Gene Curtis Blog

Sorry I have to be brief. I wanted to do a cartoon for DragonLight of a tiny dragon sitting atop a huge egg with a couple looking on and the woman saying “Well, she’s got high hopes,” but I haven’t had the time to draw it. A lot of things have happened in my life over the last month or so that require a lot of my time and I just don’t have the time to devote to this blog. For the next few months I’ll be taking a sabbatical from it.

This month’s participating CSFF Blogtour members are:

Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Mark Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Magma
Terri Main
Magma
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Deena Peterson
Steve Rice
Cheryl Russel
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Laura Williams

Okay, it’s the first book in a series. I, like just about every other reviewer, feel the need to say I also was disappointed that I didn’t know that from the start. I hadn’t read the reviews. I didn’t think I needed to. After all, this was a Kathryn Mackel book. Having said that, Vanished is as fast paced as a maglev train, action packed as a supercollider experiment gone awry, suspenseful as waiting for bombs to explode, as emotionally charged as confronting the guy your wife left you for and as chilling as watching monstrous creatures crawling out of your floor drain, all of them coming after you.

I made the mistake of starting to read Vanished as soon as I returned home after being awake for more than 24 hours. I finished the story in one sitting, two pots of coffee later. Mrs. Mackel is an excellent story teller and is a master at writing page-turners. Fore told is forewarned.

Other reviewers compare the story to the television series Lost. I can’t comment on that comparison since I don’t (didn’t?) watch the series. I did find the story to be strangely familiar though; reminiscent of several Twilight Zone episodes I remember. I think of it as if Stephen King had teamed-up with H. G. Wells to write a seriously evil SciFi version of the popular computer game Myst; an excellent game by the way and Vanished is no less an excellent story as-well-as a magnificent start to a series. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Participating CSFF Blogtour members include:

Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Deena Peterson
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika
Mir’s Here
Chawna Schroeder
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

What a great name for a spec-fiction magazine. I also like the fact that Double-Edged Publishing, Inc. has merged two magazines, Dragons, Knights, and Angels and The Sword Review, into one super-zine: MindFlights.

I think the coolest innovation is their implementations of skins. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s great. I’m on dial-up and have little patience when it comes to waiting a half an hour or so for a website designed for broadband users only. Their skin selection #8 looks really great and makes the site super fast for those of us with slow connections. Thanks guys, I really appreciate that little feature!

The only thing I might suggest is adding a place to sign up for an email notification when a new issue has been released. My bookmarks list is really long and to tell the truth, I get so involved with other things that I just plain forget to check back. A simple reminder that you exist and have new content would be most helpful.

Check out what this month’s participating CSFF Blogtour members have to say about MindFlights:

Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Kameron M. Franklin
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Michael Heald
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Pamela Morrisson
John W. Otte
John Ottinger
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika
Mir’s Here
Rachelle Sperling
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Robert Treskillard
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

1 isn’t the loneliest number anymore.

I occasionally use iWebtools to keep up-to-date on popular search terms and to get ideas to write about. I noticed what I thought was an anomaly a few months back and didn’t bother to dig any deeper than just noticing it. A ton of people were (are) typing just the number ‘1’ into the search box to do a search. I could understand it if the search was for world war 1, formula 1, air force 1, stargate sg 1, or even algebra 1, but on average there are 184,159 searches a day (more than 5 million searches a month) for solely the search term ‘1’.

I can’t make sense of it. I seriously doubt that many people are making a typo. About the only thing a typo could be is someone missing the letter ‘Q’ and as anyone that has ever played Scrabble™ knows, ‘Q’ is very infrequently used. It would make more sense if the number was ‘3’. That would likely be a shortcut for a search on ‘MP3’, a very popular music format on the net.

When I Googled ‘1’ nothing with remotely enough interest returned in the search results to ever justify the popularity for that search term. Same results with Yahoo! and Dogpile. I haven’t a clue why that search term is so popular. In fact, just searching ‘1’ should be counterproductive. Numbered lists always begin with ‘1’ and how many of those are on the web? Pages talking about computer stuff abound and are loaded with ‘1s’.

This it isn’t just a passing fad. I’ve been noticing this phenomenon for several months and ‘1’ is now the 11^th most popular search term; it’s even more popular a search term than ‘yahoo’, ‘music’, ‘britney spears’ or ‘mp3’.

Does anyone have a clue? I’d truly like to be enlightened.

I’ll post links below to other blogs about this as I find them.

Cemetary Road 1 0 1

The Begotten

Author Lisa T. Bergren

The most intriguing review at Amazon.com begins, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve really had enough of Templar knights, Papal conspiracies, and secret documents that threaten the foundations of the church… Then I received a sample chapter of the book through the Chapter-A-Week Yahoo group. And I was stunned. Captivated. Rendered speechless by the power of Bergren’s prose.

I went out and got the book immediately. Not because the plot interested me even then, but because the writing in that sample chapter was so breathtaking I couldn’t resist. ” -Kelli Standish

I have to agree with her on that point, and I also agree with another reviewer, “I highly recommend this book for those who are fans of this genre, and for anyone who enjoys a really good story.” -Deborah

[synopsis] At the height of the Inquisition, a secret half a millennium old is about to be exposed-a lost letter said to have been written by Paul and part of what was to become the foundation of the Christian canon.

Participating CSFF Blogtour Members

Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Michael Heald
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Karina Fabian
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Pamela Morrisson
John W. Otte
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachelle Sperling
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Robert Treskillard
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

The Master Gardners received their next shipment of bags, started selling them at 8:30 am the next day and sold out again by 11:00 am.

I was very surprised when a project my wife was involved with became a success almost overnight. She’s a Master Gardner and the local group decided to promote reusable shopping bags. They ordered many cases of the plain green ones from Earth Savvy Products to sell at cost ($1 each includes shipping). They sold out very quickly and have had to reorder twice since then. The project has only been going on for the last couple of weeks and the ever-growing backorder list has hundreds of people on it. (The usual order is for 5 or more bags.)

These bags make great promotional items since you can have a logo screen printed on them for a few cents more. I tried to contact Earth Savvy Products to get some info on their bags and haven’t been able to get through. Evidently the company is so bogged down filling orders they are having trouble keeping up with email and phone calls. I understand they have the best prices around and several chain stores (Wal-Mart? Target?) are now stocking their bags.

Another company that has similar bags with slightly higher prices is My Shop Angle.

If you’re thinking on a larger scale you might want to look at Alibaba or Global Sources

I’m the assistant director of the Writers Studio in Virginia. Two months ago we had some new faces at the monthly meeting; one of which was Hugo Award winning artist and author Ron Miller. Mr. Miller is an incredibly humble person. You’d never know he is such an accomplished artist and author just from talking to him.

We hit it off from the beginning since we both share a love for digital art and space exploration. He asked me to his home to discuss teaming up as authors. The end result is we’re working on Regal Wind together. Every morning since then I want to do the Snoopy dance as soon as I wake up.

Picture of Ron Miller from the extended edition DVD movie Dune from an interview about the artwork for the movie.

I was surprised to find out how many lost nuclear bombs there are in the world. I made a map of the locations.

Lost Nuclear Bombs Map

I usually wait until the second day of a blogtour to make my rounds of the various blogs and this time was no exception. The third blog I visited sent me on a rabbit trail to discover what Geocaching was. I’m afraid I spent most of the day checking it out; it’s pretty cool. The rabbit trail can be found in Valerie Comer’s Little World.