Category Archives: The Writing Biz

Once again, it takes a book by Carrie Patel to break my long silence in the blogosphere.  As you can tell by comparing the cover to previous entries in the trilogy, things have taken a less chaotic turn, but things are still very exciting indeed.  And now dirigibles are involved!

Thanks to my long delay in posting, of course, you may have already read about it elsewhere, but in any case, pick up a copy today.  It makes a great Father’s Day gift.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, the erudite and well-read follower of this blog, about the latest developments in the comic strip Mark Trail, but for those of you that have been too busy to keep up with it, or absorbed in Ziggy or something, I’ll catch you up.

First, upon arriving in Rapid City on assignment, Mark was accosted by a kidnapper who was looking to add to his stable of victims, and who was interested in the careers of said victims:

The kidnapper’s intuition about the reason someone would have to visit the Cheyenne River reservation proved correct, as Mark confirmed:

So far, the conversation is pretty civil.  I mean, the “never heard of it” is arguably a bit rude (as is, perhaps, the non-standard pronunciation of “huh”), but as far as conversations with kidnappers go, you can’t ask for much more.  The man is expressing interest in Mark’s career, after all.  But things take a turn for the worse:

I have to say, I’m disappointed in Mark’s verbal sparring here, especially considering he’s a writer.  The guy gave you a nice opening, there, to defend the craft of writing on intellectual and spiritual grounds.  You could go with “Just because it takes you forever to get through an article about ferrets because your lips move when you read doesn’t mean everyone is semi-literate”, and that’s just off the top of my head.  Mumbling something along the lines of “Well, I make pretty good money at it” is just sad, especially to a kidnapper/bank robber.  Step up your game, man.

(Hat tip to Comics Curmudgeon)

As frequent readers know, I occasionally pull off Scalzi moves by getting Books and such.  Well, here I am again, showing off the view from my hotel room at Worldcon, just like Scalzi: