Magic World (working title) Chapter 2

Hi there.

Well things start to pick up here in this chapter. I didn't hit my stride on this chapter though till about halfway through, and for a lot of it I used voice to text on my phone. So if you find yourself  not being interested, see if you can stick it out till that point, I think it should improve. Let me know if that's the case.

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Chapter 2:

Davin's brisk jog down the dormitory corridor was briefly interupted by a sarcastic, mocking, sing-songsy, voice that said, "Oh Mister Wizard?"

He came to a stop, gave a dejected sigh, and let his head slump forward. Sky Waterford. Of course.

"Yes Sky, what can I help you with," he asked politely, but stiffly.

"Well, I thought I was rather helping you," came the sneering reply. Davin turned and looked at the blond elf leaning in the doorway of his dorm room with an eyebrow raised insolently. "I mean I pay you good money to make sure my papers are correct before I turn them in."

This was true. He stopped just short of breaking any actual rules by not giving the answer only by showing where the answers were not correct. Technically this fell under the heading of tutoring, and you could request compensation for tutoring, but sky obviously thought that this arrangement wasn't entirely legal and Davin wasn't about to tell him otherwise.

He wished but just once this stupid little punk with throw a punch. But bribes and cajolery were more Sky's style.

"So what is it you want exactly." ask Davin.

"Well isn't it obvious? Finals are soon going to be upon us, and it would be nice to have a copy of the final examination paper." He smiled as if he had just handed Davin a bomb with a bow around it.

Davin just stared for a moment then laughed. He laughed right in the stupid elfs face. "You seriously think I'm going to help you cheat on the final exam?" He shook his head and continued giggling. "That is so sweet of you, to think that you mean that much to me."

Sky" face turn crimson and twisted as he snarled"If you don't everyone about little arrangements."

Davin rolled his eyes and smirked at the elf. "You mean our tutoring sessions?"

"Is that what you're calling it?" sky said . "It seems like I'm paying you an awful lot just to tutor me."

Davon thought about allowing this charade to go on a little further, but he was actually running late for class and couldn't let this distract him. So he pretended to look a little worried. His shoulders slumped and he said, "Fine I'll see what I can do. Now I really have to get to class."

"You better or I'll let my orc friend handle things from here."

'Aha,' thought Davin, 'Finally the threat of physical violence, something I can understand.'

Under normal circumstances most people probably would have been afraid, but Davin had lived under the threat of physical violence for most of his life so the idea that an orc could make him afraid was laughable.

But he couldn't let's Sky know that, so he nodded his head dejectedly, and turn to leave. "I want those papers by tonight." Sky made a satisfied noise and shut his door.

'So business as usual,' Davin thought as he walked across the quad. 'Someone wants something from me they threaten me or bribe me, but no one ever tries just asking me what I want.'

He watched as a cute half-elf girl walked with her friends a few yards away across the quad in the opposite direction. She of course didn't notice him, almost no one ever did unless they wanted something from him.

Davin didn't know who this particular girl was, and it didn't really matter. He would like to be noticed for something other than his talent. It was kind of like being noticed as a computer programmer, because everyone thought that you could fix their computer.

His thoughts continue to be somewhat melancholy during professor Meriwether's class as he ran the overhead projector as usual. The power point presentation in particular was quite interesting, especially a couple of the places where Davin had fixed some of the professors formulas, and the Professor hadn't noticed in time. That got a chuckle out of most of the students, and exasperated glare from the professor.

Each of the other three lectures went the same way that day. Davin's mind really wasn't in the work. The encounter with sky seem to have bothered him more than he thought. Finally when the last class for the day, around 11:30.

"Hey there. Everything okay Dav?" The professor was packing up his briefcase, and preparing to head out for his vacation, but when Davin didn't answer he said, "Good job on the Power Point by the way, but I'd appreciate a little warning next time you fix my mistakes." He said the last part a little pointedly.

That got through the haze in Davin's head. He smiled and gave a little grunting laugh. "Yeah, sorry. I've um... been a little distracted."

"You haven't been playing that World of War Crap have you? I can't have a single goddam year in this class without somebody asking how to polymorph somebody, spam fireballs, or summon demons. It's a travesty."

Davin laughed a little again, and shook his head. "I'm not having this argument with you again. You can't avoid the fact that people are going to troll you. They troll me all the time... but that's not it. I'm... I... I just... " he stammered, then came to a halt.

The professor checked his watch, but then covered it with his hand, almost ashamedly. He looked at Davin sympathetically.

"Okay, I've got a couple minutes," he said. "What's up. Hey is it something about that weird terrorist attack this morning?"

"No... "

"I was so afraid they were going to shut down the airport, but - I confirmed the flight on my iPhone before this last lecture. But I'm sorry, go ahead. What's up?"

Davin took a second to collect his thoughts, find the thread of his issue. "It's hard to explain. Do you ever... I mean... sometimes I feel like no matter what I do, I'm only ever going to be Davin the Wizard. Like the only value I'll ever have is that I know magic. I feel like there's no one who actually knows or cares about Davin. Just Davin."

The professor nodded and appeared to think about this for a minute. "You've been studying magic, magical theory, physics, chemistry, all different kinds of maths. But more than that you have a gift like nobody I've ever even heard of. Someday you're going to be famous. Like Hawking famous. Einstein, Sagan, or even Neil DeGrasse-Tyson famous." He was saying all this in an offhand this-should-be-obvious tone of voice. "People are going to write biographies about you, you're going to be fine. You just need to take some chances every once in a while. Take a risk. Do something interesting." He glanced at his watch again as he said, "You want historians to say 'He spent his days playing World of War Crap for eight hours a day? Sorry, night." He patted Davin on the shoulder. "Look kid... Davin. If you don't want people to know you for something other than magic, then go out and do something other than magic. Or crappy video games that take over your life." He picked up his briefcase and started toward the lower door of the lecture hall, then paused.

"Oh, by the way, I don't remember if I told you, I'm leaving you the car." He tossed Davin the keys.

Davin's caught them, before his brain had caught up. Then suddenly his eyes went wide. "The Stingray? The 72 Stingray?"

"I got another Stingray? Yeah the 72. And there better not be a scratch on it, I'm counting on you."

Davin nodded mutely, not trusting himself to speak, and the Professor turned and started back to the door again. "Tahiti, here I come! Don't forget, your keeping my office hours tonight. Till five. Finals are coming and people are going to have questions."

"Uh yuh... yeah. Yes! Got it professor."

The professor waved over his shoulder, the door closing behind him.

Office hours went about as expected. Each person who had an appointment had a half hour, and everyone wanted more. He answered questions, advised study plans, gave his opinion on the subjects of papers, and generally helped people prepare for finals.

In a turn of good fortune the last appointment only lasted about five minutes, just someone needing a clarification of something, and when he went outside into the hallway, and looked around, there was no one around. He went back into the Professor's office and looked out the window. He could see the Stingray in the parking lot, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized there was nowhere he wanted to drive it. He thought he might just take it for a drive, even if it was just over to Indianapolis and back, just to see the countryside. It would be dark before he would be able to get very far, so he wouldn't see much. Maybe tomorrow...

Just as he was thinking this, the phone rang. Professor Meriwether kept an old fashioned rotory phone in his office, partly out of respect, to remind himself that even the newest and best stuff will eventually become old and busted. But his rotary phone, big, brown, easily five pounds, still did exactly what it was supposed to.

He picked it up on the second ring. "Professor Meriwether's office."

A husky female voice on the other end said, "Yeah, let me speak to the professor."

Didn't sound like a student, and certainly not his wife... thoughts raced through Davin's brain. 'Take risks indeed eh Professor?' he thought. "Um... he actually left for Tahiti... with his WIFE ...about five hours ago. By now he'll be at Boston International. Sorry," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"Shit," came the other voice. She sounded a little too upset, maybe even a little desperate.

"Uh... well I'm his TA, is there something I can help you with?"

The voice sighed. "I suppose I'll have to take what I can get. No other professors of theoretical metaphysics in the house tonight?" Her voice moved away from the phone for a second. "Hey cut it out, you don't know where that thing's been. Dammit your like a bunch of drunk fuckin' apes." She came back. "Sorry kid. Look, are you any good? Do you know much about magic and stuff?"

Davin's mind went back to his conversation with Meriwether. 'Risks,' he thought to himself.

"Uh yeah. Yeah, you might say that."

"Okay kid, you're really our only choice, so I hope it works out." There was a bunch of clattering in the background, and other voices, and a little bit of echo, as if the phone had moved from outdoors to indoors. "Here's the deal you come out, give us your expert opinion, I'll pay you a thousand." Davin forced himself to keep quiet, but his eyes went wide. "If your information proves useful, I'll even toss in another thousand."

Davin was quiet for a moment, then nodded. Then he realized that she couldn't hear that over the phone. "Uh- yeah.... sure I can do that. Where are you?"

She sighed, sounding a little relieved. "You know where the Storage Park is on South State Road 63?"

