Tired and Sick (Again)

Sorry folks, I’ve been a bit under the weather.  However, here’s a video of really cute puppies playing in leaves.  If you don’t awe, you have no soul—and I’d like to know how much you got for it!

Fall Traditions—Pumpkin Patch

Soul? No thanks.  I'll take your wallet!

Since I moved out to SoCal, my wife and I have had the same tradition around this time of going to a U-Pick pumpkin patch for (obviously) pumpkins, and then on up into the mountain to an apple orchard for (again, obviously) apples and cider.  The pumpkin patch, Live OakCanyon Pumpkin Patch, has grown more popular and theme-parky over the years.  But this past weekend it went over the top.

In the past, the Pumpkin Patch was a quaint, almost side-of-the-road afterthought affair.  The fields were mowed down, it was a walk through muddy ground, and the best they offered were wheelbarrows to carry out your spoils.  It was cold, dirty, fun work.

It apparently caught on, because they expanded the parking lot into what had been their Christmas Tree groves, and started putting up out buildings.  Some temporary games and rides came into being—mostly jumpy-house type affairs.  For a buck or two, the kiddies could go play.  A few years ago they added a corn maze, which was nice.  A bit pricey to wander through, but still fun.  The kicker is that you have to find animal signs throughout the maze to get a code for the door out.

This was the only one of twelve cars actually working.

This year, however, is the first year they’ve actually charged us admission to come onto the property to spend our money.  We had to wait in line for the privilege of coming in.  The only upshot I could see is they’ve adopted Disneyland-style parking guides to direct you to a spot.  A smart move to get the people to spend their money just through the front door.  They also have a more boardwalk type area with rides and games.  They get you by making you buy tickets (about $1 each) and then the rides run between 3 and 8 tickets.  With my three sons, I was spending between $9 and $24 to get them on a ride.  We’re now talking almost Disneyland-style prices!

The boys had a great time, went on some fun rides and bouncy houses.  When we were down to our last scattering of tickets, not enough for all the boys, I made the executive decision to shoot at the archery booth.  It was a nice choice, although I haven’t pulled a bowstring in a couple years.  I managed to only flub one arrow (the attendant chided me to make certain it was properly seated on the nock) and then made a nice grouping before I planted three in the bullseye.

But I’m torn.

I get that they want to make money.  I’m all for making money.  I’d like to make some myself someday.  It seems like it makes life easier.  I’m not certainly I can embrace the over-commercialization of a U-Pick pumpkin patch simply for the sake of tradition.  I haven’t fully decided, but I’m certainly torn between what I experienced a decade ago, and the small amusement park that is now the Live Oak Canyon Pumpkin Patch.

Progress!

Nock by Scott McGlasson

It's a zombie book.  It's an archery book!
It's both!

Scott McGlasson’s novella Nock does more than just build on the zombie mythos.  He creates life-like characters that reflect the real-world stresses of living in a world rife with the undead.  Even if you’re not a zombie or post-apocalypse reader, McGlasson has you covered with a father-daughter story that will actually warm your heart and make you smile.

McGlasson uses a visceral, engaging style of prose to tell the story of Stace, a young girl who has grown up in the After—after the zombie apocalypse—who wants to be a Ranger like her father.  First, she has to prove she’s capable, which means she has to hunt down one of the “ferals” which roam the valley her people have tried to make safe.  The only problem is that her father, Rob, is one of the best Rangers.  Living up to his standards isn’t easy, and if she fails, it means a lifetime of toil on the farm, rather than running free among the woods as Stace dreams.

Of course, if it was simple as nocking an arrow to a bowstring and loosing it into the wasted flesh of a zombie’s head, life would be easy.  McGlasson ensures that life is in the After is never simple or easy.  When things start to go the wrong way, they quickly escalate to the point where Stace has more than her father’s big shoes and long shadow to worry about, and maybe she’ll learn that her father isn’t some granite rock, but a flawed person just like her.

Zombie archer book?  Not quite, Rob!

McGlasson creates characters with very real insecurities balanced against a world that is both familiar and wholly alien.  Even though Stace was was born in the Before, she has almost no memories of that time, and only the stories the older generation still tells.  This lends a hard reality to both the world Stace finds herself in, and a poignant sense of loss to the reader—perfect for the feel of the story.

In Nock, McGlasson crafts a thrilling, heart-pounding adventure around two very real characters.  He subtly plays up the father-daughter relationship, up to and through the climax of the story.  As with any good novella, McGlasson tells a complete tale, but his craftsmanship is right on target, and will leave readers wanting more stories from this world.

Read an excerpt of Scott McGlasson’s book Nock here!

