Asheville Plans on Hold, etc.

Okay, things are settling down again so I'd like to briefly update a few things tonight. The mother-in-law has departed once again for frozen New York, the monstrous Hydra is done for now, and in the past week all I managed to assemble for my Dark Elves was one little crossbowman. (Uh-oh!) How's that for an update? I suppose that's the most pertinent info anyways, the rest will just be details.

All that extra hobby time I thought was just around the corner for me turned out to be entirely imaginary... shocking, right? My daughter turned two years old yesterday so we've kept busy with friends and family stopping by in addition to having a very exciting and noisy birthday party on Sunday at the beach. We were staying one island over while my mother-in-law visited because preparations for the expected move to Asheville, NC have lead to a lot of upheaval at home and no space for guests. In vain I brought my Dark Elves to assemble but there were no good opportunities to work on them, although the stay at the beach was otherwise a great time. Getting to sleep in a bit as my mother-in-law took the early shift with my daughter was bliss. :) (Thanks again, Cheryl!)

As I said, the only progress I made on the Dark Elf front was putting together a single pitiful crossbowman. Oh and the Hydra is mostly done, still some minor greenstuff work to do on all those gaps but that's almost finished too. What this means however is that my timetable for this project is already thrown off track but worrying about it won't help, the only thing to do is press on. I'll focus my efforts on the miniatures I most expect to use for the 1000 point tournament at Adepticon, and if I can pick up the pace I might then look at some of the other models I've purchased. Hmmm, I think I should save details about this for a future post.

While I've made little tangible hobby progress recently, on the other hand I did find plenty of time last week to really dig into the first volume of the Malus Darkblade collection. I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would even with its moments of face-peeling grotesqueries. (As an aside, I sometimes forget what a sicko Dan Abnett can be.) So despite his cruelty and all around horribleness, I've quickly grown rather fond of Malus and find him to be surprisingly funny and even kind of endearing in a weird way. I actually find myself thinking of him as almost a Warhammer version of one of my all time favorite characters, Ash from the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness movies, in that he is constantly being pummeled, beaten, stabbed, knocked out, captured, poisoned, suffocated, drugged, and otherwise generally abused at almost every turn. Yet to his credit he never stays down or out of the fight for very long and always seems to come out ahead in the end. As a hero, or antihero as you please, his greatest virtue so far appears to be his ability to take a beating. Also as I had hoped it would, the reading is helping me tremendously in my understanding of the Druchii as a people and their culture which previously had felt somewhat bland and one dimensional. Good stuff!

Another positive, albeit still somewhat disappointing, development from last week is the new plan my wife and I devised concerning the aforementioned move to Asheville. Musings of a Smurf kindly enquired not long ago how things had been going with this and I realized it had been awhile since I last updated the situation. As the title of this post suggests, unfortunately we've had to put everything on hold after getting burned recently by the anemic housing market. Less than two weeks from closing on my wife's old house, now on the market for more than 39 months, the current renters had to back out of their contract which they had signed almost a year ago to purchase the home. Instead they are moving out at the end of February so not only did we lose the sale but also the rental income as well. Their financing fell apart at the last minute and so now there's much to do to get the house back on the market again by spring.

The result of this is that we're going to have to wait on moving to Asheville for the time being as we deal with these new circumstances. Our goal now is to have everything resolved by summertime and will hopefully then resume our ambitions for moving to the mountains. So while I'm still eager as can be to translocate the family, for now we're staying here and will likely only unpack things as needed but otherwise restore order as best we can. Candidly I don't know what's going to happen but I'm optimistic everything will turn out for the best. I'm very grateful for everyone who has been so encouraging of me and who so graciously invited me to come game with you once I have moved to North Carolina. I appreciate it very much and I'm sure that such a welcoming spirit will provide ample motivation to see me through the coming months. Demolition work on the house begins March 1st, hooray!

Well I've rambled on long enough tonight. I apologize for the amount of RealLife whining contained in this update, it was something I had wanted to avoid for that reason alone but I didn't know how else to explain the situation. I remain very hopeful however about our chances of still being able to move to Asheville in the near future. Besides it was a perfect 75 degrees today with beautiful blue skies so I think I should manage alright in the meantime. For now though I've got some Dark Elves to attend to... goodnight, everyone!

