#AtoZChallenge, Day 26: Zaumg

Luther M. Siler

ZZaumg 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

Luther M. Siler2 Comments

51NDuZehByL._SY355_.jpgMy 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”

Luther M. Siler2 Comments

Y“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.

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: Elvish pronouns.

 

#AtoZChallenge, Day 24: Elvish Pronouns

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

XBecause 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.

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: Whisper-on-the-Waters.

 

Here we go here we go here we go

Luther M. Siler2 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.

bvqio7pvritx9ixi5gab.gif