New Stuff

I honestly didn’t expect it to be this long before I posted a new blog, but life made other demands.  Because of my chronic pain condition they found something easy for me to do at work–which just happened to give me forty hours a week for the first time since the Holidays.  They’ve been so accomodating that I can’t help but sing their praises.

Maybe it’s because I’d already gained the reputation as a hard, reliable worker, but Target’s treatment of me and my condition has been nothing but supportive.  I’ve long thought them a decent employer, dedicated to diversity and keeping team members safe and happy, but I think the management especially has gone the extra mile to help me out.

I’ve worked for a few large corporations before and this is the first one I can remember that seemed to really care about everyone, both team members and guests, as much as they say they do.

Besides the chronic pain deal, I’ve also been busy putting together a new version of my Role-Playing Game based on my books.  And, since the books are actually based on the original game, it’s almost a full circle.  Designing a game is a LOT different than writing fiction, but it’s something I have a LOT of experience at by now.  The original design and playtesting phase lasted over fifteen years.

So, yeah.  I’m currently working forty hours and doing the RPG thing (I’ve been doing a lot of it at work while sitting there at my little table, playing door guard, and taking care of the construction guys as they come in and out).  Busy busy busy.

Chronic pain or not, I’m almost always busy doing something.  Even if my body can’t do the things I used to do, my brain is firing on all cylinders.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of my RPG…even after I finish THIS book, I have three more settings to consider.

I know that computer games have taken the place of classic table-top role-playing for the most part and, while I have nothing specifically against computer games (I have a few favorites myself), there are things about the tabletop games that make them inherently superior to the computer RPGs.  Computer games are, by nature, far more linear than any table top game is…  simply because it takes a human mind to react to the oddball directions a real gamer can take a particular scenario.

People play RPGs for different reasons.  Some just like the hack and slash varieties, while others like extreme role-playing.  People like me, on the other hand, enjoy the problem solving and tactical end of things.  Tactical-minded players exist to make Game Masters pull their hair out.  I’ve long had the reputation for being a major pain in the ass when it comes to gaming.  I use items in creative ways and tend to shock the GMs when I do so.

My friend Charlie’s pretty good at this too.  During the solitary gaming convention we attended, we played in an acquaintance’s Bureau 13 game (Stalking The Night Fantastic, by FASA games) and frustrated him to no end when we managed to derail his plans for killing at least ONE of the PCs by the end of the session.

Dean and his brother Glen belong to the “have to kill a PC so they know we’re serious” mindset that I’ve never adopted myself.  I only kill characters when the player does something so stupid that it’s unavoidable.  It’s more fun to simply screw with them by making them think their way around problems rather than trying to bash their way through.

But, like I said, games fulfill different needs for different people.  Infinity RPG will, hopefully, be able to fulfill all of them.  Roleplay, Hack and Slash, AND Tactical.  It’s going to leave a lot of leeway to the “Guide” or “GM” (I’m using the term “Guide” in this version) to ad-lib.  I’m working on providing a basic guideline, not rules cast in stone.  I’ve found that ever GM and gaming group modifies the rules to their liking anyway, no matter which game’s involved, so why bother putting everything in stone when it’s going to be changed eventually anyway?

Anyway…that’s what’s going on in my life at the moment. 

See you next time

Miles to Go…

It’s never bothered me particularly to join a series in the middle.  My first memorable introduction to Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Miles Vorkosigan” series was what I believed to be the third book.  “Ceteganda.”  Miles is a Lieutenent sent to act as his Emperor’s representative at the state funeral of the Cetegandan Dowager Empress.

As it’s been a while since I “read” it (listened to it on my ipod), that details are fairly fuzzy.  Much more immediate in my memory are, in order, Mirror Dance, Komarr, and A Civil Campaign.  My most recent “read” was the first book in the series–namely, The Warrior’s Apprentice.

I don’t mind going back to the “origins” of Miles Vorkosigan–though my wife tells me that two books exist that deal with Miles’s parents meeting and subsequent romance–even after I’ve read books farther out in the series.