He nodded, and said, "Storage Solutions. Yeah my second cousin's dad owns that with a buddy of his. Which unit?"

There was a pause on the line. "You watch the news kid?"

Davin started... "Er... not... not too much today, it's been kind of a busy day."

Davin got the impression she was nodding now. "Huh. Then let's just say you won't have any trouble figuring it out." The line clicked and went dead, and Davin frowned at it. Then he turned and looked out the window at the Stingray again, and smiled.

******************************** Chapter 3

Alrighty then. As always comments and suggestions are welcome.

End of Month

Well. Well well well.

So my first post to this blog was on Aug 28th 2013, and now here it is Sept 28th 2013. One full month. I've done it. I've put myself to the fire, tested myself, and found I can do it. And it's been great.

That being said, weekends have been a bitch and a half for me. Weekdays I can handle. I can post a lot to this place from my phone, or when I'm not getting a lot of calls at work. But lately weekends have not been a good time for trying to keep up.

So they're getting bumped for now. I'll still do 5 days a week, M-F and I may help myself out by writing on the weekends to post during the week.

It's been a great month. I'm honestly surprised that I'm getting the readership that I am, and I am very gratified that you've chosen to put aside a little if your valuable time to read something of mine. Because of that, I will be continuing for as long as I am able, with the Magic World Story, the Santa Society, and other various fiction, as well as opinions, rants, and commentaries, with the occasional vlog or something as well. I'm also considering putting the stories into audio format, so that may pop up here from time to time as well.

All in all, I think this has been a good experience for me, and shown me that no matter whatever other problems I might have, this at least is something that I can do.

Thanks everyone.

Magic World (working title) Chapter 1

Hey.

Okay then, moment of truth, time to get the ball rolling. A few notes, mostly to myself, about the way this story will be told.

I was thinking about using 3rd person omnipresent, meaning seeing everything, but not being able to know what people are thinking, but when I tried that in my head, I kept coming back to either 1st person (which would be too limiting) or 3rd person single subject omniscient, meaning that it's not told from Davin's point of view, but that you can know what he's thinking. Harry Potter is a good example of this, where you know what Harry's thinking, but not anyone else, only what Harry thinks they're thinking. And if Harry's not in a scene you just get a description of the activity, no insight into their thoughts. I'll be doing this with Davin.

There is a good deal of storyline that occurs prior to the introduction of Davin as well, and it's never a good idea to introduce your character too late in the story. So my take on that is to start the story with Davin, and go through some of the day before his introduction to the story proper, then flash back to the events that led the rest of the characters to that point. I hope that works, and it's not too awkward. This is one instance where feedback would be helpful, so I can ensure clarity.

Okay, so, are you guys ready? For me it's been a long time getting to this point. So let's jump in.

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Chapter 1

The alarm clock went of at 5:30 am, same as every day, but instead of playing music like normal it was two guys talking in serious voices.

"...ould lead someone to do something like this Chet?"

"I'm not sure but one thing I do know it it's a good thing it happened there and not somewhere more public."

Davin, who was sleeping facing away from the clock pushed himself up and turned to look at it through a haze of rumpled hair.

"It's a disturbing thought to say the least. QWRK time is 5:31, and we'll be getting back to some music here in a few minutes. He's Chet, I'm Dave, and if you're just joining us we're talking about the mas-"

The voice cut off as Davin's hand hit the snooze button. "Damn fear-mongering..." he muttered. He was still fuzzy as he sat up on the bed and pushed his tangled mass of hair out of his eyes so he could rub the crust and gunk out of them.

He glanced over at his computer. The dragon on the World of Warcraft login screen stared back at him, challenge in it's eyes. Davin shook his head. Tempted as he was to go farming to get those pants for his 38 Tauren Hunter, he had to get to class. Merriwether was going on vacation this afternoon, and wanted to make sure Davin was there in case any of the students had questions after class. And of course Davin had the powerpoint on his laptop because he'd just finished it last night. At 3 am. After the raid.

Then got two and a half hours sleep.

Davin stood up rubbing life back into his face. His hand ran over rough stubble, and he made a mental note to shave. His neck felt a little stiff, so he grabbed his head at the top and bottom and gave a sharp twist, hearing a gratifying *snapcracklepop* as his neck popped into place. He sighed contentedly, then stumbled, still bleary eyed for the bathroom to take care of business.

Twenty minutes later he was pulling on his pants and a shirt, and lamenting the folly of late night WOW raids. He looked around his cluttered dorm room for his socks, and found a pair he had only worn once so far, and pulled them on, and looked for his shoes. He wondered for a moment if he would have time to run over to the Dunkin' Donuts to get some coffee before heading over to the Metaphysics building, but the internal calculator of the brain did some estimates of distance, speed, and the variables of how long it would take the counter girl to get his order right, or how many people would be in line today, and how many of them would be paying with cash, and having to count out change, and showed him the totals.

He shook his head. The day was going to be miserable if he couldn't wake up. Professor Merriwether always knew, and the hard time he would give Davin would be unbearable in this state. He didn't approve of Video Games, feeling they didn't add anything to the culture of the world. Davin disagreed, but he could sense that he was about to start mentally replaying the argument for the thousandth time, and forced himself to back away from that line of thought, and try to think of a solution.

He thought the run to class might help a little, but then he would just be tired and exhausted. He rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand, and groaned in frustration.

Then suddenly he smelled it, just a wafting scent on the breeze, but possibly the source of his salvation.

He searched the pocket of his jeans frantically looking for a marker, and finally found one in one of the pockets of his grey hooded sweatshirt, a black chisel head sharpie. He bludgeoned his tired mind for a moment as he pulled the pizza box out from under the bed of his small room with his foot. It rattled reassuringly with the bones of a long dead pizza... or the one from last night anyway.

He picked up the box and set it on the bed and flipped it open, and pulled the cap off the sharpie with his teeth. He was still racking his brain for the molecular structure of carbohydrates, but it was fighting back against him, punishing him for his lack of sleep. He pulled his smartphone out of his back pocket and googled "Carbohydrate Molecule" and found an image.

He grunted, as felt a little dumb that he couldn't remember all those hydrogen and carbon chains. He looked up another molecule, and nodded. Just needed a little nitrogen, but there was more than enough in the air. He sketched out a circle inside the lid of the pizza box. It wasn't a perfect circle, but it didn't really need to be for what Davin had in mind. He drew out some quick and dirty guidelines in a few triangles, then jotted down the symbols for the formula he had in mind.

He put the pizza crust in the middle of the circle and laid his hand on the edge of the circle. The physical contact wasn't necessary, but Davin found that the contact help to make the spell easier to concentrate on. As he concentrated there was a sound that started small, and grew louder over the next few seconds. Deep down, on the molecular level carbon and hydrogen atoms were splitting away from carbon, and twisting up, and recombining with oxygen and nitrogen. There were both spare hydrogen and spare carbon, but the amounts would be so small the worst that might be mistaken for an SBD fart. There were also spare electrons which were dispersing as heat energy, which had the  side effect of heating up the crust.

After a few moments Davin opened up his eyes again and picked up the crust. It was ever so slightly warm, and he smiled at this. "Aaaaahhhh.... " he smirked. "Caffinated Pizza Crusts. Magic is so awesome," he said taking a bite.

His face froze for a moment, and it was all he could do not to spit out the thing. It was SO BITTER. His face twisted up in disgust, but he kept going. He needed this. It might be disgusting but it would be better than falling asleep in class all day.

He shoved his marker back into his pocket, and his phone, and grabbed his bag with his laptop and headed for the door of his cluttered, dingy, little dorm room.

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Okay, not too bad for part one, and interesting introduction to the character,  I feel, but I would be interested to hear your opinions. The plan is to continue with chapters, and continue to expand and inflate chapters as I think of things to add, or if I'm reading or listening to something and think of a better way to phrase something, or some details I want to add. Depending on how things go, I'll probably just edit these posts directly, and make notes of the edits, do edits in different fonts or colors, so they're easy to differentiate from the original post. Then I might post a revised version of the chapter. It all depends.

But anyway, as always comments and suggestions welcomed.

Thanks for Reading!

Surveillance and Paranoia

Hey everybody.

I've got a few topics ready to go for the next few blogs, including a great one about the 22 secrets of storytelling from Pixar, which was sent to my by my brother Chris, and the first chapter of the Magic World story. (book?)

But then I was reading something on Reddit today, that opened up one of my big opinion doors, and now I have to let this beast out.

Okay, everyone's all up in arms about the NSA and how much information they have, and illegal wiretapping, and all kinds of other stuff.  Now in principal I agree that this is a moraly questionable practice, with the potential for all kinds of abuse, and I hope there's some kind of oversight. People are people, and while I think most of us are pretty good, there are those who would let such power go to their heads.

But I can't help but wonder why any of this matters. I'm a natural skeptic, so it's in my nature to question things, and when I look online the things I find answers like "what's legal today might be illegal tomorrow" and referrences to Hitler, and the Jews, and George Orwell's 1984, and "Thought Crime."

