Ashlock.org

Time Travel and Geese

jeff@ashlock.org — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:34:08 EDT

Artist Craig J. Spearing�Portlander, zombie fan, and all-around nice guy�did a very cool thing and created for me a steampunked rendering of me as the Traveler, complete with pocket-watch time-traveling device and multi-lensed spectacles. You can see the full version here.

Perfect for author pictures! I'm astounded by it. Aside from doing tons of fantasy work (and in the past, children's book illustrations), he's a regular for Wizards of the Coast and DDI.

I should also add that Craig is a survivor of the Geesepocalypse. If you don't know what that is, consider yourself lucky.

Sepulchral in the BX

jeff@ashlock.org — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:51:04 EDT

I live in the Bronx. It many ways it's what you think. In many, it's not. This is a 5-minute bike ride from me:

Paksenarrion

jeff@ashlock.org — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 21:52:04 EDT

Click here for larger image.

This is a photo I took in a newly discovered bookshop (like that one in Salem, Mass) in the town of Nyack only thirty minutes from where I live, just across the Hudson River. When I spotted it, I had to pick up this copy of Sheepfarmer's Daughter, book 1 of The Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy by Elizabeth Moon. I recently had reason to read these books and I enjoyed them immensely. While I already own the massive paperback of the trilogy, I had to pick it up: love old editions of some books and I really dig the original cover art of this one.

Sheepfarmer's Daughter, for those who don't know of it, seems at first like little more than a detailed account of a young woman�s experiences as a mercenary. The plot is straightforward in that way. The setting itself is a fairly generic, low-magic fantasy world, and the story is no more complex than simply keeping track of the many characters.

Despite all that, the story held me. I can't even explain why. There's something endearing about the character of Paksenarrion herself and her naivet�. There's also the camaraderie she shares with her new friends, the recurring moral struggle (fight for money vs. fight for good), and her burgeoning, mysterious powers. The trilogy as a whole dabbles with some common fantasy tropes I'm very familiar with, especially those derived from D&D: orcs, dwarves, elves, dark elves, magic, giant spiders, and paladins. As a Tolkien fan, I approve of Moon's non-preachy way of exploring spirituality, but the books' strength is the recurring contrast between regular soldiers (those serving a group, or themselves) and paladins (those serving a god or ideal), and the interaction between the two.

All in all, I'd recommend this trilogy to anyone who ever liked the character of �owyn in The Lord of the Rings but felt her personal story was largely untold. Enter Paksenarrion! These books would make excellent reading for Women's Studies in high school or college, if you ask me: an epic tale whose protagonist is a likable, strong female character, and which doesn't for a second read like angry, militant feminism or like someone's agenda.

In any case, the bookshop also has a friendly old dog. All good bookstores should.

Evil Clowns in Eberron

jeff@ashlock.org — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:17:01 EDT

My third Eberron DDI article is available now: "Taer Lian Doresh: Agents & Enemies." The second and third installments of these 'Explore' articles are usually just fleshed out NPCs for heroes to deal with, usually as foes.

There are three illustrations in this article by artist Craig J. Spearing. And boy was I happy with what he came up with. I mean seriously happy. This guy's good. Just another example of how lucky I've been having my writing pared with top-notch illustrators in this industry.

Like part 1 of Taer Lian Doresh�which is a citadel of fey creatures twisted into nightmares by the realm of dreams�I'm particularly happy with this article. I introduced a warforged agent of the Lord of Blades, an agent of the Dreaming Dark (a quori spirit housed in a human vessel), a bloodthirsty eladrin warrior....and harlequin gnomes.

It's those gnomes I'm most proud of. Clownish, prankish, and sinister, offering choice audience members of their sideshow acts a confectionery potion of dubious intent.

As with a lot of the things I write, it was all made better by the creative suggestions of my brother John. Thanks, bro.

HEY Savant

jeff@ashlock.org — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 06:43:03 EDT

More than a year ago I announced that I was starting work on a novel, one of my own. I termed the project Savant, and stated that it would be published through Blindsided Books. This is all still true.

Life circumstances have continued to push it in the background, and though it's been slow-going, it's very much alive. I mean, it's really just one first book in a saga and setting that's pretty much my personal pet lifelong project. Means a hell of a lot to me.

That said, we've put out an issue of Blindsided's HEY Quarterly zine dedicated to Savant. It's essentially a preview of the novel, including a draft of Chapter 1, a Q&A with me and my brother, Savant Scrawlings 1-4, some concept art by Michael Keegan and myself, and so on.

Please feel free to check it out and support the book!

Disappearing Worlds

jeff@ashlock.org — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:30:17 EDT

After several years of haunting and moderating the place, the Worlds of DnD website and boards are going away. We've kicked off a goodbye thread, but since the link won't last, I'll repeat some of what I said there:

I've been on those boards both as a fan and as an author...but mostly as a fan. And I've had a blast. I suspect that the edition update to 4E is what first dropped off a number of members�which is ironic, because we never much talked game rules a lot here�and then WotC's waning support for Eberron and other, older settings seemed to have turned the downward road into a slippery slope right off these boards. Okay, that's too many metaphors.

In the end, it was just a fan site, not something sanctioned by any of the powers that be. Just some fantasy enthusiasts who formed a community for a time. It became a place for discussions about the game, about the novels (particularly Eberron novels), and about speculation for things to come.

So...

What's going away: the Worlds of DnD website.

What's NOT going away: our love and enthusiasm for the game and the worlds that came of it, no matter who owns the copyrights.

We'll all still be out there, and hopefully we'll bounce into each other now and again. I'm grateful for the friends I've made here: Jim (Aureon) and Steven (DragonReader), JoeInPalmSprings (Joe Rixman), and a bunch more, not to mention some fellow writers, like Don Bassingthwaite, and my fellow Inquisitives, Marcy Rockwell, Ed Bolme, and Paul Crilley. And of course Mr. Creator Man, Keith Baker.

You know what else isn't going away? The Worlds of DnD Facebook page. So if you're on Facebook, join up. Perhaps we can find some sort of continuance there?

I owe a lot to Worlds of DnD. Not merely as a forum for discussion, but as a career stepping stone. Connections were made that have helped snowball into a number of writing opportunities. I'm honored to have spent time chatting with folks over there.

Portentous

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:09:15 EDT

http://foreshadows.net/

D�j� Vu

jeff@ashlock.org — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:58:58 EDT

Today my family's dog, Deja, passed away. She was a tough old girl, a Shetland Sheepdog who lived 2 years beyond her vet-given expiration date. One could say that she was just super-strong and staved off cancer like a trouper. But we often joked that she just didn't realize she was sick, that she was oblivious that she was supposed to be moving on from this world...some time ago. So she stuck around for quite a while and surprised everyone.

She made it through 15� years.

My family, we're dog people, and we're the sort who consider our pets as family members. Our dogs get portraits painted of them�by my grandmother, Libby LaSala (you rock, Nana!)�and they each seem to have more photo albums than either my brother or I. We loved our dogs.

We lost Thumper, our previous dog, after only seven years�much too soon. It was a heart-breaking and fast-acting incident. But Deja? She more than doubled Thumper's age, lived out a long and happy doggy life, replete with good table scraps, sprinkler chases, frisbee-throwing runs, an endless stream of mischievous antics, and of course a hand-puppet penguin archenemy. (All dogs need their own nemesis.)

Her full name was D�j� Vu. I think we named her that, in part, because we tried to have another Thumper, and it's no coincidence we chose another Sheltie. What we got was no replacement, just another wonderful dog.

My brother, incidentally, wanted to name her Jabberwocky. Another day, John.

Deja was a howler. Shelties normally aren't. As a newborn pup, she hung out with a litter of Alaskan Malamute (the Siberian Husky lookalike breed), and they taught her their wolfish song. We heard it often: whenever she was lonely and sometimes, it seemed, just for the hell of it. It also became an unwelcome rooster wake-up call set to go off well before any conventional alarm clock. My parents, and many houses guests, can testify. It was sometimes adorable, but usually it was annoying, heard most often in the wee hours of the morning. Now we'll miss it badly.

And fondly remember 16 years of good memories. I was a junior in high school when we got her, just a fuzzy little dog in ball form that stuck to our family like canine Velcro�. Since 1995, I've only seen her when I've seen my parents�on holidays and occasional weekends.

My brother called Deja a positive force in the world. And she absolutely was. She was a furry little piece of the animal kingdom set loose in our civilized world. A tiny piece of the wild, a shard of chaos and levity running amok in our home that kept us sane with her insanity. Most dogs are that way. And Deja's particular brand of sweetness and sassiness made everyone like her. She was friendly with everyone, once she stopped barking at them. She embodied man's best friend.

Sleep well, Deja. We dearly miss you.

And say "hi" to Thumper for us, would you? She's most likely hanging out by the food bowls, eating the other dogs' breakfast, lunch, and dinner in Doggy Elysium.

A Brief Treatise On the Lost Finale

jeff@ashlock.org — Sun, 23 May 2010 20:50:17 EDT

Okay, this is a bit spoilerish.