It changes one’s perspective of the character in unexpected ways.  I was stunned at how much of a bullshit artist young Miles actually was.  He wove elaborate fictions, or semi-fictions, then used his wits, imagination, and plain dumb luck to make his fictions into something like a reality.  A tactical genius, if not necessarily a strategic one.  Throughout the series, he’s shown a somewhat appalling inability to look past the immediate situation to one that may succeed it.

Never was it more apparent than in the first book.  Miles builds himself a huge mercenary fleet, all by accident, and inadvertently runs afoul of a law back on his home world that makes gathering a force of more than 20 armsmen an act of Treason.

I’m going to track down Ceteganda and “read” it next.  I think it’s on an older Audible account.

Seriously.  I can’t rave about these books enough.  Military science-fiction, space opera, comedy, romance, and interstellar intrigue all rolled into a single series.  Speaking from the perspective of someone not particularly drawn to “Hard” science-fiction, I have to say that I believe this series is among the best science fiction has too offer.

Bujold’s fantasy isn’t exactly common either.  The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls are among the best fantasy works I’ve read in a long time.

Truly worthy reads all the way around.

 

Influences

I’ve been asked about my influences.  Which authors I most admired and respected, and wished to emulate.

If you read my stuff, there’s no point where you’re likely to stop and think “this reminds me of ________.”  The only comparison I’ve ever heard, and more than once, is to Roger Zelazny.  I take that as a high compliment.  One person even remarked that it had something to do with the fact that my most god-like characters are, at their very core, still very human.  Humanity Abides.

In grade school, long before the Infinity RPG was but a gleam in my eye, I was soaking up the works of Tolkein, Heinlein, Alan Dean Foster, Fred Saberhagen, Roger Zelazny, Philip Jose Farmer, Andre Norton, Anne Mcaffrey.  I was also devouring comics at a prodigious rate.  My allowance went for comic books and books.  Well, half of it.  Half of the five dollars went into my gorilla bank.  That left me two fifty, which often bought at least one second-hand book and a few comics (they were like 35 cents apiece back then).  I read science fiction, westerns, contemporary novels, Sherlock Holmes novels, James Bond books, and even historical “romances.”  Mary Stewart’s Arthurian books come to mind, as does Morgan Llewellyn’s “Lion Of Ireland.”

In junior high I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons and other rpgs, and began to read anything remotely connected to the games.  Weiss and Hickman’s original Dragonlance Chronicles, I believe, were the best of these.  I read the Dune series the first time in junior high, though I really didn’t start understanding it until I was a little older.

 I don’t even have a clear estimate of how many books I’ve read.  Or even how many I’ve read two or more times.

You notice, I still haven’t really answered the question.  Who’s had the most affect on me and my writing?  I have to say all of them.  From the authors of my childhood, the comic book writers, then others like Mercedes Lackey, Tanya Huff, and Glen Cook as I reached my early twenties.

Now one might ask what my favorite books are.  I’ve got a top something list.  Plus there’s a whole list on my website, with little mini-reviews for most of the books.  You can’t beat that.

Among the best?

Well, in no particular order…

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice.

Strands of Starlight by Gael Baudino.

All three of the “Black Jewels” novels by Anne Bishop.

The whole “Dune” series by Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson.

The “Harry Potter”  books.

The “Miles Vorkosigan” novels by Lois McMaster Bujold.

The Moonlight Cove novels of Dean Koontz (“Fear Nothing” and “Seize the Night”).

Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land.”

“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” and its sequels.

Robert Asprin’s “Myth” series.

“World of Tiers” by Philip Jose Farmer.

“Chronicles of Amber,” by Roger Zelazny.  (Both the first series and the second series.  Love them all).

The “Queen’s Own” series by Mercedes Lackey.

“The SERRAted Edge” novels, also by Mercedes Lackey.

