Any Given Day July 21, 2009
Posted by eviljwinter in Books.Tags: Dennis Lehane, Mt. TBR
2 comments
My reviews are all done for the month. I should be finished with work for at least two of my classes by the end of next week. Oh, and you people owe me some reader requests. So if you’re reading this, start requestin’.
In the meantime, whilst I prepare to dive into the new novel, hereinafter referred to as The New Novel (TM), I plan to treat myself. I’m going to be reading Dennis Lehane’s big ass magnum opus, The Given Day.
Yes, it’s been out a while, and at 700 pages, it’s not something that fits easily into my TBR stack. But it’s time. Besides, the last Lehane I read was Sacred, which was not the best of the Patrick and Angie novels. (I leave that to Darkness Take My Hand.)
So what will I be reading once I commence to writing? Oh, I dunno. Likely, it’ll be Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers, a lot of history, and maybe a Hemingway. No crime fiction. I don’t want to read crime fiction while I’m writing it.
MTM Cincinnati: One Small Step… July 20, 2009
Posted by eviljwinter in Cincinnati, My Town Mondays.Tags: Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong
3 comments
Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. What’s this have to do with Cincinnati?
Well, the first one out of the lunar module was current Indian Hill resident Neil Armstrong.
Armstrong, a veteran of the Air Force’s X-1 program and Project Gemini, commanded the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Afterward, he was rather quiet about his achievement. He moved to Cincinnati in the mid-1970’s to become a professor of engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Since then, he’s lived a quiet life in the tony suburb of Indian Hill. Occasionally, he makes an appearance with the Cincinnati Pops to do narrations. As for the moon landing, he’s been perfectly happy to let fellow lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin speak for the crew. (There was a radio ad for the the beef industry a few years back when Aldrin, after reverently speaking of the trip, flies off in a rage and says, “Of course, we had steak! What did you expect us to celebrate with? A can of ravioli? One degree off on reentry, and we would have been accute BBR. That’s a cute little NASA term for burned beyond recognition!“)
As for the moon landing itself, like Armstrong, I didn’t live in the Queen City at the time. I was only 3 and living in a Cleveland suburb when Armstrong said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Yet it’s one of my earliest and clearest memories. I spent my childhood obsessed with the space program, to the point where I gave Mr. Johnson’s fifth grade class a lecture. (Now that’s obsessive.)
Hopefully, we will be returning to the moon in a few years. And we’ll have company. It’ll be fifty years between the last landing and the next one, a half century wasted when we could have exploited existing technology to find the moon’s true potential.
[More My Town Mondays posts at the My Town Mondays Blog.]
Hey, MTMers! I’m taking the month of August off from the blog, so it will be all Reader Request month. So between now and August 8th, tell me what you want to see on My Town Mondays here at Edged in Blue.
Reminder: Reader Request Month All August July 19, 2009
Posted by eviljwinter in Reader Request.add a comment
I’m working on a new book in August. Which means you’re going to run the blog. Email me or leave a request in the comments. Or hit me up on Facebook at jim.winter1. What topic would you like me to blather about? Let me know by August 8th.
Otherwise, August is going to be a month of this…
You’ve been warned.
And That’s The Way It Is, Friday, July 17, 2009 July 18, 2009
Posted by eviljwinter in Television.add a comment
Walter Cronkite passed away yesterday. He was 92.
We need more Cronkite’s, guys who report the news. When he gave an opinion, you knew it was an opinion. 24-hour news needs to learn from Cronkite.
We’re Doomed, I Tell Ya! Doomed! July 16, 2009
Posted by eviljwinter in WTF.Tags: doom, Rise of the machines, zombie apocalypse
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Remember I said last week the British were working on a dead bug-powered clock?
This week, the Pentagon goes one better: Robots that feed on dead bodies.
Think George Romero will be demanding royalties? How about James Cameron? Or Ron Moore?
If It’s August, It Must Mean Blog Slackage July 15, 2009
Posted by eviljwinter in Administrivia, Reader Request.add a comment
I’m taking August off from the blog.
No, not to focus on school. All my classes this term are online, so I plan to have all my work done by the end of the first week. (Um… My Database Design and SQL instructor doesn’t read this, does he? Prank caller! Prank caller!) No, I’m not going on vacation, either.
August is going to be devoted to the next novel. While it’s probably not going to be finished in August, I’d like to have such a leg up on it that I can have a final or intermediate draft into my agent by the end of the year. She’s been very patient. Time to reward that patience.
What’s that mean for you? Are the lights going dim here?
No.
