Beyond My Geeky Life

 This last year has been rough for me on many levels. The hardest hitting event was the sudden passing of my father a few months ago. It did mess with the holiday season. I am helping my mother go through things so she can move into a smaller apartment. The biggest element that needs to be dealt with is my father's books. Even after he downsized his collection about fifteen or so years ago, he kept a good amount based on certain factors. Going through his books has been an experience. There were also some interesting personal correspondences between him and several notable authors. My mom is keeping all the autographed books for now, including two Robert Heinlein autographed novels, to have them appraised. He had gotten a lot of autographs over the years. As I go through them, I am pulling out books that he had recommend and we shared an enjoyment of. His favorite author was at one time Roger Zelazny (Not sure if that had ever changed). His favorite novel of Zelazny's was '...

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 ...

It seemed as if Disney was keeping all the Bantha milk limited to only being on sale at their theme parks. Now my guess is they have imported enough Banthas to Earth so they can produce enough Blue Milk that it can be found in the corner grocery store. It is amazing to me that it took over forty years for someone to see the value in marketing Blue Milk. As with anything seen in Star Wars, there is money to be made off us fans with putting that kind of stuff on store shelves. We got a half-gallon here and it we all like it.  A few years ago, during a trip to Disney World we got to try both the alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions, and my guess is you can find a few other mixed drink ideas using Blue Milk as the base on-line. There is an appeal to me for fun, novelty foods and I know I'm not the only one. So now Disney needs to keep it going and get enough thala-sirens here on Earth so we can also get the Green Milk in the stores as well.

The following is the introduction to the first collection of fiction I self-published, 'My  Delusions of Godhood'. This is a collection of my older fiction, if you are interested in seeing my style from about 20 years ago, the collection is still available here: Amazon.com: My Delusions of Godhood   Introduction, The title of this collection (My Delusions of Godhood) is based off my general belief that all writers suffer from of a basic need to play god. We create worlds and universes, give them our own rules of physics and logic, then we create life in those worlds and manipulate that life as we see fit for entertainment purposes. Our creations laugh and cry or live and die by our whims.  We play god with every story we write. I am also fairly sure we enjoy it, otherwise we wouldn’t keep doing it. I openly embrace my god complex. After creating the title for this collection, as I gathered up the pieces of fiction I wanted to include, I noticed about half of th...

I have been a huge Spider-Man fan ever since watching 'Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends' Saturday mornings in my youth. There was something there that drew me in more than any of the other super-heroes out there. I wanted to watch anything connected to Spidey, so it was no surprise that when I started to get into super-hero comics books, Spider-Man was the first one I started collecting and the only one I kept collecting when times were tough, and I had to budget things. When I have money, buying Spidey back issues in my main indulgence. As I look back it is easy for me to see why Spidey became my hero and why he is one of the most popular super-heroes ever, right from his first appearance. Spider-Man truly is the greatest every-man super-hero, created as a character you can relates to. From the get-go he was a person first and foremost, with human problems, human doubts and feelings. He was not the perfect clean cut super-hero with all the answers. He openly delt with insecu...

Recently I got to enjoy the parody burlesque show known as The Empire Strips Back. It was a memorable and enjoyable experience. I do applaud our Host for the show, Eric Calrissian, Lando's nephew, who did a great job of keeping us entertained between acts and engaging the audience in energized exchanges. The shows started off with an individual dressed in a costume much like Luke's Hoth outfit, but very much NOT Luke, climbing off her Tauntaun and then dancing with it. The poor girl ends up removing articles of clothing that leaves her cold and needing to reenact a well-known scene from the movies.  At one point the outer casing is removed from C-3PO, but the inner structure doesn't match up with what we saw in Episode 1. We get an extended scene from the opening of Episode 4 where Leia is recording her message with R2. A batch of Storm Troopers wearing what did not look like screen accurate armor, with a Darth Vader who was not as imposing as what we saw in the films. We a...

I have been a major fanboy of so many things over my life. Just looking around my office you can see at least a dozen different geeky franchises represented on my shelves. There are so many geeky things that I am passionate about and enjoy being part of. I have also at times been laughed at or told that I should not have such 'childish' interests or been told I am liking the wrong things. The reasons for this are varied, but at all times there do seem to be individuals out there who dislike my interests and wish to put me down in some manner for having them. While I will admit there have been times where I myself have been critical of someone else's interests that I disliked and might not have been at my best regarding my comments, I have very much become a person who understands that everyone is going to have their passions and should be allowed to embrace those passions if it gives them joy. I do not need to like a franchise or interest for other to find value in them. A ...

Just learned that today is Appreciate a Dragon Day. Sounds like my kind of holiday. Sounds like the perfect day to explore an interdimensional hotel run by two shape-shifting, master mage dragons, connected to a thousand-thousand worlds with some of the most unique beings you have ever encountered, and read a Georgie and Armand's Place story. And there are a lot to choose from. The novels - A Day at Georgie and Armand’s Place Georgie and Armand’s Place Under Siege Georgie and Armand on Vacation Short Stories - A Visit to Cripple Creek - A Weird Western You Call This Scary - A zombie story An Education in Steam and Gears - Steampunk A Very Georgie and Armand Christmas - A Christmas story How to Survive The End of the World - Post-apocalyptic A Spirited Locale - A ghost story What to Wish For - Genie tale Dragons in Space - Sci-fi Lemon-Man vs. The Flannel Darkness - Superhero Awakening The Deadly Horror - Lovecraftian story Daughter of Ash and Nightmares - Dark horror The Bigger Th...

Sorry for the huge gaps between blog posts here. 2023 ended up being a rough year for me. So here is the first post for 2024, which I hope will be a much better year. I am going to talk about a concept that Chuck, owner of Mile High Comics, mentioned during one of his regular auctions. He talked about how in the end we are only custodians of our collections and that at some point, in some manner, everything we have collected will end up no longer being ours. I know that when I am at a thrift store and I see what was clearly once someone’s collection, broken apart and separated into random groupings, I feel sad, knowing that for some reason that collection was given up. I have felt the same when I see such a thing at collector stores like Mile High Comics. I know how much effort can go into a collection and finding prized pieces that have meaning to you. I also know what it is like to make the choice to sell off part of your collection. I started collecting Magic The Gathering C...