As many predicted, the Lost finale seems to have polarized the fanbase. Most either loved it and thought it was the perfect ending or were thoroughly disappointed. And as always, I'm in the middle. I can see two sides. I rule.

There were flip sides to this show that made it great, two sides to the Lost coin: the characters and the mythology. Unfortunately, in the end the writers were only able to satisfy one side.

From the beginning, it was always a character-driven series. The heroes were forcibly upstaging the setting�as decided by the writers (and we let it happen)�because the characters were so unique and likeable. And diverse. Look how much time was devoted to flashbacks, starting in season 1 (which was the best season). Ultimately the acting, the popularity, and perhaps even the politics of the real world changed the plans. Some actors left the show for one reason or another, while others who were only supposed to be temporary stayed on because they impressed. In that way the creators of Lost allowed the show to evolve in ways they hadn�t originally planned. Clearly.

Then there�s the mythology, the milieu, of Lost. It just so happens that stuff was enormously appealing, to some of us more than to others. It created an epic mystique: Who are the shadow players on this island? What anomalies of science are at work here? How? Why? What does it all mean? Do fate or faith really play a part? Very intriguing sci-fi stuff, and Lost made it more interesting than just about any other TV show out there.

But in the end the writers only really addressed the characters. And from a ratings stand point, that�s probably what made the show so popular: the drama, the romances, the love triangles (blah!)�so much melodrama! And you know what? Most of it was awesome. Realistically, sci-fi still isn�t that mainstream. While it is getting more popular, American television, film, and audiences are still more occupied with cops, lawyers, criminals, crime scene investigators, coroners, philanderers, desperate wives, and pregnant teenagers.

Lost appealed to a pretty diverse group. Speculative fiction freaks (like me) got into it, and yet so did fans of bad reality TV and "good" reality TV and Survivor and readers of trashy romance novels and readers of good romance novels and lovers of social dramas and talk shows and celebrity gossip shows. And so on. That�s why Lost was popular. Somehow , the writers, producers, and director made a solid show which managed to please so many different types of people. Pretty amazing. The season finale brought to a close the character arcs that began in the very first episode. In that I found it very satisfying. And while I know many will disagree with this, I personally think they were bold about the ending, ambiguous as it was. To address the afterlife, faith, and spirituality at all is damned gutsy. Spirituality isn�t popular in our culture, and a lot of people are uncomfortable when you venture onto topics of an afterlife or belief in any kind. Makes them defensive, especially if they�re anti-spiritual. And yet Lost did touch on it without catering to any one faith. Or perhaps none. It was all very interpretive and adaptable. That frustrates some people but if they had been very definitive about what the afterlife was like, people would have been up in arms. All things considered, well done.

But I'll admit, it was a bit too afterlife-lite, much like in What Dreams May Come.

And Benjamin Linus, mass murderer and complex character, opting to sit out for a while and not "move on" with the others quite yet? Nice touch.

They didn�t bring any real closure to the mythology of the island, the nature of its original inhabitants, the Jacob role, the smoke monster, the "light," the Egyptian motifs, the Sobek statue, the powerful electromagnetism, teleportation, the mysteries of time travel . . . and plenty more. In that I feel the writers pulled an X-Files on us: they tossed out lots of cool mysteries but never really decided what they were all about. I�m sad about that. They could have, perhaps, if they�d trimmed out some of the less relevant material (the Temple, the freighter, the leaving-then-going-back-to-the-island stuff, the constant flux of running around and dissolving and reforming camps . . . something!).

But it�s apparent that the show was more about the characters than the mythology. And so the finale came full circle and addressed only them. And I think they did a good job with that. Could they have done more to satisfy everyone? Yes, they could have, but they waited too long to start tying things up.

So I�ll proudly stand between the love and hate camps. It was an awesome show with a frustrating and yet strangely mostly-satisfying ending. It will be difficult for anyone to match what Lost accomplished�not just in ratings but in diversity. It�s damned hard to tell a good story with that much diversity and get so many people to pay attention to it.

In conclusion, I�m just happy to see Vincent at very end. He was my favorite character. And the Hugo and Ben thing on the island, the new Jacob and his new Ricardo thing?

Dude.

Edit: Ken Hart made a pretty cool post about the finale, too, right here.

Fortress of Fading Dreams

jeff@ashlock.org — Sun, 16 May 2010 06:02:02 EDT

My second DDI article for Eberron, Explore Taer Lian Doresh (Fortress of Fading Dreams), is now live in Dungeon magazine. You do need to be a subscriber to D&D Insider to view or download the article.

This article is the first installment of a three-part 'Explore' series. I wrote a brief blog entry about it over at Worlds of DnD. But in short, this is the article I'm particularly excited about, as it allowed me to flesh out an important, if remote locale of Eberron.

It essentially asks the question, 'What do you get when you take a bunch of tree-loving faeries and fling them into a realm of pure nightmare for tens of thousands of years?'

Answer: Not very nice faeries.

Oh, and the artwork is officially kick-ass.

I'm also honored to see that this article went live alongside a preview of the upcoming Monster Manual 3, featuring one of my favorite oldschool D&D monsters: the mimic! (Which I even put in The Darkwood Mask.)

The VUArtists have cut a record!

jeff@ashlock.org — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 02:17:33 EDT

My First Dictionary (a blog of ghastly humor) has teamed up with The Very Us Artists (a revolving band of musicians and artists) to release FOR FREE an album entitled My First Sing-Along Dictionary.

Not for the faint of heart.

Tune in to My First Dictionary or to the VUA website every few days and enjoy a hilarious new song, each written and recorded by a different musician and each based on one of the MFD words.

I'll also add that there's a super-big project that I've been working on for the last few months (and probably the next few) involving the Very Us Artists and a whole gaggle of awesome fantasy and sci-fi writers. Yup, musicians and storytellers. It promises to be amazing. And I'll certainly talk plenty about it here when the time is right.

Interview with Don Bassingthwaite

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:12:42 EDT

My latest article for Examiner.com was an interview with Don Bassingthwaite, whose next Eberron novel (The Tyranny of Ghosts) hits shelves in June.

Time Machine

jeff@ashlock.org — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 02:15:55 EDT

Oh, heck yes.

"The Time Machine Tour is an evening with Rush, where they will perform their classics, give a taste of the future � and for the first time ever � feature the Moving Pictures album live in its entirety.

"The band is currently working on their 20th studio album with producer Nick Raskulinecz (co-producer from 2007�s Snakes & Arrows) and in addition to their classics plan to showcase a few new tunes live this summer."

Oh, heck yes. New stuff, live, before it's been recorded and perfected on a studio album? They've never done that before. Not really.

Seeing Rush at Jones Beach (Long Island) has become one of the few really bright spots of the last few summers. They didn't come around last summer, but they did prior...

1 of 15

jeff@ashlock.org — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:01:24 EDT

On author/editor/publisher Jeff VanderMeer's BookLifeNow blog, I am participating in an ongoing series of advice from 15 fiction writers. The first installment begins...NOW.

If you're interested in hearing some casual sage advice about the craft from a range of authors, check it out. There'll be more to come.

D&D (We)blog

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:12:39 EST

The website Worlds of DnD, of which I am one of the curators, now has a blog as its main page. With it, we (Aureon, DragonReader, and myself) wish to provide news of new D&D articles, events, books, and possibly other interesting tidbits. Feel free to subscribe via RSS feed, or just stop over now and then.

The forums of Worlds of DnD have been around for a few years now. We've got some solid regulars, a handful of novelists who stop in, but the community could use some fresh blood.

If you're interested in D&D and would like to know more about it, or any of the settings, please stop in. In my opinion, it's a friendlier bunch than any other D&D site. Certainly doesn't seem to have any of the trolls or whiners of Enworld.

Villains and Vagabonds

jeff@ashlock.org — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:24:00 EST

My first DDI article for Eberron, Explore Fairhaven: Villains & Vagabonds, is now live in Dungeon magazine. You do need to be a subscriber to D&D Insider to see the article.

This article is the final installment of the three-part 'Explore Fairhaven,' the first two (which are excellent) of which were written by Chris Sims. This isn't the first DDI article I wrote, but it's the first appear.

Eberron DDI

jeff@ashlock.org — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:09:33 EST

I've been sitting on this a little while, but I can safely mention it now: I'll be writing DDI articles for Eberron. DDI is D&D Insider, the online content of the D&D game hosted on the Wizards of the Coast website. DDI is what the old Dragon and Dungeon magazines have become.

It's particularly cool because once, a long time ago, I submitted an adventure idea to Dungeon magazine, and it was rejected, presumably because there was already an adventure coming out with a theme too similar to the one I proposed.

In any case, I've already written two Eberron articles. The first one goes live February 5th. It's exciting, mostly because I'm happy to be contributing to Eberron once again. This time in quite a different capacity.

Avatar

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:43:29 EST

If you haven't seen Avatar yet, consider it. Here is a spoiler-free review I wrote for Examiner.com.

Andrea LoPrete

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:55:13 EST

After fighting illnesses (emphysema and COPD just to start) for many, many years, my father-in-law, Andrea LoPrete, passed away last Thursday morning, December 17. Just one week before Christmas. Yesterday was his funeral. Needless to say, this is going to be a quieter, more solemn holiday than most around here.

