A-to-Z Challenge Theme Reveal 2017...

So, after skipping 2016, I'm back to give the A to Z Blog Challenge another go for this year. For those not up to speed, the A-to-Z is a blog hop through which bloggers attempt to post every day during the Month of April (minus a few Sundays) on a different topic based on the letter of the alphabet. You can get more info at their website here.

In previous years there was a handy Linkytool-list-thing that gave you a list of all the participating blogs in one convenient location. It made it easy to find other blogs and even sorted them by genre so you could find those that might interest you. This year you have to go to the A-to-Z website post each day to share your current day's post, which is another way to do it, I guess. I don't make these decisions.

Bloggers are encouraged to chose a theme to keep themselves focussed and to help readers find blogs that may interest them. I participated in the blog hop in 2014 and 2015. My topics are below:

2014: Stuff I'm Afraid Of

2015: Characters You've Never Heard Of (Because they're in books I haven't published. This was a stupid idea)

This year, I've got a (hopefully) more interesting topic, one that's topical and appropriate to the times.

Ready?

Okay, here goes...

Photo credit: FreakingNews.com

Weird Canadian Facts and History

Your first bit of trivia? This year, 2017, is the 150th anniversary of the Confederation of Canada in 1867, when the the British colonies of Canada were granted dominion as a semi-independent federal state. (Full independence didn't actually come until 1931, which is your free bonus fact of the day). Celebrations are taking place across the country all year long, and I'm going to have my own little party by sharing some of the bat-sh*t weird stories I've run into over the years about America's polite neighbour to the North.

Some of these stories may be relatively well-known among Canadians, but I'm hoping they're obscure enough that my readers from other countries won't have heard of them. I will admit up front that I'm not a historian so I probably won't always cite properly and I've been known to exaggerate for comedic effect, but this is supposed to be about fun stories, not a history lesson. And I do promise that they are all true.

So join me back here come April 1 when I will (hopefully) have a story for every day you drop by!

My First Time (#MyFirstPostRevisited)

#MyFirstPostRevisited was created by Sarah Brentyn at Lemon Shark, and I was tagged to participate (after some prompting) by Loni Townsend. It's an excuse to share your very first (hopefully terrible) blog post.

I wrote my first blog post six years ago. It wasn't at this blog, it was at a gaming blog called "Rule of the Dice" that I still write for occasionally. An acquaintance of mine was bumping up his game-related content and recruited a bunch of gamers to write for his site.

The post is not as embarrassing as you're probably hoping. I actually did write some REALLY embarrassing and obnoxious posts over there, but I'm not sharing those today. This was just an intro to me and my first time playing Dungeons & Dragons. Appropriately, this year is the 25th anniversary of me getting into role-playing games. This is amazing for two reasons:

1. I have wasted SO many hours playing those games over the years.
2. I am getting really f*cking old.

January 25, 2011

It was the summer of 1992. Super Nintendo was still all the rage, and Final Fantasy II was my favourite game (still is, actually). A bunch of artists from Marvel comics started their own upstart comic company, Image, which featured lousy stories but very pretty pictures. Batman Returns was in the theatres, though it was actually Basic Instinct that my 12-year old self wanted to see. Of course, being 12-years old, I couldn't get in.¹ I was about to go into Junior High, an awkward, pimply, unpopular kid with ugly glasses (why parents let their children wear ugly glasses, I will never know), and spent my afternoons hanging out on my friend's patio.

One day, one of my friends (I can't remember if it was Carl or Chris) pulled out these green-lined character sheets covered with arcane runes like "THAC0," "Bend bars/lift gates," "Constitution" and "Save versus Death." The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons logo was featured at the top. I had heard of D&D but really had no idea what it was. "It's like Final Fantasy, but you can make whatever kind of character you want," they explained to me. "Then you make up stories and adventures and stuff for them to go on."

F***ING AWESOME.

My 12-year old mind was blown. I immediately made a character, which I remember vividly (I think his name was Arik). He had 20 Strength, 20 Constitution, 20 Dexterity, 5 Intelligence, 5 Wisdom and 15 Charisma. He had 600 hit points (we all started with 600 hit points) and had a Sword of Elements, which could attack with whatever type of damage was appropriate at the time.

We obviously had no idea what we were doing. We had no rule book, no dice, very little idea of how the game worked besides a few hours one of the other guys had played with some older kids. All he had were those ugly green character record sheets. And we loved it.

Pictured: Gateway drug.

Most of our games looked like this:

DM: You meet an ogre.

Player: I hit it with my katana of destiny.

DM: How much damage do you do?

Player: Um, 500?

DM: It's dead. You find a potion, but it's not labeled.

Player: I taste it, does anything happen?

DM: It was poison. You die.

We played that for awhile, and then tried Marvel Superheroes, which was even more fun. You could make your own superhero? With whatever ridiculous powers you wanted? And I can beat-up Spider-Man??? Once again, we neglected to read the rule book, so that made it even better. It wasn't until Christmas that year when I got the D&D Basic Boxed set, and I sat down and realized that role-playing games actually had RULES. So many things suddenly made sense now, like: "Oh, so Turn Undead doesn't actually mean you transform into a zombie!" The box also came with a set of ugly polyhedral dice. I still have them, and though they really suck (I usually don't believe in luck affecting the probability of dice, but that stupid twenty-sider can't roll a 20 to save its goddam life), they hold a special place in my heart.

