Construction of the Haunted House

I teased you with this last time, and here it is: the MASSIVE and AMAZING Haunted House! At over 2000 pieces, this is far and away the biggest Lego set I've ever owned. Nearly all the ones I had when I was a kid were dinky little $5 sets; I couldn't even dream of getting something like this back then! Cindy wanted to help, so we put on a succession of classic horror movies and spent the next eight hours building!

Here are all the parts! I didn't count exactly how many bags of parts the box contained, but it was around twenty.

The three instruction books...

... and the decals.

First floor done!

Some interior rooms. Note the ship in the bottle.

Two floors down!

Completed! A couple of days later, I modified the top so that it can spin, based on a suggestion I saw somewhere on the web. I had actually been looking for ideas for a weathervane, but came across that and liked the idea.

One side of the attic. I friggin' love that it has a Victrola!

Yeah, it's a pretty nice house, but can it really be called a home with no coffins? (Note the mid-day snack in the jar next to the bed.)

Make sure you squeeze all the flavor out of that spice serpent! (The organ is an original creation I whipped up a few weeks earlier.)

The entry room and staircase.

A little office area, complete with desk and stationary!

"Here's a little number I tossed off recently in the Caribbean..."

Here's the hearse. As a potential future project, I want to build a garage for it in a matching style.

Brick-Ho-Tep swings by for a visit.

Gill Man and Scarecrow hanging out next to the tree, in which dwells...

... the Wolf Man! The tree is significantly modified from its normal version, and I'll mod it further as I acquire more branch and "leaf" pieces.

"I bid you welco-- RARRRGH! FIRE BAAAAAADD!!!!"

Cindy was sold as soon as she saw that it had this widow's walk! Love the zombie faces carved into the columns.

Full shot of the house, with Man-Bat stopping by to hang out.

Yeti in the ice cave I whipped up for him. If you look closely, you may be able to see the dismembered Lego body parts he's been snacking on in the cave behind him.

The spire, post-modding. It's pretty cool to spin it and watch the ghosts swirl around the witch.

The mad scientist hanging out by the porch, possibly drinking a urine sample.

Sweet liquor eases the Frankenstein Monster's pain.

Full shot, with all minifgs added.

These are the minifigs that actually came with the house(there were two ghosts). Cindy is holding them; my nails are not that fabulous.

Circa 1931

I can say without a shred of doubt that, of all the Lego sets I've lusted after over the years, this one is my favorite. I'm very glad that I got back into the Lego addiction in time to get it before it's discontinued and the price skyrockets. (Seriously, if you wanna invest some money with no risk, buy some of these. They'll be going for 2 or 3 times the retail price in a couple of years. Lego sets are never worth less than you pay for them, provided you get them at or below retail.)

The Haunted House occupies a place of honor in the house, and will be the centerpiece of my Halloween decorations in the years to come. I'd still like to get the castle that is part of the Monster Fighters line, but if and when I do, it won't displace the Haunted House. This thing is simply amazing.

Falling Back into Lego: A Tale of Addiction

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook have surely noticed that I've become hooked on Lego again the past few months. The movie apparently recaptured many people, but I had actually become ensnared a few months earlier. Like most people, I had been bitten by the Lego bug when I was a kid. Even when I started buying stuff like action figures again as an adult, I resisted buying Lego stuff because I was well aware that it's a bottomless pit of hellish addiction. The very nature of Lego means that every little thing you can get integrates with everything you already have, so even sets you may not be interested in are still tempting simply because of all the parts you can add to your existing collection. So, for years, I stayed strong. I even resisted the Lego Batman line, reasoning that I already had so much Batman stuff that I simply didn't need Lego-fied versions of it all. My will grew shaky when I saw things like this, but I managed to stay strong and resist temptation.

Then, last year in Target, I saw this.

Just an innocuous, innocent little thing. And only $7, which made it ever so easy to impulse buy. I let out a deep sigh when I saw it. I knew then and there that I was back in, because there was no way I was walking out of there without it. And this thing isn't a one-off deal, it's part of an entire line of classic monster-themed sets.

So, over the next few months, I wound up getting this.

Then this.

And this, which I simply adore.

Then this thing, which I got for a very nice price on ebay since it only included the train itself(which was all I wanted, I already had all the minifigs from other sets, and could do without the plane).

Then the  topper, the king of them all, THIS. (Cindy included for scale.)

It deserves its own post. You'll get it in a few days.

National Poetry Month: Solomon Kane's Homecoming

In observation of National Poetry Month, I present one of my favorites: Solomon Kane's Homecoming, by Robert E. Howard. Even if you loathe poetry, read it. It's awesome.

The white gulls wheeled above the cliffs, the air was slashed with foam,
The long tides moaned along the strand when Solomon Kane came home.
He walked in silence strange and dazed through the little Devon town;
His gaze, like a ghost’s come back to life, roamed up the streets and down.

The people followed wonderingly to mark his spectral stare,
And in the tavern silently they thronged about him there.
He heard as a man hears in a dream the worn old rafters creak,
And Solomon lifted his drinking-jack and spoke as a ghost might speak:

“There sat Sir Richard Grenville once; in smoke and flame he passed.
And we were one to fifty-three, but we gave them blast for blast.
From crimson dawn to crimson dawn, we held the Dons at bay.
The dead lay littered on our decks, our masts were shot away.

