Blog – Page 28 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

May 24, 2012

Literary Setbacks (DOG EAR)

I’ll always remember the scene in The Muppet Movie (the first one, kiddies) where producer Orson Wells casts an imperial glare over the bedraggled muppets who have forced their way into his office, then intercoms his receptionist. “Bring me the ‘Rich and Famous’ contract.” Yeah, that’s what we want. Then there is the movie moment from Sideways where a would-be author stands on the empty loading dock behind a winery and listens as his agent tells him that “Some books can’t find a home”. Yes, after thinking he was going to be published, he’s getting dropped by his agency. And […]

May 26, 2012

…Something I Could Quit (Review)

The wordy name for this book is I wish there was something that I could quit. What drew me to it (on the CD shop bookshelf) was the old drawing of a railroadman leaning out of a tower, pocket watch in hand, watching a set of 1950’s diesels blur past. The 50’s are great fodder nowadays; full of irony. So the story is about four young folks, Laura (a gloomy rock-throwing-at-military-trains nutcase), Aaron (the nutty-yet-earnest fellow living in his dead tour van in her driveway), Susan (the bartender seeking a strong man and…) Jemuel (her boyfriend, baby-weak yet organized to […]

May 26, 2012

Slow day at the con

Slow day at the sci-fi convention. 10am to 6pm, sold three books. Other sellers are making about the same rate of sales. Good point – well, besides those few sales, watching a guy manning a booth across from me read Early ReTyrement all day. Every now and then he’d laugh out loud, or call over to tell me what Mason was up to. This helped to get through the thanklessness of convention doldrums. Had a fan I didn’t even know stop by and tell me how much he liked it. Worth more than money. Also, got some leads on some […]

May 31, 2012

Gotcha! (DOG EAR)

You know the movie – the cute babysitter hears a noise. She investigates. Opeeeeennnsss the dooooooor…. MEOW! Out runs… the cat. She and the audience breath a sigh or relief and then the killer rams an ice pick into her. Surprises, shock, and startlement go with the media of movies – very easy to do. But it’s possible to pull this off in writing – if one really crafts it well. My favorite shock comes from the book Mr American by George MacDonald Fraser, where the title character (once a desperado, now a English squire) has just been threatened by […]

June 3, 2012

Footprints of Thunder (Review)

It was the cover that caught me in the used bookstore, of a dinosaur foot standing next to a sand castle – says a lot when you think about it. But it irked me that the footprints on the beach beyond were singular – what was this dino doing? Hopping? Footprints of Thunder had a couple of things that twitted me – not seriously, mind – I rather liked the book. For instance, it starts with a team of scientific hobbyist investigating strange occurrences – fish and flowers and corn which fall from the clear blue sky. However, it appears […]

June 6, 2012

Naturally good?

Yes, I know I haven’t written much here. I’ll have to post about some fallout I got from an earlier post on a bike forum. But mostly book stuff and twice-weekly literary postings have gotten in the way. I’m still riding, three times a week. Just a quick comment for today – was in an ethical debate with someone who was arguing that people are inherently good. I had to ask her if she ever rode a bike in the street. You know, commuting. A bike as part of the flow, part of the mechanized society, a component of transport. […]

June 7, 2012

Creativity (DOG EAR)

Creativity. Those who don’t have it (who talk on cellphones or watch TV in the evenings) don’t get it. But we, the people who walk silently with eyes on the invisible or who do more than doodle during tedious office meetings, we have it. Creativity. An example was yesterday – slow day at work with an unexpected extension we didn’t need. Not much to do. Fine. But for fun, I’ve been working on a computer game at home, an excel takeoff of “Time Tripper”, a time-travel/combat game from 1980 that I loved to play. The game itself was clever (I’m […]

June 9, 2012

Time Tripper

There was an old solitaire board game, years ago, called Time Tripper. It was a hoot to play – a grunt in Vietnam (contemporary when the game came out in 1980) falls back in time and finds himself fighting Romans and dinosaurs and all sorts of things. I mentioned the creativity behind it HERE. Anyway, the game is up and you can play the current cobbled version (its still being worked – not complete, but free, all the same). You can track down the free versions on our Facebook page devoted to the project by clicking HERE. The game and […]

June 10, 2012

The World Set Free (Review)

According the Wells, all it will take for world socialism and sunlit-fields-upon-high utopia are radioactive volcanoes. The World Set Free was written in 1913 (under the looming war). In its format, it’s very similar to In the Days of the Comet, another Wells’ book. We have a “Dickens” view of the world, bleak and unfair and evil (I agree with him on this). The middle act is the disaster, the events so amazing that it would take Hollywood in all its CGI to do them justice. And after that, the level world reexamines itself, sorts itself out, corrects itself (and […]

June 11, 2012

A new arangement!

I‘ve been thinking about this for a while. The Book and Writing blogs are what this site is about – it’s what I think a lot of the writers I’ve met and corresponded with are most interested in. Well, before I formalized the postings about writing, it used to show up in the general blog. Once I formalized it, I marked it “Dog Ear” and moved it in with the book reviews. There are people interested in reading. There are people interested in writing. But not all readers are writers and vice-versa. After some consideration, I’ve decided to break the […]