A friend has asked for news on Ping-Ping, so here goes: Our daughter is doing very well. She has settled into her routine. She plays nicely with her brothers (though they feel she’s a bit rough). She looks after Roland. (John worries that we should have named him something that didn’t have two letters she has…
This is the third time I’ve written this…keep losing it somehow: Still reading Red China Blues. Very few people left the West to go China in the first few decades of Communism there. Very few. At one point, there were maybe two dozen Westerners in China (or at least in the Beijing area.) Among those…
Next in our series of examining my Writing Tips in more detail is The Foil. The Foil: Use other characters to showcase the strengths of your main characters and to make them seem extraordinary. The best example of the idea of a “foil”, in fact the place that the term comes from, is Hal from Shakespeare’s King…
This Japanese horror movie where…aliens affect a human to make him super strong. He walks through flame into the house to attack the good guys. Then, on the roof, the main alien leader: hits himself over the head with two bottles of alcohol, pulls up a wire, electrocutes himself to set himself on fire, and jumps…
A friend told me about a book that sounds just fascinating. It’s called A Comrade Lost and Found. It’s about a Canadian woman who was one of the first two Westerners invited to study in China, back in the 70s, when they began to open the country a bit more. A classmate came to her…
Still spending too much time recovering from our computer outage, so it’s been hard to write something new this week. I did try yesterday, but what I wrote came out…dumb. So, today what we have is the begining of How Can I Have A Life And Still Write, an article I wrote for: The Complete Guide To Writing Fantasy Volume Three.…
Hopefully, I’ll have a new post tomorrow, a day late. In the meantime, I’ve discovered that, unlike most rather unpleasant tasting organic stuff, the Horizon’s Organic Egg Nog is the best eggnog I’ve tasted since we used to make it ourselves (something my mom won’t let us do any more because she’s worried about the safety of…
Last night, we finally reached Episode 37, the final episode of Chinese Paladin 3. This picture does not give you a good sense off the show.for a better one, go here While there are a few things I would have changed in Episodes 36 and 37, it remained up to it’s extraordinary level of entertainment right from…
Of video games, one that never drew my interst was the Mario games, where two short, Italian plumbers do stuff. So, you can imagine my surprise when not one but two of my sons became utterly entranced by Mario. Why? One of the will only wear Mario shirts (he has four identical shirts, given to…
Originally published at Welcome to Arhyalon. You can comment here or there. Of video games, one that never drew my interst was the Mario games, where two short, Italian plumbers do stuff. So, you can imagine my surprise when not one but two of my sons became utterly entranced by Mario. Why? One of the…