And I can't help but think how alarmist and paranoid that sounds. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, history shows us that it certainly could. But right now we are living in an age of information. This is the generation that saw the internet take down a dictator. They used our huge information network to do something that would have been impossible only about 15 years before.

So I can't help but wonder what exactly people are afraid of. What is it they think the government is going to do with their information. So far I haven't heard of anyone being arrested or detained based on the information the NSA has gathered. I haven't heard any specific examples of anyone having their "liberties compromised" as a result of the NSAs surveillance.

Also, the information they're collecting is being collated, and compiled as statistics in a database somewhere. It's not like anyone's looking at most of it. This blog for example might -MIGHT- be looked at by some NSA analyst somewhere, who will flag it as harmless, then chuckle about this portion and how oddly accurate it is... or how stupidly inaccurate. Either way he or she will pass this by and look for something more substantial. And that's IF it's looked at by a real person at all.

There are also those who think that there isn't enough evidence to show that the surveillance has done anything to curb terrorist attacks. Of course we wouldn't hear about those plots that get foiled, as they want to avoid releasing any information to other terrorist cells. It's possible. Who knows? Bombings happen, but I can't believe that anyone would think that it hasn't done at least some good. Do you think the government would keep spending money on a venture that didn't show any gains? Especially if the money could go into their own pockets?

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm not concerned at all, I just don't see how it affects anybody yet. I mean hell, Ed Snowdens leaks told what information was being gathered, and how, but he never said how they were using it.

So really it all comes down to this: How are they using our information? How does them having our information specifically threaten our freedoms? In what way COULD they use our information? What reason would the government or the NSA have to persecute you (in a generic sense) or anyone you know unless you've done something wrong? I'd be happy to accept real rational answers of things that have happened, with evidence.

Of course it's always possible that the government is trying to hide the evidence of their use of our information. I can buy that. But this is the same government that let Ed Snowden get to Moscow. This is the same government that didn't know about WikiLeaks until Julian Assange decided to make a movie about it. (okay now I'm just being sarcastic.)

But seriously you can't just live in fear. The media is making a huge deal about this because their entire job revolves around you watching them. and they know you'll watch if you're afraid not to.

Who knows? Maybe after writing this I'll mysteriously "disappear" and everyone will gasp and say "Ohmygosh he totally got abducted, and now they're taking him to Gitmo to waterboard him!"

But I doubt it.

As always though comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks for Reading!

Magic World: Story **WARNING: SPOILERS**

Hey, how's it going?

So fair warning up front, if you've been following the Magic World posts up to this point, and you're interested to read the story, you may want to skip this post. I'm going to put a line of stars a little lower on the page, and beyond that point I'm going to be working out the main plot of the story, the thing that brings all these characters together, the mystery they will have to solve. If you want to be surprised and not know all the answers ahead of time, STOP NOW and wait till tomorrow. You won't get another chance.

If on the other hand you are the kind of person who reads the last page of a book first, or reads the internet for spoilers, or likes watching a story unfold, even though every wrinkle is already known to you, then this post is fair game.

But the time to decide that is now, I can't keep writing filler forever... well I probably could, there are people who write self help books that are almost nothing BUT filler. But that would be atrocious. So yeah. Here comes the line in the sand. Ready?

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Okay, if you've crossed the line, you're committed. Anything you read from this point forward may end up in the story, and spoil any surprises. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Okay, so first things first, character background on the old guy, briefly. I was going to have to do this anyway, so this is as good a place as any.

Okay, Raul Muyres grew up in Madrid Spain, an overachieving son of a wealthy landowner. He was educated at Oxford, where he studied Physics, Metaphysics, Chemistry, Alchemy, and Mathematics, achieving a PhD in each after 20 years of study.

It was during this time that he started to hear stories about some items of great power. Things that should not exist, but somehow did. These items, it was rumored, struck a fine balance between each of the scientific disciplines, and between magic and miracle. Each one was created by some of the most gifted geniuses in history, such as Merlin, Isaac Newton, Galileo, Pascal, Da Vinci, and a few others. (I need to do more research, this will probably change a bit as the story evolves.)

Raul became somewhat obsessed with these items, collectively termed the MetaCapacitors (borrowed from Dresden Files, might change too; Meta-Apparatus?) because of their ability to do things that were previously thought to be impossible. He even went so far as to try to re-create these items using modern techniques, but without the originals met with only limited success.

And in its own way, it started to become almost a "grail quest" trying to find the items and obtain them in order to re-create their effects. In many cases not only their locations, but often their descriptions and appearances were lost to antiquity.

But when you have 50 years, and a lot of resources, a lot of practical knowledge, and you're a wizard, you tend to be able to get things done. And so, one by one, in secret, the items were located. That was the relatively easy part. The thing that took the most time was attempting to re-create the effects. He had a few people he held in confidence, and in turn they were able to offer him help.

For this story the item that Raul is looking for is called Newton's Battery. The exact details of it aren't really important, except that it converts light, heat, and other radient forms of energy into chemical energy which turns solid when the energy is stored. And when it's full, as a rather odd side effect it hovers about 3 feet above the ground, and becomes cold enough to freeze water vapor in the air. The other details are really just trivial, and will only be used for narrative reasons.

But then there's the whole murder mystery part. That part is hard to get right. You end up having to weave a narrative into a wholly  different storyline.

 So okay then, lets just start with the basics. Raul was going to buy the Battery from Stanislav Mihaylov, a Bulgarian art collector, who believes that the Battery's value is only artistic. However since he's also a drug and gun runner he's not the type to give something like that up. Not without something fairly substantial in exchange. So Raul, who has worked as an a magical engineer on several ships offers several magical wards to use in security, and protect from prying eyes and ears, as well as potentiality frying, or at least severely injuring anyone who tried to get through. 

Raul had been put into contact with Mihaylov through a mutual acquaintance, an art-house dealer named Celia Fry. She was showing several of Mihaylov's pieces, and knew he'd had the Battery, and told Raul he would ask him to bring it next time he was in town for a show. She doesn't know about the Battery, except as an artistic piece, and doesn't know about Mihaylov's other activities, for which the art-house show is merely a front. 

 Mihaylov completeted the trade with Raul in the parking lot of the Kitty Palace, a gentlemen's club where Mihaylov had was trying to entice one of the dancers, named Pearl, aka (Kaley Daniell.) He let the trade go down, but had Raul followed. Meanwhile things with Pearl didn't go well as she escorted to her car by a bouncer, who ended up in the hospital, but put 2 of Mihaylov's men there as well. 

So Raul went to a storage park where he had rented a space in the center of the park reasoning that if anything happened to the Battery, or his attempt to re-create it, that there would be several layers of uninhabited insulation between him and anyone who might be hurt. 

Mihaylov's men trailed him there, but waited for orders from the boss before moving in. But Mihaylov was curious, and told them to wait, so they staked out the location... for several days. Finally when Raul emerged, haggard, but apparently elated, Mihaylov was so impatient that he ordered his men to rush in and take back the Battery. Raul in the meantime had come out to go to a local Sub sandwich shop, and when he returned to find Mihaylov's men puzzling over what seemed to be two Batteries, with one of the men attempting to prize apart one of them he tried to stop them, but was shot, though not fatally. The explosion however when the goon manhandling the duplicate Battery reacted violently was enough to kill him, and the two men in there with him. 

And there we go. There are bound to be other details, but this is sufficient for now, and gives several of my main characters a lead to follow up on. And it includes a Strip Club, which means boobs, and that makes me happy. :)

Okay, if you've read through this, just remember that when you're not surprised you have nobody to blame but yourself. But all the same, thanks. 

Comments and suggestions as always are welcome. 

And thanks for reading!

Magic World: Bernard McFreed Orc Driver

Welcome back, and thanks for joining me. 

Today is the last of the main characters for my Magic World story. I still have a dead guy to write up, but other than that, this is it. I'm thinking I actually might write a couple of scenes, or maybe even a chapter by the end of this week. No promises, but if I feel up to it, I could potentially get a lot done

Also the Santa Society is still in the works, but I'm going to need a bit more inspiration for that one, probably I'll have to go on Netflix and watch Sports Night, and maybe that Parenthood show.

But that means that I have to get some stuff done here right?

Okay so right now when people think of Orcs they think of the bad guys from Lord of the Rings, with the black or green skin, and the grotesque faces. But actually other than a slight cleft of the nose, a slight underbite, slightly lengthened inscisors on the bottom, and skin ranging from dark grey to black, with slight pigmentation, Orcs are just like anyone else.  Sure generally speaking they're bigger and stronger, but not all of them are.

And this is why the Native Americans alway used Orcs as the warriors of their tribes, and the same goes for the tribes in Africa. The best and strongest were always the Orcs. This led to the belief that Orcs were brainless savages, which of course was not true. Atilla the Hun may have been savage, but also had a cunning intellect which allowed him to overrun a good portion of the continent before his empire was spread too far.

