Beyond My Geeky Life

This post is an update to what is going on with my writing. On Dec. 16th, you will be able to pick up a collection of my short fiction, 'Open Mic Night at The Nexus'. https://www.amazon.com/Open-Mic-Night-at-Nexus-ebook/dp/B0DNNVY92Z/ This collection is a great way to see my progress as a writer, starting with the first story I sold going all the way to my more recent writings. All the stories have been tweaked and improved, with one brand new, never before published story in it. For some award news: My story 'A Break from the Routine', was awarded Silver Honorable Mention from Writers of the Future for 4th quarter 2024. If you have read 'Georgie and Armand's Place Under Siege', then you should be familiar with Prof. Gunn. This is a stand along story of his. I really love this story, so I will be working hard to find a home for it. I am ending the year on a good note with my writing. Thank you to everyone for your support.

Stress is a normal part of life.  I have anxiety issues myself. Life can hand you the big stresses, which is where I'm at right now. Over the last few days the one thing that has helped me relax the most has been to just lie in bed and read some comics. I have a good pile of them right now, so I expect to be using this therapy regularly for a week or so with new-to-me comics. That's all I have for this post.

Yesterday I was at Mile High Comics as they celebrated the 50th anniversary of their first store opening. It was nothing huge. The owner, Chuck Rozanski, did what he really enjoys doing, reminiscing about his adventures in selling comic books for over five decades before everyone had cake. As I'm about to turn 50 myself, I find the closeness of age amusing. I have been a regular customer for over 35 years, when they opened a store in walking distance of my house. Before that I had been a customer whenever I got the chance, but that was the hands of my parents at the time. I think I have been to most of the Mile High Comics stores that have existed over the years. Now they are down to one store, but it is an amazing store. Worth a visit for anyone to just walk in and experience how truly overwhelming the place is. Me and My Boys At an author signing event While it has slowed down, me and my boys have been to a good deal of events there, including a wedding. I held my one and only bo...

It has been a while since my last post, but here is a good short one. Deadpool & Wolverine is a great movie.  Highly enjoyable on so many levels. It does an unbelievable job of taking looks straight from the comic books and making them work. For me one of the coolest scenes was when they did the cover to Uncanny X-Men #251, which is at the top of my list for best cover ever. Had a t-shirt of this cover and wore it until it was heavily tattered. It really is a powerful image. In the film we get to see from other angles, and it is amazing. The rest of the film is great, I'm just focusing here on one aspect that I really geeked out on.

With the truth that everything can be a collectable, I often enjoy seeing what kind of things pick up in popularity for collecting. Right now, one of the more interesting collecting fads is novelty popcorn buckets. The old popcorn buckets, which I do have few of, were just your basic bucket with whatever franchise printed on them. In recent years that has changed. Popcorn buckets have become far more interesting and collectable. As far as I can figure out it all started at theme parks, Disney and Universal Studios. But due to the fact that people were not too aware of them, there was not the big demand for them. When I learned there was a Millenium Falcon bucket at the time we were planning to go to Disney World, I knew I had to have it. I've picked up a few others as well. And while they were collectable, it was not that big of a thing. Even after the same kind of popcorn buckets started showing up in movie theaters, people picked them up as just fun things. Then came D&D Hono...

I worked in the toy department at Wal-Mart for several years and even after I moved from the department, I still had people hunting me down because they knew me as a serious collector. My first piece of advice for anyone wanting to collect, is make sure whatever you collect you have a passion for. One big thing so many people do not understand is that most pieces in anyone's collection are not worth much and no matter how one tries, there is never any guaranty of value. If you do not have a passion or interest in what you are collecting, then you're gonna be upset when you collection has no value. This is what happened with Beanie Babies and now there are a huge amount of people who collected the Beanies Babies because of preconceived value. Lots of people are now stuck with hundreds of worthless Beanies Babies that no one is buying or interested in. And since these people only collected thinking of it as an investment, they have a bunch of the things taking up space that they ...