The Battle of Beaumont-Hamel

So... not all of my posts are funny and weird. Didn't think they would start out on a bummer on day 2, but I promise they'll be less bleak in the future.

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July 1st is Canada Day, the anniversary of the founding of the Dominion of Canada, and generally accepted as "Canada's Birthday." It is NOT the same as Canada's independence day, which is a major misconception that I'll probably get to in another post this month. While this year marks the 150th anniversary of the Dominion of Canada, the province of Newfoundland did not join the country until 1949, and before that year we remembered July 1st for a very different event that took place during the First World War.

WWI was a pointless war. Archaic alliances and posturing lead to mass conflict between old countries that had no idea how to use new weapons and military technology. This was not the battles of armoured knights of old, this was battle with heavy artillery, machine guns, chemical weapons, but the powers behind it didn't seem to know what they were getting into. The ruling governments of the day maneuvered themselves into a massive, continent-spanning war that no one could win. In four years, it left 17 million dead and more than 20 million injured.

At the time, Newfoundland was a separate colony of Great Britain, completely independent of Canada. Even though Newfoundland hadn't maintained a standing army in nearly 50 years, like many other countries, we were required to send troops to Europe to defend the British interests. One thousand men from the small island volunteered, enough to form a dedicated Newfoundland Regiment. After short stints in Egypt and Gallipoli, the Regiment was moved to the front lines in 1916, near the village of Beaumont-Hamel in the North of France at the head of the Allied offensive for the Battle of the Somme.

The Battle of the Somme was a massive joint British and French offensive designed to quickly push back the German Empire. It ended up lasting five months, killing or injuring over one million men, making it one of the bloodiest battles in history.

The Newfoundland trench, just before the attack on July 1, 1916.

Photo credit: http://www.heritage.nf.ca/first-world-war/assets/img/articles/road-support-trench.jpg

The offensive began on July 1st after Allied forces spent a week bombarding the German front lines to weaken their forces. Tunnels were dug beneath their emplacements and huge explosives were set to go off in conjunction with the assault to cause further damage and confusion. Everything was in place for a strong Allied advance. Then everything fell apart.

The first British troops advanced as planned, but met with far heavier resistance than expected. It seemed the heavy bombardment did little to weaken the German emplacements, and intelligence reports were inconclusive as to what ground, if any, the first wave gained.

Instead of waiting for better intel, British Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Lovell Hadow ordered the second wave - which included the Newfoundland Regiment - to advance and take advantage of the actually non-existent gains of the first wave. The mine that was supposed to cover their advance detonated early and only succeeded in alerting the Germans of their impending assault. Still they were ordered to press on.

When the Regiment reached No-Man's Land, they found it devoid of cover, having been flattened by the earlier Allied bombardment. They were completely open to German machine gun fire. Worse, the battlefield was so littered with bodies from the first wave that they troops were tripping over the dead. Those few that made it any distance discovered the German barbwire - which earlier recon had pointed out was still intact but the officers chose to ignore - blocking their final advance.

It was a massacre. Out of some 780 men who went over the top that morning, only 68 were able to answer roll-call the next day. The Newfoundland Regiment was no more.

Some choose to remember that day as the valorous sacrifice of courageous soldiers. Others remember it as a senseless loss of human life, ordered by incompetent commanders that gained nothing for the war efforts. Either way, Newfoundland remembers. It was the first great conflict experienced by the dominion, and the losses were felt by an entire generation on the sparsely-populated island. The severe post-war depression only compounded the heavy toll.

In 1921, Newfoundland purchased the land where the failed attack took place and established a memorial site that continues to be maintained by the province and Canada to this day. It is one of only two National Historic Sites of Canada located outside of the country.

Further reading: http://www.heritage.nf.ca/first-world-war/articles/beaumont-hamel-en.php

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My A-to-Z Blogging Challenge theme for 2017 is Weird Canadian Facts and History. To see more blog posts, click here.

