Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel by Edward M. Erdelac (2011) : ISBN 9781615725526 (Damnation Books)
Last year I reviewed the previous two entries in this weird-west series, Tales of a High Planes Drifter and The Mensch With No Name. In fact, the series made my soon-to-be-distinguished-and-renowned “Top Distractions of 2011” list. In the review I stated that I was looking forward to the next entry. Well, it finally came and did not disappoint. In fact, I think it’s the author’s best yet.
“Glyphs” is set up in the same episodic style as the other books, this volume being comprised of episodes nine through thirteen. “The Long Sabbath” picks up the action immediately after the final tale of The Mensch With No Name (“The Pandaemonium Ride”) with the Rider and his companion Kabede being pursued across the desert by a hoard of hungry undead. They happen upon an isolated military outpost where Rider meets an old friend and learns more about the renegade Essenes that seek the strange sacred scroll that he now carries. In “The War Shaman”, the Rider and his allies take on an ancient Native American medicine man allied with the otherworldly forces that seek to force the Hour of Incursion. Next the Rider takes on a foolish mission to save a succubus from the wrath of “The Mules of the Mazzikim”, a task that places him in the hands of his greatest enemy in “The Man Called Other”. Finally, he receives some answers–and no few questions–in the boom town of Tombstone in “The Fire King Triumphant”.
“Glyphs” has all of the things I loved about the first two novels only more so. This volume is chock full of revelations about the nature of the planes, Adon’s identity and true motives, the Rider’s ultimate destiny, and the role of gods and men across the spheres. Erdelac does a great job of paring complex paranormal concepts with good old fashioned western action. These tales are truly the love children of Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Sergio Leone. There is great action, an intricate and well-researched system of metaphysics and mysticism, and an interesting character fighting for the highest of stakes–the continued existence of all creation.
Also, Erdelac’s dialog is crisper and the prose is less forced–not that it was terribly forced to begin with. This is clearly the work of an author completely in his element and having fun with it, making it infectious for the reader as well. The final events of episode thirteen (I didn’t really think about the numerological significance until now…hmm…) are huge and, true to form, set up an ending that’s really not–enhancing anticipation for the next volume.
Count me as being first in line.
THIS is the reason for the blackout...
not these tasty bits of doughy goodness...
Okay, so I totally stole that joke from the internetz. It’s still funny.
But if the legislation that is being proposed right now actually becomes law, I could be declared a dirty internet pirate whore for posting this.
Not my words–but the images. But maybe even the words. Who knows?
That’s the problem with the legislation–the language is very wibbly wobbly and slickery. Check it out for yourself here…SOPA and PIPA. Here is a pretty good translation and explanation of the bills from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Also, just do a search on SOPA and PIPA–you’ll find all kinds of sites from authors and content creators talking about how bad this legislation is.
I mean, I get that piracy is bad. While part of me would be flattered that someone would even want to steal my stuff, it is wrong and it would tick me off. I get that.
But I also remember when the RIAA and MPAA went all gestapo against peer-to-peer downloads back at the turn of the century (in ought-two or ought-three) and I wondered then as I wonder now–are we cracking down on ordinary people and curtailing all of our freedoms simply to allow big artists to add another deck to their yacht?
Don’t misunderstand me–piracy is theft. I do not and cannot condone it. I don’t care that you feel like you’re “sticking it to the man” by stealing Bill Gate’s software or that you’re only skimming off the top of Spielberg’s big pile of money when you bit-torrent that movie. You’re still stealing.
But legislation like SOPA and PIPA is a hammer in search of a nail. It punishes the common internet citizen and jeopardizes the free internet that has revolutionized our society in uncounted ways. It eliminates due process, jeopardizes expression, and only benefits media lobbyists. Further, in targeting good-faith internet content providers, it’s not really going to address the problem. Piracy is already illegal. This isn’t going to change that nor is it going to curtail the illegal activity. Ironically, it’ll just stifle legitimate activity.