Orcs get a bad reputation because there are too many prominent examples of Orcs behaving as people expect Orcs to behave. But of course those Orcs are the very loud minority. Most Orcs are just regular people who lead regular lives.

Which is more or less how it was with Bernard's mother, who was born in east London. Her father was a Nigerian refugee, but she had grown up in the city, and thanks to her fathers good business sense, grew up fairly "posh," and somewhat spoiled and entitled. She was a bit of a party girl early 70's London, and as is often the case, ended up pregnant.

And she was a good mother for a while, as she had the support of her father, who was often quite generous. However when he died without a will, according to the stipulations of his company all his personal assets went to the company upon his death, leaving her homeless and penniless. She took several jobs through the years, often several at a time, to support herself and her son Bernard. But the years and the stress took their toll, and she ended up bitter and apathetic. She loved Bernard, but also felt resentful of him, believing her life would have been easier if this had happened without him.

But Bernard wanted to be useful, and helpful, and though he couldn't get a job he did learn how to fix household items. He was very good at working out the inner workings mechanical devices, but not so much electronics. Still he was able to fix the VCR and the toaster, and the turntable on the microwave, and the tape deck, and several other mechanical devices in the house by the time he was 12, and he did it for all their neighbors, some of whom tipped him very well.

But it was when he turned 14 that a neighbor was outside working on a car that he realized his true calling. Bernard was always interested in cars, but he always used public transportation, and they did not own a car. But when he stood next to the mechanic, standing there in his overalls, and looked into the car while the mechanic scratched his head, he noticed that there was a rubber tube worn through. He pointed it out to the mechanic who looked quizzically at him. The mechanic replaced the tube and started the car, which started up with no problem. When the mechanic asked how he knew that was the problem Bernard said, "Sounded like it was having trouble breathing."

The mechanic, Giraldo Felice got permission from his mother, and took Bernard to the shop he owned. Bernard was able to diagnose every problem they put in front of him, not by name, but he was able to describe  the problem, and point it out on the car.

Giraldo took Bernard under his wing then, teaching him everything he could about auto-mechanics, and taught him to drive, which Bernard took to right away. Giraldo taught him all the laws, and how to follow them, then showed him how to break them, and get away with it.

Then on his 16th birthday Giraldo took Bernard on his first boost.

Bernard hadn't really been aware of it up to that point, but realized that he should have know that the shop he had been hanging out in was a chop shop. And Giraldo had been training him as a getaway driver, teaching him how and when to break the rules.

At first he was scared, sure that he was going to end up in jail or dead.... then he started to realize the possibilities, and potential to help out his mother. His first job was boosting a black 1968 Camero. He had practiced hot-wiring, thinking that it would be for repo jobs, or other situations where someone had lost their keys, so he had gotten  quite good at it.

He was in and away in 38 seconds flat.

Jump ahead fifteen years, Bernard was working as a getaway driver in America, when he was approached by an older gentleman who wanted him as a getaway driver for a museum job. He insisted that it was vital that he be away from the museum and on his boat as quickly as possible, preferably within five minutes. The boat in question was eight miles away, via normal surface roads.

However thanks to extra time, and good planning Bernard was able to make it in four and a half minutes. It was one his most entertaining getaways ever, and Bernard made the old man promise to call him again next time he planned to do something like this.

So, a few years later, when the old man had turned up dead, Bernard was curious, and decided to check it out.

******************

And that's it! I still have some things to work out, some fine detail to bang out, but I'm pretty much ready to get moving. However I will have to work out the details of the old man, the one who brings them all into this situation, and the details of his death, and I think come up with a bad guy. But the important thing is that the characters are in place, and really it's how they interact that makes all the difference.

So, fair warning, and I'll put it in the title, tomorrow's post may have storyline soilers, so if you're the type who doesn't like to know the ending, or likes to figure things out on your own, you may want to skip the post tomorrow.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks for Reading!

Magic World: Gary Abdulla, Gnomish Hacker

What's up everybody?

So I mentioned in my Fantasy Races post that gnomes tended to have some middle eastern background. However these days when someone says "Middle East" here in the US it's automaticaly put in the same catagory as Terrorists, Jihad, Muslims (which ^of course^ equals bad.) Backward uncivilized people living in the desert. But this is not so, even in our own world. Certainly those places and people exist, but there are very civilized places out there, cities and skyscrapers, and modern conveniences like internet, television, air conditioning, and even *gasp* Running Water. Try to contain your surprise.

Actually it's been like this for a very long time, and in fact there was a time that Bhagdad was considered the cultural and scientific capitol of the world, developing many of the scientific principals that we still use today, and creating art, liturature, music, engineering, etc, pretty much everything people think of when they think about civilization.

And today there are a lot of cities there that are pretty great. Dubai in particular is kinda awesome.

And that's where Gary's parents are from. They moved to America for 2 reasons. First, his father's brother was here, and second, cost of living in Dubai had grown to high for them, so rather than move to the desert, they decided to sell everything, cut ties, and move to America, where Gary's father Yamil opened a small grocery store. Gary was born in 1980's-ish and grew up with the small computer that sat in the back of his father's store, which was used for bookkeeping.

By the time he was 13 he was hacking into the computer system of the video store to give himself permission to rent adult videos and setting up free phone service, free dial up service, and a few low limit credit cards, which he could generaly get away with using in non-gnomish stores where they had a hard time telling how old he was. In this way he was able to build himself a new computer by the time he was 16, by which time computer technology was booming.

His fathers business however was failing. A shop owned by a larger corporation was using shady and decietful tactics to try to drive the small grocer out of business. Upset at the injustice Gary hacked the corporate servers and tried for several says to find a vulnerability, in they're overall system. Not just the computer system, but they're entire operation. And eventually after planning and abandoning several different types of attack from brute force to roundabout, but finally he found an opening that would rely on subtlety. 

He found that he was able to edit unread emails on their server, and started leaving little hints and rumors about people being fired, and that the company wouldn't be paying final paychecks, and that some people were taking everything they could and getting out before the mass firings began. 

It worked better than he could ever have anticipated. Not only was the other store cleaned out in a matter of days, the corporation couldn't afford the store with the reputation it had developed, so instead they made his father an offer, and bought the store for far more than it was worth, and offered to pay him to run the place, more than what he made now, and they paid to have the store re-modeled, something it would have taken his father years to afford.

And so Gary learned the value of being able to hack for profit.

His goals and aims though were not malign or hostile in general, and not entirely selfish either. He always made a point to help people who had been wronged by his victims, at least when he could get away with it without exposing himself.

Eventually, after college, (which he attended for free,) he formed an internet startup company who's job it was to test different servers, and websites and such. Eventually it got to be so easy, he was able to code bots and scripts with smart algorithms that figured out the systems nearly as fast as he could. And so he started getting bored.

That was about the time that one of the companies he was actively hacking, seeking more vulnerabilities, gave his business card to some weird old guy who called himself a Magic Engineer. This guy wanted him to hack a virtually impossible system, backed up by a team of hackers.

Gary didn't try to take them head on, he harassed and cajoled them, using bots to lay false trails, and working cracks in the security. Eventually he found a vulnerability, and sent a bunch of drones...

Okay it's been a long night, I'm tired. The rest of the story is pretty much what you might expect.  Gary has an exciting hacking adventure, that in his head was full of adventure and exitement, but to a casual observer just looked like a guy in a chair staring at the screen.

So when the dot com bubble burst and his company went down in flames rather than take his profits and rebuild, he became a mercenary hacker for hire, having gotten the taste for adventure.

Shortly later the old magic engineer died and Gary made it his job to find out how and why.

Okay, I'm done, I have have a headache, and blah blah blah. Comments. Suggestions. Welcome.

Thanks for Reading!

Live and Die in Los Santos

Hey everyone.

Well I just finished GTA 5.

It has been a grand experience, running from the cops, stealing huge amounts of money, killing "bad guys" and generally causing as much mayhem as it is possible to cause. I don't know if I'm a better person for the experience, but certainly I've enjoyed myself, almost obsessively.

But in a rather odd way, I'm glad its over. Not because I didn't enjoy it, but more because I found myself not able to stop playing, as my wife can tell you. I'm sure she'll also be relieved to know that the whole think is over.

So now what? Well, first I think I'm going to start a new game. But this time I'll be taking things in moderation, taking it slow. Shorter sessions, more time devoted to the side missions, and other activities, more time looking for hidden things, and exploring the world underwater. I also need to make sure to take better care with my money. Unlike previous games where you get money after every mission in this game you get money far less often. And you need money for car upgrades, guns, tattoos, stock market trading, cars, and other things. It would be nice to be able to purchase more property.

Also, I'm looking forward to the Grand Theft Auto Online, which is the version of the game that you can play online, doing mostly the same things as in the game, for the most part. I'll be playing with my brother, and friend of ours.