I'm now approaching 19 years playing table-top RPGs. Have I learned anything interesting or useful enough that people will want to read what I have to say? Probably not, but I still hope I can sufficiently minimize the suck so you'll stop by from time to time to read my ramblings. While you're here, leave a comment while you're at it. Tell us all about your first time.²

Join me next week when I'll tell you about the greatest RPG ever.

Later,

CDGK


¹ Which was probably for the best - even when I saw that movie years later, it still made no sense to me.

² Yes, I mean first time-time playing D&D. But if you want to tell me about other firsts, that's okay, too.

##

Some things of note: I love foot notes, and used to use them extensively in my writing, but they really don't work very well digitally. No one wants to scroll down to the bottom in a blog post, and setting them up in an ebook is even worse. So sadly I don't use them much anymore.

I wrote lots more about roleplaying games on Rule of the Dice until I ran out of old stories, and had kids so I didn't have much time to create new ones. Then I started releasing my fiction and writing this blog, which I don't really have time for either but at least I can do it by myself, without having to schedule game days with other people.

If anyone wants to participate in the hop, the rules are below:

The Rules:

• No cheating. (It must be your first post. Not your second post, not one you love…first post only.)
• Link back to the person who tagged you (thank them if you feel like it or, if not, curse them with a plague of ladybugs).
• Cut and paste your old post into a new post or reblog your own bad self. (Either way is fine but NO editing.)
• Put the hashtag #MyFirstPostRevisited in your title.
• Tag five (5) other bloggers to take up this challenge.
• Notify your tags in the comment section of their blog (don’t just hope they notice a pingback somewhere in their spam).
• Feel free to cut and paste the badge to use in your post.
• Include “the rules” in your post.

Here are the folks I'm tagging to participate, if you're feeling up to it:

Philip Overby
CG Coppola

Birgit at BB Creations
Natasha Duncan-Drake
Stephanie Faris

Happy Blogging!

###

Hell Comes to Hogtown: The Soundtrack

For those who missed it, my new book Hell Comes to Hogtown was released last week to much fanfare. It's available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes, Smashwords and many others, so you should go immediately to your online retailer of choice and pick up a copy. Then come back here and listen to these songs while you read it. It will greatly improve your overall experience.

I can't speak for other writers, but I listen to music constantly when I write, and certain songs tend to burrow into my brain and insinuate themselves into my writing. I've said before that my first book, Ten Thousand Days, was basically inspired by A Perfect Circle's song "Sleeping Beauty." I don't have a single song this time around had that kind of impact, but I actually have enough songs that are meaningful to the story that I can come up with an entire album.

Some of these tunes I listened to while I wrote and they affected my frame of mind and thus affected my writing. Some of them just strike me as being appropriate to the story. Either way, it's a fun little exercise and maybe it will help you understand the theme and the atmosphere I'm going for in my book. Or maybe you'll just get to listen to the fun tunes.

~ | ~

"Zombie Night" by Trastorners

This is the music from the trailer. I wanted something both dark and humorous that fit with the theme of the piece (I also wanted something that was royalty free so take that for what it's worth). It may not capture what I was going for exactly, but it's close. There's another song by this band I wanted to use, but it was too familiar and people would have associated it too closely with something else. SPOILER WARNING: The book doesn't actually have anything to do with zombies.

"Conditions of my Parole" by Puscifer

This is the theme for Act I, and quite accidentally, it nearly tells the plot of the book. It was not at all planned, because I hadn't heard this song until I was nearly finished the manuscript, but there are several lines in "Conditions of My Parole" that nearly spoil the story. I don't know why I'm including it except that were Hogtown be made into a movie, this would actually make a great theme song, like the Bond themes of old.

"Applause" by Lady Gaga

This is the only song that's actually mentioned by name in the book. It's the entrance music for Dee, one of the main characters. He's a professional wrestler, and it's the song that plays when he makes his way down to the ring. It's perfect because the idea of living your life on stage and doing everything for "The Applause" is EXACTLY Dee's motivation. He's a narcissist and everything he does is for attention. Plus it's a really catchy tune.

"Dear Brother" by Puscifer

This is the theme of Act II, when the story gets darker. It's about raising a drink to fallen brothers, and cursing "the reaper (who) slips right past us/the bastard stole your breath away." It's a little more introspective, a little more serious than "Conditions of My Parole," which follows the pace of the book nicely.

"The Heart's Filthy Lesson" by David Bowie

The villain's theme. The creepy demon hobo holds many dark secrets in his heart, and he knows everyone else's secrets as well. He's dark and dissonant and discordant, just like the song. It's about death and loss and longing, but also about having a sick sort of admiration for the beauty of murder and destruction. About holding dark desires in one's heart. Plus it's just an awesome song, and I had to include David Bowie somewhere.