So, many major side-trips on the Information Superhighway (Yes, I remember that term. I’m old.) are blacking out today in protest. Check out Google, Wikipedia, and The Oatmeal (by far my favorite) for examples.
Why aren’t I blacking out? Because that would inconvenience all 5 of my average daily visitors to no avail. Wikipedia blacking out draws attention to the issue. My blacking out only inspires a shrug and a click to move on.
So, what’s my point?
One, click the links above and learn more about this important issue. If you feel as strongly about as I do, then you’ll do what I did–contact your Congressional representatives and make your voice heard.
Two, if you’re doing research today and need good information, don’t go to Wikipedia. For one reason, it’s blacked out. For another reason, and I must put on my pinched glasses and stern-librarian-in-a-bun-wig for this (suck on that mental image!): FOR THE SAKE OF SWEET BABY GHERKINS, WIKIPEDIA SHOULD NEVER BE USED AS A SOURCE FOR RESEARCH!. Yes, use it to get links to elsewhere but Wikipedia (as much as I love it) should never ever be a primary source of information. Ever. Go to a library. Do big boy/girl research. You’ll be glad you did.
So, with a new year budding it comes that time where we look back at the previous annum to assess. WordPress provided me a pretty swanky report what this blog did in the past year. Feel free to take a peek…
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,200 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
It’s the holiday season. Christmas bows and lights adorn the street lamps of my town. Folks decorate their yards with icons of Frosty and Santa and nativity scenes. Menorah lights shine from the windows of some my neighbors. Yule logs and feasts are being prepared for the solstice. The smell of spiced fruit, wood smoke, and wassail floats through the air.
I love this time of year. People go out of their way to act nicer, be nicer. It’s a time for peace and goodwill. A time to band together to face the darkness of the coming winter. To celebrate the miracles of the past and prepare for the miracles of the future.
But over the past decade or so, there’s been this undercurrent of decidedly Grinch-like behavior and attitude that infects the holiday vibe. And it roots itself under my skin and irritates the living Dickens out of me.
What turns my mood as sour as last year’s fruitcake? The so-called “War on Christmas”.
The backlash against this non-existent war manifests itself in a number of ways. People declare that “Merry Christmas”, not “Happy Holidays”, is the only acceptable way to wish people a pleasant yuletide. The term “X-mas” is decried as an attempt to take “Christ out of Christmas”. Folks will assert that “Jesus is the reason for the season!”
My problem is that many of these assumptions are not only fairly arrogant–but based in ignorance of historical facts.
So, yeah. A lot of this nonsense really got rolling with the good old John Birch Society back in the 1950s. They were very concerned about the UN and their secularizing ways–especially the way department stores (those bastions of communist and anti-Godly rhetoric) used non-denominational Christmas decorations in their establishments. This was, of course, a plot by the UN to secularize all beliefs and customs.
This rant against department store decorations has now evolved into a protest against the use of “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings” instead of “Merry Christmas” as a greeting. It’s viewed as somehow a way to diminish the Christian holiday–instead of what it is: an attempt by retailers to get more people–Christian or otherwise–to come and spend money in their shops. Stores don’t want to undermine the holiday–Christmas is the best friend retailers ever had!
Besides, how on earth is being more inclusive in a greeting a bad thing? Why is it that by including others in the well wishes of the season Christianity is diminished? It’s not. And, frankly, it’s arrogant to think so.
I’m sorry. But when 95% of Americans celebrate the holiday and a full 76% of the adult population are Christian, it seems a bit childish to believe that your religion is being attacked simply because not everybody practices it. It’s a bit like the kid in the playroom who has all but one of the toys but whines that nobody likes him because he didn’t get them all.
Most actual people–not pundits or self-proclaimed “culture warriors”–but the people you meet in day-to-day life–don’t mind being wished a Merry Christmas. Or a Happy New Year. Or a Happy Chanukah. Or even a Happy Holidays. Not when the wish is genuine and comes from a place of peace and joy. Like where most Christmas-y feelings come from.
