Action Adventure Fiction

Here’s something to keep you occupied for about a minute.

Have you ever been in a heated discussion about “which would work better in a fight?” You know - Taikwondo vs. Kenpo, rapier vs. katana, AR-15 vs AK-47. Or perhaps “who would win?” - Darth Vader vs. Captain Kirk, Superman vs Spiderman

Well my brother would like to illustrate such a conflict and answer once and for all:

“Who would win, a guy with a sword, or a giant killer banana?”

My brother’s the one with the sword.

You are welcome. Yes, I told him he should add exciting music.

I was recently tagged with a blog meme. If you don’t know what a meme is, basically it’s a blog post chain letter. Anyway, here are the rules for this one.

1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4 .Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

I’m not going to tag anybody, because I’m a spoil sport. But if you want to do this on your blog, go ahead and play like I tagged you.

OK, now on to my memoir.

At first I came up with-

Destroyed my enemies, loved my friends.

But then I decided to use something that resembled my real life.

Embracing family, friends, food, fun and…

I figured my memoir should match my fiction writing style and leave you hanging.

If you live in a super Tuesday state like me, I’d highly suggest you getting off your butt and voting in the primaries today. And please vote for whoever you think will do the best job. Choosing the lesser of two evils just because they have a better chance of winning is weak and irresponsible.

There, I said it.

I really don’t know what I could say about these photos that would match my feelings. This is a house in my neighborhood. Sorry about the fuzzyness. With the flash on, it washed out most of the fun. With the flash off it got blurry. And it was way more creepy and awesome at night than during the day.

Merry Christmas, all.

P.S. This was actually last year. This year they only have up one lonely snowman. Bah Humbug.

P.P.S. And yes, there will be an Oasis chapter this week.

I was watching a movie the other day, and I realized something.

When the poop hits the fan, there is one survivor skill you will always need.

No matter what’s going on in your life: you need to stop a terrorist, you’re being hunted by the FBI/mafia/Girl Scouts, you are looking for a long buried treasure, giant robots are battling in the street, you’re being chased by zombies, you realize that you really do love that girl and she just walked out or anything else, it doesn’t matter.

No other skill will save you as often or as efficiently.

It doesn’t matter if you can hack a computer, fight with a sword, sweet-talk like nobody’s business, or make a bomb out of everyday objects. In fact, those things are nice, but at the end of the day, if you don’t also have the one survival skill, you’re toast.

Here is the secret, according every single action movie filmed over the past ten years:

If you want to survive anything, you’d better well rush out and buy yourself a pair of… running shoes. And you’d better start running every morning.

Running is the one survival skill.

When all else fails, your legs are the key to your survival. The ability to run at a dead sprint for long stretches of time is the one skill all modern action heroes share.

I could go on about why, but I think the point is best proven by example:

The Bourne Movies: Holy crap, Jason Bourne can run. I mean, I think he averaged 5.73 on-screen running miles per movie. He does have a number of other useful skills: hacking cell phones, using anything as a weapon, etc., but he always goes back to the old standby: running. And it seems to have kept him alive this far.

Casino Royale: Even James Bond has to book it. Generally it’s to catch a terrorist (the guy with the backpack, the guy who’s going to blow up the plane)

Transformers: Giant robots are destroying the city. Cars and debris are flying everywhere. Megatron is awake and pissed. The valiant Autobots are sacrificing themselves left and right, and what does the fate of mankind come down to? That’s right, the kid’s ability to beat cheeks over to the white building with statues on it, and then run up all 700 flights of stairs.

National Treasure: Question- How are you going to escape the bad guys chasing you, your new girlfriend and your plucky comic relief through the streets/markets of Philadelphia? That’s right, you run.

Blood & Chocolate: Scary people release the comic book artist into the forest and turn into wolves. It’s a good thing the boy can run. And run. And run. As a side note, I’d just like to say it’s slightly embarrassing to admit that I actually watched this movie.

The Incredibles: The whole family does a lot of running, down corridors, away from giant robots, through forests…

And going back in time a little-

Indiana Jones: Giant boulder, anyone?

Jurassic Park: Lots of running from those pesky thunder lizards.

I think I’ve made my point? Where have you guys seen the one survival skill in action?

Two months or so ago I was named a winner in an informal contest done by James Brausch on his internet business blog.

I was beginning to think that I had been forgotten and that I would have to write a post asking all of you what you think I should do about it. Maybe I would have offered some kind of undisclosed prize to the best commenter. Yeah, that would have been delicious irony. You know, because the contest James did was because it looked like a prize he was about to win was going to be taken unfairly from him… oh, nevermind.

Anyway, never fear, James is a man of his word and I was not forgotten.

After months of patient waiting by the door for my prize to arrive, my wife found a box hidden in our garage. UPS hid it there a full 5 days before she found it. I’m not exactly sure what possessed them to think the garage was the best place to deliver a package, but hey, that doesn’t matter in the long run does it?

What matters is that I finally got my major award! (That’s what I had taken to call it before it arrived.)

The prize is a box full of copies of one of his products, “How To Earn An Income By Creating Your Own DVD…”

As it ends up, I only need one for myself, so I’ve got to figure out what to do with the others. If you have any ideas, let me know.

