's a heavy gun that would I prefer to see left in the artillery park. Still, if the next book in the series comes up cheap, say $2.99 or so, I would probably get it. As long as it remains at twelve bucks, I won't be getting it. If I could get a cross of the best parts of Django Wexler's Thousand Names and Brian McClellan's Promise of Blood, with a little more French Revolution and Napoleonic flavor, I would probably still complain because a picture is worth a pound of cure; you can lead a horse to water but you can't change his spots; a stitch in time gathers no moss; curses like chickens are in the eye of the beholder; don't blow your trumpet before swine; don't count your chickens in one basket; never look the early bird in the mouth; every cloud has his day; Rome wasn't built on the other side of the fence; too many cooks get the grease; when the going gets tough, skin a cat; where there's smoke there's a way; while the cat's away another door opens; you can catch more flies without breaking eggs; you can't teach an old dog and eat it too; birds of a feather shouldn't throw stones; familiarity breeds spilt milk; the pen is mightier than the better part of valor; an apple a day killed the cat; a journey of a thousand miles is worth two in the bush; and a bad workman blames the bridge when he comes to it.

I have to apologize for that digression above, but once I got started down that road paved with twisted proverbs, my good intentions all went to... well, you know.

***

As for the gift from a higher-up this week, it came on Monday. I was enjoying an afternoon constitutional, before resuming my efforts at creating a power point presentation on Fourth Amendment issues, when something flashed before my eye. I looked around, unsure of what I had seen. I couldn't see anything, near or far. When I sat back down at the desk to resume my project, I noticed a peculiar smell. The aroma bore a certain familiarity, but I could not place it. I checked my garbage can, as well as the soles of my shoes. I couldn't find the source. Every time I leaned forward to examine my presentation material, the unpleasant odor wafted its way to my senses. Eventually, the smell went away, or I got used to it. I thought no more about it. A couple hours later, someone came into to ask me a couple questions and left with answers, but made no remarks about any observances. It wasn't until I went into the restroom that I discovered the gift. The higher-up, a bird sitting upon a wire, had delivered an unwanted present as I had walked beneath its perch. On the chest of my lovely, sky-blue shirt, right next to the pocket, was a big smear of what looked like it could have been Oreo ice-cream--but it wasn't. By that time the material had become dried and crusted. I brushed it away with a dry paper towel. I can't figure out why my visitor never asked about my decoration.

***

I'll have to save my review of Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Red Hawk until next time. As for my own work in progress, Clamourous Harbingers, Book Three of the Tomahawks and Dragon Fire series, and end of that first trilogy, I'll need another couple weeks to complete the story. I'm at the cusp of 100,000 words. I expect to finish before I hit 120,000.

Removed the vent covers around the house today. Last week was the first lawn mowing of the year, as I didn't say any more about the mowing, you may assume it went smoothly--which is mostly true.

The Stewart Kings as Tolkien's Stewards of Gondor? And A Flintlock Fantasy Review

Fun Fact: James I of Scotland, was captured by pirates in 1406 (James was 11 years old). The pirates turned him over to Henry IV (played by Jeremy Irons in The Hollow Crown Series). (He was the first Plantagenet to speak English as his first language). James' father, Robert III, died and the uncrowned king of Scotland remained in captivity for 18 years. He fought with Henry V (played by Tom Hiddleston in The Hollow Crown Series) in France (see last week's post), and married Joan Beaufort just before his release in 1424. His re-entry into Scottish affairs was anything but smooth. He began by attacking his closest rival kinsmen to secure his position. He was eventually assassinated in February 1437. Joan was wounded but escaped to their son, James II, at Edinburgh Castle. James II was six years old. As for the assassination details, James and Joan were at Blackfriars monastery at Perth, and were at least temporarily separated from their servants. When the conspirators (about 30) entered the building, James learned of the conspirators' presence and attempted to escape through the sewer drain, but the drain, which passed beneath the tennis court, had been blocked off to prevent the loss of tennis balls (apparently on James' own orders a few days earlier). Double fault for James--Advantage murderers; I believe this was the first tennis related fatality, and it raised quite a stink.