Tanya Huff’s “Blood” or “Vicky Nelson” books.

Jennifer Robeson’s “Del and Tiger” books.

J.D. Robb’s “In Death” novels.

The “Young Wizard” series by Diane Duane

This is a partial list of some of my favorite books.  Rather eclectic, wouldn’t you say?  And that’s without adding Lee Childe’s “Jack Reacher” books or Robert Tenenbaum’s very amusing “Karp” novels.

Of course, other things have influenced me as well.  The Hercules and Xena TV shows, believe it or not, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Old Saturday morning cartoons.  Comic Books.

It’s amazing how many times you’ll see something, the expression of someone else’s idea, and think…”that’s not the way I would do it.”  And an idea is born.

The things that have influenced me are so wide-ranging, it’s not a question I can answer in only a few words.

Sometimes my stepmother will ask me a question, expecting a “yes” or “no” answer and frustrated when it doesn’t quite work that way.  This is sort of the same thing.  My influences and inspirations are so widely arrayed that it’s impossible even to point in a particular direction.

Influences?  Everything and anything.  You name it.  Movies, books, comics, music, role-playing games, TV shows, movies, and even my own life experiences.  Nothing worth remembering overshadows anything else.

And that’s the way I like it.

To Absent Friends

I once ran into an old girlfriend at a bar.  We talked for a few minutes and I happened to mention that she’d come to mind a time or two in the fairly recent past.  She seemed shocked by this and it left me scratching my head.

I take it she never really thought about me.

That’s okay.  She’s certainly not the first person I’ve lost contact with over the course of my life.  I find myself wondering if some of them think about me on occasion.  Lost friends, former lovers, and even people closer than that.  I never knew my mother.  She left me with my father when I was very small.

My primary mother figure growing up was my stepmom.  She lived with us for about eight years and it was she who had forced me to practice my times tables all summer after I’d brought home an F in math the previous year.  She started reading The Hobbit to me and then quit part-way through and thus jump-started my love of reading and writing.

I haven’t seen her since I was fifteen, when I traveled back down into Central Oregon to visit.  I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for her now.  I have no idea what last name she’s using, or even where to look anymore.

There are also friends who’ve fallen by the wayside, people to whom I thought I would be bound forever.

I didn’t help matters, I suppose, with all the traveling I did.  I would vanish, then show back up again, trusting at least a few friends could be found where I’d left them.  At any given time, I might be unreachable.  On the road, or simply in a mental retreat.  I’d return or reopen communications sooner or later.

As my life settled and I acquired such things as a permanent phone number, address, and e-mail address, I found my friends simply dropping out of sight.  As I began to get my life together, and really start moving towards accomplishing my goals, the people who’d been there for me during the rough parts just fell off the planet.

Not all of them, certainly.  But more than a few.

Two of the people I’d been working with on the Infinity RPG walked away when I met the mother of my two boys.  They were right in some respects…she was a mistake.  But my kids aren’t, no matter how you figure it.

You hear that Glen?  Bill?  Or should I just call you The Archivist and George Harrigan, your most memorable characters from the annals of the Infinity RPG?  You guys were right about her.  Somehow I don’t think that comes as a surprise.

Then there are always those you feel obligated to apologize to, for one reason or another.  An old girlfriend you didn’t treat quite as well as you should, or a friend with whom you’d had a falling out you now regret.  I imagine most of us have googled their names just out of curiosity.

I’m telling you…when people fall off my planet, they freakin’ vanish.  Google hasn’t helped me find a single one of them.  Oh, I know one of my first live-in girlfriends is signed up with that classmates.com site.  Hell, I wouldn’t mind a hello from just about any of the people who did the Rocky Horror thing at the Sunrise Mall in Sacramento during the mid eighties.

People I could’ve sworn would end up on the web for something cool don’t seem to exist at all.  It’s hard to believe I’m the one sitting here wondering where everyone else is.

Life’s funny that way sometimes, I guess.  Rarely turns out in any way like you might expect.