"Kalopsia" by Queens of the Stone Age

Kalopsia is a condition, state or delusion in which things appear more beautiful than they are. This is the theme of Act III, which is where our hero Fitz discovers so many things aren't what they seem. Things that seemed beautiful turn ugly, the world he thought he understood is turned upside down, and he's forced to reevaluate parts of his life and relationship that he's held true for years. The pace of the song is also perfect for the up-and-down roller coaster of the last few chapters. The song goes from low, dreamy and confusion valleys to soaring, powerful peaks, keeping you off balance and reeling, just like our hero.

"Chelsea No 2" by Rufus Wainwright (Leonard Cohen Cover)

This is Alexandre Croteau's theme. Alex is one of the RCMP officers chasing down Fitz and Dee and one of the main players in the story. I knew I wanted to include a Rufus Wainwright song, it was either this one or Montauk. I always imagine this song in one of the book's violent, deadly fights toward the end. It's incredibly incongruous but gives a chilling and sorrowful undertone to the violence. I could totally picture that scene in a movie in slow-motion, shot like a choreographed dance number, with a slow love song playing at graphic violence in the centre.

"A Drowning" by How to Destroy Angels

Ariadne's theme. She is the woman that enters the comic shop and turns Fitz's life upside down, and she is destined for a dark fate right from the beginning. Her mysterious, painful past is only hinted in the story, but the bits that we do see are heartbreaking enough.

"The Munsters" by Trastorners

And here's the other song I alluded to at the top. If Hogtown was a movie, this is the song that would play over the closing credits. Despite the heavy nature of most of the music, it is a funny book with strong elements of comedy, and I wanted to include that somewhere. The goofiness of the Munsters' theme song just provides such a nice dichotomy to the heavy-handedness of the rest of the contract.

~ | ~

THE BOOK!

Title: Hell Comes to Hogtown

Author: C.D Gallant-King

Genre: Comic Horror

Length: 65,000 words

Cover Art: Jason Salvatori and Max Covers

Editing: Amy Allen-MacLeod

Release Date: July 1, 2016

Fitz is a broke night manager for a grubby comic book store. His only friend Dee is a drugged-out, womanizing pro-wrestler. Together they’re the most pathetic losers on the face of the planet. Their lives cannot possibly get any worse.

And then they’re implicated in the kidnapping of the prime minister’s wife.

On the run from the cops, Fitz and Dee discover there is something far worse than the RCMP stalking the dark streets of Toronto. They are being hunted by an ancient demon of unspeakable evil with an insatiable taste for blood... or maybe it’s just your run-of-the-mill giant murderous hobo?

Either way, life in prison might be better than whatever the creepy drifter has in store for them…

THE LINKS!

You can purchase Hell Comes to Hogtown at any of the fine retailers below:

AMAZON.COM | AMAZON.CA | AMAZON.CO.UK

KOBO | BARNES & NOBLE | iTUNES
CREATESPACE | SMASHWORDS | GOODREADS

~ | ~

The Day Before Hell Arrives

My new book comes out tomorrow.

In our world of changing political landscapes, increasing cultural tensions, radicalized violence and rampant media hysterics, it's not even a blip on the radar. Even in my tiny pocket of the world, with my oldest starting school in a few months, my wife going back to work full-time soon and our planning of a family vacation halfway across the country, my little book often falls on the back burner.

But in it's own small way, it is important, and I would like to wax poetic about it for a moment if you'll indulge me.

I started Hell Comes to Hogtown in February of last year, when I wrote the first lines in a hardcover black notebook on a bus on my way to work. I eventually wrote the entire first rough draft in that notebook, on that bus. I typed it up on that bus, too, and did countless revisions over the last 16 months with my laptop perched on my knees.

After Ten Thousand Days came out last May, I really looked forward to releasing this one. I felt good about it, that I had learned from my mistakes and that it was going to be much better than Days. I was also wildly optimistic, thinking that I would have it out by Halloween.

That didn't happen, obviously (though I did put out an unrelated short story for October 31). I tried to run a crowd-funding campaign to get Hogtown published through Inkshares.com, but that didn't go very far. I was reminded once again that my network is rather small, and I don't have the time or energy to do the hyperactive marketing required for crowd-funding.

If only I had an army of these guys as fans. Assuming they all have Twitter and Facebook.

My writing "career" is really more of a "hobby," and I'm perfectly okay with that. I know I'm not going to write a national bestseller, or win any awards. I'm not even hoping to write full-time. I just want to put out a book that I can be proud of, that hopefully people will enjoy. If Hogtown sells a few more copies or gets a couple more reviews than Ten Thousand Days, then I will be content. I will know that the work I put into this book was worth it, and that I am improving at writing. That's all I can ask for.

Nothing will change tomorrow when the book comes out. The sky won't open up, the anxiety won't vanish. It will take awhile before numbers and reviews come in, and I will still check my sales rankings and the review pages every day to see what's happening, and that will go on for weeks or months. But there will be a symbolic change, in that all my work of the last 16 months will officially be available for all the world to see. And that, I think is the big deal.