So watching the end credits right now, I'm reminded of how absolutely gorgeous the game looks, as they show fly-throughs of the game's environments, which is what they always do in these games, so I hope that's not a spoiler for anyone. It's much more realistic looking than any of the previous games, with a map that's far larger. This is awesome, but I do have a minor criticism about this: It takes FOREVER to get anywhere, and the only thing you can do to speed up the process is call a cab, which does cost money, though not a lot, which is fortunate.

And believe it or not, I still have a lot of places in the game that I haven't fully explored. It was odd, looking at the incomplete map at the beginning and wondering exactly how big this thing must be, and still here at the end of the story they're still showing closer views of areas I haven't seen yet. I'm thinking I'll have to go in on my completed game save just to look around if nothing else.

So, I'm going to enjoy the heck out of GTA Online, probably play for a few hours each night, but this last week or so has been totally detrimental to my sleep, and I need to catch up. I'd meant to go to sleep at midnight tonight, just to get a little extra, but if you look at the time-stamp on this, you'll see that idea got blown out of the water. I think I would have been okay though if this hadn't been the end of the game. Every mission has that sense of urgency for the next one, like, "Now all we need to do is get the thing-a-ma-bobber, and we'll be ready to take down the whozamawhatsis! Get on that!" and your thinking. "You GOT it! We are SO doing this!" Heh... I won't fall for that again.

And you know, I've never been a fan of rap or hip-hop, but in context, when you're playing as Franklin you kinda get used to it. But what I really like is the ambient music that plays when you're in a mission, which sounds like sci-fi music somehow, but still works.

And still the credits are playing. What else can I talk about until they're done?

The non-rap, non-dance, music on the radio was a little disappointing to me, the rock station didn't seem to have a ton. While I did kinda like some of the music, not all of it was great, nothing that made me want to sit in the car and listen to the radio for a few seconds extra like I'd heard in previous ventures.

Okay credits seem to be ending...

And a note from a therapist. Amazing. Apparently I'm pretty f*cked up. And now I'm back at home, in the game.

So that's that. Overall, a fantastic experience, not without some minor flaws, but with a lot of things that worked better than they did in previous incarnations of the game. I think there might have even been some things that tied this game to Red Dead Redemption. But that's not really relevant right now. For now, I need to get to bed.

Oh before I go, if you have the game and you want to hook up online my  gamertag is billyuno01 on X-box live. If you want to meet up in Los Santos, feel free to add me.

Comments and suggestions welcome, and treasured.

Thanks for reading!

Highway etiquette

Hey guys.

Well I've nearly made it through 30 days of blog posts. This is something accomplished for me, because I don't think I've ever stuck with something this long before. So I'm quite proud of myself.

When I've made it through the first 30 days though, I think I'm going to be going to weekdays only. And that way if I do write anything on the weekends, I'll be able to save it for those days that I don't have anything during the week. Because, you never know, things come up all the time that make it difficult to post.

But today, I would like to talk about something very near and dear to my heart. This is something that I deal with on a daily basis, and something that drives me a little nuts.

Have you ever been out driving, and you're going maybe 5 miles over the speed limit, you're getting ready to pass some big truck that's going the speed limit? Then just before you get there the car that was just behind the semi, decides to change lanes right in front of you to pass the semi, and they are going about a half a mile an hour faster than the semi.

To me this is absolutely fucking insane. If I'm out driving and I can see that there is someone who's going faster than me coming up behind me, I will wait until that person goes by before I decide the pass someone else. That just seems like common courtesy right? So why would anyone think it's a good idea to change lanes right in front of somebody just as they're about to pass them?

And I don't mean to make a big deal about this. Since changing my route to get to work, I've had this problem much less, because I'm only on a two lane road instead of a four lane road, but when I was driving home from Scott County Park tonight, we were just about to pass a semi, and this little white SUV that was right behind the semi, and just about like 3 seconds before we would have passed both of them the SUV decides that it wants to pass the semi first. This was annoying enough, but then as it was passing the semi it seems like it could make up its mind about what speed wanted to go, so it got about half way past the semi then suddenly it was hovering right beside it going the exact same speed. It took several minutes to get past the truck this way.

Now if you've ever done this to somebody, maybe you can tell me. What the hell were you thinking?

So short blog post again tonight. I had previously been able to get quite a few posts done at work because the call volume has dropped considerably, and hopefully that will continue now that the iPhone launch is complete, but we'll see. 

In the meantime comment and suggestions. I ask for them because I care.

And thanks for reading! 

Magic World: Fantasy Races

Hey guys welcome back.

So this world of mine will be inhabited by several of the races that are currently seen in fantasy settings, such as elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, half-elves, orcs, and other various things. This brings up an interesting concept though: How do you blend real historical cultures and races with non-human, yet humanoid fantasy races?

Well in my case, I'm keeping all the normal races of humans, and blending them among the "non-human" races.

So for example, among the different types of elf are European/Caucasian elves, and Asian elves, which range from the UK to Taiwan, and all through the southern continent, where the Dark Elves live. (Just don't call them Drow, aka the D-word. That's their word.)

Also there are Orcs among the Native Americans and tend to be peaceful and calm, unlike their cousins, and also among the descendants of the Mongols, and more slim, fast versions in Africa. Also it should be noted that these orcs are more like the Half-orcs found in D&D, rather than full orcs of the same setting.

Dwarves can be found in Europe, famously in Scotland, but also among the tribes of South America, among other places.

Gnomes live in a few different places, like Greece, and various countries of the middle east, such as Dubai and of course Iran, Iraq, etc, and down into Pakistan and India, but they also have a presence in Ireland.

Halflings come from all over the world, they're as diverse as Humans, and in fact are equally as regarded despite their smaller size. The ratio is about 3 humans to 1 halfling.

Half-elves are found anywhere that elves and humans are, and are the only half-breed race. Among elves they're called half-elves too by the way. Humans are inclusive, seeing half-elves as humans who have some elven blood, whereas elves are exclusive, seeing them as being "only" half-elf. However this is an old viewpoint, and changing slowly with the times.

Elves and humans as previously mentioned, are the only two races that produce offspring, but not the only two races that can mate. However when any  other two races will produce children that are either one race or the other, but never half and half. Or at least not very often. If it happens at all, it's a fluke of nature, a perhaps one in a billion chance. Those children are often born with some very strange features, like if a Dwarf has a child with a halfling for example, you get something between the two, a skinny dwarf with long dexterous fingers, and a fantastic beard.

Now while all the old prejudices remain, this affords the opportunity for a few new ones. The KKK and Skinheads are against African Americans, and the Westboro Baptists are against... well anyone who's not them, there are also organizations who oppose Gnomes, mostly because of their middle eastern heritage. There are also anti Dwarf, and Anti Elf organizations, but also Anti Human organizations as well, but for the most part, at least in the US, the grand melting pot of all nationalities, colors, races, and creeds, things are more or less okay, everyone more or less gets along, though some old prejudices are hard to avoid. Most people of other races don't trust Orcs, seeing them as hoods and/or thieves,  Orcs whose ancestors were brought to the US as a result of the slave trade still view white people with distrust and mild contempt, but again, this is a gross generalization, and is more about how people view things more than it is about how things actually are.

So there we go. I'd thought about adding Giants to the mix, but first there was a lot of scientific and biological reasons why that wouldn't work, and also I figured they would take up way too much space.

Okay, that's enough for now. I keep keeling over the keyboard, which means it's time to move along.

Comments, suggestions... yeah, you know it by now.

Thanks for reading!

The King of America

Okay, this sounds like a bad idea, historically speaking. We're a fairly young country, with a long history of independence and rebelliousness, and we even fought off King George and more or less spit in his eye. Why in the WORLD would anyone suggest that we should have a King

Okay yes. Back in the day when kings were all crazy and powerful, and commanded armies and made weird stupid proclamations demanding impossible things, we were kinda right to throw off the shackles and stand apart from the oppressive... er ...oppressors.

But if you look now, the British Monarchy looks like a romantic, noble, sometimes scandalous, but always entertaining family with a long and amazing history. Every time one of them gets married, divorced, starts dating, takes an alleged bong hit, or anything really it generates headlines for weeks. I would bet that most Americans don't know the name of the British Prime Minister, but can tell you ALL about Prince William, and Kate, and the baby, and oh holy crap people love the royalty.

And here in this day and age they do make a valid contribution to the country. There's a great YouTube video about this, but basically it works like this: They own a lot of land; They rent (or lease) that land to the government; The Government makes money from that land; British taxes go down. But more than that interest in the Royal Family accounts for a HUGE amount of the British, especially the London, economy, due to tourism. People come from all over the world to see where the Royal Family lives, plays, the Crown jewels, and all the royal themed attractions that start with "Ye Olde."

And that got me thinking: Why should they have all the fun? We could have our own American Royal Family, couldn't we?