A lot of folks this time of year make an effort to put “Christ Back Into Christmas” and detest the seemingly more secular abbreviation of “Xmas” or “X-mas”. It is viewed as a subversive attempt to de-Christianize the holiday.
Except that the first group to use the abbreviation were Christians.
The terms “Christ” and “Christian” and “Christmas” have been abbreviated for over 1000 years. The practice is rooted in ancient symbology and in the Greek language (the language of the New Testament). Christ was often noted with the XP, a derivative of the Greek chi-rho symbol that depicted the first letter of the word Χριστος. The term Xtian or Xpian has been used for Christian and the term Xtianity is cited as early as the 1600s (see more here).
Now–I’m not going to be disingenuous: Most people don’t know their history, or their Greek. Thus I think it equally as likely that people use Xmas to secularize the word as I do that people use Xmas as an homage to its Greek roots. That is to say–neither explanation is bloody likely at all. When Xmas is used it is either due to lack or time or space to write out the full word. That’s why we have abbreviations. Twitter only has 140 characters, after all.
In other words–Xmas takes Christ out of Christmas as much as Thursday takes Thor out of Thor’s Day.
“Jesus is the Reason for the Season” makes a great bumper sticker. But the fact is Mr. Christ was actually a bit late to the game.
People have been celebrating the Winter Solstice since ancient times. Our Norse and Germanic ancestors celebrated the yuletide over a period of days, feasting in celebration of the return of the sun until their yule logs burned out. Even the Romans celebrated the time with their Saturnalia, a hedonistic celebration of the harvest in honor of Saturn. They’d carry evergreen wreaths through the streets during their celebration and acknowledge the “birthday” of the sun-god Mithras on December 25.
Further, the celebration of Christ’s birth was not part of Christian practice until nearly 400 years after his death. And it is widely believed that the dates of the celebration served to bolster the practice of Christianity with the fun-loving, debauching pagans. In fact, it is far more likely that he was born in September, around the Feast of Tabernacles.
The fact is, the reason for the season is the same as it has always been: to engage in fellowship with friends and family and celebrate the coming of brighter days.
Now, I am not a Christian. I’m an agnostic. But I do celebrate Christmas. I enjoy the season, the traditions, the fellowship of friends and family, the music, the lights, and the food. I truly love the season. I just don’t celebrate it in a religious manner.
My biggest problem with all of this is that the underlying assumption by a lot of these folks is that if you don’t celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, you’re declaring war on it. If you try to “dilute” the season by actually making it inclusive, you’re declaring war on it.
In reality, most folks want the same thing as everyone else: to have a nice holiday with family and friends.
The truth is, if your faith is so weak that it can only exist if everyone around you acknowledges it, then you need to question the basis of that faith. If it is diminished simply by the acknowledgment that there are people other than yourself–then perhaps you have already arrived at the root of your problem.
So let’s end this non-existent war. Wish people a Merry Christmas if you want to. Or Season’s Greetings. Or Happy Holidays. Just mean it. Smile more. Laugh often. Embrace one another in the darkness of winter and smile at the coming of the light.
Isn’t that the reason for the season?
I'm a loser, baby, etc.
So..this was the third year I attempted the NaNoWriMo challenge (50,000 word novel in 30 days). And I failed.
I managed to get a little over 28,000 words and just stopped. There were a couple of factors (illness, a friend’s wedding, the holidays, ennui, demonic Smurf™ possession…). But the biggest was just the falling out I had with my story.
It wasn’t her. It was me.
The thrill was gone. I wasn’t having fun writing it–so I damn sure knew that my readers would not have fun reading it.
And yes, I get that the whole point of the exercise is to JUST GET SOME EFFING WORDS ON THE EFFING PAGE AND EDIT LATER, YA MOOK! But I had gotten far past that point. I didn’t want to put any more words to any more pages on this story.
I just didn’t care any more. And life is too short to spend 30 days working on something you don’t care about anymore.