Most of you reading this didn�t know Andrea (it's an Italian name, pronounced on-DRAY-uh), even those few of you reading this who may have met him once or twice. But I wanted to give you a brief pictorial summary of who he was. And because I�m proud to have known him.

Andrea was born and raised in Calabria, a mountainous region in southeastern Italy; in fact, it�s that toe portion of the boot-shaped peninsula that�s perpetually kicking the island of Sicily. (Note: many non-Sicilian Italians are happy to see Sicily get kicked. Shhhh...don�t tell them.) To give you an idea where Calabria�s located, here�s a handy graphic of Italy:

Like many parts of Italy, Calabria is a complete mosaic of cultures. In addition to his dialect of �proper� Italian, Andrea grew up speaking a dialect of the Albanian language. Why? Because many Albanian refugees fled from the Ottoman Empire�s rule in the 15th century, crossing over into Italy for safe haven (and stayed for the food). Interestingly, Andrea�s last name, LoPrete, is actually a French-Italian hybrid (roughly, �the priest�). My own theory is that somewhere in his lineage a French woodsman must have gotten lost in the Alps, wandered down the mountain eastward into Italy, and stumbled on a tavern in some sleepy little town...and thereafter decided he preferred tomatoes, garlic, and pasta to the foo foo pastries and cream sauces of his homeland.

Be that as it may, when he was 14, Andrea climbed into a boat with one of his sisters and left Italy behind, in hopes of finding somewhere in the world where he could sip tea from a metal straw and find more cows and sheep than anywhere else. It took a month to do so, but then he arrived in Argentina.

Andrea settled in the outskirts of its capital city, Buenos Aires, the �Paris of South America,� a place where he�d learn to speak Spanish the way it ought to be spoken, damn it. (Apparently, even Spain doesn�t have it right.) Here he found work in a textiles factory, and a few years later in that same factory he met a nice Italian girl, Lidia: not just any Italian, but a part-time farmgirl from the suburbs of Venice! Which means she was from northern Italy, where all the stuck-up, nose-in-the-air Italians are from (according to Andrea).

But they set aside the differences that automatically come between Italians who aren�t from the same part of the Motherland, and in 1960 Andrea and Lidia entered into a long marriage (almost 50 years) of eating empanadas and drinking mat�...and returned to those differences again, arguing about which part of Italy makes the best marinara sauce and whose family is more hard-headed. (The correct answer to that is: both. Lidia�s family was bull-headed, and Andrea�s family was rock-headed.) But this was oldschool Italian/Argentine love and you�re supposed to fight about things like this. Cue the Tango.

Andrea soon left the factory and went into construction and carpentry, the house-building business. In 1962, they had a boy, Javier. (Who would later take the name Sam in America.) Like any proud Argentine father, Andrea sought out a South American camelid and placed his small son on its back. A llama would do just fine.

Five years later they had another son, Eduardo (Eddie), thereby creating a second fan for the soccer-loving, non-English-speaking world. But then times got tough in Argentina, and work became hard to come by. So like many families in such times, they looked to the United States of America, where the streets were undoubtedly paved with gold and whose freedom-loving, verdigris-plated colossus would always welcome immigrants with open arms. So when their third child, Marisa (my wife!), was still just a sticky bun in the proverbial oven, Andrea got suited up to fly to America. In those days, one dressed up for aerial travel.

Now in New York, Andrea lived for a time with his eldest sister and got back to house-building. He spent 7 years apart from his family, until there would be enough for money to send for them, too. (A common pattern among working immigrants, scouting out work in another country before sending for the family.) Of course, Andrea would return from time to time, and in one such visit he would meet his infant daughter, who even then had the attitude of Buttercup.

In 1980, the rest of the family made the transition to the land of apple pie, cowboys, melting pot cities, and gun-toting patriots.

They settled into the Bronx, and the kids started to pick up the family�s third language: English (and maybe a little Spanglish). Nearly thirty years passed. A lot of things came to pass in Andrea�s life during all that time, too much to even summarize here, including a lot of patronage for the farms of America. A lot of fruit was culled from their lush acres, I can tell you, and no peach or cherry was safe from Andrea's grasp. And while Americans howled for their baseball and football, the LoPretes kept tabs on the sport the rest of the world cared about (the only team sport worth all the hoopla). They cheered and lamented over the fluctuating fortunes of Argentine soccer teams. But hey, at least Italy won the World Cup in 2006.

In time, eldest son Sam gave Andrea his first grandchild�the irrepressible Matthew. A few years later, second son Eddie would bring him two more grandchildren�the adorable twins, Alessio and Alessia. And they all knew him as �Nono.�

Somewhere in this mix, his daughter Marisa met me and eventually I married into Casa de LoPrete. This established me as the first true American mutt in the clan, even if I�m just an in-law. I�m the one who introduced this, my second family, to various geeky American locales, like Renaissance festivals and Medieval-themed restaurants�and Marisa, my wife, to gaming and to GenCon.

Andrea�s life had many difficulties, not only in economical hardship within multiple countries, but also in various illnesses. His decision to keep smoking for far too long in the face of many warnings made the last 20 years of his life harder than they needed to be. Not only for him but for his family. I myself have been frustrated by the burdens his condition brought many times, and the stresses inflicted upon Marisa are innumerable. He wasn't always easy to live with, and he could be a real grump, but he also livened up our world. He was inquisitive for a blue-collar tough guy, and would sometimes ask random science questions whenever they struck him.

Andrea�s suffering is over now, and we grieve for losing him. He leaves in his wake more things than I�ll probably ever know, but within my own experience, it's legacy of memories, children, and grandchildren. It�s becoming harder and harder for any of us who knew him to remember what we were ever mad about. In fact, all the good things come to mind easier now, along with all the funny things he said or did (whether he knew it or not). Everywhere we look is something Andrea made with his own bare hands. Who does that anymore? And every now and then we'll drive past a house that he built or had a hand in building. A legion of relatives across the ocean recall him well.

I liked him. And I know he liked me. A language barrier divided us, but we understood each other well enough. He helped give my wife and I a home (our apartment was rendered at his expertise), and I'll always try my best to take care of his daughter. He was always nice to me. I remember every now and then he would sing a line or two from some song in Spanish or Italian, signifying one of his good moods. Those always made me happier.

Andrea was many things: A husband, a brother, a father, an uncle, a father-in-law, a carpenter, a grandfather. And the best aspects of these roles live on in those who knew him.

Cue the Tango. And rest in peace, Andrea.

Everything Ever

jeff@ashlock.org — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:38:36 EST

There are some things going on right now that are quite momentous and difficult to relate in a few mere words. But I'll save that until next week, when things begin down the long road to adjustment.

But I did want to put one thing out there. Josh Wentz, whose name crops up time and again on this website, has just made his entire collection of music that he's ever recorded (between 1996 and 2009) available for free download.

Right here.

We're talking about 240 tracks. For you writer types out there, I can tell you that a lot of this music is perfect writing music. You should totally go, sample, and snag some.

Savant Scrawlings 3: Fantasy Distinction

jeff@ashlock.org — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:47:18 EST

Every writer will give you a different take on this, but here�s mine:

If you write some fiction that takes place in the real world�be it the past, present, or not-too-distant future�both you and your readers get to take a lot for granted. There are 24 hours in a day, four seasons in a year, one moon in orbit, and when you refer to Ancient Egypt, readers will rightfully think of sand, pyramids, anthropomorphic gods, and maybe mummies. If a character pulls out a gun, the reader understands the concept, even if they don�t know the physics of firearms. So you don�t have to waste any time educating the reader about anything new. You can hit the ground running. I suppose it could be reasoned that this is why mystery, romance, and non-genre fiction get the most sales. There�s less work for both author and reader with "real world" fiction. But nah, I think their popularity probably has more to do with the zeitgeist of modern society.

With fantasy�or outlandish science fiction�storytelling is quite a bit more work . . . if you don�t want to cheat.

Why do I say cheating? In Star Wars, seeing two suns in the sky on Luke�s home planet of Tatooine might suggest an unusual daylight scheme. Are there, in fact, 24 hours in a day? (If so, then the circumference of Tatooine also happens to be 24,901.55 miles; if not, then it spins faster or slower to compensate to make a full rotation in 24 hours.) Do day and night have the same ratio as on Earth? Is Tatooine�s cycle around one or both of its suns the same as ours? If not, then years don�t mean the same thing. How many years old is Luke, then? Supposedly he's 19 years old in the first film. Now, is that in Earth years or Tatooine years? George Lucas didn�t worry about stuff like this because it wasn�t the point of his story (and might even have detracted from the story if he had).

But readers who appreciate immersive science fiction might demand to know such things. Such readers may well have chased down those answers in the Star Wars novels. Or maybe those in charge of the Star Wars Expanded Universe are content to gloss over those details? (Which would mean that Tatooine, Alderaan, and Coruscant are all the same size or in the same sort of orbits.) I wouldn�t know.

I may be picking on Star Wars, but it�s true for most other fantasy settings. Most of them feature worlds which are conveniently similar to ours, so that the authors don�t have to worry about such details.

