Blinking again
October 19th, 1998 |In truth:
The Half Closed Eye is blinking again, looking for the truth and missing it ever so slightly. After a hectic summer of enlightenment and moving, the Eye can refresh its view.
Both the Eye and I have been relocated since the opening of the site: The Eye from Geocities’ Virtual URL to this non-Virtual URL space and I from the very real Fort Worth back to the also real town of Pryor, Oklahoma. The Waiting God dictated that a time of action was at hand so here we are.
On Literature:
A snippet from Barry Hughart’s “Bridge of Birds” inspired the title of “The Half Closed Eye” but anyone looking for any Barry Hughart title has their work cut out for them. Most of his books are out of print which is surprising for an award winning author. It seems not every one appreciates Number Ten Ox and Master Li as much as I do.
On the other hand, the barbarian hordes of Robert Jordan fans are about to be endowed with the long awaited eighth volume of “the Wheel of Time”. Being a patience sort of crowd we will still have to wait 3 to 5 more years for the completion of the series. I once eyeballed an L. Ron Hubbard ten book Sci-Fi series askance and said I would never commit to anything as outrageous as that. I suppose that makes me a liar.
On the topic of Robert Jordan, he’s thrown a 75 page short novel in Tor’s “Legends” anthology which is quite good. I liked the anthology. It has some good stories by Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Terry Pratchett to name a few.
I finished Pratchett’s “Jingo” a week or two ago and it was laugh out loud funny. Of course I had sleep deprivation so that might have been the cause but I’m fairly sure that I laughed while coherent as well.
“As She Climbed Across the Table” by Jonathan Lethem was very good as well. Very quirky, random, and funny. I recommend it as a sci-fi novel non-sci-fi readers will enjoy.
raveller.com:
The Virtual URL trick wasn’t quite as nice as I thought it would be so I shelled out some bones and set up a Virtual Domain. The difference is that addresses at raveller.com now resolve to raveller.com instead of where the Virtual URL sends them. In essence the URL in your browser actually says “www.raveller.com” instead of “www.geocities.com/sc/…/ratbait/”. I think it is an improvement.
Once again I may backtrack on already stated, hardline stands because of a newfound knowledge of Java. Then again I may not. Who’s knows? I’m going into politics if I get any better at contradicting myself. I am still adamantly against using a frames interface. For now.
On my Novels:
Thankfully zero is plural. It makes things sound so much better when things are plural. I began organizing my notes and such a month ago and got somewhere. Unfortunately I got nowhere near being able to put anything up here.
Basically my idea is to create the basic space opera with a twist. I suppose every hack writer knows that all you need is a twist. As for the people in the story, they’re just like you and I, except for the body covering, tattoo-like parasites that allow them to shape shift. And the superior mental powers. And the susceptibility to demon possession.
On my Galleries:
A few of my friends have sent in some pictures: namely Lance and Stacy Farley. Because I’m lazy and slow and all, I haven’t yet put those pictures up. And maybe because my Norman gallery would then be dominated by Farley photos which may not be a bad thing.
Fortunately I can now say that I have a scanner and will at some time in the upcoming six months scan more photos and artwork in and put them up on the web. As soon as I get my stuff out of storage that is.
