Hello hello again,

Greetings on this fine tuesday coming from my shack in the middle of murky nowhere to bring you more weird stories and general musings on life (or the lack thereof).

Been getting on with some decent writing and a lot of slacking off, still trying to get back into the swing of things with the 2k a day word count, not quite managing it but saying that the stuff I’ve been putting out imo isn’t too bad. It’s taking shape, it’s getting there.
Is it as good as the start, I don’t but I’m reaching the tipping point now, the story is peaking and I like the way it’s shaping up.

And tbh I’m looking forward to doing something more silly and fun again, so as soon as I’m done here gonna get straight back into 3 ring for the next instalment of that and then maybe start thinking about a sequel to Diana after dark if the time is ready for that. Been wanting to write that one for a while.

But the moon and the stars have to be aligned for that, it has to be perfect and if you’ve read the book you’d know that is pretty topical haha.

Not that I don’t love writing serious stuff and intense stuff, it’s just a little draining being in that head space constantly, you have no idea how worked up I have to get to write stuff like this. It’s like I meditate but not to get calm and serene but to get the complete opposite. I get so worked up it’s like I’m trying to rip the keys out of my laptop haha.

It just takes up a lot of energy to run that hot, I’m literally trying to make myself feel like I’m in battle flinging a battleaxe into someone’s face haha.

Talking about battleaxes in the faces I haven’t been reading or listening to the witcher much, I just don’t care enough to follow the story honestly, the characters are boring and unlikable and I feel like I was cheated out of the witcher series I should’ve have gotten. I keep lamenting to my polish buddy at work that if the series had been like the first story it would have been perfect. If Sapkowksi had kept it a tight almost pulpy action packed terse tense fantasy thriller it would have been my favourite fantasy series hands down.

But it just gets lost in the weeds with this generic crap and shitty characters I just lost interest. I mean most of the books are just about Ciri and completely unrelated stuff honestly. For a series about a monster slayer it just uses his monster slaying as like a character trait, it’s not what the story is about at all and plays no part in the narrative whatsoever.

Geralt being a witcher is just something he likes to tell people like he’s on a speed date but he never actually does any ‘witching’. It’s just astounding that CD projekt red can get it so right with the games but the creator of the character can get it so wrong. It’s weird because it’s usually the opposite for adaptations like it’s the total reverse with Dexter. Sure they hired a great actor to play Dexter but they completely fluffed the story and the character after season one. If the show had followed the books religiously it would have been amazing.

But it’s equally amazing that CD projekt red (jesus I sound like I’m doing marketing for these guys haha) could turn a cool shorty story (which could be a rip off of elric, I need to read elric) and turn it into one of the biggest game franchises in history.

I also finished that Parker book it was taking me ages to get through and yeah it kinda goes nowhere like I thought it might. They kill the only interesting villain off halfway through and replace him with an old guy on a golf cart who doesn’t do anything except shout at people. And the whole book is about Parker trying to escape this amusement park while getting besieged by this criminal organisation and spoilers yeah at the end he escapes and then goes home and makes himself a sandwich. That’s literally the end, I’m not making that up. The last line is him eating the sandwich and then thinking about getting the money he left there.

He doesn’t even get the money, or even try for it there’s no tension at all. He just escapes and thats it, no epic show down because the person he would have had the showdown with he already killed, he was literally the first guy he killed, it was pathetic. I mean why the fuck couldn’t you just have killed off the guys buddy and continued the story with the interesting villain instead?

That tiny change would have changed the entire plot and made it ten times more interesting and it would have been so easy to do. You just have the other guy walk into the hall of mirrors. Why would this smart villain be the first to walk into a trap like that? It made no sense and basically destroyed all the tension in the book.

I complained that the last book was kind of small and uninteresting and the heist was a little boring because everything went right. But that still had tension and interesting characters and a more dynamic story, it had legs. This book is just lazy and hacky honestly.

But still this is like I dunno the 14th book in the series and it’s the first real stinker, so that’s amazing. I’ve been burning through these books and loving each one more than the last. I just hope the next one returns to form a little.
Oh and I’m really excited because I just found out that someone turned all Stark’s books into graphic novels so that’ll give me a reason to read them all again which is great. I can’t wait for that.

I didn’t think the book was shit, I think if it had a few tweaks it would have been decent. Just have that interesting villain you spent all that time building up live til the end and have this awesome battle of wits of which I expected. And maybe have a little more set up to the actual job and the park itself. Just to give the story a little more breathing room and not be this claustrophobic almost like stage play set in one room.

Yeah so that’s my rant for the day probably be back for a poem tomorrow, I don’t know yet, been feeling a little up and down about that. I definitely have material let’s leave it at that.