Help Get Del to the Library!

Help me Obi-wan Reader, Del needs your help!

Would you be willing to recommend my novels, Tears of Heaven and Hell Becomes Her, for acquisition by your local public library? Because my publisher is a small press, not one of the big five conglomerates, the library acquisition is not automatic. Someone with a library card has to request it.

If you have a library card, it's very easy. Go to the library's website, search for “Tears of Heaven by R.A. McCandless” and “Hell Becomes Her”.  If nothing comes up, click on "suggest a title for purchase," which shows up when a search yields no results. Then put in the details:

Author: R.A. McCandless

Title: Tears of Heaven

Publisher: Wild Child Publishing

ISBN: 978-1617981708

—AND—

Author: R.A. McCandless

Title: Hell Becomes Her

Publisher: Wild Child Publishing

ISBN: 978-1617981692

The books are about Del, a half-angel Nephilim.  Angels should be a human’s worst nightmare. Del didn’t think there was anything worse than angels, or their fallen kin, demons. She was wrong.  With her partner Marrin, Del helps to keep the world safe from the horrors of escaped demons for generations. But she’ll find that the world is even more dangerous than she suspected. There are worse things than angels and demons.

More info, as well as lots more reviews if you need to check before suggesting the book to the library, available here: robroymccandless.wixsite.com/ramccandless

Preview of "Nock" by Scott McGlasson

Zombies and Archers and Zombies—OH MY!

The feral locked eyes with Stace Tomlinson and moved toward her across the forest clearing. Dark clouds threatened rain again, gray above leeching the autumn colors from the forest all around her. The thing’s ruined clothing and filthy pallor blended in perfectly, making her shot difficult. Watching its decrepit state and slow pace, Stace guessed that it had been around for a long time, maybe even going all the way back to just After. It was a big buck. Probably a well-muscled man once, by the looks of it. Stace and her father had tracked it up the hill after spotting its prints in the sodden earth of a deer trail. It was late afternoon and they had been heading back to town, but the patrol had been uneventful and the tracks fresh and easy to see.

“Remember,” her father whispered from just behind, “the arrow flies when you’re surprised. Deep breath now. . .”

Stace inhaled, filling her lungs with chill October air. Her left arm locked straight, holding an ashwood recurve bow, and her right held the fifty pound pull to her cheek as she focused on her target. The damned thing wasn’t making it easy.

Oblivious to everything but living prey, the feral advanced on stiffened legs. It moved like an animated length of chain. Each foot fall caused the body to follow in a stilted wave, the upper torso undulated back and forth and the head, the last link, tilted from shoulder to shoulder. The decay on this one was bad. At thirty paces, Stace could see bones pushing through the remains of its gray skin. Where not covered by tattered clothing, the feral’s hide hung off its frame, puddling around joints and jowls, swaying like wheat fronds as it staggered toward her. What hair it had left dangled in knotted tangles down to its exposed collarbone.

“Hold the string with your back and shoulder, not your arm,” Rob Tomlinson said. “Now . . . breathe out.”

She exhaled through pursed lips and slowly let her fingers relax, trying not to anticipate the moment when her muscles were no longer tense enough to hold the bowstring taut. The feral’s milky eyes stayed on her, its mouth twisted into a snarl. Stace used that as her focus, drawing a line up from the jaw to a spot just above the nose where the bone would be thinnest. She caught the rhythm of the thing’s swaying back and forth, as her father had taught her, allowing the bow to become an extension of her self, and the world shrank down to that one spot on the feral’s horrible face. She released the bowstring to thwack on the plastic guard protecting her left wrist. The bodkin-tipped arrow blurred through the space the feral’s head had just tilted past.

Teeth opening and closing, it snarled at her, a rasp that sounded like dry twigs being dropped down a pipe as it continued toward them through the knee-high grass and brambles.

Her father huffed at the miss.

“Again,” he said.

Stace held two more arrows in her right hand. With a quick, circular snap of the wrist, she swung a second shaft up, nocking it with index and middle finger while holding the third arrow ready with ring and pinky. She pulled the bowstring to her cheek, grunting with the effort, and sighted on a spot just above the feral’s forehead and released.

Thwack

Much closer this time — she actually saw the thing’s dirty hair flutter as the arrow passed by — but a miss anyway. Failure.

Stace frowned and lowered her bow, grinding her teeth and trembling with all the lambent fury her sixteen-year-old body could muster. A single thought, a mantra, vibrated through her.

I don’t wanna be a farmer.

Ranger field trials were coming up the following week. To fail during Selection was to condemn her to a life of crops and crafts instead of running through the forests outside the security wall. Running was freedom. Running was as far from working the fields as one could get.