So, anyway…  Here’s a web-dedication to all my absent friends.  From my real mom to my stepmom, to the folks in Sacramento, Timberlane, Auburn, Bremerton, Tacoma, and those met on the open road  who might remember a certain young writer with big dreams.

Yeah.  This is exactly who you think it is.

Thanks for everything.

The Origins of Infinity

Infinity was born as a conceptual role-playing game that involved nothing more than two ten-sided dice rolled as percentages.  I’m not sure who initially came up with the game, but I was introduced to it through several Rocky Horror afficianados who hung out at the Sunrise Mall in Sacramento (Fair Oaks, actually, but let’s not nit-pick) during the mid-eighties.

In this game, you played yourself, and after somehow escaping a harrowing death–or succumbing to it–you wake up in a strange place surrounding by odd creatures or objects.

It’s remarkably simple to play, and can be a lot of fun.  Anything can happen.  The impromptu game can be in any genre or sub-genre, from futuristic and sci-fi to horror, suspense, or fantasy.  When I was first introduced to it, it wasn’t unusual for the players to develop special powers like invisibility or flight or anything else they could dream up.  See, we had to discover our powers by trying to do things.  The GM would roll the dice and the higher the roll, the more successful the attempt.

It’s possible to play nearly anywhere.  We’ve even played in the car, while on a road trip.  Great way to kill time.

I brought it with me to Washington State and introduced people not only to this simple game, but the background I was already beginning to develop for it.  Characters like Deryk Shea began to find their way into different adventures as recurring NPCs.

Here’s where I have to pause and thank two people I haven’t seen in over twenty years.  Dave and Tammy.  It was Dave who first told me “Why don’t you design a REAL game around all of these ideas?”

“God Wars” became “TAU Wars” with the introduction of two percentile tables.   One was a list of about six “Agencies” and the other was an “Agent Class” table that determined how experienced your character was.

And then it took off from there.

Fifteen years.  Then burnout.  As many as fifty or sixty people may have played what is now Infinity, it one or more of its incarnations.  First it was “God Wars,” then “TAU Wars” and then “Multiverse Unlimited,” then “Metaverse Unlimited” and, finally, Infinity, the RPG.

A lot of people have contributed to the universe over the years.  Characters, weapons, magic, psionic abilities, martial arts…  It was a LOT of fun while it lasted.

“Loki’s Sin” was originally written to tell the story of where the agencies came from, how it all came to pass.  As it turns out, it took four books and several short stories to build the world I wanted.

It’s a little different from the RPG universe.  It had to be.  The game’s magic system would never have worked in fiction.  I wasn’t sure how I was going to tackle magic until I was close to the middle of the second book in the series, “Of Man and Monster.”  The idea of mana threads came to me out of the blue and I ran with it.  Mana threads exist everywhere, mages use them to construct spell sigils, and spell sigils affect probability in specific ways.  Magic as a pseudoscience.

What fun.

Someday I’ll get together another group and start gaming again.  If they’re the right people, maybe we’ll put our heads together and knock out an updated, marketable version of the Infinity RPG.  It’s certainly not out of the question.

 

Goal!

They say that setting attainable goals and reaching them is a recipe for success.  I suppose that’s true.  I set my goal of becoming an author when I was ten or eleven years old.  And no matter what, I kept that dream alive within me for nearly twenty-five years before I saw it come to fruition.

Most people told me that becoming an author wasn’t an attainable goal.  That it was a pipe dream.  Not because they didn’t believe I had talent, Ibut because it’s almost expected of those older and allegedly wiser than ourselves to keep us from dashing ourselves on the icy rocks of disappointment as we discover that what we want isn’t quite as easy to reach as we first imagined.

Not that I didn’t know becoming an author wouldn’t be difficult.  You have to remember, I started writing over thirty years ago.  There were no PCs or word processing programs back then.  Just me, a notebook, a pen or pencil, and my imagination.

