#AtoZChallenge, Day 26: Zaumg

On April 30, 2016April 21, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing

Zaumg started off as a joke on Twitter while I was flailing about trying to come up with a proper title for The Sanctum of the Sphere. I wanted something that sounded like a Star Wars/Indiana Jones/ adventure serial type of subtitle, and specifically was trying to think of something alliterative. When I referenced The Temple of Doom as a template I was working from, some jackass (and I say that with love) suggested The Ziggurat of ZOMG. I rejected it, for obvious reasons.

There is a story in the forthcoming Tales from the Benevolence Archives called The Ziggurat of Zaumg.

It is the Internet’s fault.

My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives. You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.

Previously: “Yank”.

Tinted back window with a bubble in the middle

On April 29, 2016April 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

51NDuZehByL._SY355_.jpg My car is a 2001 Ford Escape with just over 150,000 miles on it. I got it when I traded in my beloved Toyota Yaris (shut up, it was the perfect city car) for something with a backseat big enough to put a car seat into. I literally walked into the dealership with one car and walked out with another; the Yaris was paid off and we did an even swap off the lot. I traded a relatively new vehicle for a much bigger, older one.

Calling it a hooptie is probably overstating things. It actually runs pretty damn well for its age; there’s an oil leak deep in the engine where it’s not worth the money to fix, and the brake lines chose a surprisingly convenient (that’s not a typo) time to blow a couple of years ago, but it’s done well for a car that is itself actually old enough to drive.

The running boards were rusted out enough that several months ago I tore them off the car barehanded. For the last little while, then, these ugly, rusty, sharp brackets have been hanging off of the sides of the car where the boards used to be attached. I finally got around to trying to remove them myself last week and my ratchet sheared off on the first bolt, so today I took it in and had professionals remove them. My car looks 50% less garbage now than it did this morning, which is nice.

There was a television in the waiting room, which made the experience way more surreal than it ought to have been. First of all, I’m so glad that the primary is just a few days away and that our usual television-watching methods don’t involve commercials, because holy shit does Ted Cruz have a lot of commercials. And he’s simultaneously running against Trump and Clinton, which is kind of hilarious. There was one Trump commercial and what seemed like a hundred Cruz commercials during the hour or so I was waiting.

The actual program being shown was the Today Show. The Today Show was celebrating 90s hiphop for some reason. Either that or I took some very serious drugs this morning before dropping my son off before school and then forgot I did it, which… might be possible? I guess? I brought a book, and was buried in it when the first verse of Ice Ice Baby broke into my brain, and I looked up to see Vanilla Ice dancing on a stage with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And the word live was up in the corner.

vanilla-ice-turtles_769aab1f0a208872f581d7833ebd7699

I thought, for a moment, that I was either hallucinating or had gone back in time. Only the crowd, filled with old white people, managed to convince me that the body shop hadn’t warped back to 1993.

A performance by Salt n’ Pepa followed, which was also weird, as I could have sworn that at least one of them had sworn off rap forever. Kid n’ Play were interviewed. Fucking Kid n’ Play.

This is why I never leave the house, guys.

#AtoZChallenge, Day 25: “Yank”

On April 29, 2016April 21, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing2 Comments

“Yank” is one of the short stories in The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1. And this entry is kind of hard to write, because it’s a short story, right, and so if I tell you much about it I’ll be ruining it, but I still need an entry for Y anyway.

Hm. Yank is the first story with dwarves in it, the first mention of the Malevolence, and also the story about what happens when you think you’re in tunnelspace and then suddenly you’re not. It’s kind of important to Sanctum, come to think of it. Read it! You’ll like it.

Previously: Elvish pronouns.

#AtoZChallenge, Day 24: Elvish Pronouns

On April 28, 2016April 21, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing3 Comments

Because elves typically do not have a gender, elvish pronouns do not match the binary “he/she” construction common to English. Elvish pronouns begin with X, meaning that I am the only participant in the A to Z Challenge who had an easier time finding a word for X than he did for J.

Elvish pronouns are as follows:

He/she: Xe
His/hers: Xir

The genderless “they” and “their” can be used for multiple elves.

Previously: Whisper-on-the-Waters.