Okay let's think about this. Kings were originally charismatic and aggressive leaders who led armies, and protected their people from harm, and gained glory and honor from battle, and believed mightily that they were given the right to rule through Divine Providence. After that, they just passed the title down from generation to generation, not out of any deference to the descendent's prowess or skill or charisma, but rather because they were born.

And this is understandable, as we have a built in desire to protect our offspring and provide every advantage possible for their survival and prosperity. Being King is a really good way to do that, unless you screw it up by being really dumb and causing a revolution, and maybe getting your head chopped off. But hey, nobody's perfect right? The important thing is that they started as nobody, but took what they had and forged a kingdom sweat, blood, steel, and will.

So then, what if I told you that deep in the south there was a long, nearly forgotten line of noble blood that is heir to the Lost Throne of the Americas? Tracing it's lineage back through the Civil War, further back to a family of royalty that had been banished to America for the crime of being Catholic, which disqualified them the succession. (A real thing apparently, look it up.)

The Nobleman arrived quietly, and mostly did things without fanfare, or fervor, but made a difference in the lives of his people, and protected them. His lineage is still alive today, and the most direct of the eldest descendants is a humble construction worker in North Carolina, unaware that he is the rightful King of America.

None of that is true of course, as far as I know. But it makes a good story, it has the ring of truth, and don't people just love the idea of lost and hidden royalty? It is a fascinating idea.

See it's not like he/she would have any real power or authority, per se. Maybe they find out that they're the beneficiary of some land grant back revenues that the government could never pay back, so they set up a trust that they'll pay back over several hundred years or so, to the family and their heirs. Other than that it's just a big PR thing. "Hey look at us, we have our own King!"

So yeah, might make a good story. Kind of a rags to riches story about a nice guy, single, who suddenly finds himself the heir, not only to an incredible fortune (which he can't have, but no one cares,) but also the title of King of America (which means nothing, but no one cares.) Suddenly women who wouldn't give him the time of day are throwing themselves at his feet, companies are offering him jobs as their spokesman, businesses are changing their names in his honor, Matt Lauer won't stop calling to ask him to be on the Today Show. It goes on and on.

And the whole time he's just trying to live his life, and figure out what he wants to do, now that he doesn't have to have a job any more. But of course it turns out that being King is a full time job, making public appearances, meeting important people who's only interest is his fame, and so on and so on.

Then he meets a girl, the only one who is not impressed by his fame, has never heard of him, doesn't care about his money, etc etc, and of course isn't too impressed with him either.

The rest should be fairly obvious to anyone who's seen King Ralph, or any romantic comedy where the guy has to work to impress the girl. She sees him in a moment of kindness, instantly falls in love with him, then some other complication keeps them apart until they can be thrown together at the end of the movie while some funny yet touching, song plays in the background. Start credits, then show the wedding scene during the credits along with bloopers, and so on.

Yeah, I think we could do better than that though. What if being King turns into a huge chance for him to bring out his diplomatic side, and become an unofficial goodwill ambassador for the US and Canada, travelling extensively to talk to important people about how their people can get along better, and basically be a really nice guy via interpreter. Then suddenly he gets embroiled in an international incident, and suddenly we're in a suspense action movie, in the vein of Air Force One, or any of the Die Hard movies, where it turns out that the King has a military service record, and a way to contact someone on the outside. He uncovers the plot, takes out the bad guys, saves the day, then gives a one liner about how it's good to be the King, or something equally cheesy. Credits roll to a Lynard Skynard/Elvis  mashup, encompassing "The King" and "The South."

Yeah, that sounds like a blockbuster hit by Michael Bay.

Well this is what Brainstorming, and Spit-balling are for, you toss everything at the wall, and see what sticks. I'll probably go to TV Tropes and see if an idea occurs to me, but this one will have to sit on the back burner for a while, after all I've got 2 other stories to make some progress on.

Anyway, as ever comments and suggestions are welcomed.

Thanks for reading!

Magic World: Miranda Herrera, Roller Derby Queen

Hey guys, I'm back. Hope you enjoyed the Vlogs over the last couple of days while I played my new game. I've been having a lot of fun with it, and I'll keep playing when I have time, but it's time to get back to writing. I am going to keep this somewhat short though so I can still play a little GTA 5 before getting to bed early. 

Actually, I'd had a story I thought would be good for GTA 5 way back before they had even announced it, where a retired criminal thug, (played by Sam Elliot* in my head) was living in New Austin (where Red Dead Redemption took place) in a little wooden cabin out in the middle of nowhere. He gets a call that someone like a brother or friend, or maybe enemy was killed. He's torn about whether to come back, when he hears motorcycles approaching. They're coming to get him next. (*edit-not sam neil)

So he goes to San Andreas to get back into "the game," of crime, corruption, and violence. It could just as easily be Vice City I suppose, so I'm thinking about writing it as fan fiction in that universe, or maybe I'll set it in my Magic World universe, who knows?

But now I want to move onto something I've been looking forward to for some time: My Roller Derby Queen character, Miranda Herrera. This is the kind of character that I love. Quirky, flirty, unconsciously sexual, happy, bubbly, perky, and good at what she does. If you're a Firefly fan then if I describe her as Kaylee, only less shy, more muscle, and with more scars and bruises. Oh, and pink pigtails.

***********************************************

She was born in a mid-sized midwestern town, and was always a tomboy, growing up with 3 older brothers. When she went to high school, she played every sport they had for girls, basketball, soccer, volleyball, track, but was always upset that she couldn't join the football team, or wrestling team. She had always roughhoused with her brothers without any problems, and couldn't understand why it should be any different with any other boy. (This led to a tendancy to be very physical, even in casual encounters, without any sense of self consciousness, and without any intentional sexuality.)

Then when she was about seventeen she went to her first Roller Derby. She was ecstatic, elated, and enamored, at the raw physicality, and comradery, and the fact that you got to smash into people at high speed on roller skates. After her first successful derby she earned the name Butcher Knife because she "carved up" the other team. This was shortened first to Butcher, then finally to Butch.

However a few months after she turned 18 she fulfilled a promise to herself, following her brothers into the army. She finished boot camp with distinction, and when the time came chose Combat Training and Special Forces. She was accepted, and finished that training with distinction, though her instructors clearly disapproved of her "two-gun" style. She had to admit it was difficult at first, using two pistols simultaneously, but she gradually came to see it as extensions of her arms, so that she had more options when aiming. Her ability grew better and better, and soon she was hitting the same targets as those who used more conventional weapons, only she was hitting twice as often. She could also aim at 2 targets at once, however her accuracy suffered when doing this.

She served 2 tours in Afghanistan, but during the second one on a patrol her unit encountered an IED on the side of the road, and stopped to secure the area. As they patrolled, watching for civilians and terrorists alike, it happened.
Miranda stepped onto a mine. The blast was contained but she did lose the bottom part of her left leg, halfway through the calf.

However a brilliant Magical Engineer who claimed to be part of a special department, came and offered to make her a prosthetic. He came back with an enormously over sized prosthetic, which she was told to put on.

He came and went several more times, each contraption looking much smaller and lighter than the last, until finally he came back with a device that look,stump  and felt good on the "stump" of her leg

She was discharged from the Army, presented with a Purple Heart, and wanted to go straight back into Roller Derby, but wasn't sure how. But she practiced, and fell, and practiced some more, until she was able to skate on her prosthetic leg, and was eventually able to skate again.

During the Derby's off season, with her prosthetic functioning  flawlessly, to the point where almost nobody knew it was there, she was able to supplement her income as a mercenary for the Mexican government, helping to push back the gangs and take out their strongholds.

When she heard that the engineer who had given her the leg was killed, she felt she owed it to him to go and find out what happened.

***********************************************

And there we go.  Fairly simple, yet hopefully entertaining.

Comments and suggestions are my favorite form of tip, and tipping is not just a city in China people!

As always, Thanks for Reading!

What I did last night.

So, I've been up for better than 24 hours, since about 7am Monday morning. Went to work, came home went out at midnight, haven't been to bed since, though I have had some involuntary naps.

What was I doing? I could tell you, but I think this montage says it all:

Vlog #1

Meant to post this yesterday, but oh well. I should have one for today though, another video, much shorter.

Magic World: Robert Michael Brown, The Chameleon

Hey everybody. Thanks for joining me.

So before I started writing this post tonight I knew that I was going to need a name for the character who would be my "Man of Many Faces." So I looked up the most common first and last names, and chose from among them the first middle and last names I thought would be the most inconspicuous.
Then I did a Google Image Search for the name Robert Michael Brown just to see what came up. The result was everything I had hoped for and more, with a ton of different faces, mostly white male ages 18 to 60, with different hair styles, different eyes, different facial hair, different everything. And all completely forgettable. In this context. If you saw if you saw a picture  of one of these guys, then were asked to point him out on the street, chances are you wouldn't recognize him, unless the contrast was extreme, such as if he were the only guy.

And that's what this character is. Forgettable. Plain. Normal.