I hope you will check out the book. It's a dark comic horror/urban fantasy kind of thriller, with monsters and comic books nerd and professional wrestling and government conspiracies and gratuitous drug use. It also has a lot of bad words. Like, a lot. Believe me, I completely understand that this won't be for everyone, but I'm okay with that. Just don't say I didn't warn you. If you like Christopher Moore, you'll be in the same ballpark for what I'm going for.

AMAZON.COM | AMAZON.CA | AMAZON.CO.UK

KOBO | BARNES & NOBLE | iTUNES

CREATESPACE | SMASHWORDS | GOODREADS

On the surface the story is about the loser night manager at a Toronto comic book store and his best friend, a womanizing pro-wrestler. They accidentally get caught up in a murder/kidnapping case involving the prime minister's family, but through it all they're also being stalked by a creepy demon hobo with an unknown agenda. It's gory and crude and funny, and will hopefully thrill and surprise you along the way.

At the heart though, it's the story of a young man who is unhappy with his place in the world, questioning his choices and his future. Sure, all this crazy shit is happening around him and he could die at any moment, but he's still worried about whether that girl was actually flirting with him or not. And he's still watching out for his best friend, even if he's an arrogant jackass who doesn't give a damn about anything but getting high and laid.

We've all been there, right?

If you read all that and you still think you would be interested in the book, and you're the kind of person who leaves reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, drop me a line or hit me up in the comments and I'll hook you up with a digital copy. Who knows? You might enjoy it.

(Oh, please, I hope you enjoy it)

Excuse Me While I Gush About Roleplaying Games for a Moment

Most of you know I'm a gamer in addition to a writer. Specifically, I'm a table-top gamer, preferring old-fashioned board games and pen-and-paper roleplaying games to video games. I don't usually talk about roleplaying games much on this blog since I write for another site that's devoted entirely to RPG's, but today I just wanted to share with you an awesome new game I've been playing lately. I think I would be better served discussing it here rather than for an audience who all know what I'm already talking about and are probably just thinking "yeah, so?"

Hopefully you know what role-playing game is. Dungeons & Dragons is of course the classic example, as it's the oldest version out there. It's a game where a group of players each create a character and "roleplay" them through adventures to (usually) accomplish a group goal, like defeating an evil monster, finding a lost treasure, saving a kingdom, etc. One of the players acts as the Game Master or Dungeon Master, sort of the defacto referee who plays all the enemies and secondary characters the player characters/heroes encounter, and generally guides the story by creating the world and the setting with which the characters interact.

There are rules to adjudicate how your characters interact with the world - each characters has numerical values to represent their strength, agility, intelligence and so on, which indicates how good they are at certain tasks. In most games you roll dice to determine if your character succeeds at a task or not (like casting a spell or attacking something with a sword) and your chances of success are modified by your skills and abilities.

Many writers enjoy being Game Masters because the two roles involve similar functions: creating worlds, characters and stories. I also enjoy game mastering, but in the last few years I've found myself enjoying it for very different reasons than why I enjoy writing.

In most games, the GM or DM sets out the scenario: Where the players are, what they're doing, what is their goal. The players then follow the clues, plotlines and story as set out by the GM to try and accomplish the ultimate goal of "finishing the adventure." A good Game Master can adapt and improvise if something changes or the characters do something unexpected, but ultimately they're still moving in a pre-defined direction. In the worst version of this, the characters and players end up like pawns moving through the GM's pre-written story.

Even at the best of times, when the players have some choices in the outcome of the story, this still feels false to me. Many times players go through the motions because that's just the way it works. We fight these monsters because the Game Master wrote it this way. But why? Unless the player characters have a very good reason for wanting to accomplish this goal, why are they doing it? Why are they trudging through a dungeon, hunting for this treasure, slaying this dragon? If these were characters in a novel, what is their motivation? That's the part that interests me: why do these heroes do what they do?

For some heroes, it's to get back at their exes.

This is where Dungeon World comes in. Dungeon World is a "stripped down" version of Dungeons & Dragons where game mechanics and rules crunch take a backseat to storytelling and character development. It uses brilliantly simple mechanics that leave a lot to interpretation and imagination, and encourages the players to fill in as much (or as little) as they want.

My favourite difference between Dungeon World and D&D is that it takes a lot of the agency away from the Dungeon Master and gives it to the players, which is a very good thing. In classic D&D, the DM builds the game world and the players wander through it uncovering its secrets. In DW, the players build it themselves as they go.  The Dungeon Master is there to nudge them along and get the story flowing, not to create the world himself, and the players get to decide exactly what kind of game they want to play. By having more of say in their game, the players ultimately feel more involved and invested, and their characters develop true motivations to do what they do.

A great example is the classic booby trap: the pit in the floor, the poison dart, the falling block from the ceiling. In D&D it's very common for the DM to place traps in a dungeon for the players to overcome. They have to make a roll to seek out these traps at the proper time and then find a way to disarm or avoid them. Much fun is had as the players try (and often fail, sometimes fatally) to figure out how the trap works and disarm it. That's the fun of the game. In DW, the Dungeon Master doesn't set a trap in advance. Instead, when a player decides to "look for traps," he makes his roll. On a success, he finds a trap and disarms it - what exactly that looks like is up the player to make as cool, devious or silly as he chooses. On a fail, he misses the trap or fails to disarm it and it blows up in his face. Again, he may choose to describe exactly what that looks like.