With Middle-earth, Tolkien didn�t need to worry about this problem much because Middle-earth was Earth all along (and shared the same night sky, moon, and presumably the same solar system), or at least an alternate Earth. He told us only what needed telling, and if something was quite different about his setting than our understanding of Earth then he did address it. Usually. Magic, goblins, Elves, Wizards, orcs . . . these things he fleshed out quite extensively so that you do understand, more or less, where they fit into the big picture.

But what about if you�re creating a new world of your own, as I am, and you don�t want to take the easy way out? Then you�ve got physical, cultural, and environmental factors to flesh out and make clear to the reader so that they can follow the plotline. If you don�t address them, discerning readers will eventually wonder . . .

How many hours in a day?
How many days in a month? In a year?
Are there 7 days a week? If so, why? Isn�t our calendar astrology- or Bible-based, and therefore quite specific to Earth?
Is the world round? Do the people know it?
Is the character dialogue we�re reading merely being �translated� into English from some fantasy languages just for our benefit? Or am I to believe that Latin-based English is what these characters are really speaking?

For my world, the intent is to straddle the line between adaptability and singularity. I�m probably not going to go and invent some hard-to-follow system of time that will detract from the story. There are 24 hours in a day, and probably 365 days in a year. But that�s not mere happenstance. The similarities between Earth as we know it and this setting are deliberate, as will be the differences. The calendar won�t be precisely the same as you know it. But in this first book, what we call dawn doesn�t arrive until around noon. Daylight is scarce. And you'll find out why.

And the language everyone�s speaking . . . is it English? Yes and no. Wait and see!

My Dogs Are Barking

jeff@ashlock.org — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:23:13 EST

As I only hinted at last year at this time, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is arguably the best comedy ever. Certainly it's John Hugh's finest. And I say that despite tbhe awesomeness of Jeffrey Jones's portrayal of Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Planes is the heart-warming, side-splitting story of an uptight businessman (Steve Martin) trying against the odds to get home to his family in Chicago� in time for Thanksgiving. And in the bustle, his fate is entangled with an irrepressible traveling salesman (John Candy). Steve Martin's always amusing and the immortal John Candy has a slew of hilarious movies, but in Planes the combo of the two is without equal.

Click the Play button to listen to a medley of songs and sound clips from the movie. (And thanks go to Joe R. for getting me the music in the first place)

Will you ever find a movie more suitable for Thanksgiving? Let's just say you'd have better luck selling dental floss at a Willie Nelson concert.

� Speaking of Chicago, because he knows a thing or two about recording music friend Josh Wentz has become the Chicago Home Recording Examiner. Subscribe today!

And have a happy Thanksgiving.

The D�mon

jeff@ashlock.org — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:03:37 EDT

I've recently resolved to read the classic works of horror, at least one each year, and always in October. I honestly can't remember what it was last year. I've already read Dracula, though I'm up for a re-reading.

But this year it was Frankenstein. I've long eyed the book and known I had to read it...but I just never got around to it. I always suspected it was something more�and perhaps in some ways less�than the clumsy giant depicted by Boris Karloff in the old 1931 film.

Well, no more. I finally read it. Anyone who's read The Darkwood Mask probably won't be surprised that I loved Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

In particular, The Essential Frankenstein (The Definitive, Annotated Edition of Mary Shelley's Classic Novel), and I think it made all the difference. I learned a great deal about Mary Shelley, the time she lived in, and the opinions of many famous authors through this book.

So then I went and gushed about it on Examiner.com in the form of this article: Classic Halloween monsters in fiction: Frankenstein's monster

Long as my article is, it feels rather truncated. There's a lot more to say about the story, such as Shelley's many descriptions of the settings: Geneva (Switzerland), where the Frankensteins are from; Ingolstadt (Germany), where Victor went to university and made his Creature; Scotland, where on an island he made the female creature; and the Arctic Circle, where Victor pursues the Creature and the story comes to a slightly ambiguous end. The constant contrast of bitter emotion and frigid climates (the "mountains of ice") makes the story all the more dramatic.

So, like, consider picking this book up someday. Get an annotated version, if you can.

Kobold Quarterly Interview

jeff@ashlock.org — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:34:19 EDT

Some time ago, Jeremy L. C. Jones of KoboldQuarterly.com (and a very personable fellow) approached me and asked me if I'd do an interview for the website�not to be confused with the Kobold Quarterly magazine itself. (Previously KQ has also interviewed Joseph Goodman, Harley Stroh, and Aeryn Rudel�all acquaintances of mine through my Goodman Games work.)

I thought that was just peachy, and of course it's nice to talk to the folks over at one of the most popular RPG websites around. Kobold Quarterly, run by game designer Wolfgang Baur, was the first print magazine to spring up when Dungeon and Dragonn magazines transitioned into a strictly electronic existence.

Unconventional Dreaming: A Conversation with Jeff LaSala

Which brings up another thing. I've been largely remiss on visible Savant progress in the last few months due to (1) a large number of circumstantial life speed bumps and (2) RPG projects I had to clear from my plate. But I am returning at last to this book, which is still in its infancy.

But not for one second has my interest faded. This is still a book set in the quintessential world of my imagining, and so it's time to get back on track. Stay tuned for the next installment of Savant Scrawlings.

Halloween Music '09

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:19:03 EDT

Sidedown and I now present you with....

Downcast Epside No.109: Jeff LaSala's Hallowcast 4

Go to the Downcast site to play it right off the page. Or subscribe to the Downcast podcast and snatch the mp3 for yourself in iTunes.

Hallowcast 4 is 45 minutes of Halloween-themed music blended together in one big horrible admixture, woven with little movie clips and other goodies. I promise you, you'll never hear Mel Torm� and Rob Zombie in the same podcast ever again.

The only warning I'll give you is:

You better not have weights tied to your feet.

And...if you missed them, I've also curated the previous three Halloween episodes of Downcast. Grab 'em (right click and Save As) or just play 'em below. We're talking a total of 2.7 hours of excellent scary music, probably a good 60% of which you've never heard. Take advantage!

Downcast Episode 69: Hallowcast 1

Downcast Episode 70: Hallowcast 2

Downcast Episode 94: Hallowcast 3

The Witch City

jeff@ashlock.org — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:39:37 EDT

Marisa and I are now returned from this year's pilgrimage to Salem, MA. I suppose "pilgrimage" would be a more appropriate term for a Wiccan making a trek to the Witch City, for whom it could be a religious trip, but for us it's more about homage to our anniversary and our favorite holiday. Salem is the Halloween Capital of the World, after all.

And if you don't believe it, have a look at some of the pictures I've taken there in the last few years. Click here to see more than 70+ photos.

Halloween aside, Salem is chock full of cool histories, from the literary (author Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter while working at the Customs House at the wharf�) to the maritime (Salem was the launching point for thousands of trade ships that spanned the globe). Old colonial houses, witchcraft hysteria history, museums galore, specialty shops, and festivities/fun houses all month long every October.

Bottom line: cool town, worth visiting at least once in your life�especially in October. For my wife and me, we've gone every year ever since our first pass through the day after our wedding on Halloween '04.

I have one gripe, though, and this isn't about Salem as much about plenty of native New Englanders: Not everyone is obsessed about baseball. Got that?

While we were buying tickets for one of the fun houses, the ticket seller asked where we were from. When we told him the Bronx, he said, "Man, can we stop with the Yankee fans today?"

I couldn't care less about the Yankees or the Red Sox. Even if I was a football or baseball enthusiast�, I just can't be passionate about laundry. It's not your enthusiasm that bothers me, sports fanatics. It's your assumption that everyone else must be just as enthusiastic that does. (It would be like me going up to complete strangers and asking, "So what's your favorite race/class combo? Do you prefer low-level play or epic gaming?") Yes, yes, it's all in good fun. But is there a list I can put my name on to opt out, please?

The closest sports rivalry I've participated in (peripherally) was Army-Navy, but that's only because I was raised under the doctrine that the Navy was evil. You'll have to take that up with my parents, who will no doubt confirm it. But probably not their parents, who were shipbuilders and yeomen affiliated with the Navy during World War II.

Anyway, thank you Mom and Dad for making this year's Salem trip much more enjoyable!

__________________________________

� Not to mention the house which was the loose inspiration for his novel House of the Seven Gables.

� I seem to have been born without that sports-fragment of the XY chromosome.

Countdown to All Hallow's Eve

jeff@ashlock.org — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:29:05 EDT

The month of Halloween is here at last�and anyone who's even a semi-regular to this website probably knows that Halloween is not a single day event for my wife and me.

October is the twilight of the year, appropriately cooler and darker but also colorful and vibrant for all that. It was 51� outside this morning, which is just about right. Yay for long sleeves again!

This has been the most turbulent of years. It didn't start that way, but I've already witnessed enough grief and hard times, mostly for friends mine, but things haven't been the easiest on us either.

A lot's going to happen this month: some good, some bad, some necessary. Both my in-laws are having surgery done (necessary), and the last vestiges of some unpleasantness from the summer must be dealt with (bad).