Alert, Nunavut - Santa Claus's Next-door Neighbour

Alert is the northernmost permanently-inhabited location on Earth. It is just 800km (500 miles) from the North Pole. It is so far North that temperatures only increase above freezing for two months out of the year (and not by much - average August high is just 3 degrees Celsius or 39 degrees Fahrenheit).

Why do people live and work next door to Santa Claus? For both scientific and sovereignty reasons. Alert is a research station and military outpost, maintained and operated year-round by the Canadian government. There's lots of scientific information to be gleaned by poking at frozen oceans, and we constantly have to be watching for those pesky Russians to be sneaking into our hemisphere across the North Pole. This is actually a legitimate concern: the waters of the Arctic are contested by Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark and the US - or more importantly, the natural resources that potentially lie beneath the seabed under the waters are contested. Yes, we are so close to scouring our planet clean of gas and oil that we're looking to start drilling in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's back yard.

Environment Canada air chemistry observatory. Yup, scientists sit around in the arctic in the dark for months at a time observing the air. 

Stay in school, kids!

How far north is Alert, exactly? I have an anecdote to illustrate.

I work for a department that provides satellite communications services to the Canadian Government. Due to the vast size of the country, with communities located in very remote locations where no other form of communication is available, our satellite phones and modems are used regularly by police services, park rangers, medical personnel, search & rescue operations and the military.

Recently we had a meeting with a new satellite provider based out of the United States who was trying to sell us on their new devices and equipment. His products were interesting and he had a great sales pitch, but inevitably it came down to one question: "How far north does your satellite network reach?"

"Oh, it goes really far," he assured us. "You shouldn't have a problem," he said. We pointed out that we have a number of communities and organizations well above the 60th parallel. His confidence wavered a little there, but he still insisted that it should work "most of the time." Then we showed him a map of the Northwest Territories and Nunvat, and pointed out communities such as Iqaluit and Resolute, and research stations such as Eureka and Alert. He was gobsmacked. "You go that far north? Nothing goes that far north."

You know nothing, American satellite provider.

Canada is vast, far larger than most people realize, especially along the North/South axis. Alert is basically the farthest point North, and is 4,358km (over 2,700 miles) from Toronto. That's about twice the distance from Toronto to Austin, Texas, which itself is no small trip. Hell, the distance from Alert to Toronto is only slightly less than the distance from New York City to London, England. That's big, and that's really, really far North.

We had to invent a new unit of measurement called "really stupid far."

The station is named after the HMS Alert, a British/Canadian exploration sloop that wintered in the area in 1875-76. Yes, that kind of sloop. A wooden sailing ship, stuck in the ice in -50 below weather. For months. Between this and the Cremation of Sam McGee, it really seems like folks loved to die in the Arctic back in the 1800s. Oh well, I guess they didn't have Twitter.

Seriously, who do you have to piss off to get assigned to this job?

Not surprisingly, there have been a few tragedies around the station since it was established in 1950. The most famous of which was the crash of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules (a heavy duty military transport plane) in 1991 that killed 5 people and left the survivors stranded for 32 hours while search and rescue teams fought blizzard conditions to reach them. If that sounds like a movie it's because it is - it was dramatized in the made-for-TV-film "Ordeal in the Arctic" in 1993, starring Richard Chamberlain. Reviews were chilly. 

Sorry.

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.

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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!

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Interview with Author Alex Schuler

I'm starting a new feature on the blog where I'll be interviewing a mix of writers, at least once a month, from a variety of genres and backgrounds. They're not necessarily promoting a new work or have even officially published anything, but they all share something in common - the love of writing and creativity.

My first guest is Alex Schuler. Alex lives in Colorado in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. She loves learning new things and meeting new people. These days she spends most of her time working on her writing and visual art, and spends the rest dreaming about and planning her big trip bicycling around the world. You can find her blabbering about her writing and visual art at alexschuler.com, travel (as Rebecca Jones) at snapshotsoftheworld.com, or follow her artist or travel Twitter accounts.

