Blog – Page 86 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

November 21, 2015

OpsLog – FEC – 11/21/2015

ometimes these things can be tough to write. Outside of a turnout being left open, some paperwork getting misfiled, and little snigglets here and there, there wasn’t much material for a fire-n-brimstone ops report. No insights, no breakthroughs, no flashes of intuition. Except one. Bruce and I drove over and met Bob and the FEC crew for the holiday/last-session-of-the-year shindig. There was food in cornucopia amounts, side dishes and deserts and everything you could want to stuff in your gob. And then we ran. Bruce and I ran as a team, lucky to find ourselves on local jobs(which is the […]

November 22, 2015

Tyrannosaur Canyon (Review)

am such a book addict. Again, this one from Maya’s up in beautiful Sanford (I can’t go into that place in under $20). This one is a bit of a ride-the-free-publicity-coattails of Jurassic Park, at least for cover art. Bony tyrannosaur skull deal; you summer movie goers know the drill. Happily, the idea stops there. This is a book about a prospector of sorts who, after the thrill of a lifetime of finding “something big”, gets shot before he can spill the beans. In No Country for Old Men fashion, Tom Broadbent, quiet millionaire and horse-farm naturalist, comes across the […]

November 23, 2015

NGC 869/884 (11/23/2015)

ver at the train club rather late with friends, putting the finishing touches on a falling-down barn I’ve been building for the sectional layout, a rustic structure that required the placement of individual shingles on the roof (and took six weeks to complete). When we got home, the wife pointed out that the moon was full and the sky clear. Dammit – great. It’s going on 10 and I’ve got a bike ride tomorrow morning. Gotta get up early. Still, the binoculars will give me a good look. Stayed out longer than I thought. Moved to one part of the […]

November 26, 2015

Thank full 4 (DOG EAR)

was going to run some other observation today but I figured I’d hold it. After all, today is Thanksgiving. And while we have things to be thankful for (friends, family, blah blah) and I specifically do (namely that that damned kidney stone is out), there are things we writers should be thankful for. I’m not going to be thankful for the self-publishing market. Like the internet overall, it’s changing things in ways we still cannot imagine and so into the chaos we fall, heedless. I’m as thankful for that as I would piloting a vessel in fog-bound seas. No thanks. […]

November 29, 2015

The Real Story – Series (Review)

oing out of memory on this one – see, I’m hacking my way through Rothfuss’s The Wise Man’s Fears (1200 pages!) so that’s like four books. And with his other book, I’ve simply burned off my book review backlog. So with that in mind, I’m doing this one out of my head – after all, I’ve shelves of books. Certainly I can remember a story or two. And I can. And the one that pops to mind is The Real Story by Stephen Donaldson (who you might remember me reviewing for his wonderful book, Lord Foul’s Bane). Here, The Real […]

December 3, 2015

Tell, don’t show (DOG EAR)

o what is dialog? It’s the act of story advancement where the words (rather than actions) of your characters advance the plot. Oh, sure, you can use this for other things; setting a mood, advancing the plot, defining a relationship, and so on. Like action, Dialog needs to be carefully mapped before attempting. You need to figure out just what you want to say, the order of the points to be made, the information to be passed to the reader and so on. When all this is down (on scrap paper or in your head), only then should you put […]

December 6, 2015

Orion Nebula – filtered (12/6/2015)

ll evening it’s been broken clouds. I finished writing the third section to my book (all done – landmark) then went outside at 12:45am and saw that everything was clear, that Orion was up, and that I had that new light filter I wanted to try. The good news was that Orion was visible right off the back porch, so that’s where I set the scope up at, right on the porch. Nice to work on boards for a change. However, I managed to dislodge (i.e. drop) the spotter scope twice. So now I was cursing a blue streak. Everything […]

December 10, 2015

Stories not written (DOG EAR)

ometimes you’ve got to get quiet. There are stories around us, all sorts of fascinating ones. Your partner, your neighbor, your coworker, all have stories. You might not have a direct use for them (i.e. in your current written work) but sometimes you can actually pick up something I’ll call “the rhythm of humanity” in the stories your friends tell you. I remember driving with a nice older gentleman all the way to Atlanta. Lots of time to share stories on that long, long road. On the way, he told me about his four divorces, and also his hundred and […]

December 11, 2015

Andromeda (12/11/2015)

ome from work, out to dinner, then had a look about 8-ish. Looked clear, damned clear. Confirmed it on Clear Sky – 4+ in all categories. No cloud, no haze, no high-altitude winds. Good seeing night. So out came the scope. The goal tonight was the Andromeda galaxy. This took a bit of doing since it was passing right overhead when I started, and a vertical scope is damned hard to aim. Still, managed to sweep north from Cassiopeia to Pegasus and back, looking for that white stain I’d seen recently in binoculars. And there it was! Okay, for you […]

December 13, 2015

The Game of Rat and Dragon (Review)

kay, write a short story that glorifies space fighters and cats and you’ve got me hooked. The Game of Rat and Dragon is a fascinating short story from the old Space Fighter’s analogy by Joe Haldeman (story by Cordwainer Smith). What caught me, when I looked it back up, was that it was written in 1955. See, I think of that time as the end of the “rocket ship with three tailfins” sort of scifi, stories where authors didn’t know WTF space was, how we could work it, and what it would be really like to fly in it. But […]