Renting The Dream Camera
Recently, a trip to the Oregon coast and a local photo walk lined up on the same week, giving me a good excuse to rent a Fujifilm GFX100RF (aka midlife crisis dream camera). You can read all about my time with this unique camera here. But, for those who just want to see the pictures, here’s some of my favorites:
Vampire Test Reader Update
I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from the generous folks reading Vampire Detective Agency: Double Date. Given the positive vibes, I think folks are going to really like this book when it drops on October 13th. While I’ve got a few chapters to work on expanding with additional details, most of August will be taken up with my usual pre-release line-by-line deep edit. Once that’s done and I have a final page count, I can put together the paperback edition of the book. Expect to see a call for ARC readers late next month along with a few preview chapters.
Book Recommendations
Her Dark Omens (by Noelle C. Richter)
Dark fantasy with a heavy dose of PTSD centered around a woman alone in the world. It took me awhile to get through this book. The first third moves at what feels like a glacial pace, then the middle teases answers but drips them out slowly across multiple chapters, and the final third thunders by as a horrible fate comes to the village that burns witches. Yet, it works because the wordsmithing is first rate. The world and its characters drip with texture, desire, and history. Early slow chapters make a lot more sense by the end, and even though I would have rather things moved faster, it’s easy to recommend this book to folks.
Raise Thy Blood (by Nenia Campbell)
Dark romance in gothic setting, very twisty and bloody. It checks off every box it promises and then some. The heroine treks out to California to look for her sister, and somehow manages to find the darkest and gloomiest town on the West Coast. There she’s romanced by the most a man who has you guessing from page one whether he’s a villain or just a cad. What is clever is how the author makes you understand why the main character would want to be with such a strange man.
My Blood is Risen (by Nenia Campbell)
This isn’t a sequel to the above book. Rather, it’s the same story again, but this time you see the whole tale from the other POV. As usual for this author the writing was top-shelf. She’s incredibly talented when it comes to building characters that burn brightly for their loves. I’d say textbook definition of “yearning” but she does it better than that. The POV switch does mean this book is a little heavy on the spicy scenes and a little lacking on stuff for our guy to do in between scenes that were originally written from the heroine’s POV. Still, I’d highly recommend everyone check out these two books. They form a unique pairing that makes for a refreshing take on the genre.
Finally, an old man plays Halo… Again
Microsoft has released Halo three times. First, it was an Xbox launch title that saved the system and cemented them as a legit player in the videogame industry. Second time around it was an “Anniversary” edition that served to help a new fledgling studio find its wings. This month they’re releasing it again, remade from the ground up (mostly), to help a broken studio remember how to thrill gamers. As part of the larger celebration about Halo’s upcoming 25th anniversary this fall, they’ve been publishing fans recollections of important moments along the way. Mine got posted a few months ago, but I’m sharing it here since the game just came out this month.
Ted talked us into the invite-only Halo 2 multiplayer demo area of Microsoft’s E3 booth. We got to play the infamous Zanzibar multiplayer CTF map demo, which by itself would have been pretty cool, but Sinbad and his entourage of kids showed up. Those little kids murdered us over and over with the dual-wield SMGs while Sinbad cracked jokes and launched the Warthog over our heads with his awful driving.