Traps should be fun. No, seriously.

At first it may seem counter-intuitive to "intentionally" hurt yourself in a game (remember, if the player didn't choose to look for it, the trap probably wouldn't have been there), but you have to remember the fun of the game is finding the trap and either setting it off or not. Having no traps is boring to everyone involved. Not to mention you actually gain experience points every time you fail a roll, so it's in your best interest to try everything you can.

The best mechanic is when your roll falls between a "success" or a "failure." A "partial success" means you have succeeded at your task but... some complication has arisen. You hit your opponent but he hits you back. You sneak silently into the queen's bedchamber but you find yourself in an awkward position, perhaps under the bed and the king just walked in. Or maybe your spell puts most of your enemies to sleep, but one of your companions is caught in the area of effect and accidentally gets knocked out as well. These are fun and interesting occurrences that keep the action moving, and that you can use to build on the story and move the plot along. The player and GM working together can turn these complications into compelling set pieces that make the characters and the world around them come to life.

Perhaps the character had only meant to sneak into the queen's bedchamber to steal a signet ring to forge a letter. They assumed they would either succeed or fail and get caught by the guards, and have to fight their way out. But now we have another option, with the character under the bed, eavesdropping on the king. Perhaps the GM had an idea that the king was plotting to attack a neighbouring kingdom, and now the player character hears part of that plan. Or perhaps the player throws out the suggestion that the king is having an illicit encounter with someone unexpected - the queen of that rival kingdom, or the royal sorceress, or the queen's sister, who knows. No one had planned that detail in advance, but adding that wrinkle now adds a lot of interesting possibilities to the story.

All of our Harry Potter games end in unexpected player actions.
Though honestly, this would have solved a lot of problems in Harry Potter.

And that's what I enjoy about roleplaying games. Telling a story, together, and letting it develop and turn in unexpected directions when the need arises. I shared with you awhile ago about the time we were playing a zombie apocalypse game and one of the players turned on another and killed him at the climax of the adventure because he had been bitten by a zombie. It was completely out of the blue and against the generally accepted "no player vs player violence" of most games, but it made perfect sense to the story and the character in the moment.

I've played other roleplaying games via email and through messaging, where the whole game interaction takes place in writing. We were basically writing a communal novel, going back and forth between the players and the game master. When it works, when everyone is throwing ideas out there and adding to the story with each message or post, it's an exciting and amazing experience. It's also usually hilarious. Dungeon World really plays into that same communal storytelling sweet-spot, and it's a game I hope to play a lot more in the future.

What kind of experience do you have with role-playing games? Have they mostly been just complicated board games? Or have you delved into them as shared storytelling experiences?

"You Promised Me The Ending Would Be Clear," or, "Thank you, Mister Bowie"

I'm not a big celebrity chaser or an idol worshiper. I don't build up an aura or mystique around famous artists and entertainers the way some do, but I do respect and admire those creators whose work inspire me. Because I'm not so invested, I guess I'm generally not as devastated when we lose figures from our cult of personality (though I do appreciate many of my friends were pretty broken up about Lemmy a few weeks ago). However, sometimes, just sometimes, a celebrity death really kicks me in the gut.

The first time I was really bummed about such a death was Kurt Vonnegut. I was HUGELY into his books at the time and while he was getting up in years and wasn't writing much anymore, the definitive realization that there would be no more books really stung. Plus he was such an interesting and fascinating fellow.

The most recent before today was Terry Pratchett, which was hard because I loved Pratchett's work at least as much if not more than Vonnegut. His was also massively influential to my own writing. It didn't hurt as hard as it could have because we knew he had been sick for a long time and that the end was coming. Plus I heard the news of his passing while my wife was in labour, so I really didn't have time to dwell on it.

Then came today.

A little background info first. In 1995 I was listening to mostly stuff I picked up going through my dad's old vinyl. Deep Purple, Queen, Three Dog Night, Jesus Christ Superstar for some reason. The newest album I owned was a cassette of Micheal Jackson's "Thriller."

My friends were mostly still into 80s hair metal and early-90s thrash metal, refusing to modernize to what the "cool kids" were listening to (Nirvana and Pearl Jam). I was far from the cool kids, and while I liked some of the metal, my friends were going farther and farther into dark growly stuff that just didn't do it for me.

I did have one friend who was into pretty much everything though, and he would constantly tape music videos off MuchMusic (the Canadian version of MTV). One day he introduced me to David Bowie's new song "Heart's Filthy Lesson." We only picked up on it at first because we misheard the line "I am already" as "I am a Reggie" which we thought was HILARIOUS. We watched/listened to the song over and over cracking ourselves up, until I eventually realized "Wait a minute, I really like that song."

I actually went out and bought the CD that the song appeared on, "Outside," which was one of the first CDs I ever bought, and probably the first album of new music (previous CDs were Queen and Deep Purple Greatest Hits records).

It came in a cardboard sleeve instead of a jewel case.
Bowie was so avant-garde.