Not taking her eyes off the approaching feral, Stace heard the soft noises of her father nocking an arrow in his own massive bow. She realized he was preparing to drop the creature himself. Frustration flashed through her and tears began to build up at the corners of her eyes.

I do NOT wanna be a farmer.

BUY NOCK TODAY!

The author, Scott McGlasson consults his human helper.

About the Author

Scott McGlasson is the author of NOCK – the winning entry in the Infected Books Year of the Zombie Pitch and Page competition.

A former member of the US Air Force, he spent nearly a decade as a rock radio personality before getting a “real” job in logistics. He spends what little free time he has herding cats managing the Space Opera and Space Opera: Writers groups on Facebook. Flash fiction contests for SO:W have been judged by such sci-fi luminaries as Neal Asher, David Farland, and Peter F Hamilton.

Scott currently lives in St Louis, Missouri USA with his wife, Monica, daughters Evelyn and Emily, and son, Trip.

Quick Notes on Middle Ages Social Mobility

She's just a simple, innocent, peasant girl!

Caveat: There are lots of great articles and in depth analysis available on this topic.  These are just some quick notes to get you started if this is a theme of your writing.

While it may seem that social mobility in the Middle Ages was largely stagnant—with peasants being tied to the land and the noble class off-limits—this is largely misunderstood. Throughout all periods of the Middle Ages (Early, High and Late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance) status was more mobile than most people think. You might not become king through inheritance, but you could move up or down through the ranks. It could take a few generations, but rising and falling happened all the time.

Marriages of nobility were often for position and/or gain, regardless of gender and sometimes with little consideration to class.  If a merchant was rich enough, influential enough, or both, a noble family, down on their luck, might well salivate at the chance of marrying into all that power and wealth.  The reverse is also true, as a merchant class family might want to gain additional influence (and thus wealth) by achieving membership into the peerage, which offered certain additional advantages that couldn’t simply be bought.

Downton Abbey (although set in the early 20^th century) offers a wonderful thumbnail sketch in just the first episode and throughout the series where the overarching focus is on saving the dying institution of the great estates.  Initially, the problem was solved (before the show starts) when Lord Grantham specifically went to the United states to marry a rich American Cora, who had no title or nobility whatsoever.  Her money was then tied, inextricably, to the Downton Abbey estate, with no hope of untying it when the initial heir died on the Titanic.  The reverse was also true. The family was hopeful that the new heir would want to marry Lady Mary, and thus secure their joint futures.

He's just a simple, innocent, peasant boy!

Some social structures were far more rigid depending on the time and place. In Japan during the Sengoku Jidai, peasant to great lord was possible (though never easy).  However, Hideyoshi's Social Status Control Edict or the Separation Edict enacted in the late 16th century IIRC changed all that, and made social mobility much more difficult. Peasants could no longer go to war, which pretty much tied them to the labor class permanently, and samurai were not allowed to farm or become merchants.  This became even more structured during the Edo period in the early 17th century. There were still ways around this (like being adopted by a samurai family), but social mobility became much harder.

By contrast, during roughly the same period, Italian city-states were incredibly mobile social structures.  Of course, it depends on how rich or influential (or both) the individual in question is, which could make for a powerful alliance (of give access to ready cash loans) depending. Most importantly, when writing about any of these time periods and your pairing of a peasant and a noble, you want to keep your social, political and technological standards as period-correct as possible. 

The Magnificent Seven - Review/Comparison

You magnificent bastards!

Instead of offering a regular review, which are widely available, this will be more of a review/comparison between this new film and the “original” The Magnificent Seven.

Growing up, I watched a lot of Westerns.  A lot of Westerns.  My dad loved them, and we watched them together.  It was a weekend staple.  I also watched a lot of musicals.  My mother loved them, and if you wanted to get some of her movie/song lyrics, you needed to be well versed (as it were).  I’ve even watched non-Western musicals—like Paint YourWagon—because they starred actors who were quintessential frontier types.  You simply haven’t lived until you’ve heard Clint Eastwood singing despondently while walking among the trees, or Lee Marvin doing a muddy dance rendition of “Hand Me Down That Can O’ Beans”. 

If I recall correctly, neither man touches a gun the entire movie, and the only violence is some standard, friendly, neighborhood bar brawls.

You're as magnificent as ever!

So it’s hardly surprising that this past Saturday I ended up in a theater this weekend with my father to witness the remake of The Magnificent Seven.  I’m fairly certain I’ve seen most of the iterations of this movie starting with the original template, The Seven Samurai and then through the entire catalog of Magnificent title (Return of the Seven, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and The Magnificent Seven Ride) Battle Beyond the Stars right through the anime Samurai Seven including the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “The Magnificent Ferengi” and Black Adder’s “The Black Seal”.