“We beat them back with broken blades, till crimson ran the tide;
Death thundered in the cannon smoke when Richard Grenville died.
We should have blown her hull apart and sunk beneath the Main.”
The people saw upon his wrist the scars of the racks of Spain.

“Where is Bess?” said Solomon Kane. “Woe that I caused her tears.”
“In the quiet churchyard by the sea she has slept these seven years.”
The sea-wind moaned at the window-pane, and Solomon bowed his head.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and the fairest fade,” he said.

His eyes were mystical deep pools that drowned unearthly things,
And Solomon lifted up his head and spoke of his wanderings.
“Mine eyes have looked on sorcery in dark and naked lands,
Horror born of the jungle gloom and death on the pathless sands.

"And I have known a deathless queen in a city old as Death,
Where towering pyramids of skulls her glory witnesseth.
Her kiss was like an adder’s fang, with the sweetness Lilith had,
And her red-eyed vassals howled for blood in that City of the Mad.

"And I have slain a vampire shape that drank a black king white,
And I have roamed through grisly hills where dead men walked at night.
And I have seen heads fall like fruit in a slaver’s barracoon,
And I have seen winged demons fly all naked in the moon.

"My feet are weary of wandering and age comes on apace;
I fain would dwell in Devon now, forever in my place.”
The howling of the ocean pack came whistling down the gale,
And Solomon Kane threw up his head like a hound that sniffs the trail.

A-down the wind like a running pack the hounds of the ocean bayed,
And Solomon Kane rose up again and girt his Spanish blade.
In his strange cold eyes a vagrant gleam grew wayward and blind and bright,
And Solomon put the people by and went into the night.

A wild moon rode the wild white clouds, the waves in white crests flowed,
When Solomon Kane went forth again, and no man knew his road.
They glimpsed him etched against the moon, where clouds on hilltop thinned;
They heard an eerie echoed call that whistled down the wind.

Nightmare Escapade is now available on Smashwords!

My first book, Nightmare Escapade: A Horror Anthology, is now available via Smashwords! Your purchase of the book gives you access to it in various formats, so it'll work on most any electronic device you may have, including your Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Ipad, smartphone, etc. You can get it right here! Of course, if you prefer to get a physical copy of the book, you can always order the trade paperback here, and get the Kindle version for free!

Just for fun, here's a screenshot of Nightmare Escapade on the Smashwords front page:

New interview!

A new interview went up a few days ago, you can check it out right here!

Happy 100th birthday to Bill Finger, the true father of Batman

NOTE: This was supposed to go up earlier today. I just realized it hadn't been posted, and discovered that I'd accidentally scheduled it to post at 11:30 p.m. instead of 11:30 a.m. D'oh!

Today would have been Bill Finger's 100th birthday. Unfortunately, there's a good chance you've never heard of Bill. that's due to a number of circumstances, chief among them the way he was consistently marginalized and screwed over by his frequent collaborator and "friend," Bob Kane. Does that name ring a bell? It most likely does, and more's the pity. Credited with the creation of Batman, one of the most popular and beloved characters in the world, Kane is actually the man who should be no more than a footnote in comics history, not Bill. These are bold claims, and fortunately, there are mountains of evidence to back them up. I won't recount all of it here, because frankly, it's been done far better here. There are many places across the web where you can find evidence of details of exactly how Bill was cheated at every turn by Kane, but that is definitely one of the most damning collections.

I also highly recommend the book Bill, the Boy Wonder by Marc Taylor Nobleman and Ty Templeton. The research that went into this book is astounding, turning up all sorts of new information. It's also a very even-handed portrayal of exactly what went down between Bill and Kane. (Many would argue that it's far too nice to Kane; the authors definitely took the high road there.)

Speaking of Templeton, the fan-favorite artist recently did a wonderful piece demonstrating exactly what kind of character we would have had if Kane had truly created Batman on his own, without Bill's involvement. Check it out here.

Since this post is going up late, I'm able to add this: I've been made aware of this project by Athena Finger, Bill's granddaughter. A film documenting the true story of Batman's creation, and celebrating Bill Finger and his legacy, is long overdue. It's less than $10,000 away from being fully funded, so by all means, go and donate something, even a dollar, if you're so inclined. I know I look forward to seeing it!

WTF is the deal with the Blacula box?

Okay, so here's the deal: I'm helping a friend of mine sell some stuff online, and while going through some of it Sunday, I was suddenly confronted with THIS. As someone with a lifelong fascination with old horror movies, B movies, and '70s blaxploitation movies, this thing appealed to me far more than is probably healthy. "If you want that box, you need to take it right now, because if I leave this house with it, it ain't gonna find its way back over here," I told him. He didn't want it, so this glorious prize is now mine! the only problem: I have no friggin' idea where it came from. He had similarly gotten it from another friend years ago, and likewise has no clue to its origins. The box gives no indication, and the only text on it (aside from the Spanish on the front) is some copyright info on the bottom. A few Google searches turned up nothing relevant. I like to think that a really nice bottle of liquor was originally housed within it, possibly in a drawstring bag. Who knows?

