It’s not quite summer yet but it was time for our week long vacation along the scenic byways and back roads of upstate New York. My wife and I love to take road trips and wander around to see all the little places that you won’t see on the major highways. You may get there faster on a highway but it is never as interesting. Read the rest of this entry →

Figured I’d put up an excerpt from the new book today. Its unedited so don’t give me any crap. Enjoy!

Jax had filled Alpha squad with some of the more experienced pilots and even then, there had been a couple who had only been in combat simulations. When he took over on the Delarus, he had called on a fellow retired fighter pilot by the name of Morris to be his second and in command of Beta squadron. Morris was quiet and seemed reserved but Jax knew a different side of his second. He had seen the extreme intelligence and split second decision making that Morris tried to downplay while they were flying together back in the GF. He knew that if anything happened to him the station and the other squads would be in very capable hands.

“Delarus command this is Alpha one,” Jax said.

“Alpha one this is Delarus command, go ahead,” he heard.

“According to your coordinates we are on an intercept course with the incoming ship and should be within visual range soon,” Jax said.

“Copy that Alpha one. Please visually identify the vessel and report back their ID tags so we can put it into the system.” Read the rest of this entry →

To say that I was sorely disappointed would be an understatement. It’s been a long time since I’ve considered walking out of a movie before it was over much less a superhero movie. I had a feeling months ago when the first trailer came out that I wasn’t going to overly enjoy this movie but I never thought it could be as bad as it actually was.

Since it is still only a week old I’ll do my best to not give out any spoilers (and I’ll warn you ahead of time if I do). Most of my major issues aren’t spoiler related anyway. First off, I’m never a fan of movies that mangle up three or four different story lines that ran through comics over the course of a couple decades. This movie has that in spades. Then there is far too much Slo mo, Superman carrying a little girl, Batman walking through tall grass and wonder woman walking out of a party, plus endless amounts of slo mo during Batman’s origin (which you essentially have to watch twice… in slo mo).

I’m not sure why but there is never a real clear reason why these two should be at each others throats and in the end when they come together its because of one of the most stupid and contrived plot lines I’ve ever heard of, that essentially centers around someone uttering a single word. I literally threw my hands up in the air at this point. Also The theme of God vs man is shoved down your throat just about every ten minutes of this two and a half hour travesty. and the dialogue felt forced and fake.

The cast was superb and I believe they tried very hard to make a good movie, unfortunately the writers and directors didn’t seem to care nearly as much. Zack Snyder and whoever wrote this and looked at it and said “Oh yeah, this is gold,” should be ashamed of themselves. Hell I even thought that the score made no sense with this movie and I never notice the scores to movies. All in all there is a metric ton of wasted potential in this movie.

One last point before I finish my rant. I’ve now watched this new superman in two movies, both of which I disliked, I think he’s an excellent choice to play Superman and I keep trying to like him, but it seems that the writers don’t want me to. It makes no sense at all to me to make your main character completely lack anyway to connect or care about him/her. I honestly didn’t give a crap about Superman at the end of this movie, and considering how it ends, I should NOT feel that way. Either way I will not be back for a second viewing.  Way to go DC you’ve managed to screw the pooch once again.

The holidays are over with and it’s a brand new year! Thanksgiving and Christmas were both good with minimal drama, which is always nice, and new year’s was great because I got to spend it with my darling wife (for the first time in a few years) at a wonderful Italian restaurant. All in all the holidays were pretty good!

I don’t usually consider the holiday season to be over for me until after the Arisia scif-fi convention which happens every year in Boston on the weekend before MLK day. Now that it has passed I can buckle down and try to get back t the daily grind of writing more stories and creating new and hopefully interesting worlds.

I was on two panels this year at Arisia and both seemed to go very well. The first was a panel about The Walking Dead and its spin off The Talking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead. My fellow panelists were all interesting and knew the shows quite well. The audience was engaged and asked some great questions. I just wish there had been more people in attendance, we had a large room and barely got twenty people.

The second panel was on Sunday and was right in the middle of the AFC divisional game, same as it was last year. That would be the only complaint I had about this panel. The room was packed and the audience was wonderful, they had great comments and asked interesting questions. Our moderator ran the panel flawlessly and the other members followed suit. I was very happy with this panel and hope that I can be on it or something similar next year.

The rest of my two days at the Westin waterfront hotel was spent wandering around enjoying the costumes and people of Arisia, catching up with old friends that were also attending, drinking far too much or any combination of the three.

I bring the panels up mainly because The second one, that was focused on pulling the emotional strings of your readers, reminded me of a couple things that i had been neglecting the last few months of 2015. As a self employed writer with no deadlines it sometimes gets hard to stay focused and get your work done. It doesn’t matter if its posting on social media with ads or updating my page or writing a new story, it all counts and all has to get done… because I am no where near rich enough to hire people to do my ad work for me.

Somewhere during the panel the point came up that it was important for a writer to write every day. It didn’t matter if it was a blog or pages in your story just something, anything. There were a couple other points that I mentally jotted down but that was the one that struck home. I had not so much forgotten it as shoved it t the back of my mind when I hit a bit of a wall a few months back. Once I started down that undisciplined path of writing only once in a while it just sort of snowballed downhill from there to where i would go days or weeks with barely writing anything at all. That needs to change. Now the holidays are over for the moment and I have nothing else to claim as a distraction so it seems like a great time to get back up on the horse and start over again. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing story pages or updating my site here or adding to my travel journal (also on this site) I will be working toward writing something everyday. Hopefully, I’ll find some folks out there that will enjoy it and don’t mind taking a few minutes to give it a read.

On to 2016!

Back to work with me

Don

The feasts have been had, the games have been played and about now most folks are heading to bed or gearing up for Black Friday for today is Thanksgiving, the day to count our blessings and give thanks. Read the rest of this entry →