But among the good:

And after a long string of obstacles, I'll be back working on my Savant project again. You can expect the next entry of Savant Scrawlings soon.

Marisa and I will be taking our annual October pilgrimage to Salem, MA in just over a week, this time with my parents in tow. I'm very excited about that.

My seemingly annual installment of the Sidedown podcast (Downcast) will appear in a week or so. Hallowcast 4!

Also, in honor of Halloween, every single day this month I will post up at least one photo appropriate to this time of year in this Facebook album, which I've made public.

My heart goes out to Max, who continues his fight, and to Andy (aka Beezer), a friend and someone seriously undeserving of what he's going through. Prayers would be appreciated for both.

Happy October!

U2 360� (9/23/09)

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:52:23 EDT

The concert was great fun! I also decided to look at U2 with appraising sci-fi eye as an Examiner article.

The set list from the show was:

"Breathe"
"Magnificent"
"Get On Your boots"
"Mysterious Ways"
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
"She's the One" excerpt - a Bruce Springsteen tribute, on account of his 60th birthday
"Desire" (excerpt)
"Elevation"
"Your Blue Room" (from Original Soundtracks I) - very unexpected, and very cool, that they played a song from this little-known album
"Beautiful Day"
"Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" excerpt - since Quincy Jones was in attendance
"No Line On the Horizon"
"New Year's Day"
"Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of"
"The Unforgettable Fire" - a serious highlight of the show for me
"City of Blinding Lights"
"Vertigo"
"I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" - a strange techno version of the song which lost something performed live
"Sunday Bloody Sunday"
"MLK" - "an Irish lullaby" according to Bono
"Walk On"

Encore:

"One"
"Amazing Grace"
"Where the Streets Have No Name"
"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" - another high point
"With or Without You"
"Moment of Surrender"

Unforgettable

jeff@ashlock.org — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:19:40 EDT

This coming Wednesday, I'll have the pleasure of seeing U2 live at the Meadowlands (NJ) with my wife and with my parents.

The only rock concert I've been to with both my mother and father was for America (the "Horse With No Name" band), and the last time I saw U2 my wife had selflessly given up her ticket so my dad could join me. So I'm really looking forward to going with all three of them.

I consider myself late in becoming a U2 fan. Not until Achtung Baby came out (1991) did they hit my radar�notably with "One." Although Rush has always been the best band in the universe to me, for a good 2 or 3 years starting at age 16 they took a backseat to U2 in sheer air time.

Much of this is nostalgia. Achtung Baby, Boy, War, The Unforgettable Fire, and The Joshua Tree are irrevocably linked to my memories of living in Newport, Rhode Island when I was a sophomore in high school, while most of the rest filled in the rest of my high school years nicely. There was a time when I sought out every b-side and single and bootleg I could get my hands on. And not just U2. I'd chase down things like Bono's version of the Leonard Cohen song "Halleluliah" or the soundtrack to the obscure movie The Captive because the Edge was involved.

In high school, and with Josh Wentz's musical accompaniment, I even sang a couple of U2 songs for some talent shows�like, in front of a full auditorium. Looking back, I absolutely cannot believe I did that. My memory of the experience is probably way better than the reality of it, but I'm still rather glad I dared. We did "October" and "Running to Stand Still."

While I don't seek out each song with Gollum-like obsession anymore, I'm still a big fan. I saw U2 on their Popmart tour (from very far away in a stadium with terrible acoustics) and then again on the Vertigo tour at Madison Square Garden (a very memorable show). And after subjecting my father to U2 for many years, somewhere along the way, Bono took hold. And now I'm proud to say that he (my father, not Bono) is a rabid fan, too.

Everyone knows the big hits: "Where the Streets Have No Name," "With or Without You," "Mysterious Ways," "Pride (In the Name of Love", and so on... But I'd like to share some of the aforementioned obscurities or at least lesser-knowns.

"Rowena's Theme" (from The Captive soundtrack, by the Edge)

"Drowning Man" (from War)

If I'm able to snap some pictures at the concert, you can expect them to appear here. You ever been to a U2 show?

Breaking the Chains

jeff@ashlock.org — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:55:11 EDT

In stores now, as previously mentioned, is the Hero's Handbook: Tieflings, which I co-authored with Aeryn Rudel (and even had some help from my brother). I wanted to talk a little bit about this book because from the outset it presented a strange admixture of ideas in me.

Tieflings first appeared in the Planescape setting back in the 2nd Edition of the D&D game; they were essentially humans with demonic, devilish, or some other sort of fiendish ancestry. In their 4th Edition incarnation, tieflings are the descendants of humans who made bargains with devils (specifically) and in time begot a new race (complete with horns, tails, and and all-around diabolical appearance). In D&D, devils and demons are not synonymous as they usually are in real-world religion or mythology. In D&D, devils are soul-craving corrupters, denizens of the Nine Hells who garnish their evil with a kind of infernal law (as opposed to chaos).

For me (and I do indeed speak only for myself), the first challenges in writing an entire book dedicated to tieflings and the devils that influence them is the fact that (1) as a Christian, I do believe in a real devil (or something very like it) and (2) since the early 80s, D&D has been fallaciously accused of involving devil worship and other occult involvement. As a longtime player of the game, I know this to be a ridiculously stupid notion, but when you want to defend the truth of the game, are you really helping dispel the idea by putting out a book about devils? Well, the way I see it, there's no harm in broaching the subject itself. Just do it right.

First things first. You want to separate reality from fiction. Tieflings, and the specific devils discussed in this book, are pure fiction. But that doesn't mean there aren't some comparisons to be made to reality.

A lot of books out there like to glorify the bad guys. It's even become trendy to do so in some areas of fantasy fiction. Many people seem to be sick of the good guys always winning and the bad guys always being soundly defeated. I think that's a little bit sad. Not that fiction shouldn't get a breath of fresh air, or have morals realistically blurred (as they are in real life)�see Eberron for some good examples of this�but the trend of wanting to see the villains win is a little disheartening.

In light of this, in the Hero's Handbook: Tieflings, I wanted to polarize tieflings and devils a little bit more. Devils are unquestionably evil, interested only in self-gain and the souls of mortals; while tieflings, a hybrid of human and devil, have the free will to decide which way to go. I wanted to stress the latter.

In the Player's Handbook, it says...

It's that first bullet point I latched onto. When it came out that tieflings would be one of the core races of 4th Edition, Wizards of the Coast emphasized the "bad boy" angle: "It's cool to be bad." So in our book, I wanted to be sure to talk about the culture, and everyday challenges, of a race that has a constant, uphill battle against evil.

Goodman Games writer and editor Aeryn Rudel also added his vision to the project; chiefly, to six of the eight "legacies" described in the book, along with six archdevils. I can honestly say he sure did make them vivid, and the "Breaking the Chains" section of each legacy entry was his idea, which fit perfectly with my vision for tieflings, which is: Tieflings are bad-asses, and have a hell of a chip on their shoulder, but each can choose his own path. They're talented, crafty, capable of very great evil...and very great good. Most of the time they're a mix of both.

Sounds familiar, to me. I've always loved the idea of using fantasy to better illustrate humanity, to put our own reality in a different context for a fresh perspective. As I said in my Examiner interview a while back: "I�ve always believed that science fiction and fantasy both offer another world from which to better view our own. Get someone�s attention because you�ve got a good story going and you can use that to talk about life, science, and the human condition. Yes, even with robots, dragons, and zombies. And to readers unreceptive to such things (which is perfectly fine), these genres at least offers a dose of escapism and sheer entertainment."

And as for devils? In referring to the devil and his job of tempting humans away from the Christian life, C.S. Lewis wrote: He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery. I know someone will ask me, 'Do you really mean, at this time of day, to re-introduce our old friend the devil�hoofs and horns and all?' Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know. And I am not particular about hoofs and horns. But in other respects my answer is 'Yes, I do.' I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance. If anybody really wants to know him better I would say to that person, 'Don't worry. If you really want to, you will. Whether you'll like it when you do is another question.'

A little bit more information about this book will be talked about in an interview I had with a popular RPG website, coming soon. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here's a free preview of the book which Goodman Games has made available.

Sorry, one more C.S. Lewis quote, which I take to heart:

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.

That said, I'd happily choose to play a tiefling who challenges the evil inside himself, and the devils that put it there.

Best Paperweight Ever

jeff@ashlock.org — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:27:15 EDT

So the Scribe Awards previously mentioned have come and gone, and though The Darkwood Mask was a nominee, it didn't take the win. Congratulations go to WARHAMMER: Elfslayer by Nathan Long, which did.

But I have to say, it was very cool to be nominated. Especially since TDM was my first novel ever. The IAMTW (International Association of Media Tie-In Writers) and Wizards of the Coast were kind enough to send me a physical representation of my nomination, though. I think that's pretty neat, too.

Click here for a larger image.

How appropriate, then, that this comes just before I begin my next post for Savant and other writing discussions.

So this is certainly the end of one chapter of my writing career and the beginning of another. I wish there hadn't been a lost chapter between them, but such is life.

I raise a glass to more metaphors to come.