The Horror of Many Clauses

I'm still working away at the urban terrain for Sector 7G and will take some pictures tomorrow to document the progress I've made these past few days. In addition to detailing a couple of pieces, I could not resist and have started assembling another double-sized building. Also I should be getting my new painting desk tomorrow afternoon so I'm sure I'll want to report on that as well. For now, though, I'd like to indulge in a short bit of literary fun.

Earlier today I saw a post at Enormous Noise which introduced me to the website I Write Like. You can submit a sample of text at the site for analysis and are then told which famous author's style of writing resembles your own. Upon submitting the previous post from my blog, this was the result:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

As much of a fan as I am of his writing, I don't know if this is all that complimentary. It does however confirm something for me that I've long suspected, that my writing style is indeed clunky and awkward, often confusing and appealing to only a very small number of people. I started reading Lovecraft when I was about twelve years old and I've wondered over the years how much of his stilted formalism rubbed off on me, or if instead that's just what comes natural to me and thus struck a sympathetic chord when reading his works. It does seem appropriate at least that less than a week ago that I turned my Followers section into an admittedly lame Lovecraft joke.

This certainly does not bode well for any of you when I start posting my own background fluff. You have been warned....

Less Than 12 Hours Left

I got my copy of the Warhammer rulebook yesterday and oh my gaaaaahd, it's freaking huge! The book is absolutely beautiful and very well done, but as a gaming reference it strikes me as rather impractical. Not too big of deal if you already plan on buying The Island of Blood set but certainly frustrating for gamers on a budget. Games Workshop has definitely succeeded in making another high quality product, I just hope they've not created too much of a sticker-shock barrier for new people considering taking up the hobby. Nonetheless, the bibliophile in me rejoices at the sight of such a lavish tome and I think it's cool that so much attention was given to the hobby and background sections. I have happily spent much of the last day looking at all the pretty pictures and skimming through random bits of text as it will probably be sometime before I'm ready to begin digesting the rules themselves. It really is such a nice book that I want to take my time exploring and enjoying the material within... at a cost of about 75 dollars, I think it deserves to be savored awhile before turning to its more utilitarian purposes.

Okay, nothing much going on here otherwise. Just wanted to post a little reminder about the giveaway I'm doing tomorrow for those of you who have not yet entered. To those of you who have already signed up for a chance to win those Warriors of Chaos dudes, thank you very much as I am really excited to have the opportunity to give this collection of miniatures to one of you. I've been cleaning up more of the house and found some packets of WoC bits that I ordered to bulk up a few units, the plan having been to make use of leftover arms and such from the other box sets I'd bought. So in addition to the items mentioned in my previous post, the winner will also receive a single horse from the Marauder Horsemen kit plus 5 sets of Marauder Horsemen bodies, shields, and left arms. Also included in the prize package are eight sets of Warriors of Chaos torsos and capes, right arms, and heads to allow for even more enemy-chopping fun.

I've decided to put a deadline for entry on this contest just to make sure I don't run into any last minute troubles. Therefore to be eligible to win, Followers of this blog need to leave a comment on the original post by tomorrow at 8:00 AM (EST) letting me know that you want to be included in the drawing. At the time of writing there remains a little more than eleven hours to have a shot at winning this new Warriors of Chaos army. If you're not already playing a Chaos army, there's enough here to get a big start with them. And if you don't play Warhammer Fantasy, here's a chance to get an army to help introduce you to the game. So come on and sign up.

Thank You, John!

Look at what arrived in the mail today! I would like to express my gratitude to John Lambshead of John's Toy Soldiers for sending me a copy of his novel, Lucy's Blade. John graciously awarded it to me as a prize for being the 150th follower of his excellent blog. He even took the time to include a personal inscription for which I am very appreciative. Awesome! I love books and am super excited to begin reading his work. He's previously published a number of short stories but this is his first novel and from what I've seen it looks great. Here's the teaser from the back cover:

"Sir Francis Walshingham, Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State, was the greatest spymaster the world had ever seen. But when he asked Dr. Dee to summon a demon the result was unexpected, especially for his orphaned niece Lucy. Sir Francis' duty as her guardian was to find Lucy a suitable aristocratic husband, not to let her fight demons and witchcraft for the Queen's Secret Service. But his - and Lucy's - duty to protect Queen and country from enemies both natural and supernatural kept getting in the way. And so did all those demons...."

Now that is the way to hook a reader like me. It sounds as though John has produced something truly unique and wonderful with his writing. I can hardly wait to dive in. I'm right now working my way through The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World by Adrian Murdoch, but as soon as that's done I will next turn to Lucy's Blade. I've been reading a lot of history and non-fiction lately and so I expect John's book will be a perfect change of pace for me. I am eager to get to know John as an author and am very curious to see how he blends such disparate genres of fiction.

