Today is the 229th anniversary of the assassination of Jean-Paul Marais, blood-thirsty Jacobin leader and media baron, in 1793, by Charlotte Corday. She belonged to the somewhat less extreme Girondin faction of the French Revolutionary movement, and blamed Marat for the execution of some of her Girondin friends.
Continue reading “Happy 13th of July! (Happy “Corday”?)”Do Not Desire It, Miss Dashwood
A number of people all across the political spectrum in the USA have a weird fetish for the French Revolution. I confess, I am not a fan. Yes, the Bourbon regime was overbearing, corrupt, bankrupt, and a trainwreck looking for a place to happen. But all the Jacobins and their political allies brought France in 1789 was bloodshed and chaos, which led to the dictator Napoleon, which led to more bloodshed and chaos. Even after Napoleon, the country would be racked with periodic upheavals for almost a hundred years. So much for the Goddess Liberty, whom the Jacobins called Marianne.
Sometimes there are cases where it seems like the only thing anyone can do is storm the palaces, drive out the people in charge, and try to start over again. We seem to be seeing something like that in Sri Lanka right now. To people in that situation, all I can say is: “Good luck, and God protect you,” and hope they can learn from the past mistakes of people driven to similar desperation.
To the people who seem to be think being in that situation would be cool or fun or even cathartic, Alan Rickman’s fifth most famous movie character has a suitable reply.
Happy Fourth of July!
That Moment When…
You can’t sleep so you work on the back story for your gaslamp fantasy idea, and realize that you need to invent an extra daughter for Queen Victoria, in the 20-month gap between Princess Helena and Princess Louise, to be the mother of one of the characters in the gaslamp fantasy.
Done. Again. For Now.
I just completed the new ending and some of the expansion scenes for Star Master Book 2. For more about the long, complicated evolution of this space opera novel, see here, here and here. Yes, I have been working on this book for a while, but I hope to have it out by the end of this year, especially since I have no plans to do NaNoWriMo.
For now, my plans are a short break to work up a presentation for day job, play mobile games, read Golden Age mysteries, watch Fringe and Don Matteo with family members, and brainstorm whatever comes after the Star Master duology.
Real Estate Website That Lists Castles For Sale
I suspect I am the last one to find out about this site, but it’s still cool. Great place to research castles for your fantasy novel, or just daydream about how to spend your hypothetical lottery winnings.
Also, here’s an interesting study from 2018 of how Lake Powell in Colorado suffers from water management rules that favor keeping Lake Mead (downstream of Lake Powell) filled, and by extension favors the lawns, swimming pools and delta smelt of California, the most populous area supplied by Lake Mead.
Where Did THAT Come From: Essem and Co, Ularti
Ularti, the owner of the tramp freighter Vanner, keeps Jetay and Khed in indentured servitude, and is one of the main antagonists in Shadow Captain. Jetay’s story arc, as previously told is that of the drifter Drafted Into a Good Cause, and frequently in that arc, there’s a character who the drifter used to work with, who represents the pull away from the Good Cause. I didn’t have a good sense of what that might be in this case, until I hit on the “Hansel and Gretel” framing for Jetay’s situation.
Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Essem and Co, Ularti”Where Did THAT Come From: Lanati, Menevis and Family
This is actually a fairly large body of characters spread across the two volumes of Star Master, even if they didn’t require as much work on my part as Shenti and her family did.
Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Lanati, Menevis and Family”Shadow Captain Free for Five Days
Two pieces of news related to Shadow Captain:
-It will be free for five days, starting today, so if you don’t have a Kindle Unlimited account, this is a great time to check it out!
-Like a lot of authors, I have a love-hate relationship with Amazon and its dominant place in the ebook marketplace at the best of times, and certain developments at Amazon have led to me deciding not to renew Shadow Captain’s participation in the Kindle Unlimited program. If you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you will have until June 18, 2022, to download the book for free. After that, Kindle Unlimited subscribers will not be able to download the book for free, but if you have already downloaded it by June 18, 2022, you should be able to read it at your convenience.
Where Did THAT Come From: Why Such a Jumble of Influences
I began making up stories at a fairly young age, 5 or 6 years old, I think. At that age, my family moved around a fair amount, lived out of hotels from time to time, and some of our videotapes didn’t necessarily have the whole movie on them.
Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Why Such a Jumble of Influences”
Jaglion Press 