"Outside" may not be remembered as one of Bowie's best or most famous albums, but 15-year old me LOVED IT (35 year-old me does, too). It was another of his concept albums, set in "futuristic" 1999 where Bowie played "Detective Academic" Nathan Adler, a PI investigating the murder case of a 15-year old prostitute. Technically, the full description was "The Ritual Art-Murder of Baby Grace Blue: A Non-Linear Gothic Drama Hyper-Cycle," and the liner notes had some twisted and messed up artwork to accompany the weird and haunting story of Nathan's case.

More important than the off-the-wall concept was the music. "Hallo Spaceboy," "Heart's Filthy Lesson," "I Have Not Been to Oxford Town" and "Strangers When We Met" are still some of my favourite songs, period. The rest of the songs, between the weird dramatic segues, are also great. For those who aren't familiar, "Outside" came out during Bowie's period when he was hanging out with peak-form Trent Reznor, and Reznor's industrial influence was massively apparent on the record.

This new style of music blew my mind. I had heard of Reznor before but had never really given him a chance (my friends weren't into it - such is the power of peer pressure). Filtered through Bowie, however, I was immediately hooked. This led me to Nine Inch Nails, as well as Marilyn Manson, Tool, Linkin Park and Korn. He also led me back to the guys who influenced Reznor, like Joy Division/New Order, Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Depeche Mode and, of course, Bowie himself. For those who know me, THOSE are the bands who defined and shaped my teens and early adult years. Hell, in  the case of Reznor and Maynard James Keenan of Tool, some of those guys are STILL making music I love.

Marilyn Manson still makes music, too.

It's the music that helped make me who I am. It's the music I listened to when I was an angry young man. It's the music I listen to as a perturbed suburban dad. It's the music I listen to when I write. It influenced me just as much as Vonnegut or Pratchett. And it can all be traced back to Bowie.

(Then there's Labyrinth, which was a very special movie to my wife and I during our early courtship. Bowie's finger prints are all over my life.)

So yeah, David Bowie had a massive influence on me, and the shocking news of his death this morning really hit me hard. I had literally just downloaded his new album "Blackstar" just twenty minutes before I heard. It's heart-wrenching. This may be the last new Bowie music we ever hear. I say "may be" because if there's other material out there somewhere it will eventually see the light of day. We all remember how Johnny Cash's exceptional final album "American IV" was followed with several posthumous releases of diminishing quality.

In the case of Bowie, I kinda hope there isn't any more. If there was additional music out there that Bowie wanted us to hear, he would have put it on "Blackstar," or his previous record "The Next Day" (which was really, really good, by the way).

Though if I had to pick just one, 1997's Earthling is probably my top Bowie album.

Back in 2003 when he released "Reality," he thought that may have been his final album, and the last track "Bring Me the Disco King" would have been a perfect coda to his career. That was not an accident. I'm sure he knew (or very strongly suspected) that "Blackstar" was going to be his last, so whatever note he wanted to end on, hopefully he chose it. Judging by "I Can't Give Everything Away," the last song on "Blackstar," I think he ended it exactly the way he intended to.

Thank you, David Robert Jones, for giving us everything you did.

I know something is very wrong

The pulse returns for prodigal sons

The blackout's hearts with flowered news

With skull designs upon my shoes

I can't give everything

I can't give everything

Away

I can't give everything

Away

Seeing more and feeling less

Saying no but meaning yes

This is all I ever meant

That's the message that I sent

I can't give everything

I can't give everything

Away

I can't give everything

Away

I can't give everything

I can't give everything

Away

I can't give everything

Away

- David Bowie, "I Can't Give Everything Away"

Crappy Video Game Corner: STAR WARS Galaxy of Heroes

I got a new smart phone a month ago, finally retiring my iPhone 4S not because it broke but because Apple didn't want me to keep using it. They tricked me into upgrading from iOS 7 to iOS 9 telling me I could roll it back if I didn't like it. Unfortunately, the new OS was terrible as it was barely compatible with my 4-year-old phone, glitching and lagging all over the place. I then discovered that I couldn't actually roll-back to iOS 7, but only version 8, which runs even WORSE on a 4S, which is why I never installed it in the first place.

Anyway, my point is I bought an LG Android phone (which so far has been great), which has opened me up to a whole new world of apps and games. I don't play a lot of app games, mostly because I don't have a lot of time to waste on them and they tend to be boring and repetitive. But since it was the middle of Star Wars mania I went for it and checked out a few Star Wars-themed apps.

The first couple were terrible. Star Wars Commander is a copy of all those other "build a city/base and an army and attack other players" games which drive me absolutely bonkers. You know, the kind of game where you get a pass for the first couple of days, then as soon as your grace period expires the next time you log in you find your base and army has been destroyed by other players? It's IMPOSSIBLE to play those games without sinking ungodly amounts of time and money into them, constantly building up, protecting and re-building your resources. The annoying thing is, I actually love games were you get to build up cities and conquer other territories, I just despise multi-player versions. I deleted Star Wars Commander about 10 minutes after I installed it.