James II was actually the younger of twin brothers. The older twin, Alexander, had died before his first birthday. James II was crowned in 1437. In 1449 the nineteen year-old married Mary of Guelders, the daughter of the Duke of Gelderland (Check this out for a dance of Gelderland). James II was nicknamed Fiery Face because of a vermilion birthmark upon his face. This is the same James that, as I mentioned I don't know how long ago, stabbed William Douglas 26 times and threw him out of a window. James II was a proponent of artillery and was killed in 1460 while besieging Roxburgh Castle when a cannon near which he was standing exploded. His son, James III was killed in 1488 either during or after the battle of Sauchieburn. James IV, son of James III was --- actually, he deserves his own fun fact post.

The above led me to consider whether the Stewart kings might be good candidates as real-life models for Tolkien's Stewards of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings. Previously I had speculated about the Kings of Numenor as the Plantagenets. Not only did I suggest that there was probably no merit to that idea at the time. I've since been reminded that Tolkien was not a big fan of the French and eschewed French terms in his writing. The true kings to represent Aragorn and his predecessors could not be the Plantagenets. As to the Stewarts for Stewards, probably the only similarity is in the similar spelling of Steward, and the Stewart spelling of Stuart.

If there's no similarity, why do I even bring it up? Well, there might be more good reasons that I haven't taken the time to consider. This all started with a fun fact about another royal person being captured by pirates and I arrived to this point by chance. I should have thought more about it before I posed the question. So I may come back to this another time. In the meantime, the lesson is that history is certainly as interesting as fiction, and fiction with some basis in history may make for the most interesting reading.

Such a statement naturally leads me to an update on the progress of my alternate history flintlock fantasy Clamorous Harbingers, book 3 in the Tomahawks and Dragon Fire Series. Here's another piece of the cover.

I have passed the 85,500 word mark. It looks like about 100K words at the finish. I had thought about writing the ending and working to it, but did not do that. I'm glad I didn't choose that option because some new ideas have emerged about exactly how the book (and the series) will end. I like the new ideas. The end will be an ever bigger spectacle than I had originally planned--and it will set up the successor series, tentatively called Wings of Rebellion.

Last time I offered some constructive criticism for authors doing readings of their books. Here's me reading the first chapter of Threading the Rude Eye -- and it's obvious to me that I learned almost nothing from my own instructions.

And here's the last third of the chapter, as I didn't realize that I wasn't pausing the video, but actually terminating it. I had to create second video to finish.

***

Finally, last time I did a short review of a book so distasteful to me that I didn't name either the book or the author. I continued my search for more flintlock fantasy, and I am pleased to praise a book today. Old Nathan by David Drake.

The book is a series of sequential short stories about Old Nathan, the cunning man. (I had to wonder if it was a source of inspiration for DJ Butler's and Aaron Michael Ritchey's The Cunning Man). The dialog is written to reflect the Tennessee back woods manner of speech at the time (I guess). It was a little off-putting, but not difficult to follow, and I got used to it fairly quickly. Old Nathan has some interesting abilities which include speaking with animals and creating various spells for given situations. Each story reveals more about Nathan and his history, as well as his neighbors and their problems. Nathan and his bull Spanish King have similar story arcs, which helps prepare the reader for the rather foreseeable conclusion, but the desire to see how it happens presses one to finish the tales.

The book came up in my flintlock fantasy search, but the flintlock rifle doesn't play much of a role. Nevertheless, I wasn't disappointed. I noticed several 1, 2, and 3 star reviews on Amazon. Interestingly enough, one of the 1 star reviews called it "very good" and gave it other compliments. Perhaps that reader doesn't understand the rating system. Most of the complaints were about the dialect, so it may bother some more than others. I rate it four out of five powder horns. It's still available for FREE on Amazon.