My early stuff was probably crap.  I don’t have any of it now, so I have to rely on what I little I can recall.  Yep.  Pretty much crap.  It doesn’t even hurt to admit it.

I collected action figures as a kid.  I remember the GI Joe with the fuzzy hair.  Let me tell you, the new GI Joe toys don’t look anything like what I remember.  My dad didn’t quite get why his son was ‘playing with dolls,’ as he put it.

I created characters with those ‘dolls.’  I invented my own names and powers for them, and constructed elaborate scenarios in my head based on what I’d been reading at the time.  It took almost no time at all for me to discard the identity the action figure came with and dream up a whole new one.

I still try to get my dad to understand the causal relationship but he seems to be facing a conceptual wall there.  So be it.  I played with dolls.  Fine.  I can live with that.

I had a few teachers who went out of their way to encourage me.  Too few, if you want me to be perfectly honest about it.  I started writing when my parents took away my books to punish me for reading too much and not getting my schoolwork done.  In junior high my father forced me to take typing, though I was initially worried because it was considered a girl’s class.

My dad likes taking credit for that, at least.

I still think the idea of taking away books as a punishment is a pretty strange one.  Does anyone else find it rather odd?

Hell if I know.

So, I set myself the goal of becoming an author when I was quite young.  I had no idea how I was going to get there, but off I went.

I went to a lot of different schools growing up.  Something like seven grade schools, nine junior highs, and seven high schools.  One might say that writing was the most stable part of my life.

Eventually all the moving caught up to me and I discovered that my transcripts had been lost.  My school wanted me to repeat my junior year all over again.  I refused.  So my old man dragged me off to do drywall with him.

Now don’t get me wrong.  It’s a good trade.  But it wasn’t for me.  Problem was, I’d never decided precisely WHAT occupation would work for me.  All I’d ever wanted to be was a writer.  I had no other goals at all.

So I drifted.  I tell people I have an author’s resume.  I’ve done any number of things along the way, from roofing to working retail.  If I’ve learned one thing it’s that all jobs suck.  Some less than others, but the fact is that they all have things about them a person is bound to find objectionable.

Part of it’s attitude, of course.  Life’s a lot better if you get up every day and at least don’t hate what you do.  If you do, it’s all that much more difficult to find the bright spots.

I read and wrote and read and wrote, and then, when I was eighteen, someone suggested to me that I take the bare bones concept of an RPG someone had introduced me to and inject my own story and character ideas into it.

Infinity: The RPG was born as a percentile chart featuring a list of four or five different “agencies.”  Over the next fifteen years it expanded into a grandiose, rollicking madhouse of a game where the only limitations were where logic and imagination meet.  Anything might be possible in the Infinity Universe, but one had to justify it within the established rules of the game.

As many as fifty or sixty people at one time or another have played my game.

I can’t even begin to guess how many incarnations it went through.  Eventually, however, I just burned out on it.  Over the course of the next few years I did a little writing, but nothing concrete came out of it.

One day I simply decided that I wanted to tell the story of where my game universe began.  I really wasn’t sure where I was going with it when I sat down…just that I wanted to tell a different kind of story than most of the ones I’d read lately.

“Loki’s Sin” flowed out of me as if it was the book I’d been waiting my whole life to write.  Which, I suppose, it was.  Once I was finished with it, I just continued writing, pounding out Of Man and Monster in less than six months.  I set it aside and began “Freak City.”

Then came the day my wife posted an excerpt from Freak City on an email list and I received invitations from a few different e-book publishers to submit something.  Three years later I have a total of seven books on the market and another written manuscript on hand.

I just kept writing.  No matter what, I kept writing.  If I didn’t have a computer, I’d write in a notebook.  I shared my work with my friends.  I kept writing.  Through hell, high water, and personal crisis, I kept writing.  It kept me sane in rough times.

It keeps me sane now.

