StanleyWheeler

I won't tell you what color we painted the house yesterday, but I may take to calling the place Grey Havens, and change my name to Cirdan. It has been a lengthy project -- and it's not yet complete as we still have all the trim to do. I am entirely responsible for the great color which the neighbors admire because I let my wife and daughter make the color selection. Lacking both freakish height (which is anything over 5'8") and scaffolding, there were stretches when I spent more time moving the ladder than spraying paint. Let me recommend spraying as opposed to brushes and rollers. We still use brushes and rollers for certain spots, but spraying is about 20 times faster for me. The great plan to leave the windows covered until after we had completed the trim came to an end last night with the terrific windstorm that rattled the paper all night long which created a sound like that of 40 snare drummers practicing outside the house. In addition to the painting, and th...

It's official - I'm now a YouTube sensation, internet influencer, and author of renown -- or perhaps I exaggerate. Probably the latter. The facts are these: Saturday at 2:pm MDT I went live on Facebook and You Tube in an interview with A.F. Stewart on her program Between the Pages author interview. She fed me a few questions that allowed me to ramble on for about twenty minutes about myself and my books. Mostly we talked about the Tomahawks and Dragon Fire series -- And I forgot to give the names of all three books in the first trilogy, and I only had a copy of the second book, Power to Hurt , with me to show for the interview. I also got to mention the other genres in which I write, and I had a copy of my 1940s detective novel  Smoke to show. At the conclusion, after we were no longer on the air, Ms. Stewart, who is also an author, assured me that I didn't look too stupid, but I'll let you judge for yourselves. I hope to post Ms. Stewart's answers to my writ...

Someone posted this rating (but no written review) for my new book Clamorous Harbingers : A written review would have been nice, but I'll gladly take every 5 star rating that comes my way. I only need about a thousand more of these. In related news, someone else, a young man of 15, got a paperback copy of Clamorous Harbinger's last night, and had read all three hundred pages by this morning. He said he stayed up reading until after 2:00 a.m. -- That's the kind of dedication I like from fans. The power of interesting characters and exciting action in a compelling story has captured his imagination.  He has of course read the whole trilogy and now wants the second trilogy. He has good taste. That kind of dedication is what every author craves. *** I'm not sure whether it was Tracy, Chris, Danny, Laurie, or Keith - but I saw one of the members of the partridge family die yesterday. When I opened the garage door, I heard some chicks chirping outside, but I co...

Some movies, the best movies, demand an investment not only of time and attention, but of something more, a unique sort of currency, a shaving planed from the heart--all thin, translucent, and curling like a Christmas ribbon--but still attached at one end. If one dips the end of the heart-shaving into the emotional waters of the movie, it becomes a fleshy conduit connecting the viewer with the characters. I'm not sure I like that analogy (or whatever it is) above, but I am sure that I liked the movie I saw on Saturday about the inspirational tale of three broken men and a broken horse. Broken by loss and mistreatment, the three men and the horse rally together to overcome long odds to triumph on the track and in life. Seabiscuit came out in 2003, so I'm not very quick on getting a review out, but I wasn't doing the blog back then. When I saw that it was on, I was't going to watch it. I had seen it a few times before. I knew the story. I knew how it ended. I knew...

Best Flintlock Fantasy What makes a book a flintlock fantasy? How is it different from gunpowder fantasy? Flintlock fantasy, as I understand it, designates a genre defined by a certain level of technological advancement in the mundane weaponry, as opposed to ancient or medieval weapons as seen in classic, or high fantasy. The flintlock saw roughly two centuries of use, from the early to mid 17th century to the early to mid 19th century. The flintlock replaced the matchlock and wheel lock firearms. A flintlock fantasy novel would typically employ technology, including flintlock muskets, from this two-hundred year time span. Specifics may vary among authors. As for gunpowder fantasy, I believe it could span a greater technological period to coincide with the first wide use of gunpowder weapons, making flintlock fantasy a sub-genre of gunpowder fantasy. Flintlock fantasy may cover alternate history of the relevant time period, or complete fantasy worlds at the flintlock technology l...