If anyone is interested in getting your own copy, you can find it for sale here on Amazon.

Thanks, John!

And The Winner Is...

I believe I have finally settled on the book that I will take on my road trip. Rather than go with any of the ones I was considering earlier, I have instead chosen The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours (539AD-594AD). Tonight I started reading the Penguin Classics edition translated by Lewis Thorpe and right away knew that this would be the best pick. I had been really tempted to go with The Book of Contemplation but I didn't feel as if I had enough of a contextual understanding of the times to get as much out of the book as I would want. Nor am I planning on painting anything from the Crusades period for the foreseeable future so I therefore don't really feel like diving into that period just yet. I do like the idea though of reading some original source material though instead of one of my contemporary's analysis so that Gregory's work nicely fits that criterion.

After I move on from the Hundred Years War portion of the medieval period, I am pretty sure I want to next focus my attention on the so-called European Dark Ages and in particular the wars fought between the Franks and the Arabs for control of Spain. (Makes sense considering the number of Carolingians and Andalusians I purchased in the last couple of weeks.) As I said before, though, I am only very superficially familiar with not just this period but also much of the time preceding it as well. I believe therefore that Gregory's history should be a good reference for that transitional period from the end of effective Roman control to the later portion of Merovingian rule. Even though this is earlier than time in which I have expressed my main interest, it should nonetheless provide an excellent foundation for my understanding of the later Carolingian renaissance. Also it serves to keep the other books I have fresh for when I am actually ready to start painting the relevant armies.

So much thought and consideration has gone into the choice, I really hope the good Bishop does not let me down. But just in case I'm take Longitude as a back up.

Not Feeling The Dirt

Unfortunately I'm so far struggling to get into a happy rhythm of reading my book about dirt. As my wife said, "Reading about dirt not interesting, who would have guessed?" I'm glad I started this process of choosing a book early as I would have been disappointed if I had taken this one with me on my trip to western New York. I still think this could have been a good topic of interest, I just wish this one by William Bryant Logan was more in depth in its approach. Instead of a real thorough scientific and historical exploration of dirt it is instead a series of short chapters usually no longer than three pages each. This is hindering my effort to enjoy the book as there seems to be no flow or rhythm established in the writing. Nor even can I discern any real system of organization with regards to the chapters either as they seem not to relate to each other or follow from one to the next. I'm not going to say that I'll never pick up this one again, but it will certainly be some time before I'm ready to give it another shot.

And so that means I need to pick out another book to start reading. Here then are the ones I am considering:

Longitude by David Sobel
The Book of Contemplation by Usama ibn Munqidh
A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich
The Last Pagan by Adrian Murdoch

I plan over the next couple of days to read a little of each of these and see which grabs my attention the most. Also there's still the possibility that some of my Amazon books will arrive in time in which case I may need to expand the field of contenders... in that order after all is a book called Nero's Killing Machine which sounds plenty exciting to me!

A Road Paved with Books

New books!!!! Yay! I made a trip to the book store today and got a stack of new books to read. For the last several months I've been stuck on pretty low quality fiction, but last night I finally snapped out of it. I've got a road trip coming up in a couple of weeks and I realized I needed to find a good book to take with me. I certainly don't want to squander this occasion on some crap novel and so have set out to pick the perfect read. Last night I placed an order with Amazon but I don't know what will arrive in time, and thus I went to Barnes and Noble today. As a former owner of a small independent book store this was its own special form of torture, but they have the best selection of the stores in my area, especially if one is looking for history.

Despite my online search the evening before and a thorough exploration of the mega-store this afternoon, I couldn't find anything concerning the Hundred Years War that interested me. So I then was mainly looking for books related to the history of any of the armies I want to paint in the near future, although I also ended up picking out a number of science books as well. I couldn't find anything on Andalusia in particular but I did get a biography of Charlemagne which should be quite useful. I would however prefer to save such reading for a time closer to when I'd actually be painting the related miniature forces. Last summer when I first started my current project I was reading everything I could find on the Hundred Years War, but now I'm in the position of running out of source material and inspiration. Therefore, as I am not ready to jump into any of these histories, I have chosen to begin with something quite a bit different. I am starting with a natural history of dirt, appropriately titled "Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth," by William Bryant Logan. A book about dirt, now that's interesting.