Lady Dissolution

jeff@ashlock.org — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 07:03:14 EDT

Issue #2 of Level Up seems to be hitting stores and subscribing mailboxes now, or at least imminently. As a contributor, I recommend you pick it up�if not for my sake, then for the fact that it's so freakin' affordable. $2!

In issue #1, my "Deities of �ereth" article featured Gorhan, the lawful good deity of valor, chivalry, and war. The ultimate paladin god, with a dash of religious ferocity thrown in. But in this issue I give you Lasheeva, goddess of undeath, murder, and affliction. Here's a short excerpt:

Lasheeva is known foremost as Lady Dissolution, for she aims to burn the na�vet� from the world, destroy its heretics, and bring mortiferous enlightenment to all societies. Her dogma is one of death, undeath, and whatever afflictions are required to shape the world according to her vision. She is called the Black Desecration, for her destructive wrath is often leveled against �ereth's self-righteous religions. Lasheeva is also sometimes known as the Cold Seductress, for she lures mortal and immortal alike into her fold not with promises of loyalty and affection, but of cold, uncompromising power. Despite the stigma undeath holds the world over, none can dispute the supernatural strength and invulnerability it grants its recipients. The Cold Seductress vaunts this like no other, and refers to the power of undeath as the Dark Salvation.

As always, the article is mostly flavor text ("fluff"), roleplaying ideas, and cultural information. For those who prefer new rules and game options ("crunch"), there's a new Channel Divinity feat, a magic item, and a paragon path to go with the clergy of Lasheeva.

Okay, my article aside, there are some other goodies to be found in this issue. My favorite is "Sheep's Clothing," written by co-conspirator Ken Hart, part of the "A Picture Tells 1,000 Words" series. I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that I probably won't look at a sheep the same way again.

District 9

jeff@ashlock.org — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:07:53 EDT

District 9 is worth seeing in the theaters. And it has been reviewed by me right here.

Maximilian

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:45:48 EDT

I don't normally have cause to put up a baby picture up on my website (not having any kids myself at this time and not particularly inclined to put up photos of anyone else's baby), but I'd like to make an exception today by putting up this photo of Maximilian.

Max is the 4�-month-old son of author and friend Marcy Rockwell, and aside from being ridiculously cute, he's also very sick right now. He was recently diagnosed with stage 3 neuroblastoma, a cancer of the sympathetic nervous system.

Recently I've been working on an RPG book that addresses the concept of faith. In the D&D world, faith usually only takes the form of spell-slinging and other varieties of divinely inspired butt-kicking. But in this book I've really tried my best to infuse a bit more flavor, and meaning, into the concept. And why? Because in the real world, faith really does mean a lot to me. Belief in God (any god) doesn't seem to be something I share with too many people in the RPG industry, so I generally avoid talking about directly. Writers and game designers, like any artist, are pretty passionate and opinionated people.

Anyone with any faith at some point is confronted with the question of miracles. Do they exist? If you believe the validity of the Bible�or, like me, the validity of some/many things in the Bible�then you probably believe that miracles have taken place before. But do they still? Not a question anyone can answer. If you pray for something, will God grant it? I'm not so sure it works that way, or even should work that way.

But you can ask. You are encouraged to. I believe the asking is often more important to God than the question.

If any of you are so inclined, please pray for Max, to give him a fighting chance. Divine intervention is one thing, and the skill of a doctor is another. I think they can be mostly the same thing.

Let's Find the Mega-Condenser!

jeff@ashlock.org — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:59:06 EDT

So what does Alex Lifeson (of Rush) have in common with the Thundercats? Not very much...until I put them both together in this sound clip.

You see, Alex composed the intro music for the first season of the sci-fi TV show Andromeda, which was much better than the later intros. It was only natural, then, to add some Thundercats outtakes. I mean, who wouldn't?

Leveling Up Tieflings in Texas?

jeff@ashlock.org — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:27:42 EDT

Some recent things:

Hero's Handbook: Tieflings, which I co-authored with Aeryn Rudel (and even my brother�), should be coming out next month. I'll talk a bit about that when it does.

Level Up, issue #2 is also coming out imminently. This issue will include my next "Deities of �ereth" article, which details the faith of Lasheeva, or Lady Dissolution, the goddess of undeath.

On the subject of horror, I just posted up a review of Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas. I wish more third-party RPG publishers would put out fiction anthologies based on their roleplaying books. (Hint, hint.)

I'm currently wrapping up one more Goodman Games book with. Once that's done, I'm returning to Savant in force. So the next Savant Scrawlings will be coming soon.

� Speaking of my brother, he's got a new website going: LaSalamander. Check it out. Let's together pressure him into refining it, eh?

The Out-of-Print Mask

jeff@ashlock.org — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:38:45 EDT

So The Darkwood Mask has joined the Great Library In the Sky, earning a place in the out-out-print firmament alongside some of its peers. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace! This is commonly the fate of series books, after all.

Incidentally, the other Inquisitives books are also out of print now, at the same time, giving TDM one year less shelf time than they, which is unfortunate. But what are you gonna do?

It's still in stock on Amazon at the moment, so if you're even slightly interested in owning a copy....order today!

Free 4-day pass to GenCon

jeff@ashlock.org — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:50:31 EDT

Got a spare friend?

Flames Rising is hosting a contest: Send a Friend to Gen Con Indy 2009!

The contest pays for the 4-day badge (sadly, not hotel or transportation) and entry for the contest is as simple as sending them a note about who you want to select and why.

I'm bowing out of GenCon this year, regretfully so, especially as this year marks the 25th anniversary of DragonLance and I'd have liked to see what Wizards of the Coast does with that.

Examiner Interview

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:13:25 EDT

Fellow Examiner (RPG Examiner, specifically) and author of a ton of role-playing books Mike Tresca has posted up an interview with me. Thanks, Mike!

Interview with Jeff LaSala, author of the Darkwood Mask

At some point in the quasi-pseudo-near-future, another interview may appear on a popular game website. When that happens, I'll certainly mention it here.

NY Speculative Fiction Examining

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:01:37 EDT

So, some interesting news.

There�s a news website, Examiner.com, that allows �local citizen journalists to share their city-based knowledge on a blog-like platform.� Essentially, they organize and even pay (a little) contributors to the site, each of whom are given the title of examiner. They�re not professional journalists (although some are), and sometimes it shows, but generally speaking each person is a specialist in their own particular area. The application to become an examiner is pretty thorough; you�ve got to prove your skills and your credibility.

Well, I�ve become the NY Speculative Fiction Examiner. Please feel free to bookmark, subscribe, and stop by...whenever!

(You can subscribe via RSS or by e-mail; there's a "Subscribe to Email" link on the page.")

And see that die-clutching gargoyle in the upper right-hand corner of this screen? That's going to be a direct link to my Examiner homepage. Everything there will relate one way or another to speculative fiction, which includes science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Although I aim to put a NY spin on as much of it as I can, these articles certainly don�t require you to be a New Yorker to read them. So tell your friends, and their pets. Tell them to tell their friends and pets.

In fact, if you ever come across something relating to sci-fi, fantasy, or horror that you think might be worth an article, send it my way! I'm all ears.

Also, today marks the release of The Strain, a vampire novel written by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. Go get it or something. It's good.

Modular Deities

jeff@ashlock.org — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:28:57 EDT

There is a pretty thorough review of the magazine Level Up over at the Flames Rising webzine. Of course, I'm happy to hear good things said of my contribution, the "Deities of �ereth" article:

The deities article stood out to me as being a great article that completely details a faith from both a flavor and crunch perspective. Rules wise all the necessities were there, the Channel Divinity feat and the paragon path as well as a relic appropriate for a champion of the gods to carry into battle. This article really wins however on flavor. The description of the holy texts, rituals and worship were top shelf and the �alternate aspects,� describing the name of the deity for other races and cultures gave the religion a very organic and real feeling. An A+ overall on this article, which is the perfect modular piece for DMs everywhere to drop into their own homebrew world.

Sadly, "Deities" article will probably be a shorter article in future issues, for reasons of space.

Also, I will probably writing occasional reviews (most likely for movies or novels) over at Flames Rising, but you can bet I'll mention them here when they appear.

Savant Scrawlings 2: Outlining

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:36:30 EDT

It�s a universal question every writer has to ask himself or herself: do I need to write up an outline of the story I want to write? Outlining is essentially plotting, mapping out the story. Deciding what should happen in advance. What happens that the protagonist(s) must overcome, do they overcome it, what are the consequences? And so on.

Whether you write an outline or not, at minimum I think a writer needs to decide a few important things ahead of time, simply out of respect for a reader�s attention. If you have a lot of ground to cover over the course of the story, this helps you determine the space between each chapter or scene. Does the story span hours, days, weeks, months, years? With outlining comes a deliberate observance to pacing, so it�s sort of built in. What you get if you don�t do this right is a potentially evenly-paced book with a rushed ending. Even authors I greatly admire suffer from the rushed ending. I�ve been accused of that myself, and I don�t deny that it tends to happen. (I think I�ll save talk of pacing for another entry, though.)

Anyway, now that I�m writing something strictly on my own, should I try and outline the whole book?