 

So I guess I’m the last person to tell anyone that their goals are out of reach.  I might have been better off if I’d known how to go for what I wanted directly, but the fact is that I knew in my heart that I wasn’t ready until I’d completed “Loki’s Sin.”  It was the first thing I’d written I truly believed was worthy of publication.

It’s a good feeling having accomplished that particular goal.  I’m what I’ve always wanted to be.  Now the goal is to become a successful author.  Which means I have to step out of my mental bubble and make a spectacle of myself.

In the end, I guess that’s what this blog is about.

Who is this guy?  What’s his deal?

I’m Saje Williams.  I write rather unique futuristic fantasy novels and short stories.  I’d like to say something to the effect of “if you like so-and-so, you’ll like my books.”  Problem is, there’s no good “so-and-so” to reference.  My books aren’t really LIKE anyone else’s.

They would, I’ve been told, make great graphic novels.  If that tells you anything.

I’d love to find an artist interested in such a collaboration.  Maybe someday I will.

I suppose one of my next goals is to get a wikipedia page about my novels.  Can’t write it myself, obviously.  Against the rules.  I guess it’ll happen sooner or later.

I’d also like to put together an anthology set in my universe, a collaboration of several different authors telling stories set in their part of the world.  It would be really cool to put together an Infinity: Earth anthology written by authors from all over the world.  It would be interesting to see how a European or Australian might describe how Loki’s Sin and the subsequent strangeness affected places as far flung as Lisbon or Perth.

I think it would be a wonderful project and a lot of fun for everyone.

Maybe tomorrow.

Well, I think it’s time for me to say goodnight.  I guess my message here is that no matter how out of range your goals might be, you’re the one who ultimately has to decide if you have what it takes to reach them.  No one else can.

Something to think about, eh?

 

Restart

This isn’t my first attempt to do the whole blog thing.  But I think most of the other attempts have been too narrowly focused to accomplish everything I’d like to do with a blog.  I occasionally blog on my myspace site, and still post political stuff at Democratic Underground, but I thought this time around I’d create a blog that might encompass a wider range of topics than I’ve so far managed.

I almost called this blog Randomeyez because the topics I cover here will most definitely be random.  Thoughts for the day, peeks into my daily life, observations about film, television, or music, philosophical musings on the state of the world as I see it, life in general, and, of course, stuff about my writing and the Infinity Project as a whole.

We’ll see how it goes.

 

 I think today I’m going to start out talking about web comics.  Thanks to StumbleUpon, I managed to run across several new ones I thoroughly enjoyed.  Now besides the obligatory Order Of The Stick, I have several others bookmarked.  OOTS is a AD&D-based comic that is both tribute and spoof in equal measures.  Anyone who’s spent his or her share of time bent over a table rolling dice and scrawling weapon doodles down the side of their character sheet will certainly “get” the jokes.  Sometimes spoofs cross the line, at least from my perspective, but OOTS shows a definite love for the game along with some choice ribbing about its conceptual failings.

Besides OOTS, my new favorite is Impy and Aevy.  (Don’t worry…I’ll include some links at the end of this post so you all can check it out).  Just today I found Striptease and Punch an’ Pie.  So far I think I like Striptease better, but I haven’t gotten very far in either one, so I can’t say for sure.

Striptease is about a comic book artist and his friends and doesn’t so far feature the talking animals and other weirdness of the other strips I enjoy.  But it’s cute, and fresh, and, well, I’d kill to have a comic book artist as a member of my posse.  Then maybe Infinity Project graphic novels wouldn’t be such a pipe dream.

<sigh>

Sluggy Freelance is fun too, in a twisted way, but I’ve more or less stopped following it for now.  Maybe after it builds up another backlog I’ll spend some time catching up.

Another recent find is superdickery.com.  As much of an old-time comic book fan as I am, I was choking back howls of laughter while thumbing through the site last night.  Some of those old comic book covers are gut-twistingly funny.