But, in hindsight, I still managed to learn a couple of things in the process of trying and losing. Because, ultimately, writing is a science. And an art. And an alchemical equation. And a kind of magic. Nevermind…go back to the science metaphor.
Like with all science experiments, failure forces learning. With failure, one can still build on his or her store of knowledge and come out better for it.
So, without further ado…what I learned from failing NaNoWriMo:
I don’t care if you’re a die-hard pantser–you’ve got to have some sort of plan on where you’re going and how you plan to get there. Even if it’s a plot outline that exists solely in your head (displacing your knowledge of Pink Floyd lyrics for a short period of time), you’ve got to have a plan.
I didn’t. Not really. I had a plot idea, not a plan. I did have a structure–but not an outline. My vague ideas remained just that…vague.
I’m not the sort to outline out each chapter to the Nth detail…but if I had planned out what I was doing a bit better, I probably wouldn’t have gotten as bogged in the middle as I had. Probably. Maybe. Just roll with me here, people!
I can’t stress this one enough: you have absolutely, posismurfly (sorry…still a little residual possession there…) got to have an interesting antagonist to drive the story.
My biggest mistake on this story was thinking that my protagonist was interesting enough to carry the book through a series of various minor villains–the biggest one turning out to be his mentor/friend.
EEEEHHHHKK! Wrong answer. No final bonus round for you.
I was bored out of my skull writing this book because it was all a set up for some big reveal toward the end of the novel of what a skunk the main character was. But he didn’t really have any real conflicts along the way. There was no yin to his yang to generate that friction. It’s that friction that should be driving the narrative.
It doesn’t have to be a Bad Guy™ per se–but Our Hero’s got to buck up against something or someone that’s at least as interesting or clever as she is. I should have made my character’s mentor/nemesis more interesting. Or give them both an antagonist that would be more than their equal and see how the two characters diverge in handling the situation. Or something.
So here’s the news flash, Chet: No character is interesting enough on his/her own to carry a story without an equally interesting source of conflict.
It’s my blog…I can indulge in an Excalibur reference if I want to…
The original idea for my NaNo project was a short story I wrote about a retired superhero sidekick who is cynical and hard-bitten and cashing in on his past fame. And the “twist” is that it could be inferred that he got his mentor/hero killed. And maybe even did so on purpose. I actually found it to be quite clever, because there so much was going on behind the scenes that could be inferred by the text.
I work-shopped the story and it was pretty roundly criticized for not really being a story but an idea or an exercise. So I thought I could expand it–novelize it. Show rather than tell.
And then I found out the truth: Clever ain’t gonna cut it. And I’m not clever enough by half to hold the attention of folks for more than a few pages.
There’s a difference between clever and interesting. Between layered and obtuse. Between Dick Sargent and Dick York.
Clever can get you some high points in the text, but it’s good writing that makes a interesting novel.
Plus, sometimes it is better to keep it short because the devil in the details has a name: Dullzebub. And he is the cruel, dark lord of Sleepytown.
We don’t need to be shown everything. Just what is interesting. Or clever. But mostly interesting.
I still think the idea is worth pursuing, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to make it so quite yet. Which leads to my final point…
In my case, I think I have novel idea–in the older sense that it is rather unique. I managed to create an equally unique setting in which the action could take place. I had ideas–but not a Novel.
It takes planning and craft to make a novel. An idea–or even a string of them–isn’t enough. It could be that this idea I have isn’t for a novel–maybe it really does work better in short form (but just not the one I originally wrote). Or it could be that the idea would make a good novel–but I’m not skilled enough to write it.
Yet.
Regardless, I didn’t bring everything I needed into my workroom when I sat down to craft my little NaNo jewel. And as a result–I failed.
But maybe I won’t fail next time around–as long as I listen to the lessons gleaned from this year’s failed experiment. Maybe in a year’s time I’ll have honed a few more skills to use in my pursuit. Or at least recognize a stinker a bit sooner than halfway into the game.
Either way, even when I lose, I win.
Serial Distractions by Shedrick Pittman-Hassett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Shedrick
