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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) johnjosmiller | |
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The above is a slightly dated photo of myself and two friends. As you can see, I had an affinity for animals from an early age. I grew up not exactly on a farm, but in a very rural area paradoxically about sixty miles north of New York City, and eight miles away from a village of 5,000 where I attended the centralized school district from kindergarten through high school. The high school, which was actually grade seven through twelve, had about five hundred students. Imagine the shock when I walked into my first college class (BIO 101), which had almost seven hundred. (This was at SUNY Stony Brook. I assume that I'll have a few stories to tell about those years as this blog rolls on.)
Anyway, to bring this back to the present, I still have an affinity for animals. Gail and I have two pure bred tri-color collies who are three-quarter siblings (same mother, who is a merle showdog; their fathers are brothers). The male is named Hamish. The female is Khyber. We have eight cats, all of whom were strays. They range from 16 (Edmond Blackcatter, or Eddie) to ten (Mrs. Miggins and Pie Shoppe) to nine (Alexander the great [familiarily known as Sandro] and his sister Kleopatra), and the Three Amigos, male strays of uncertain age whom we adopted two winters ago. There's Phantom Stranger Deux (There's a long story behind his name, but basically he looks like a cat we lost ten years or so ago who was named Phantom Stranger -- but his name was also Phantom [yes, we learned his name from the family who abandoned him] and he came to us Christmas Eve, just like the original Phantom Stranger nearly 30 years ago. Kind of spooky, actually.), Archie, and Nero (AKA Big Black Kitty, a pure blood Persian who put me in the hospital when we first adopted him. Another long story.). Oh yes, and three goldfish who don't have names.
I used to have a lot of fish and amphibians (including a mata mata turtle, Surinam or Pipa pipa toads, several species of poison arrow frogs, mantella frogs, and Red-Eyed Tree Frogs which we used to keep in the bedroom and serenaded us at night, especially in the spring). Alas, the books haven taken over the house, and we no longer have space for all the tanks.
On to some Wild Card news. Bud Simons, of Austin, Texas, was in Santa Fe for the weekend, and we had dinner and a Wild card meeting (so we could deduct the dinner). Present was George, Melinda, Bud, of course, myself, my wife Gail, Vic Milan, Ian Tregallis, and Chip Wideman who is not a writer but a player in the original role-playing game from which Wild Cards sprung and creator of the ever-popular Crypt-Keeper and the soon to be popular Toad Man. There was a lot of discussion over the Chinese food and later at Melinda's fabulous house on the outskirts of Santa Fe. Mainly, we nailed down some stuff for the new book. Melinda is doing the interstitial material, which is always tricky business, and we had to work out some choreography as virtually all our stories intersect in complicated ways.
I don't want to give away too much, or even much at all of other people's contributions, but, even though this is Wild Cards -- Next Generation, my story is a Billy Ray story, just as you like him, in trouble, kind of lost and over his head, but still swinging wildly. It ties up a loose end or two from my novel, DEATH DRAWS FIVE, as well as advances the plot of this middle book of the new trilogy.
Stories are due in mid-July. I virtually never hand mine in early. I always tinker endlessly until I HAVE TO hand them in. That said, everything seems to be going well. The stories I have read are terrific. There's lots of new characters, but some of the familiar ones as well, and, as always, we try to keep the readers guessing.
Next time, if there's interest, I'll talk a little about my project for Avatar Comics, a graphic adaptation of George R.R. Martin's novella, "In the House of the Worm." John Jos. Miller
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Now Reading: THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL by Paul Malmont
Now Writing: "Mortality's Strong Hand" a Billy Ray story for Wild Cards Book 2: BUSTED FLUSH.
In the Publisher's Pipeline: A graphic adaptation of George R. R. Martin's "In the House of the Worm" for Avatar Comics
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From: oceandoot |
Date: July 5th, 2007 08:50 pm (UTC) |
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Re: X-Mageddon
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Much as it pains me to say anything bad about a book by any Wild Cards author (and particularly the Godfather himself), I didn’t really like “The Armageddon Rag.” I’d been excited for it to come back into print for years because I love ‘60s music and have read several books on the subject. Sci-fi meets ‘60s rock? Sounded like a match made in Heaven. PLUS it was his last book before Wild Cards Book I, PLUS it had one of the coolest titles I’ve ever heard, PLUS Chris Claremont liked it! But when I finally read it last year, I couldn’t get into the book at all.
I don’t know whether this explains its original low sales, but I know that for me – reading it in 2006 – it just seemed to be going over very well trod ground. Obviously when the book originally came out, the ‘60s were only 15 years gone, but now we’ve had over 35 years of books examining ‘60s culture and its subsequent dissolution. The whole deal of the guy meeting old hippie friends and finding one of them is now an extreme hippie living off the land, another one has gone ultra-conservative and is rich, etc. ... It was all fairly rote and predictable. I imagine it was less so in ’84. Oddly enough, though, I’d opine that the blending of fantasy elements with ruminations on ‘60s culture was done much better in Victor Milan’s Mark Meadows stories.
