Author Archives: Henry

What You Want To Read

Posted on by Henry

I have been moderately derelict in my duties: I’m in the throes of a book.  1636: The Devil’s Opera caught me late yesterday and hasn’t yet let go.  I am also partway through two others (Hide Me Among The Graves, The Quiller Memorandum), but I don’t have a review of any of them ready for you.

I’ve been making progress on the next Jerome short story, with several thousand words down already and a good number more to go.  I’ve been having some trouble with this one, but it’ll come around eventually.

What I want to know, though, is what you next want to read from me.  Specifically, are any of you interested in seeing more material based on that flash fic piece which I wrote?  I’ll include it past the break so that you can refresh your memory, but here are a few questions to get things started:

  • Do you want to see more in this setting?
  • If yes, whom should I follow?  Who and what seem most interesting to you?  How long should I make it?
  • If no, what sort of thing would you like to see instead?  Do you have any ideas that you’d like to see explored?

Please put any responses in the comment section.  Once again, the flash fic piece in question follows the break…

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Choose Your Own Adventure! Part 3 (or 2b?)

Posted on by Henry

Quick news note: the flash fic that I wrote one week ago was chosen as the winning piece in the contest!

This is the third installation of my Choose Your Own Adventure series.  The previous two pieces can be found here: Part 1, Part 2.  You’ll benefit from having played them and being moderately familiar with their details, especially Part 2.  Note that this piece is divergent from Part 2, and actually follows on the events of Part 1.  You’ll see what I mean when you read the first briefing just below.

For the best experience, keep your eyes on the text nearest the top of the screen and be careful not to read ahead.

#Start here#

When we last left you, you had just outrun the knights and fled into the woods with the villagers.  You’re immensely popular, because you warned them of the approaching group of knights just in time for them to escape…

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Short Story: Jerome’s Tropical Vacation

Posted on by Henry

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Alternate title: Dude, Where’s My Boat?

Dear readers,

It’s taken a bit longer than I had expected, but I finally have another installment for you.  This goes along with two other pieces in the same setting.  I won’t claim that this is the final version of this story, but I do think it’s ready for your eyes.  It might even, according to some of my proofreaders, be fun.  Enjoy!

***

Jerome lay on the sandy hill, exhausted.  He had pulled himself up to the line of trees, above the high tide mark, and fallen to his knees before slumping over onto his back.  The sun was slowly lighting the sky from beyond the horizon, turning the east pinkish gray in anticipation.  Lifting his head, Jerome could see the ship breaking apart on the reef.  Much of it was still afloat, but it was all wrong.  The wood was holding together, but it had been so battered by the waves and rocks that the only piece he could recognize was the bowsprit.  That jutted into the sky, waving back and forth like a flagstaff whipped by wind as the swell dropped it time and again in the shallow water.  It had separated a while earlier, breaking off the forward hull with a sickening crack that he had heard across the water.  Soon enough there would be nothing but fragments and scattered driftwood, carried off by the rolling waves.  Jerome found the fate of the ship a fitting metaphor for all civilized accomplishments.  Who could claim that they had made something which would last more than a few heavy storms without being constantly repaired and rebuilt?  Everything slowly fell apart, even as people tried to hold it together.

His head dropped back onto the sand.  This was probably just his fatigue talking.  He knew that he wasn’t usually this unhappy.  He watched as the darkness of the night sky fled across the heavens towards the western horizon.  Then again, he reflected, he usually hadn’t just been shipwrecked and marooned, likely to die far from home on an island in the New Sea.  It was enough to make him want to cry, but he was just too tired.

***

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Bait and Switch

Posted on by Henry

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned.  Back on August 26th I promised you that I’d have a short story posted by today.  As you can see, I don’t have that here for you, but perhaps you’ll forgive me: I did give you the second installment of my Choose-Your-Own-Adventure far sooner than I had thought would happen, and I have actually finished the short story I’d intended to post today.  I just haven’t edited it yet.  My guess is that you’ll see that up here on Wednesday, though it won’t have any of the section that I teased you with last time (that should end up in another short story, which will come out sooner rather than later).

Finally, in hopes of making reparations, I offer you the flash fiction piece that I wrote over the weekend for Alison McKenzie’s contest.  The rules were that the piece had to be between 100 and 750 words long, and had to use the phrase “When dawn broke, he knew it was all over.”

Have fun…

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Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake

Posted on by Henry

I think David Drake might have access to a time machine.  You see, I’ve written my reviews of his books years after they were published, and yet he has consistently moved to address my concerns.  He doesn’t get it exactly right every time, but he’s clearly heard me and has responded to the points that I make.  He’s even usually fixed things within a book or two.

Master of the Cauldron is the sixth book in the Lord of the Isles series, the last book before the final trilogy which is supposed to wrap up all of the adventures that our heroes have been having.  It continues with the excellent setting which I gushed about in my earlier reviews, still delivering on that sense of diving into a world made up of an Atlantean amalgamation of our past.  In fact, much of it is very familiar.  If you’ve paid attention while reading the previous books, you’ll probably be able to call most of the scenes here as they happen, or at least know the pattern of the flow as you read.  So the question is, do I still like it?   Continue reading →

Choose Your Own Adventure! Part 2

Posted on by Henry

Edit: Part 2b has been posted and can be found here.