Here we go here we go here we go

On April 27, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Work2 Comments

Okay.

I’m going to have a productive day today, people. If it kills me. I have a job interview in half an hour, and once that’s done I have a literal list of projects from which to choose from, and I’m gonna bloody well get to as many of them as I can before I have to go collect the boy from school this afternoon. Today will be productive.

You hear me, world?

Productive.

Getting stuff done.

Yeah.

#AtoZChallenge, Day 23: Whisper-on-the-Waters

On April 27, 2016April 21, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing

Whisper-on-the-Waters is a dwarf and a high-ranking member of the Noble Opposition. She appears in The Sanctum of the Sphere.

Dwarves are an intensely matriarchal culture, and women by law hold all positions of status and power. Female dwarves typically have “story” names (two other dwarves from BA stories are Smashes-the-Stars and Shocks-the-Mountains, for example.) Male dwarves are practically slaves unless they happen to be the children of very highborn dwarven women; most male dwarves have a three-letter name, not always especially pronounceable. Brazel and Grond have been called upon to “liberate” male dwarves from their homes on more than one occasion, as the few allowed access to education often try to escape dwarven society to make their way in freedom somewhere else.

Previously: Brian K. Vaughan.

#AtoZChallenge, Day 22: Brian K. Vaughan

On April 26, 2016April 21, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing

Brian K. Vaughan is a comic book and television writer best known for several seasons of Lost and the comic series Y: The Last Man and Saga. Vaughan is also indirectly responsible for the existence of the Benevolence Archives series, and if I ever meet him I’m giving him a copy of the books whether he wants them or not.

I read an interview with Vaughan just after George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, just before the Saga series launched, where he pointed out that instead of getting mad at Lucas for selling what was, after all, his own property, we ought to use Star Wars to inspire us to create our own stories. This got me thinking about what would have happened if Han and Chewie hadn’t come back at the Battle of Endor, and soon after Brazel and Grond were real. The earlier Benevolence Archives stories are very clearly (and deliberately) Star Wars homages, and while the series is moving away from that as it becomes more mature the influence is still clear. If reading that interview hadn’t led me down that path of thought, the series might not exist.

You should be reading Saga, by the way. It’s excellent.

Previously: Untkaar.

Two quick true stories

On April 25, 2016April 25, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Parenting4 Comments

It is Saturday night and I am at OtherJob. A mother and her young daughter– six, perhaps seven years old– come up to the counter. The little girl is carrying a toy stuffed dog. (Given where this story is going, it is probably important that the word “toy” be in there.)

She shows me the dog in that proud way little kids do, a thing I’ve seen my son do with strangers a million times, and tells me his name is Happy. I make entertained grown up noises at her and pivot toward Mom to explain how our price structure works.

She keeps talking. She shows me a hole in Happy’s side.

“This is where I cut him with a scissor,” she says.

“Um. Okay,” I respond.

She shows me where his back leg is nearly cut off.

“And this is where I cut him with a knife!” she says. She’s super excited about cutting Happy with scissors and knives.

My eyebrows raise a bit, and I look at Mom, not saying anything.

Mom is mortified, and says “She didn’t cut him with anything.” Sure, Mom, okay.

And then the little girl starts chanting at us.

A scissor and a knife!
A scissor and a knife!
A scissor and a knife!
A scissor and a knife!

Never seen a parent complete a transaction that quickly before.

There is an old vanity cabinet in the room of our house that we haven’t settled on a name for yet. The den, maybe? The family room, as opposed to the living room? The playroom? Who the hell knows, but it’s in there, and the top of the thing has sort of become a messy catchall for artwork stuff of the boy’s that we don’t really know what to do with. The dog’s food and water bowls are right next to this vanity.

Several weeks ago, a little candle holder thing he made at school for Halloween got knocked over, and the little LED candle that was in there fell out and landed on the floor in between the dog’s bowl and the vanity. That little electronic candle has annoyed me every time I have seen it for weeks, and it took me until today to bend my lazy ass over and pick the goddamn thing up to put it back in the jar and back on the vanity.

I don’t tell you this for any particular reason other than maybe it’ll make you feel better about whatever stupid shit you’re avoiding doing right now.