For starters, I’m going to make a bunch of them available this weekend at a fraction of James’s retail price.

He sells the DVD for a cool $100 (you can see it here), and I figure 65% is a pretty sexy discount, so I’ll send you a copy for $35, and I’ll even pick up the shipping. If you want one, just click the buy now button below.

And just so you know, I spent an hour or so coding something so that if you click the “Buy Now” button and I’ve sold all of the ones I’m making available, you won’t be redirected to Paypal. You’ll just get a nice “Sorry, you’re too slow” message. Monday I’ll disable the button.

And don’t worry, Friday will still bring with it the next of Corbin St. Laurent’s many trials in Oasis: Chapter 31.

Ok, two quick pictures. The first is me and my daughter, Katie. She actually had a cute little Cinderella headband, but she refused to wear it most of the time. The pregnant pirate is my wife, Aurora.  The picture doesn’t really show off her pirate coat too well, though. It was awesome.

Never fear, the week’s tomfoolery is over. Corbin St. Laurent will be back tomorrow, learning for the umpteenth time that life just isn’t fair.

Online Serial Fiction

Sandy Copeland left a message on a recent chapter of Oasis. Apparently Sandy is also writing serial fiction. Here’s a link to Chapter 1, Part 1 of his story. Actually, I’m not sure if Sandy is the author’s name or the just main character’s or both. What other online serials are out there?

Doc Savage Winner

Congrats to Glenn. I’m sending him the Doc Savage novel “The Annihilist.” After reading it, Glenn will no longer be satisfied by second-rate action heroes (like Jason Bourne, James Bond, Batman…), although I hope he keeps reading Oasis anyway.

Red Alert

In random news, somewhere between half and three-quarters of all my spam is now coming to me in Russian.

I’m Losing My Fingernail

I shmooshed it while changing a tire for a friend. Now it’s all black and starting to come off. Just thought you should know.

Oasis In Paperback

I’ve been asked by several people if I’m going to attempt to get Oasis published. The answer is yes. I am currently planning to do a few edits after I’ve finished and then self-publish via lulu.com or somewhere similar. Unless somebody mysteriously offers some great publishing deal between here and there. (My definition of great publishing deal = pretty much anything)

Halloween

My wife, daughter, and I went to two Halloween parties over the weekend. My wife used to work in a costume shop for a theater, and I’m just a nerd, so we spent a lot of time on our costumes this year. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll put up pictures of our costumes her in a couple of days.

Amusing Spam

My wife got an amusing piece of spam the other day. This is what it said:

Three houses in your neighborhood have had high amounts of spiritual activity. Our instruments show strange energy radiating directly from your home.

Please dont wait until it is too late!

***Scum-sucking spammer url deleted here***

Click Here to find out if your house is Haunted.

For some reason I just thought that was funny.

I know this is old news, but James Brausch chose my post about CD Baby as the winning entry in an informal contest. Why did I win? The image I made. So what did I win?  I have no idea yet.

Just a thought on that:

I wonder if the problem is really with the distribution partner with whom CD Baby had arranged to release the winner. I wonder if they told CD Baby “We’re not distributing non-music CDs…” and by that time, it was too late to change the contest rules. So CD Baby (Derek) doesn’t want to go back on their word (for legal and/or moral reasons), and they can’t make good on their promise either.  So they stall, hoping it will all blow over. Or, in the worst case, maybe they did fiddle with the sales page/results. Either way, the problem wasn’t really dealt with.

In any case, the proper course of action would be to talk to James immediately and own up to any mistakes/wrongdoing, then make some kind of offer to appease him. Maybe he gets his cd on the front page of cd baby for the next X months or something.

The point is that the person who comes out and says “I did it and I’m sorry.” always gets a better result than the person who tries to hide the wrongdoing.

Oasis Whoops 

I figured out why I was practically the only one who could see Chapter 23. Somehow I had posted it as “private” rather than “published.” Anyway, the whole world should finally be able to see it now. And by the whole world, I mean the four of you that read it…

OK, if you’re here for the next Oasis chapter, don’t worry, the zombie action will arrive right on schedule tomorrow.

I read an online business blog by a man named James Brausch. The past little while, he’s been trying to win a sales contest at CD Baby. Some things have happened that make the contest appear a little shady, perhaps even like they’re trying to rig it to make him lose. On his blog, he asked for ideas as to what to do about it.

Being the dutiful net citizen I am, I’d like to offer my suggestions.

1) Be more sure of foul play. You’ve sold plenty of product through them, so you should probably be able to talk to the owner. See how that goes. It could be the malicious actions of an employee, not him. If that were the case, the owner should deal with the employee appropriately. Or it still might be an unfortunate occurrence of incompetence.

2) Assuming they won’t talk to you, or your conversation goes poorly, quietly remove your products from their store. If you raise a big stink, they get free press, and there’s no such thing as bad press. Besides, there’s no reason to do business with a company that uses shady business practices, you’ll always get stung in the end.

3) Let’s just assume you brake up with CD Baby. Now what? The best revenge, of course! That’s right, it’s time to open up CD Brauschy, compete, do things better and make some more money.

Edit: CD Baby’s owner responded in the comments here, and his response is definitely worth a read. Make sure you check it out.