Sketches: Black Hat Magick, Elaine, Hadaly, and Frog

Rebecca Gunter from SOAP has been working on some new character portraits from some of my work, and here are the preliminaries that we’ve been working with. It may be a week or so before we have color versions, but those will be posted slowly onto the Black Hat Magick website.

Elaine is the main character, geek extreme; the next girl is Hadaly, an Artificial Intelligence seen in her android body; and finally is Frog—yes, that’s just a nickname—with her fencing foil and Dungeon & Dragons nerd t-shirt, “Yes, they’re natural” d20s.

Thunder over Michigan, no kidding

Yesterday our house was buzzed multiple times by extremely loud, low flying jets. At least they looked like fighter jets. Not complaining, exactly, it’s not like they were doing these maneuvers during the early morning (afternoon really.) I just figured I’d like everyone know what I discovered about what might have been going on.

One of my flatemates figured that it involved Willow Run Airport, an airstrip within jet distance, showing off their wares. Then, today, I started looking into more things happening there and I discovered an airshow happening soon called Thunder Over Michigan.

You can check out the air museum's four-engine B-17 and twin-engine B-25 -- along with many other aircraft -- during Thunder over Michigan at Willow Run Airport.

The highlight of the event will be demonstrations by the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels. The precision flight team will be making its only Michigan appearance of the summer. There also will be a salute to Vietnam War veterans and re-enactments of events from World War II and Vietnam.

Now, as to why articles like the above refuse to put dates (it does say Saturday and Sunday, but it would be nice if there was something like July 17, 2009.) And I don’t understand why a lot of online newspapers simply refuse to link their sources. Sure, the URL is on there, but it’s not hot linked. Deliberate? Very likely.

Why don’t they just get over themselves, hot link in articles, just activate “open in new window” with target=“_blank” or something and stop annoying users with bad Internet etiquette? Please.

Link, via the Free Press about the upcoming Thunder Over Michigan Airshow.

Bookworms, chuzzles, and – RPGs?

Well, I’ve been working slowly on Crime Scene Unit Obscura for my wonderful kaywng and also on the next season of Mill Avenue Vexations. That’s the writing front. However, other things have been going down.

Such as my very own review of Chuzzle Deluxe by Popcap Games for Vox ex Machina. Now, I’ve also been playing Fate II, another tiny game downloadable and playable—but really, the one that is catching my attention right now is one about a Bookworm.

Apparently, over at Popcap there is an RPG that involves spelling and a role playing game. I’ll update everyone on how that goes.

In between collecting delicious chuzzle eyeballs and beating down waves of enemies Gauntlet style in Fate II.

For Sale: Hell, and Step On It

You can own a copy of Hell and Step On It right now for just $1.00.

This story originally published in the Twilight and Thorns horror anthology by Circle Dark Press—an anthology that has gone out of print—is not available again in e-book format. Instead of trying to find something that is no longer in print, you can buy it here.

Here’s a piece of Mill Ave Vexations canon and you will also be helping continue the writing tradition of these stories.

Formats exist for the Amazon Kindle and others that can be read in Stanza on the Apple iPhone!

The Deal: Mill Avenue Vexations comic book

Been playing around with my graphics skills, trying to set up advertisements for this upcoming comic book. I just finished lettering the pages and it's about time to get this to the printers.

Here's hoping all of that goes well.

Link, via Mill Avenue Vexations

BLOOD: Vampires at last…?

Oh, Saya, as if we didn’t have enough vampire animés to go around—but still. Who else is with me in that BLOOD+ and BLOOD: The Last Vampire had a certain strange Nipponese school girl trope going for it.

Now they’re going live action with it.

And I gotta say, the costume certainly made me snicker the moment I saw it on the screen. I suppose we’ll have no small part of blood flinging from katanas this Friday.

Web Fiction Guide listing for Black Hat Magick

Black Hat Magick has gotten a listing and a review on Web Fiction Guide! This website is the premier website for all online fiction and the webserial community.

Plus, Chris, the main administrator of the page has given me a fairly good review--although he does have a solid criticism of my writing style. Perhaps I should work on the overall wordiness; a flaw reflected in that I started writing this one for geeks.

Visit the listing, and, if thou may be wont to do so, please leave me a review.

Link, via Web Fiction Guide.

Black Hat Magick: Chapter 2 – Barbarians

Just got to the point where chapter 2 is now fully published: chapter 2 part i and part ii.

I am still fighting with the Wordpress Hemingway theme. I’ve enlarged the font on text posts and made it a little bit lighter to assist readers. But, does anyone know about a plugin that permits me to put in some sort of a CSS modification widget that will allow people to increase/decrease font size overall?

I suppose I could write one myself.

We’ll see.