Antoine Fuqua pays some layered and obvious homage to the original throughout this new telling of a rag-tag group of borderline criminals/heroes.  The plot skews very little from the original source material Akira Kurosawa 60+ years ago.  There’s a bad man Peter Sarsgaard’s Bartholomew Bogue, harassing a small town of mostly defenseless but decent folk.  He’s a dirty, rotten, low-down, no-good, yellow-bellied sap-sucker who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, even if that means killing men, women and I assume cute puppies and kittens.  To stop him, it will take hard, dangerous, men with some true grit (see what I did there?).

Enter Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), who is introduced in one of the most cliché Western-genre ways possible—stopping just outside the bat-wing doors of a saloon, his shadow hidden from the patrons while they all look in rapt attention before he pushes inside to confront the bartender.  Damn, that’s cool!  Fuqua made of point of that in the film, “I kept reminding myself of when I was a 12‑year‑old boy, when I was a kid watching it with my grandmother, what was the feeling I had? How much fun was it? How cool were they?”  Chisolm isn’t a real person—he’s an archetype, an angel of vengeance and justice in an unjust world.  Like Yul Brenner’s Chris Adams, he’s a champion of the cause because it’s the right thing to do (sorta).  For example: Chisolm wears his gun on his right hip with the butt forward and pulls a “cavalry draw”—with his right hand initially reversed.  I assume, like The Princess Bride’s Inigo Mantoya, he does this on purposes because to draw any other way would leave him unsatisfied and the fights would be over too soon.

"Why not just cross-draw, Denzel?"
"Reasons.  Bad-ass reasons."

But don’t look for this kind of draw to start becoming a staple of Westerns.  It’s overly clumsy and dangerous.  It can be practiced to perfection so that it’s “as fast” as other kinds of draws, but it still points the barrel of the gun (the end where the bullets come out) into the body of the shooter while his finger is trying to find the trigger—not a combination most safety instructors would advise.

Yep, Chisolm is that good/dangerous.

And he’s only the beginning.  Chisolm, spurred for “some reason” to draw out Bart Bogue,

Takes seven of you, huh?

begins to search out similarly competent gunslingers.  Chris Pratt’s Joshua Faraday takes on the role originally personified by Steve McQueen as Vin Tanner.  A jokester, prankster who is as quick with a witty retort as he is his own guns.  If you look closely, you’ll see that at one point Faraday uses a “mare’s leg” a shortened rifle made famous by McQueen on the television series Wanted: Dead or Alive and again by Zoe Washburn on Firefly.  Ethan Hawke’s Goodnight Robicheaux is a Doc Holliday type based in part on Robert Vaughn’s Lee, a poster-child for post-Civil War PTSD.  With him comes Byung-hun Lee as Billy Rocks in James Coburn’s role, who can use a knife (or series of knives) as well as anyone with a gun.

The remaining three characters are somewhat wholly new, or looser conglomerates of the original movie.  Vincent D'Onofrio as Jack Horne is something of a cross between Charles Bronson’s stoic, yet warm-hearted Bernardo O'Reilly and big man Brad Dexter’s Harry Luck.  Horst Buchholz as Chico, the hot-blooded villager who wants to become a gunslinger is only sorta found in Martin Sensmeier’s wonderful Comanche warrior, Red Harvest (we could have used a lot more of him and that's not just because I love archers!).  Finally, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo’s Vasquez doesn’t really have much of a parallel, although he might be a mirror of Chris Pratt, and the two have a couple of clever exchanges before the shooting starts.

Fun fact: Red Harvest is the name of the Hammett story
which Akira Kurosawa used as the basis for Yojimbo.

And that’s really the heart of this movie.  Rather than the slower-paced 1960 film, which took a little more time to develop all the characters, including a number of the townspeople, this updated version is a quick build to the blow-em-up and shoot-em-out that dominates the second half of the film.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  The trailers don’t hide what this story is about, and it delivers all that is promised and then some.  Bad Black Bart Bogue enlists an army of 200 gunmen (read as cannon fodder) for our heroes to mow down, rarely missing a shot or running out of ammunition until dramatic tension has to be built while James Horner’s riff on the classic Elmer Bernstein score soars and falls with our “heroes” efforts.

Make no mistake, this is an updated classic Western that does right by its history and its is modern audience.  I don’t know that the film needs to be seen on the big screen, but wow does it look pretty.  Certainly worth the price of admission of you have any love for Westerns, or any of the actors that showed up to pull leather.