Not only is a stupid game, but it's also really dumb-looking.

I also tried LEGO Star Wars Microfighters, which was actually a pretty neat little "vertical scrolling" shooting game (think the old 1941 arcade game). You get to fly classic Star Wars ships and blast recognizable baddies, all in cute little min-LEGO format. It's good for a lark, but it doesn't have much replay value. You just play the same levels over and over again trying to get slightly better scores and hidden items (that are completely random and very hard to find).

Then I found Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, which is not a great game but its in the perfect sweet spot for what I look for in app games.

Ignore the text, the game is actually in English.

1. Collectible-card game-like mechanics.
I spent way too much money on Magic: The Gathering and especially the Star Wars card game as a kid. I know I have a weakness for collecting imaginary little characters, weapons and items. And Galaxy of Heroes is all about collecting this crap. The point of the game is to build a party of iconic Star Wars characters (and not-so iconic characters - who the hell is Cad Bane?) (actually I looked it up, he's a character in the Clone Wars cartoon) and play through battles to earn items to improve your characters and earn in-game money to buy more characters. This is like crack to a guy like me, who actually spent a good chunk of December playing Pokemon The Card Game Online (and I only stopped because it's not available on mobile devices).

2. Character building and improvement
There are so many ways to improve and upgrade your characters, it's ridiculous. First you have to collect "shards" of the character's avatar to unlock them in game (the characters are actually supposed to be holographic game pieces on a board, you're not "collecting" real people). Then you have to collect more shards to make them more powerful. You can also collect training items to make them stronger. And you can collect (and upgrade) gear to make them stronger. AND you can collect other items to unlock (and improve) special attacks. Of course I recognize that all this junk is just there to keep you busy doing pointless tasks, but I appreciate their dedication to diversification.

3. No direct player-vs-player combat
No one can steal or destroy your stuff when you're not online. You have no idea how happy that makes me. There is a player "arena" where your squads can do battle, but you don't actually damage or hurt the player. You can lower their ranking if you beat them,but the rewards based on rankings is so minimal it's not really a big deal.

I can't find a screen grab of it, but my favourite moment in the game is when Chewbacca shoots
Ewoks in the face with his bowcaster and they go flying off the screen.
I've seen it dozens of times and I still laugh every time.

4. It requires little effort
There is some strategy involved in the game, but mercifully it requires no super reflexes, timing or similar skills. I was never super great at games that required precise hand-eye-coordination, and I certainly haven't improved in age. The battles are turn based, so you have lots of time to decide your moves between actions (especially helpful if I'm falling asleep on the bus). You can even turn the AI on and let the computer battle for you, which is fine for easy fights. If you've already beaten a level and need to play it again (which you will do A LOT, because you need to play those levels again and again to get all those collectible items), you can use special items to just skip the battle and get the rewards.

For those of your who are saying "but that's not even a game," remember that Heroes is not actually about the battles, its about collecting crap. The battles are there to get in your way to collect more crap, so you have to get through or around them any way possible.

Also, you're right, it's not really a game. It's more like some weird kind of database that you have to jump through hoops to update.

I wish Excel looked more like this. I would probably enjoy my job more.

 5. You don't have to spend money to play
I haven't spent a cent yet, and I don't plan to. You can collect more cards and items faster by spending a few dollars of real money for extra in-game currency, but it's expensive. And there's not always a guarantee of exactly what items or characters you'll get, just that you'll get them faster than if you have to slog through the battles.

If you want the REALLY good characters, guaranteed, you have to spend really big bucks. A Jedi Knight "starter bundle," which is 2 decent characters and two more you probably already have, costs $45.99 US. A "Heroine" starter bundle for those of you who want some cool lady warriors cost $57.99. And the big kahuna, the Force Awakens pack, which is one of the only ways to get Kylo Ren (who is inexplicably one of the most powerful characters in the game), costs a whopping $119.99 US. That's the cost of at least two brand new full length top-of-line video games for a few bonus characters in a crappy cell phone game.

you can't truly appreciate the imperial march until you hear it on vinyl

— Emo Kylo Ren (@KyloR3n) December 22, 2015

Seriously, who would pay 120 bucks for this guy?

Again, you don't really compete against other players, so you don't need to have the most powerful items to compete with anyone but yourself. And the only "reward" in the game is grinding away to unlock these cool characters. If you buy the cool characters, then all you have left to do is grind away to unlock the crappy characters. Or do you buy those, too? In which case, what is the point? The whole point of the game is collecting stuff. That's the end goal. If you just spend money to buy everything, you're not spending money to buy the game, or to play the game better; you are literally just buying "winning the game."

Anyway, the more I write about this the more trouble I'm having justifying the fact that I play it, so I'm going to stop. For now it's just a diversion that I will probably grow bored of in another week or two. But I'm not ashamed of it. It scratches an itch and I haven't spent any money so I think I'm in the clear. I've been trying for a week to unlock Rey, though, and I'm only about 15% of the way there. If I get fed up and spend $30 to buy her, then I will admit it's a problem.

Hundreds of Stormtroopers have died while I've tried to find her.
Seriously, it's easier to get her into a Monopoly game.