If you write a book for some publishers, like Wizards of the Coast, you have to, no matter what. They want to know the basics of what happens, where the story goes, what characters show up, what monsters appear, and how the story ends. No big secrets. And when you�ve got a cap on how long your book can be, outlines help make sure you're on track the whole way through.

If I remember correctly, Stephen King (in his book On Writing) advises you to not think too much about outlines, but to just get to writing, to let it take you along for the ride (to discover it, he presumes), and worry later about fixing it up appropriately. R.A. Salvatore, I've heard from several interviews, puts together a superficial outline for his WotC books (again, because the contracts demand it) but then just makes it up as he goes anyway. Both are extremely successful authors. Can I afford to reject their patterns? Maybe not. But of course, they�re sort of anomalous in their respective genres. They�re not the everymen of fiction writing.

The truth is, I did find outlining to be extremely helpful when working on The Darkwood Mask and my second WotC book. In some ways, making an outline makes the story-writing itself less fun, because you feel constrained by it and you already know everything that happens. But at the same time, my favorite elements usually come up in the writing, not while creating the outline. As an example, the character of Aegis (a warforged bodyguard) never appeared in the initial synopsis nor in the outline for TDM. However, by the time I created him as a side character, he was absolutely necessary to the story and its conclusion, both as a character and a plot device.

I am at that stage where I�m beginning to outline, or at least write up a synopsis.

For you writer-types out there, what do you think of outlines? Are they for people who don�t know what they�re doing? Or necessary evils? Or something else?

The Helmed Vengeance

jeff@ashlock.org — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:09:00 EDT

The Kobold Quarterly website has posted up an interview with Aeryn Rudel, staff writer for Goodman Games with whom I�ve worked on a few books now. He�s also Editor-in-Chief of Level Up, the new 4E magazine which is out in the stores now so go get it hurry what are you waiting for it�s only $1.99!

In the interview, Aeryn says a few nice things about me. Thanks, Aeryn!

He also mentions "Deities of �ereth," the rolling series of articles I�m writing for "Level Up," wherein each issue I describe in considerable detail one of the gods of the campaign world �ereth. Originally, all these gods appeared in the Gazetteer of the Known Realms, a 3rd Edition boxed set. This Deities series allows me to update each god, one at a time, in the 4th Edition version of the game and provide a lot more detail around their faith. Each article includes information about:

Titles, tenets, and culture of the faith.
The clergy (including the difference between regular priests, clerics, paladins, and monks)
The laity (non-clergymen of the faith).
Symbols and icons.
Temples.
Alternate aspects of the god (i.e. different portrayals, names, or ideas).
Holy texts.
Famous relics.
Vestments.
Alliances, rivalries, and enemies.
Holidays.
Roleplaying suggestions.
A new Channel Divinity feat.
A new magic item produced by the church.
A new paragon path available to a worshipper.

In issue #1, I describe Gorhan, the Healmed Vengeance, a god of war, valor, and chivalry. The challenge (and fun) about this was that I needed to take a fairly generic war god (who first appeared in DCC#12: The Blackguard's Revenge, by Wesley Schneider) and find a way to give him real flavor and a unique spin on the otherwise traditional "god of war." Ultimately, he's what you get if you take a powerful, yet lawfully good and honest executioner or assassin.

Anyway, I hope people will enjoy it and maybe some will put Gorhan into their campaigns. My goal is to convince players that this god would be an awesome choice for their character's devotion, whether he or she is playing a cleric or not. If you're gung-ho against evil, you might want Gorhan at your back.

Savant Scrawlings 1: Setting & Genre

jeff@ashlock.org — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:46:57 EDT

This is the first entry of Savant Scrawlings, a series of posts wherein I talk about this whole novel-writing thing of mine (as mentioned in my previous post). It�s going to be more a journal than a collection of essays, but I�ll try and keep it as concise and intelligible as I can.

I�d like to start out by talking about what this book isn�t going to be. Quite unlike The Darkwood Mask and its relation to the world of Eberron, this novel isn�t going to be part of a shared universe. A shared universe is a setting where multiple authors tell different�and possibly overlapping�stories yet where the core material (central characters, places, laws of nature, magic, etc.) must always remain the same. For example, if you write a novel in the Star Wars universe, you can�t go and kill Luke Skywalker in your story (unless the Lucasfilm people tell you to, and in which case his death will need to be accounted for in all subsequent novels that take place in the same timeframe.)

It was an unusual experience writing for Eberron shared universe, because I knew full well that most of my friends and family would know nothing about it except what my book addressed. Therefore when the book came out, I wrote up a sort of Eberron primer for them so they could understand just what the heck dragonmarks were, or warforged, or even the race of elves.

But the world of the Savant project is going to be a world of our own. I say our, because my brother John and I are developing it together. We�re not beholden to anyone else in its details, nor the stories that come of it, and the continuity of the setting is my own responsibility to maintain. That�s a responsibility I relish, as I find it lacking in most shared universes.

So�this means no primer will be necessary, unless I somehow incorporate one into the book. I want this story, this world, to be approachable by anyone. Just pick it up and go. There are no other books out there that you will have to read first. Maybe it helps if you�ve read any sort of speculative fiction before, but I expect there�ll be elements of various genres�mystery, horror, and so on�and in doses anyone can handle. But it generally comes down to the two big ones:

Fantasy � Fantasy is generally assumed to be fiction that uses magic or other supernatural forces as a central plot device, and usually with a marked lack of technological advancement. Fantasy stories are usually, but not always, medieval in flavor. Without a doubt, Savant will be mainly fantasy in its style and themes, but not exclusively.

Science Fiction � Space and robots, right? Well, sci-fi involves speculation about technology, and almost always takes place on Earth in the present day or in the future (and sometimes possibly other planets). Because I intend to incorporate a certain level of real science, and a little bit of modern technology, so there are certainly going to be science fiction elements.

You can analyze and dissect these two genres, but in the end I believe that science fiction is asking, �What if this happened?� and fantasy is asking �What if it had always been this way�? My book is definitely more of the latter. Ultimately, Savant is merely speculative fiction doused with genre elements. I really enjoyed writing the mystery noir flavor from The Darkwood Mask (required for a series about detectives). And I�m a serious fan of horror, so I�ll aim to make things creepy when they�re needed to be. Although I should add that I consider good horror to be about scary monsters, ghosts, or other supernatural occurrences. I have no interest in books or movies about sickos torturing and murdering people. Give me The Ring or The Others any day; I don�t care for the Saws or the Hostels of the genre.

Next topic: To outline or not to outline?

Savant

jeff@ashlock.org — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:00:58 EDT

I have an announcement. I'm going to start talking about what I've only vaguely touched on previously. Now I have a name to call it�a project name, if not an actual book title. Yet. So what's the announcement?

Savant! <-- Click here!

As that project page says, I'm going to be writing a novel and it's going to be produced by Blindsided Books. And I'm going to be keeping a journal of sorts right here on my website as I do, aimed at giving friends, potential readers, and maybe even potential fellow writers one man's account of the process of writing a novel from scratch. Now, I don't profess to be some veteran author with years of writing experience from which to dispense advice to would-be writers. Far from it, in fact. I've been a writer for a fairly long time, but I've been an author and novelist for only a year or two. I'm about to dig into my third novel, and still have much to learn.

Anyway, teaching people about writing isn't my intent. Half of the purpose of this writing journal is to work out some of my own ideas "out loud." Certainly I hope to do so in an entertaining way, to keep interested parties along for the ride. That said, if anything I do end up talking about is indeed of some interest to you, or is instead mind-blowingly boring, do say so. Really. I'd like to learn from you, too.

Anyway, the first entry of the journal will better showcase what I'm failing to explain here.

The entire Savant project is an experiment, both with Blindsided Books and with my personal goals for this project (and other books to come). The journal I'm going to keep, Savant Scrawlings, is more than just about novel writing�it's also about world building, which scales things up quite a bit more.

Josh Wentz, owner of the Blindsided Books imprint, talks a bit about the project from his view right here.

A Sleight Mistake

jeff@ashlock.org — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 07:37:53 EDT

It occurred to me that although I've warned readers in advance (whenever I was able to), I've never officially done so here. So now I am....because I'm still hearing about it.

What am I talking about?

In my novel The Darkwood Mask, most readers will notice an assortment of spelling and grammatical....um, slights. Typos, if you're kind about it. Most, if not all, of these were not present in the final galleys (the printed manuscript sent to me by the publisher for final proofing) when it left my possession. Astute readers will rightly realize that with any book it is the editor's final responsibility to catch such mistakes�and certainly to ensure that none are inserted when the author is finished�but some reviewers have attributed the errors in TDM to the author. To me.

One of the reviews on Amazon (most of which are great, actually!) included this: "The thing that kept jarring me out of a pleasant read was the use of 'sleight' when the author meant 'slight.' It's minor and it looked intentional (it happened at least twice), but it was like having a pleasant car ride and then hitting an unexpected pothole."

Now, almost every book out there has one or more typos. It happens, and I accept that both as an author and as a reader. It's just that the number of unnecessary mistakes in the text of TDM is especially painful.