EDIT: Before this post went live, I did some more digging, and finally found a little information about this box. Evidently, it was intended as a storage box for trading/playing cards. I can't find any other information about it, but at least that lays to rest the mystery of its intended purpose. Even with the central mystery solved, this thing is still interesting enough to share. I certainly feel my home is a bit better for having a Blacula box in it!

WHO is joining the Justice League in April?!?? (Spoiler alert!)

Justice League and Forever Evil  writer and DC bigwig Geoff Johns revealed in an interview earlier today that none other than Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor will join the Justice League in April's issue #30! The team will consist of Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Aquaman, Shazam, Luthor, and another villain-turned-hero, Flash rogue Captain Cold. For those who have been reading the Forever Evil series, this actually seems like a natural progression, as the series sees Luthor struggling to unite a team that can stand against the Crime Syndicate(evil versions of the Justice League who have invaded from a parellel universe) after they've apparently killed the Justice Leagues. Luthor truly attempting to reform and give the hero thing a go is sure to be fascinating, however long it lasts.

Oh, and in the last line of the interview, Johns tosses this tidbit out: "Ted Kord returns to the DCU in Forever Evil #7, and plays a role in Justice League post-Forever Evil." For long-suffering fans of the second Blue Beetle, this is very welcome news!

The print edition of NIGHTMARE ESCAPADE is now on sale on Amazon.com!

As noted in this post Monday, Nightmare Escapade is now available in print. Amazon.com got it up on their site a few days earlier than expected, so you can now order from them right here! You can still get it from the link in the previous post too, of course. I'll earn a bit more money from each copy that way, but if you prefer to order from Amazon.com, which is certainly understandable, you now have that option. Expanded distribution of the print copy, including overseas territories and libraries, will be coming in the next few weeks. I've also enrolled it in the Kindle Matchbook program, so if you buy the print copy, you can then download the Kindle version for free! I think that's a pretty great program, so expect to see that for all my books going forward. If you have a Nook or an Ipad or a Kobo reader or something and prefer read in that format rather than via the Kindle app, I'll have you covered there as well in a month or so. Stay tuned...

My New Year's Reso-- er, writing goals for 2014

For various reasons, I just didn't get as much done last year as I wanted. There were many factors that lead to that, and not all of them were my fault, but the fact remains that I didn't publish anything new, and this blog was largely neglected during the second half of the year. Unless I spontaneously combust or the world blows up or something, we're not gonna see a repeat of that this year. These are my goals for this year.

Finish APEX PREDATOR

This is the big one, and the one currently getting most of my attention. I was nearly done with it a few months ago when disaster struck, as you may recall. I was so sick about the whole situation that I wound up taking a break from it for a month or so, though I did work on some other things during that time. I recently dove back into it, and it will be released this year. I'm not sure about a release date yet, and that will obviously depend on when I finish it, but my goal is to have it done by the end of March at the latest. The issue with backing up the file more often is now moot, as I setup Skydrive to automatically sync the file whenever I use it, so it's automatically backed up. Reeeeeaaally wish I'd known about that last year, but there's no use in fretting over it now. What's done is done, and all I can do is charge forward.

Publish print versions of my books

This one has actually happened! I spent the first bit of the year working on getting Nightmare Escapade ready for printing, and it went on sale Monday. Now that I've familiarized myself with the process, it should go much more smoothly when it comes time to publish future books. In the meantime, just having an actual physical copy of my first book sitting on the shelf feels pretty amazing.

Get the local bookstores to carry the print versions of my books

Pretty self-explanatory. We have two bookstores in town that have sections for authors from our region, so hopefully it won't be too tough to make this happen.

Get better at self-promotion

This one is really crucial. My sales are not where I'd like them to be, and the brutal truth is that I'm just lousy at promoting myself and networking with people. I need to really double down and make some serious effort to change that. 

Post on this blog more often

This is a problem I tackled last year as well, and I made a big effort to post at least once a week. I stuck with it for a few months, but eventually, things just got in the way, and I began posting less and less. So, I'm going for it again this year. Hopefully I'll do better this time. 

These are not all the goals I have set for myself for this year, but they are the major ones. If I can accomplish all of them, I'll consider 2014 a rousing success! If not, well, I figure any year in which I don't die is still a pretty good one. ;)

NIGHTMARE ESCAPADE print copies are now available!

Been enjoying your Kindle ebook copy of Nightmare Escapade, but wishing you had a print copy of it to display on your bookshelves, give as a gift for Valentine's Day, smash bugs with, and whatnot? You're in luck! You can now order your very own old-school printed-on-paper copy of Nightmare Escapade! It will be available on Amazon.com in about a week, and via other channels a few weeks after that, but if you can't wait, you can order a copy right now if you click here! (I'll make another dollar or two per copy if you buy it via that link too, so, there's that.)
Tell your friends! Tell your enemies!

Happy xmas, everyone!

Of course, this is auto-posted, since I don't have to be up this early on xmas because I don't have kids.