This particular story follows in the footsteps of the previous CYOA which I published on this blog.  It should be perfectly legible and entertaining without having read / played through the first one, but those of you that like knowing a little bit more about what’s going on should try the other one first.  As with the previous one, you’ll have to make a little effort not to read ahead.  But if you keep your eyes on the topmost section of text and click the links as you see fit, you’ll do fine!

Another important note: this was originally going to continue both sides of the the previous story.  I’ve pared it down to just one of them to give myself more time with the other half, but even so this may be longer than the first installment.

# Start with this link #

Last you knew, a knight had ordered that wretched man named Hurly to pick you up and carry you off…

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Computer Game Gossip! Blackbird’s new game will be in the Homeworld universe

Posted on by Henry

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SPAAAAAAAAAACE

So, this is not what I usually write about.  But I was given some really great news and I thought I should share it with the rest of you.  You know how Gearbox acquired the rights to that totally sweet game Homeworld?  I know, I know, it came out in 1999 which is practically forever ago, but it was still pretty incredible… rather than review it right now, I’ll just say that I loved playing that game, loved watching that game, and loved listening to that game.  Anyway, Gearbox just signed a deal to allow Blackbird, a company founded in part by people involved in making the original Homeworld, to publish their new game Hardware: Shipbreakers as a part of the Homeworld universe.

I also haven’t mentioned how excited I am by how Hardware looks, so I forgive you if you are confused.  Check it out:

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Cartozia Tales

Posted on by Henry

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Quick disclaimer: I received my copy of the first issue as a review submission, and am friends with Lucy Bellwood, one of the excellent artists on the project.

Cartozia Tales is the collaborative creation of a group of indy cartoonists, with two issues out and another eight to come pending a successful Kickstarter project.  It explores the world of Cartozia by offering stories from all over the map… literally.  One of the central conceits of the project is that each of the artist teams will create stories from a randomly chosen location in the world of Cartozia, with the eventual goal of having every artist tell a story from every section of the world.

The world itself is filled out in promising detail on a map in the center of the first issue (like that pretty one up above).  Your initial introduction to the material is offered by a young cartographer named Shreya, who travels around the world of Cartozia mapping it out and collecting stories.  These stories are all designed to be accessible to young readers, and as such they are short, move quickly, and don’t require an extensive background vocabulary.  But leaving it at that doesn’t do full justice to the content; a number of the stories were just as deep and engaging as I would hope something aimed at an older audience to be, and the stories that didn’t quite hit that note felt like they promised to do so within the next few episodes.

The art changes from one story to the next as different artists take the reins, offering a wide variety of styles in a medium that is more often denoted by much larger uniform chunks.  I am of course quite partial to Lucy’s work, but I found several new artists that I expect to look up once I’ve finished writing this post (never mind, I couldn’t resist and already looked them up).  Simply put, I quite like this project and I’m looking forward to reading the next issue.  I highly recommend that you check it out, and contribute to their Kickstarter if you like what you see.

Rough Drafts and Epiphanies

Posted on by Henry

Maybe I should put a number on that title.  I expect I’ll be writing more posts like this in the course of writing this blog.  Much like Mattias’ post, this one is meant to keep you up to date.  First, some housekeeping notes: I’ve set up additional pages such that you can more easily find my creative content simply by mousing over the Our Fiction tab.  My choose-your-own-adventure is still hidden a little deeper in there, so you’ll have to click on the tab itself in order to find it (I should probably fix that too, just to make my other work more accessible, no?).

Also similar to Mattias’ note, I’ve got news on more adventures for Jerome!  My Jerome, not his.  I’m afraid there was some cross-pollination after Mattias briefly used the name “Jerome” for all of his RPG characters.  Now we’ve both got main characters named Jerome in our stories, which certainly doesn’t help you, our readers.  Just remember that my Jerome lives in a world of fantastical alternate history, while Mattias’ Jerome lives in a straight up fantasy world.

Anyway, the news is this: I expect that there will be another short story installment in the next two weeks.  I’ll post it when it’s mostly done, but let’s call it September 9th just to be sure.

Would you like to know more?

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Sir, You Are Being Alpha’d

Posted on by Henry

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Your merciless foes

Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also runs a game company, called Big Robot.  For one month last year, Big Robot ran a kickstarter project to fund their game Sir, You Are Being Hunted (now available both directly from Big Robot and through Steam).  I backed that project.  This summer, just a few days ago in fact, Big Robot released an alpha of their game to their backers.  Can you see where I’m going with this?  Good.

What follows is a collection of my first impressions of Sir, You Are Being Hunted, a game about traipsing across faux-British countryside in search of important MacGuffins while being mercilessly pursued by a very large number of robots with guns.

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