"O Give Me A Manse Where the Buffalo Prance..."

Greetings and blah blah blah. Come on, like I need to find additional words for a greeting when that amazing shot of Paris is sitting there? I mean, wow... Does it remind you of your first trip to Paris? My first time in Paris was in late August 1944, when we liberated the city from Nazi clutches... I remember it well. The world was still black and white back then... the first soft colors didn't start leaching into parts of Europe until the late forties, as you know...

... and blah blah blah.

So, I pulled the plug on my Wagnervana website, as I threatened to. Yep, it's gone. It was pretty much a ghost town. Although when I checked the stats, it said I had about 1,000 unique visitors there in the past 30 days. Yeah, I doubt it. What would they be looking at, I wonder? The front page, primarily (according to the stat details). Which tells me people were either popping in and ditching again, or it was a bunch of Google spider bots gathering data for it's search juggernaut. Either way, it's now dead, and that's $14 less I have to spend per month. Yeah, I'm frugal like that...

I added a page here at this blog for my Wagnervana webcomic. At the moment I have the first half-dozen up there. I need to figure out a way to post the more recent strips in a way that will be big enough to read. Probably have to cut them into segments and post the pieces. I guess I should try drawing smaller strips again eh! No lack of ideas on my part...

And I've got the itch to work on my fantasy novel again, thankfully. Bought some supplies today - notebooks, index cards, highlighters, etc. I want to try and set some of the details down on paper before diving back into the storylines themselves. I want to do character sketches for all the characters of note, I want to detail the magic system, I want to detail the cities/geographic features/society, I want to focus on the Council of Wizards, I want to get a big map up on my wall. Once I get the world built better, as a foundation, I'll rework the quests and take the anxiety out of it. As it is now, I have so much stuff swirling around in my head, I can't keep things straight and avoid contradictions... then I try to "wing it" as far as advancing the four main storylines, and it collapses. I hope that by setting things down and getting a good look at it all, it will help me craft a better tale.

Wish me luck.

So after finishing The Dark Prism by Brent Weeks, I dabbled with a couple book samples, and then pulled the trigger on a book called Escaping Destiny by an author named Jeffrey Pierce. The first three chapters were very, very good, so I smiled, settling in for what promised to be a nice, satisfying read. And then it went straight to crap. I mean, the whole thing morphed into an addled, poorly-written, cheesy, incongruous boxful of amateurish pablum with dizzying speed. Now, I've read bad stuff before, but never something like this that started out so well and flatlined so fast. And no, the Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert Redick is not that same thing... in that case, RWC was a terrific book through about 85% of it and then one odd storyline choice caused the tale to weaken considerably (and disappointingly). But I'm still glad I read RWC (and will likely read it again at some point). But in Escaping Destiny's case, I won't touch it again, period. Not sure what happened. Well, sometimes playing Independent Author Roulette pays off and sometimes it doesn't.

So I'm working my way through more free samples again. If I see anything of note, I'll let you know.

Yes, I know this post is boring! I'm sorry! I can't dictate my moods! I wish I could be a total goof all the time, but hey, sometimes I'm just mellow, boring ol' Dave.

Here, lemme get a video for you... ok, you've probably seen this guy lately, he's kinda blowing up online lately. Another unassuming-looking dude with a ridiculously good voice and crazy musical talent. His name's Noah, he's 18.



I recommend checking out his YouTube channel. He's got a ton of great cover songs he's done.

Trying to get into Deus Ex: Human Revolution again, but it just isn't doing it for me. I really want to like it, though... mostly because I think I could pull off dressing up as the main character for Halloween this year, if I wanted to...

... he wears a great trenchcoat. I've got the right hairline, lol. I'd just have to dye my beard, grow my hair out a bit and spike it, get a pair of those cool shades, and bingo! Instant walking obscure cultural reference!

Diablo 3 comes out tonight at midnight... I'm not going to buy it yet. I'm going to wait. For, like, an hour or so... that's me, a slave to hype. That reminds me, did you see that The Avengers has topped a billion bucks worldwide since it released 10 days ago? Holy crapoly! Almost 400 million in the U.S. alone! That is insane. I almost don't want to see it, just to be contrarian! You just know that new movies for each of the superheroes in that film are already underway... can't pass up a (surprise) cash cow like that.

OK, well, I suppose I'll jump ship for tonight. Gonna go find something with which to occupy the evening.

Adios for now,

Dave the Sedate