Oh that reminds me I finally got to the part of the story where my bardic poem is used in Cur, so that’s cool. It is kind of a pivotal point in the story and the lore, the celtic mythology. Bards are held in high regard in that culture, their power to influence people is quite literally seen as a form of powerful magic and curses.

Anyway gotta go and do some proof reading as usual, finished the Diana pitch chapters but I’m gonna start working on the whole book soon enough. But I will put out another Cur chapter soon enough.

See you…

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They came for us at night.

Me and my friends watched from our rooftops as they snaked through the back alleys. That bookish one with the moustache behind them fiddling with a tiny pencil and paper trying to write in some kind of journal.

They crept quickly and quietly to the centre of town. The town was so quiet you could hear the sand moving in their boots. A ghost town silently watching as they worked their way closer to the saloon they hoped Gage was sleeping in.

I could see on the hill where they set up camp, those weird pods were still there closed up and not moving, just sitting there like warts on a frogs ass.

They had strange weaponry and stalked the alleys ways watching every corner as they went. Feeling the eyes on them, slits of boarded windows following them as they passed holding their breath.

They must have felt us watching, the big one with the beard looked up at us but we ducked too quickly for him to see. They hurried along passing us off as curious birds.

He was waiting for them.

Just standing so tall, alone in the centre of main street, a cold wind blowing. His shotgun hanging loose at his side.

The men fanned out in formation and surrounded Gage in a semi circle in front of the saloon.

The man with the moustache shouted and tried to push past the men.

“Ryan, we have to take him alive.” He shouted as he approached the man with the white hair.

The man at the front said nothing, he just spun around and hit the pudgy moustache guy in the guts dropping him flat to his knees. Then he turned back to Gage and shrugged his shoulders.

The man on his knees tried to get up as the other men attempted to keep him down.

“If you kill him and others hear about it, he’ll become a martyr”

The man with the white hair, he must have been the leader turned to each of his men and he pointed, first at the woman. He said “Are you gonna tell anyone about this?”

She shook her head.

Then to the large man with the beard “You?”

“Not a soul.”

Then to the mexican.

“De nada”

“You?” He said to the younger man.

“No sir” he grinned.

“Well that’s everyone.” He said looking at the man with the mustache and quickly shooting him in the head with his strange alien weapon. There was just a quick flash of light and a strange noise and the man’s head was gone and his body became dead weight in the arms of the men carrying. Stained as they were with a light dusting of pink mist.

Disgusted, they threw his body down like a sack of potatoes in the dry loose top soil.

Gage watched the dust settle around it as it stopped being a person and just became scenery.

Ryan stopped and looked Gage up and down and scoffed. “We travelled all this way for this” He sniffed and spat on the dirt next to the mustache man’s body and said “I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to do that.” He smirked and put his e-cigar in his mouth and sucked on it looking at Gage. “I know you” He said.

Gage tossed his gun out in front of him on the ground. It landed with a heavy thudding noise.

Ryan let out a laugh and said “Well that was easy.”

Gage didn’t move or say a word, his one eye burning staring through Ryan who tried too hard to hide a boiling fear in his gut. Destiny staring him right in the face, looking at the bare pit where his soul was supposed to reside.

Gage took his duster off of his shoulders revealing a mountain of man in a stained grey longsleeved under shirt that was once white. Ripped and torn and bitten and stretched with the sinewy muscles underneath forged through nothing but hard work and sweat and toil. The work horse bitten and turned sour and vicious and lame biting back at the hand of his master and running madly and wild and free to it’s own doom.

He took his suspenders off his shoulders and clenched his fists.

Ryan scoffed again “Oh so you wanna do it the old fashioned way.” He took another suck on his e-cigar and put it back in his pocket. He took his gun out of it’s holster and lifted it over his shoulder at which point the younger guy with the shaved head took it off of him.

He was wearing some kind of weird skeleton suit over his body that went over his arms and legs and connected at the hips. Under it he was just wearing a fitted shirt and a pair of pants.

Ryan didn’t take a stance he just smiled with his cocky smile and said “Well what are you waiting for?”

He let out a mocking breathy laughter and said “Ok, I guess I’ll be the one to lead”

He moved so fast I thought I was dreaming at first. I’d never seen a human move like that, it was like he was there one minute and then there was just dust and dirt and he was barrelling at Gage. He didn’t throw a punch he just launched himself right into him like a cannonball and swept him off his feet with enough force to kill a horse.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. He couldn’t have been more than six foot nothing this guy but one minute he was standing there the next he was on top of Gage. He toppled the gigantic man in two seconds flat, felled him like a great oak tree in a single strike.

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Check out the rest of the chapter on inkitt.

Passover

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