How about you? Do you or have you ever played any terrible, time-wasting (and potentially money-sinking) games? I'm looking for horrible World of Warcraft, Candy Crush and Maple Story type of anecdotes. You know what I'm talking about.

How to Write a Classic Story: Buy a Bear

"Left Port Arthur 7 a.m. In train all day. Bought bear $20."

That's an actual entry in the diary of Harry Colebourn, a Canadian soldier from Winnipeg who was travelling to Valcartier, Quebec to undergo training on his way overseas in 1914. He bought the female bear cub from a hunter who had killed the animal's mother. Now, Colebourn was a veterinarian by trade and I could absolutely understand him wanting to take the animal from some weirdo random hunter, but he then proceeded to take the bear with him to training camp.

Even better, when Colebourn shipped out to England... HE STILL KEPT THE BEAR. It became his unit's unofficial mascot.

I've never served in the military and I don't know a whole lot about army practices and regulations, even less about those in effect during World War I, but I had no idea they were so cool about their soldiers keeping giant wild animals as pets. I mean, were people back then so badass that no one was worried about A FUCKING BEAR wandering around their base? And no one thought it was odd when the dude brought the thing with him ACROSS THE OCEAN to hang out with him in England? I mean, I would imagine if a soldier asked to bring his dog with him that would be a flat-out no. But a bear's okay?

You're probably wondering where I'm going with this and what this has to do with writing, so stick with me a moment (if you haven't figured it out already).

Colebourn wasn't a complete jerk; when he shipped out to France he finally decided to leave the bear behind. Apparently the trenches at the front line were not the place for a bear cub, though I'm sure if she had been full grown they would have slapped some armour on that bastard and brought it along.

Way deadlier than any WWI-era tank.

He left the bear at the London Zoo, where it became a favourite of guests, in particular to an aspiring writer and his young son, who loved the bear so much he named his teddy after her. Did I mention that Colebourn had named the bear "Winnie" after his hometown of Winnipeg? It all makes sense now, right?

A.A. Milne wrote the Winnie the Pooh books for his son, Christopher Robin, based on his toy bear that was in turn named after a real bear that Major Colebourn irresponsibly dragged halfway around the world.

(For anyone who caught that, yes Colebourn was eventually promoted to the rank of major despite  - or maybe because of? - the fact he irresponsibly dragged a bear halfway around the world.)

So what is was my point in this ridiculous story? My point is that A.A. Milne became famous because some dipshit bought a gawd-dang bear off a crazy hillbilly in a small town in backwater Ontario. That, my friends, is the secret to literary gold. Ursine trafficking.

Being super creepy-looking apparently also helps.

So if you too are an aspiring writer, if anyone ever offers to sell you an orphan bear cub, snatch that up right away and wait for your book deals to start pouring in.

Or, alternately, I'll become famous writing about you getting eaten by a bear. Either way, someone wins.

My new story Tentacles Under a Full Moon - now available here - doesn't have anything to do with Winnie the Pooh, but it does contain a giant murderous werebear, which is probably much better.

Trick or Treat for Books (100th Post!)

Happy All-Hallow's-Eve-Eve-Eve-Eve-Eve-Eve!

Ah, Samhain is in the air. Smells like cheap kid's make-up, candy and rotting pumpkins. Well, that and winter. It definitely smells like Winter is Coming™, but that's a story for another day.

I love Halloween. As a kid I just liked dressing up, but as I've gotten older I've been drawn more and more into the spectacle and pageantry of it. I'm at an unfortunate life stage however where my kids are really young so I can't go too overboard with the decorations. The first year we had our house and my oldest was an infant, the neighbourhood kids were terrified to come up onto my front porch. Last year, my son started asking why there were severed limbs all over the yard. This year I'm afraid he's old enough that he won't ask, he'll just run up to his room crying and send me his future therapy bills..

So I'm going to have to tone it down for a few years, I get that. But I still want to have some fun at Halloween, right? If I can't scar children this year, maybe I'll give away some free spooky books instead.

(Not to the neighbourhood kids. My books would probably scar them, too.)

Thanks to the Devilish Duncan Twins at Wittegen Press and Grim Patricia Lynne, I've signed up for both the Share-a-Scare Blog Hop and the Trick or Treat Reads Blog Hop. Fortunately both are basically the same deal and pretty straightforward: On Halloween, you hand out free (preferably spooky) books and stories to anyone who comes knocking on your door/blog!

Make sure to come back this weekend (Samhain technically runs until sunset on November 1, so let's keep the festivities going) when I'll be giving away FREE copies of an appropriately-spooky story.

Plus, if you're interested in other places to grab free books, the full list of participating blogs is below. Feel free to sign up yourself, if you have something you want to share:

Also of note, as you may have noticed from the title today is my ONE HUNDREDTH blog post here at Stories I Found in the Closet. I thought this was some kind of momentous occasion, and actually failed to write a post last week because I spent too much time thinking about what I should do for this special event. This week I just said f*ck it and got on with business.

Life is too busy. I wrote 100 blog posts. Yeah me.  Now let's get on to the important stuff!

Just 114 hours until Halloween...