Instead, you run the blog. Between now and August 8, you tell me what you want to read on the blog. Between now and the 10th, I’ll bang out a paragraph or two on your requests. No topic is off topic, but beware. Don’t ask if you think you might not like the response.
Between August 1 and the day after Labor Day, there are 26 posting days (since I tend to post only on weekdays anymore). These include six My Town Mondays posts, so MTMers, get cracking.
Naturally, I expect some gaps, which I’ll fill with various Photoshopped abominations, the odd picture or two, YouTube – and fear not. I won’t bore you to tears with “Video Killed the Radio Star” over and over and over and… – And maybe a video update by yours truly on where I am with this damn silly project. (No details, of course, but you will get to see an actual novelist in his natural habitat. Um… I suppose nude writing is out of the question.)
So get cracking. Leave your reader requests in the comments, on Facebook at jim.winter.1, or via email at jamesrwinter@yahoo.com.
Another Thought On Kindle July 14, 2009
Posted by eviljwinter in Writing.Tags: Kindle
4 comments
When writing crime, unless you’re lucky enough to get into a very small number of pubs, you’re pretty much giving away short stories in hopes you can build an audience.
And yet most writers I know want to get paid.
So what say you, writers (and readers)? What about waiting for those unpaid stories to hit the archive and sit for a year, then selling them on Kindle?
The way I see it is you don’t offer up anything that didn’t go over a transom first. And some of those early editors I dealt with didn’t really edit. They acquired. How do you sift through those?
The comments are open.
S%&t Happens July 13, 2009
Posted by eviljwinter in Books.add a comment
How nasty can writers get? Well, the worst I’ve seen personally is on the Internet with some shooting their mouths off, perhaps even on this very blog. (Hmm… )
Harry Dolan speculates they can be much worse. I review his take on that scenario in Bad Things Happen for January Magazine.
MTM Cincinnati: Just What Is Goetta Anyway? July 13, 2009
Posted by eviljwinter in Cincinnati, My Town Mondays.7 comments
Upon moving to Cincinnati, there are five things one is required to add to their diet:
- LaRosa’s Pizza
- Skyline Chili
- Montgomery Inn ribs
- Hudey DeLite beer
- Goetta
[Cue needle scratching across record*]
What in the name of William Henry Harrison is “goetta”?
And why, people have asked me, did it take you twelve years to get around to having it?
Goetta is ground pork shoulder, often mixed with equal parts beef and oats and flavored with bay leaves, rosemary, salt, pepper, and thyme, as well as onions. For those of you on the East Coast, this is similar to scrapple, a breakfast food argued over by Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Yes, it’s true. I did not have goetta until 2003. I was shopping at Bigg’s one weekend, and Glier’s, the mack daddy of goetta brands, was giving away samples. I liked it. I bought some. It goes best with maple syrup.
So what does it taste like? It’s hard to say. Obviously, it tastes like breakfast sausage, but different. The texture is different, and the flavor is sweeter.
So why haven’t other cities heard of “goetta”? Well, I can only speak for Ohio, but I’ll take a whack at it. Cleveland is a largely Slavic town, or used to be. So the pierogi reigns supreme there. Columbus, like Cincinnati, was once a German town, but it got swallowed up by this sprawling metropolis that now has a population larger than at least one New York City borough. People there eat other things for breakfast, and the diet trends toward the offerings of the surrounding Amish country. That leaves Cincinnati as the sole bastion of German culture in Ohio.
And Goetta is a German food. Originally, it was peasant food, designed stretch food portions. Immigrants from Hanover, Westphalia, and Oldenberg brought it with them to Cincinnati during the mid-19th century. It soon gained popularity in the surrounding area and earned the nickname “Cincinnati caviar.”
Today, we have Goetta-fest, an annual celebration of the stuff. Glier’s of Covington, Kentucky, is the world’s largest producer of goetta and a major sponsor of Goetta-fest. (We do love our festivals here, don’t we?)
So, if you’re from the Mid-Atlantic and find yourself in the Queen City missing that scrapple with your breakfast, ask for goetta.
[More My Town Mondays posts on the My Town Mondays Blog.]
*For those of you too young to remember, music used to come on these etched vinyl platters called “records,” still used by club DJ’s. They were replaced in the 1990’s by CD’s.**
**For the really young, music used to come on these DVD-type things called CD’s.
Another Installment Of “Dude, My Wife Is Totally Hot!” July 10, 2009
Posted by eviljwinter in That's Pretty Cool, WTF.Tags: Babes, Fun with Photoshop, Nita
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