Until he's not. And there is where things get a bit awesome, because when Robert goes into character he's suddenly a different person, whether that person is a homeless person begging for money, or a wealthy socialite, or a Hollywood A-lister, or Joe Shmoe Automechanic Hometown USA.

Robert Michael Brown was born to Alice and David Brown, elves in a small town in the middle of nowhere. His life growing up was for the most part fairly uneventful, his family wasn't wealthy, but nor were they poor, and they lived in relative comfort. In school he was average in the class, neither at the top or the bottom, but consistently average. (He had taken several IQ tests however, administered  by his parents, and the objective conclusion they discovered was that he actually had an IQ far above average, approaching Genius level, but when they asked him why he wasn't do better in school, he confessed he wasn't quite ready to start calling that much attention to himself.)

Then when he reached High School two amazing things happened, that touched his deeply on a personal level.

First he decided to join the drama club, because of the second reason, which is that he found himself very attracted to someone who was a member of that club. This was surprising to him, because up until this point his his life he hadn't really considered the concept of attraction, though most of the other kids in his class had boyfriends/girlfriends for the past several years, since like sixth grade, though those relationships tended to be very tame. A lot of handholding and other minor displays of affection. Robert has always thought of himself apart from that kind of odd display.

But then he started to feel something a little strange, like affection, caring, and a sense of a magnetic force drawing him in. It was like suddenly finding out that you had this whole range of emotions that you had previously never realized you were capable of having. It frightened him, excited him, saddened him, but ultimately made him realize that up to that point something had been missing from his life, though of course at the time he was only fourteen.

The fact that the person he was attracted to was another boy wasn't even a concern, it was just a blip on the radar.

James was an actor in the theater, and very popular among that group, but socialized outside of that group very seldom, so in order for Robert to be able to attempt to socialize with him he would have to join the theater.

During his very first audition the drama teacher, who was also the director of the plays, gave the group a brief introduction to acting, saying that the idea was to put yourself in the place of the character you were playing, and try to react the way that they would in that situation.

They were reading for Grease and the director had given them a scene with Danny Zuko and Burger Palace Boys, a dialoge version of the male half of the song "Summer Nights" which the director had written up himself to test the range of emotion that each of the boys could give without having to worry about the singing, which would come later.

When Robert gave his rendition the director had thought he had already cast his Danny, from among the Seniors, and only freshmen were left, and the director had seen Robert's demeanor prior to the audition, very reserved, quiet, and always giving you the impression that he was somehow studying you. He didn't have high hopes.

But when Danny Zuko arrived on the stage and started telling all his friends about the girl he'd met over the summer, and how he had conquered her, before looking dreamily off into some inner world of his own to remember the tender moments spent with Sandra Dee, then putting the bravado back in place. When his friends left him and he was alone the sense of longing and sadness for Sandy that he showed, nearly brought a tears to the director's eyes.

Then when it was over, the unassuming and reserved Robert stood on the stage, looking calmly and expectantly back at the stunned director.

The relationship with James lasted through all of high school, but James had insisted that it should remain a secret because (as this was the mid 80s) homosexuality wasn't as widely accepted, and he feared the kinds of reprisals that would come with an openly gay relationship. Robert respected that request, but as he never really considered it to be anyone else's business.

But in their final year, in the last week before graduation James caused a scandal by getting caught in the boys locker room with a football player, in a very compromising situation. James had been correct in his assumption about reprisal, as he was hospitalized by the other members of the football team for "turning Shawn (the one he was caught with) gay." Shawn, for his part, was kicked off the team and forever shunned, though he never had so much as a hand laid on him.

Though he never showed it openly, Robert was devastated by the betrayal. He went to the hospital and to James' room, but did not enter, only looked at him passively through the open door, betraying no emotion whatsoever. When James saw him standing there he broke down and started weakly crying, and looking away. Robert left him without so much as speaking a word.

This reaction from James left Robert thinking about people, and about the nature of trust. he trusted James because James had seemed sincere. It's even possible that he may have BEEN sincere, but in the end it had been a manipulation.

Robert had never understood most of this, his connection with James had been his only relationship, and his only real connections with anyone other than his parents. So he decided to conduct a series of experiments in human connection with himself. He spent time developing relationships with people in different guises and personalities using his acting skill which had developed even further in the intervening years, then just did things to gauge emotional response, and attempted to discern how different kinds of people reacted in different situations. He made extensive notes, and compiled  several books worth of information.

When the time came to break off the relationships that he had developed he compiled his information and developed a strategy that would end the relationship with as little impact on those he had chosen, reasoning that there was no reason to be unduly cruel, and anyway, it was possible he might have use of them someday again.

He then created a persona which he called Professor Wildmark PhD, disguising himself dramatically, and released several bestselling self-help books, from which he made enough money to support a lavish lifestyle.

However once he had accomplished this he began to feel rather bored. Needing more of a challenge, he decided to see how effective his information on personality and emotional responses would be at manipulating people into doing things they would otherwise not normally do.

He decided that he would use the exceedingly rich to do this little experiment, reasoning that if he talked them into handing over their valuable possessions they would be able to afford to go out and get more. He had no need, nor any particular desire to do lasting harm to anyone, not out of any particular sentimentality really, but just because harming others who did not deserve it seemed somehow... wrong. It gave him a feeling that he might have described as sadness, which he didn't like.

When he started working with the incredibly rich however, he began to notice a trend. Many of the very rich he ingratiated himself to seemed to find ways to aquire their wealth by taking advantage of those that were less fortunate then they were. What's more they seemed to delight in this behavior.

This made Robert quite upset. He decided then that he would not feel bad about doing a little harm to these rich people, those that were this cruel for no good reason other than gain. He used his considerable skills find ways to do incredible harm to the very wealthy, without harming those employees who worked for the companies they owned. Any money that he acquired was liquidated and moved through dummy accounts, laundered heavily, generally withdrawn as cash to be moved into another account or set of accounts, then given to people who had been victimized by these people.

He used the information he gathered from these escapades to write several more books, (in another guise of course) created as fiction, but using many of the same situations he himself had been in as the basis for his protagonists adventures.

A military Wizard Engineer read of these books, recognizing an incidence that had been described to him by an acquaintance (who he was not very fond of) sought out the Author, finding Richard G Dean, who had "written" the books. The Engineer had made a request of Robert, which is now classified. Robert began to feel the same unfamiliar attraction to the Wizard that he had to James all those years ago, and agreed to help.

They developed a relationship, and both understood that the relationship would have to be short term. Robert appreciated the honesty, and due to that honesty let down his guard, and did not maintain the Richard G Dean persona  for him.

When the work was complete and the relationship had ended, Robert felt another emotion that he was generally unfamiliar with; Satisfaction. He did feel satisfaction at a job well done whenever he had completed a con, but this kind of satisfaction was different. It felt like the kind of satisfaction one would get after a particularly cleansing shower, that even though the shower was over the feeling of cleanliness persisted.

So several years later when the Wizard was killed, Robert made it his priority to find out who had done this, and... couldn't decide what to do with the culprit, perhaps con him out of all his possessions, or drive him into destitution. Perhaps he should kill the culprit. This idea gave Robert the a  similar feeling of satisfaction as he received when he completed a particularly difficult con.

He had never killed anyone before, he had never needed to defend himself. This emotion was therefore a little strange, and would bear examination before deciding how to deal with it.

*****************************

And there he is.

Part of the reason that I wanted to work on him tonight was that I just finished playing the D&D character that is most similar to him. It's interesting to try to get inside the headspace of what I would classify as a "high functioning sociopath" who feels only limited emotions. I don't know how accurate the rather dispassionate benevolence is, though I imagine that for him it's a sort of mental balancing of the scales rather than any kind of sense of righteousness or fair play.

I'd thought about having him have multiple personalities, but that sounded a little complicated and convoluted. I won't rule it out, but for now I think I'm just going to keep him this way.

Comments and suggestions are always welcomed, and valued. Even if you just want to say how you feel about something, feedback is a gift.

And as always, Thanks for Reading!

Coming to grips with faith

A lot going on today, so I didn't have time to write a whole lot today, which seems to be the norm on the weekends. At some point I may have to rethink my schedule of writing, and possibly go 5 day a week, and just add something on the weekends if I have time.

But for now, here's something I had done already.

I have a hard time with faith. Growing up I've been taught to accept a lot of things that I later found out weren't really true, like Santa, the Easter Bunny, and Christopher Columbus discovering America. The more you find out that things you once accepted aren't true, the more you become disillusioned and skeptical. One might say "jaded" and to a certain extent that's true, but I think that implies a cynicism that I don't really feel. Some truths are hard to accept, and if the way you come to those truths is through a well intentioned lie, or fabrication then it's difficult to think that there was any malicious intent. It's certainly possible, but I find that maintaining a positive attitude about these things helps keep stress and alienation from turning me into a total bastard.
So that tends to be how I see religion. A largely well intentioned lie meant to help people be better people.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still think there are people out there who use religion for their own personal gain, and to have control over people, and how they think, and to promote rampant bigotry and hate. But that’s not the fault of most people.