On to other things.  For the past couple years, since before I got my handy little ipod shuffle (a wonderful toy for listening to audio-books, though probably not quite so convenient for listening to music, though it does suffice well enough) I’ve been working my way through Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan novels.  Without a doubt these books are among the best the sci-fi end of the speculative fiction continuum has to offer.  Her fantasies–particularly the Curse of Chalion and its first sequel, are wonderful examples of how epic fantasy can be done right without having to resort to the intellectual cannibalism that seems to pervade the sub-genre these days.  Her world building skills are paramount, and her characters live and breathe in the reader’s heart and mind.

Okay.  Done raving about that.

What else do I have?  Hmmm.  Netflix.  Yeah.  Netflix.   A great way to discover TV serials that you never bothered to watch the first time around, or never caught more than a few episodes of.  So far my wife and I have introduced ourselves to several shows we’ve grown to enjoy.  It’s great to be able to watch a couple of episodes a night of a particular show without once having to deal with the “BUY ME” commercial crap.  We’ve done the Dead Zone, Gray’s Anatomy, The Closer, and the latest incarnation of Doctor Who.  We tried to figure out why The Sopranos was so popular, but whatever it was, we didn’t get it.  We moved on to Desperate Housewives and found a winner.  I quickly described it as a twisted little soap opera.  Not that soaps aren’t twisted to begin with–I just thought Desperate Housewives twisted the other direction…bent more towards reality.  Sure, it’s a strangely warped reality, but, then again, so’s the real reality.

I also took the opportunity to use their “Watch Instantly” option to catch up on the last season of Xena, which I’d originally missed.  Sure, the show was goofy sometimes, but it remains one of television’s best forays into heroic or epic fantasy to date. 

Ah, fantasy.  My first literary love.  How far we’ve come from The Hobbit.  My stepmother started this addiction, you know.  She read the first several chapters of Tolkein’s original masterpiece to me, then just stopped.  I already liked to read, but had, up until that time, pretty much stuck to stuff aimed at my age and grade level.  The Hobbit was the start of everything, though, and it wasn’t long before I’d swallowed it whole, then devoured the whole LOTR saga and went grubbing for more.

Let’s just say I was a voracious reader.  That’s hardly a suprise.  Like most authors, I love to read.  And I’m fairly omnivorous when it comes to literature, though I must admit that I prefer genre fiction.  The real “literary” stuff tends to bore the crap out of me.  I live real life…I don’t particularly want to read about it.  Most “literature” involves people going through crap designed especially to make the reader feel like shit about life in general. 

Woo-hoo. 

Bleh.

I want entertainment, originality, and characters I can feel for.  If the hero is someone I’d just as soon see fall down a well I’m probably not going to like it.  If a character’s main claim to fame is how big an asshole he can be…  I’ve got better things to do.  Good fiction to me includes such diverse elements as action,  drama, suspense, romance, and humor.  I don’t need it to be intellectually stimulating, just emotionally fulfilling.  If it can manage both, all the better.

Okay.  Enough about that.  Here are links to my favorite web-comics, as promised.

Order Of The Stick

Sluggy Freelance

Impy and Aevy

Striptease

One more thing.  If you haven’t quite figured it out by now, I’m not much of a snob.  I like what I like and I  accept that others will have different preferences than I have.  One of the most obnoxious things about the internet is the raging multitude of anonymous and semi-anonymous jackasses with nothing better to do than take aim at things that are, frankly, none of their business.  Those who attempt to gain stature at the expense of others really need to examine their approach to life.  Or get a life.  Whichever.

Not that there isn’t a lot of good snark to be found out on the web.  Given a few moments, I’m sure you, dear reader, would be able to find multiple sites devoted to mocking someone else’s hairstyles, clothes, tastes in music, favorite films, sexual and romantic preferences, and any number of potential vulnerabilities.  Slicing people open and pouring salt into emotional wounds is a loser’s game.  Life can be hard enough without some insecure asshole poking at you to make him or her self feel better about his or her own sucky life.

Yeah, there’s a lot of good snark out there.   You just won’t find it here.