All the photos on today's post are courtesy of, and copyright to, Alex Schuler. They're the kind of great stuff you will find on her art and travel blogs.

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Do you write full-time or part-time?  
I write part-time, although I have been trying to spend 30+ hours a week doing productive things, which includes a lot of writing, as well as housework, art, and studying.

Do you write on a typewriter, computer, dictate or longhand? 
I write longhand and do my first edit as I type it up.

Do you ever get Writer’s Block, and do you have any tips for getting through it? 
I have a lot of days where I have a lot of trouble focusing, which leads to a sort of writer’s block where I either forget what I was about to write or I get distracted by something else. Writing longhand helps me, as does starting each writing session by jotting some quick notes, or a sort of mini outline, on the page I’m working on about what I’m writing that session.

What’s your views on social media for marketing, and which of them have worked best for you?  
I haven’t had much luck with Facebook as far as expanding my market, but it’s good for letting my friends know what’s going on. I’ve had some bites on twitter, but I’ve been bad about using it regularly, so nothing that’s stuck yet.

Where do you see publishing going in the future?  
I’m very excited about the possibilities in self publishing. I think a lot of people will be moving towards that, as well as online and digital formats in general. I hope that as a result of this we see more people experimenting with different formats, particularly more interactive ones, but I suppose it depends on what people want to write.

Fun fact: Most of the pictures Alex sent me were of iguanas and lizards. She really loves iguanas.

The Ides of March (#IWSG March 2017)

It's IWSG time again. Remember last month when I said there was some life-upheaval stuff going on? I think we've got it sorted out, but it did have a major hit on my writing productivity for the month. Which is really too bad, because I had just started a new project that I was really excited about, and then I only wrote a couple thousand words for the entire month.

Anyway, thank you for the IWSG discussion questions, because at least it give me something to talk about!

(As for the image, in case anyone is wondering the Battlestar Galactica app game is what has been eating up the rest of my free time the last couple of weeks. It's terrible and I can't stop playing it.)

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March IWSG Question: 

Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it? Did it work out?

Actually, yeah I have, and I plan to keep doing it.

Long time readers know about The Closet (from the title of my blog). This is both a literal and metaphorical place that I pull my stories from. Metaphorically it represents the place in my head where I get my ideas from. It's literal because I've been writing for a long time, and I have a bunch of old manuscripts stuffed in boxes in the closet under the stairs in my basement.

My first published work, Ten Thousand Days, sat in the Closet for about 7 years before I pulled it out and released it into the wild.  It was one of my favourite stories, and despite maybe needing a bit more work, it was a good test to get my footing in the self-publishing world.

(Side note: After 7 years, it still wasn't ready, and there maaaaay be another, very heavily modified version of that one coming out. Very soon.)

You can check this book out on Amazon, but if I were you I would probably wait a couple of weeks. Just in case...

I still have at least seven more full novels (not to mention dozens of short stories) tucked away in there that I've been thinking about digging out and working with. Six of those books would need major revisions as they were just first drafts, but one of them was fairly polished. I submitted it to a number of publishers about ten years ago but received no interest. I'm thinking about going back and doing something with it, but I'm afraid that it's probably not very good. There was a reason those publishers rejected it, after all.

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The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Writers post their thoughts on their blogs, talking about their doubts and the fears they have conquered. It's a chance for writers to commiserate and offer a word of encouragement to each other. Check out the group here.

Like the new logo?

You may have noticed yesterday that I revealed a new logo for Stories I Found in the Closet. It was designed by the fabulous Ann McDougall, who ran a cool program through the month of January called "Branduary" where she designed a new logo, by request, every day for 31 days. Not only was I amazed by the speed which she put these up (she never missed a day) but the quality and variety of her designs was quiet exceptional.

Here are a few samples:

All images Copyright Ann McDougall (obviously)

I was lucky enough to get in on Branduary, but anyone else looking for design and creative work should definitely hit Ann up. She now has a Facebook page, so it's easy to get a hold of her. Check her out!

Ann McDougall Design & Creative