The most notable mistake takes the form of the word "sleight." Somehow, after the manuscript left my hands, every instance of the word "slight" was changed to "sleight" en masse. Therefore only one placement of that word is correct, the one that includes the real expression "sleight of hand."

Anyone who knows me and my English devotion knows how much of a forehead-slapping, head-hanging, exasperated sigh-inducing thing this is for me. But I've never actually made a big deal out of it. I just hope readers are discerning enough not to hold it against me.

Okay. So that's that.

Nomination

jeff@ashlock.org — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:44:19 EDT

Not so long ago I joined the IAMTW (The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers). From their website: "We write science fiction, westerns, mysteries, romance and thrillers and sometimes all of the above. Our work embraces just about every genre you can think of, from STAR TREK to CSI, from GUNSMOKE to MURDER SHE WROTE, from DUNE to James Bond, from RESIDENT EVIL to Lizzie McGuire...Our books are original tie-in novels, comic books and short stories based on existing characters from movies, TV series, books, games, and cartoons... or they are novelizations (books based on screenplays for movies and TV shows)."

Publishing a novel set within a shared world (Eberron) qualified me for membership. The real purpose of the association is to proudly state what we are: writers of tie-in fiction. See, literature based on movies, TV shows, comic books, or other existing "tie-in" works usually don't get a lot of respectability...at least not in the larger world of books, or even just fiction.

Now, perhaps less than a year later, I've just learned that my first novel, The Darkwood Mask, was nominated for a Scribe Award in the category of Special Gaming Scribe - Best Adapted (I didn't even know that was a category!).

Last year the winner was Night of the Long Shadows, by Paul Crilley, book #2 in the same stand-alone series as mine. How cool would it be for another Inquisitives book to take the win? That said, I'm up against a DragonLance novel, another Eberron book (Don Bassingthwaite's...yikes!), and a Warhammer book.

It'll be a few months before the winners are declared.

Monastic Musings

jeff@ashlock.org — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:43:40 EDT

For just a few minutes of peace, a short-lived respite from a lot of chaos going on around me (including numerous hospital visits for multiple people), Marisa and her mother and I drove up to visit some monasteries in upstate New York the other day. (It was her idea, but I quickly warmed to the idea. Plus, I'm always looking for sources of inspiration.) Some are appropriately humble affairs, old priories of mortar and stone that house a relatively small community of brothers. (Or sisters, as there were numerous convents in the same area.) Others are European-style goliaths like the Mount St. Alphonsus Monastery (seen above).

The monastic life sure does have its appeal. Peace and quiet seems the most obvious advantage, but for some, a chance for spiritual reflection. For those unwilling to devote their lives to such...quiet pursuits, a lot of these monasteries offer day-, weekend-, or week-long retreats.

Visiting these monasteries triggered a longstanding thought:

It strikes me more and more with each passing year how often I stand in the middle between opposing ethics, political points of view, religious beliefs, personal relationships, and even artistic opinions. It continues to surprise me (I don't know why) just how sharply to one end of a spectrum people cleave.

I know and love people who are strictly Republican, but am usually surrounded by Democratic types. I know some people who don't care for loud/heavy/hard music, and others who need their music to be loud/heavy/hard for it be interesting. The gaming industry I often interact with seems populated mostly with atheists who rail against "organized religion" and scoff at most talk of spirituality or, at best, just don't care at all. Yet I've got a few friends in my life who do believe in God and can say "Jesus" many times on a daily basis and without taking His name in vain to do so. I've got some friends who love video games and really value the enjoyment and stress-relief they bring, yet I usually spend time with people who dislike them altogether and see in them only a waste of time that could be spent more productively.

And this is merely scraping the surface. Everywhere I look there are extremes. To them I am always at arm's length because I can't be the same way. And extreme views only get along with other extreme views.

Politically, I'm neutral. My opinion will just go wherever it is swayed (if it is swayed at all). I love pulse-pounding loud rock music, but I also love slower, moody songs and ambient melodies that would put some people to sleep. I really enjoy playing video games, but I don't think I could indulge too much in them without feeling guilty for having done it. I haven't owned a console game system since Atari.

And faith? I believe in God...Jesus, too, but I can't bring myself to get too preachy or quote Scripture to people or speak with anything other than my own words. Partly because I admit I don't have all the answers. (I don't think anyone should claim to, not even the most faithful person.) And I can't look at the Bible and think "This is all we need to know," and I can't think that it's God's Word that somehow has gone miraculously unfiltered since it was first laid down. So what am I, agnostic? No, not even close. I believe in Christ and what He stands for, no two ways about it. But when I talk to those friends of mine are who church-bound, I know I must look doubt-ridden, when really I'm not. I've considered myself a Christian since I was 13 and I've meant it. Today I consider myself a mere Chrisitian. When I visit a church or a monastery and I see people who live in their faith everyday, I admire and even envy them sometimes; to them I must be one of the sad souls floudering in the world, trying in vain to fill the void that only God can fill. But I'm not. I believe God is the thing that Man needs. Yet I recently finished working on a D&D book that involved devils. (I'll actually talk more about that book in another post someday. Its...interesting.)

When I talk to that other end of the spectrum, the people who dislike the notion of a higher power having any authority over them, I come across as some religious prude. Because I don't curse? Because I never smoke, drank, or touched a drug? Because I never partied?

Ahh, people.

Being in the middle of the road is an interesting place. It's not about not committing to one side or the other. Only when you're standing on the wall can you really see both sides. Who's the weird one in all of this? Maybe me, after all. Maybe seeing two sides of a story is the anamoly.

Incidentally, did you know that some monks have blogs? How cool is that?

Pooch MacGooch

jeff@ashlock.org — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:10:14 EST

Bandit: 1997-2009

Everyone who knew this big brown dog felt great affection for him. He was a mutt: part Rottweiler, part Rhodesian Ridgeback, part friendly monster. He was a 130-pounder, strong and puppy-like, and not long ago he reached his 12th birthday. He also belonged to my longtime friend, Kate. Just another pooch who embodied the Man's Best Friend epithet that dogs rightfully deserve.

I love dogs. Most of them are pure concentrated happiness miraculously crammed into small and furry canine forms. You can't look at, say, a golden retriever with a tennis ball in his mouth and claim otherwise. Or a mutt like Bandit with a chewed up frisbee or decapitated stuffed animal toy. Dogs represent the good side of humanity; they're an appropriate companion for our race on this crazy, often morally-floundering planet. They keep us grounded. They love unconditionally, even when we don't.

Bandit will be missed. In my brief encounter with him when he was still a puppy his body couldn't quite contain the amount of energy God had managed to pack into it; he just wanted to jump up on, slobber, paw at...whatever! He just wanted to interact with people, even if he didn't know how yet. Very social, and more than a little crazy.

In time, he would become a member of our gaming group. He was our 3rd Edition druid's animal companion. Ever present and warm. Like a power generator, only generating life and love and comedy. He was inescapably there at all times. And as Ruth Lampi of The Five Wits says, "He was the proud scale-appropriate model of a riding dog, as well as the embodiment of the spell Wall of Dog." His presence made our gaming sessions much more memorable...and that's putting it mildly. We loved him, even in later years when he got a little too grumpy and unpredictable to cuddle with.

Now he's doubtlessly sprinting through some Elysium fields after celestial squirrels he'd never harm, fleeing from rain, and chomping on whatever suits him. The world is his Bandit Bed.

A couple years ago my brother (one of two of Bandit's best friends) recorded a song about him, "His Name Is Bandit", which cites some of the most notable moments, and quirks, from his life. If you've never heard it, give it at least one listen, will you? For him.

His name was Bandit.

The Whisper Troop

jeff@ashlock.org — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:51:02 EST

I think there's going to be a lot to talk about this month. I intend to start talking about this whole novel-writing project of mine, and such. But let's start with one thing at a time. This one involved me directly (rather than just someone I know) and the whole "fantasy and writing" thing that I do.

The project is Legato Re (bonus points to anyone who gets that name), the album name is Whisper Troop, one of Josh's RPM Challenge projects. So what is it, exactly? A description of the project can be found on that page (click one of those links, and be quick about it), but I'll give you my take on it:

It's an experimental concept album of rich, layered music (about an hour's worth). It's part fairy tale, part brainstorm, and entirely fantasy. Josh wrote and recorded all the music independent of all the lyrics, which I wrote. All I had to go on were the track titles, of which there are four.

The end result is a bizarrely pleasant amalgam of music, storytelling, and mood, which I can only hope could be described as a "richly awful tapestry of fantasy." I would be so honored to be involved in such an assessment.

So go listen, if you've got an hour. It's got giants, rocks, wraiths, and subterranean things. Music and fantasy need to get together more often, that's all I'm saying. Oh, and tons of instruments were involved. Josh plays, among other things, an animal hide drum, a toy cymbal, an ocarina, a wooden Jacob's Ladder, and hands, feet, and fingernails. And of course vocal chords.

Bit of trivia: The Whisper Troop, which the album is named after, will get a cameo in the aforementioned novel. The story that this album tells, however, is merely one of the Troop's many tales. They are musicians and performers within my setting, a traveling band of eccentric players.