Most people just need comfort. And the idea of a larger-than-life father figure, who loves you and wants nothing but the best for you is far more comforting than feeling that you’re on your own, randomly bouncing around the world, subject to the most random whims of coincidence. People fear chaos, so they choose to believe in order. They fear the unknown, so they give it a name, so they can know it. People fear death so they tell themselves that it won’t be the enxd. And this is what they call God.

How could you not want this? An answer to all life’s insecurities, a voice in the darkness that says “You are not alone. I’m here and I’m going to take care of you. I will protect you and then when it’s time I’ll bring you home.” I can’t object to that. I can’t tell someone that it’s just a fabrication. That would be like telling a three year old there’s no Santa.

You might get the impression from this, if you happen to be a believer that I find your faith a bit silly. Well… you have to look at it from my perspective. If I told you I had an imaginary friend named Wilkerson who was a tortoise who only spoke in iambic pentameter and that he was a ghost that nobody could see or hear, not even me… you would probably think I was a bit silly too. But far from that, I think it’s an understandable silliness. It’s the kind of silly I can understand.

In fact if it had more "love everybody" and less "persecute everybody" and maybe take out the jihad all together then I think I would have no problem with religion . After all were all in this together, we have to look out for one another. Maybe then we'll feel a little less afraid.

Magic World: Rachele Albini, the Leader

Okay then.

Yesterday I fleshed out a character that I already knew to a certain extent. I'd had him rattling around in my brain, I just had to work out a few details. Honestly the result of that surprised me. I did not have any intention of making him the child of a home broken by physical abuse. But once the idea occurred to me, suddenly it couldn't be any other way.

I wonder if other writers have these kinds of surprises when they write. I mean when you're writing you have to assume that there are things happening in the world the audience doesn't see, but that doesn't mean that as a writer you have any more notion that they're happening. But of course when you fill in those details later so that it suits the story, everyone thinks you're a genius. I often wonder how much of the back-story J K Rowling really had. I mean sure there were some fairly big things she had to know like about (--redacted--) or how  (--redacted--) was really  (--redacted--) because there are allusions to it in the story. But some of the fine details had to have been fleshed out on the fly.

But today I have a different task in mind. Today I need to create a character from scratch.  I have a good number of characters for my Magic World so far, but one that I've been missing, is the leader of the little group of misfits. I don't have much of an idea, except that she is a woman, and I'm leaning toward ex-military, which is what I'm thinking for most of these characters. That might might go either way though, so we'll have to see.

But one thing I'm pretty good at is making up D&D characters from Zero concept to fully formed character, which someone might have to do if their character is somehow unceremoniously *ahem* decapitated for example. So I'm thinking of approaching this as a D&D build, which means I need a Race, Class, and Concept. So let's just start filling in the blanks

Name: Rachele Raffaella Albini
Race: Elf
Gender: Female
Height: 5' 9"
Weight: 110 lbs
Eyes: Black
Hair: Blonde
Alignment:Sarcastic Neutral
Affiliation:

When I come up with a character for the first time, and I don't have a concept in mind, it helps me to find a living base, a person around whom I can build the idea of the character, who embodies the concept I'm looking for, or who fits SOME of those concepts, but who also has other qualities that may help to inform other aspects of the character. So for this character I had several ideas ranging from Milla Jovovich, Kate Beckinsale, Eliza Dushku, Gabrielle Anwar, Lena Headly, even Daryll Hannah when she was in Kill Bill.

But finally I settled on Maria Bello. She seems to have the particular thing I'm looking for where she can be charismatic, sarcastic, sexy, yet haggard, as if life has treated her a bit roughly but she's gotten by because she's learned to play rough too. She also reminds me a bit of Carrie Fisher, back in the Star Wars era, with the voice, they sense of humor. And she's not afraid to get her hands dirty.

So let's start the back-story.

Rachele was born to Italian immigrants who came to the US a few years after World War II, (putting her in her 60s, elves age just a little slower than humans with median death age being around 90-110, which would make her the human equivalent of early 40s.) Her parents both died of Polio when she was 4. They were working in hard conditions, her father was a coal miner, and her mother a seamstress, both working for very little pay in hard conditions in very close proximity to others. It's unclear who contracted the disease, but one gave it to the other, and both died without seeing their daughter again.

Rachele was in communal care with several other children of immigrants who were working to pay off their debts for their transport to the US, but when her parents died she was put into an orphanage. Her life there was difficult, with both boys and girls thrown together. Most of the children there were several years older than her, their parents having died in WWII, and they were resentful of the younger children whom they always felt got better treatment. She learned to fight to survive, but also to defend those who weren't able to defend themselves. By the age of 7 she had earned the respect of all the younger children, for being a defender and an organizer, and among the older kids, who she treated fairly and with respect after having kicked their asses.

When she was 14 she had to leave the Orphanage when the new caretaker took an unhealthy interest in her and the other girls. She was the only one who was brave enough to go out on her own, and she knew that the other girls would be in trouble, so before she left she stole the cyanide that was used to poison the rats in the sewers beneath the orphanage. She'd read up on the dosages, and knew how much it would take to kill the new caretaker, and she used two-thirds that amount in the wine he drank with his dinner the night she left. As he sat writhing sickly a few minutes after he had downed the glass, she came in the window, shoving his face gleefully into his food. She told him about the cyanide, and explained to him exactly the dosage she would need to kill him, and that she would be checking up on the girls, and that if she ever found out that he had done anything to any of them, he would have to check his food and drink for the rest of his life, which, she promised, would be quite short. She smiled casually as she told him all this, then tossed the antidote kit that was kept near the cyanide bottle on the table and calmly left out the window.

The following four years she traveled the country, hitchhiking mostly, doing odd jobs, and seeing the backroads and trails from the cabs of mac trucks and vans, and other vehicles. She dealt violently with those who tried to take her by force. She was not squeamish at all about hurting people, and managed to steal a knife from a drunk asshole who wasn't really sober enough to try to fight her. Leaving his drunk ass without his wallet on the side of the highway was how she had gotten her first car too, a 1968 firebird, when she was sixteen. She forged his name on the title and signed it over to herself, claiming she had paid $200 for it. When she flashed a little elven cleavage at the county  assessor, he smiled and signed off on the paperwork, reasoning that there was no way a skinny little elf girl could possibly steal a car from a man.

When she turned 18 she joined the Marines Womens Reserve, and spent a few years working as auto mechanic, a skill she picked up keeping the Firebird in good repair. Her unit was involved in several engagements, and in most of them she managed to acquire one of her male compatriots rifles, against orders, and assisted in defending their unit. A few times she was promoted for valor and demoted for insubordination,  once nearly at the same time. The hypocrisy soon wore thin on her, so when the CIA approached her after she had come to their attention, she took up their offer, and left the Marines (though she got the tattoo on her shoulder before she left.)

The CIA appreciated her self-reliance, and willingness to do violence, and she spend the next several decades learning languages and fighting styles, and firearms, tactics, but more importantly influence. She learned how to manipulate people, and put ideas in their heads, and soon she was leading a team of her own. She operated in the deteriorating soviet block during the last part of the Cold War, and managed a few coups that allowed a few countries to gain independence, "all for Uncle Sam" she would say sarcastically. She worked with a Military Magical Engineer for a while, but much of her records during that time are classified (meaning I don't want to try to flesh that part out just yet.) And following that, she was offered a choice of a desk in Langley, or Forced Retirement. She chose the latter, traveling the world, doing work for the vast network of international informants and allies, to generally help out the underdogs, and work with the military forces of any country that was fighting for independence.

The she got a call that an old friend had died, and headed back to America.

*******************

Well that was interesting! Again, just kinda came out of nowhere. This was a bit difficult because I  had wanted her to be a badass, but for the time period I wan't sure how I would get her into combat. Thank goodness for the CIA who is willing to use anyone, so long as they can do the job. At least in my version of the world. In reality women weren't really recruited till the 80's though the info I saw may have just been a clever ruse.

EDIT: 1/9/2014 After reading something written by Jim Butcher about how to write, I wanted to go ahead and add some details about Rachele's character to make the character more interesting and to fill out some details. The first thing is adding TAGS, which are key words tied to that character, and used almost solely in conjunction with that character and TRAITS which are concepts or things associated with that character, almost a trademark, like certain clothes, hair, attitude, and other types of things that are easy to imagine.

 TAGS: Haunted, Sardonic, Lean, black-eyed, unsettling.

TRAITS: Dirty Blonde Hair, Half-smile, Faded chestnut-brown leather jacket, blue jeans, Quick Temper, sarcasm,

Exaggerated: Quick Tempter, (able to control when the stakes are high) Moody, wicked sense of humor, "been in the game a long time," knows how to lead, how to encourage.

Exotic Position: 60 year old elf in the CIA.

Anyway, I'm done for the night. I get very few comments or suggestions, so don't be shy people, they are welcomed. And as always...

Thanks for Reading!