Also, since you bring up the Lord of the Rings connection ... That is another thing that somehow failed to ring true to me as well: the idea that this band was, in the universe of the book, a group considered as innovative, as creative and as important as any musician in the ‘60s rock pantheon – yet their whole aesthetic, throughout their entire career, was lifted from another, single source. Obviously ‘60s musicians drew a lot from literature, and also quite blatantly wore their influences – both literarily and musically – on their sleeves, but I have a hard time believing that any creative force on a par with the Doors or Cream or Hendrix of Creedence would be so monotonous in their choice of source material. (It’d be like Jefferson Airplane doing lyrics exclusively based on Alice in Wonderland characters, or The Doors naming every album and song after a William Blake quote.)
Just my opinion, of course, but I had a hard time buying into these basic conceits of the book. So much so that I never even got through it. Now that I’m reminded of Chris Claremont referencing it in X-Men, maybe I’ll try it again. (A few days after reading X-Men #194, I read a contemporaneous issue of Claremont’s New Mutants, and there was another – even more detailed – reference. Not only does someone talk about Nazgul, but they go on about how sad it was when the lead singer was assassinated during the West Mesa concert! In spite of my reservations about the novel, I have to say that homage made me smile.)
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It's not my favorite of George's solo novels (that would be FEVRE DREAM, a great historical and vampire novel in one), but I think it is a good, solid book well worth a read.
I think you put your finger on it when you mentioned the time frame. It was plowing relatively fresh ground when George wrote it. Now, that ground has been gone over a bit.
I think the bit with the Nazgul sources must be accepted as artistic license. One of those things where a novel is, has to be, simpler than real life, to hew to the point of the novel. The question is where to draw the line, of course. It didn't bother me, but rational people can disagree.
The low sales, I think, can be atrributed to the fact that is kind of a "betweener" book. Between horror. Between a 60's novel. Between a music book. Between a mainstream novel. That, and the fact that the publicity for it was absolutely botched.
John Jos. Miller
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Now Reading: THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL by Paul Malmont
Now Writing: "Mortality's Strong Hand" a Billy Ray story for Wild Cards Book 2: BUSTED FLUSH.
In the Publisher's Pipeline: A graphic adaptation of George R. R. Martin's "In the House of the Worm" for Avatar Comics
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>>>>>... how did the cat put you in the hospital ? The mind boggles
To try to keep it simple and as amusing as a cat-putting-you-in-the- hospital story can be: I'd mentioned we had a problem with stray cats in our neighboorhood two winters ago. There were three strays, all males, all unneutered. Some other people had females that they let roam and we were getting a lot of kittens, some of which we able to trap and find homes for (because, I add, no one was taking responsibility for them). Round about October of that year, we'd taken two of the males in to be neutered (one had been hanging around our house for over a year; we called him the Freeloader), and we just released them back into the "wild." (We had five cats of our own, all strays at one time.) One cold, rainy day in November, I opened the door to find the two of them literally huddled together on our doorstep. I said, what the hell, we have five. Seven can't be too many more. We took them in.
We named them Archie (Aka, the Freeloader, because he was dapper) and Nero (Because he was all black and so damn big. He's a pure blood Persian and after a whole summer and fall, at least, on the streets, we weighed 13 pounds. He gained another pound the first week we had him.) Nero immediately became my shadow. He would not leave my side. He has this funny walk, like Toshiro Mifune in a samurai movie, so some of our friends started calling him Yojimbo, or my bodyguard. Once, one of our older cats made a face at him, that's all, and he leaped six feet and started whaling on the startled Pie, who escaped without damage.
Part One, as I've been informed that I've gone on too long, which I was afraid of.
John Jos. Miller
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Now Reading: READING JUDAS: THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS AND THE SHAPING OF CHRISTIANITY. By Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King
Now Writing: It's a secret until the official announcement at the end of August.
In the Publisher's Pipeline: A graphic adaptation of George R.R. Martin's "In the House of the Worm" for Avatar Comics. But "Mortality's Strong Hand" is also knocking at the door.
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Part 2:
About a month went by, and we caught the third male, a black and white tuxedo cat who were knew was named Phantom and also knew had been abandoned by a family who then moved out of the neighboorhood (long story to that, too.) We brought him in, had him fixed, and I spent a whole day on the phone trying to place him in a cat adoption agency. (I had learned that a neighbor was also trapping cats and taking them to the city; a sure death sentence.) No one would take him. I think I've mentioned the simularities to the cat named Phantom that we had who'd passed away about ten years ago. Uncannily, he, like this Phantom, also came to us on Christmas Eve. So, what the hell, we kept him.
I kept him segregated from the others in my study. He was the wildest of the three, but he seemed happy in the study. A couple days after Christmas I went in to feed him. The dogs, following me, pushed the door open. I didn't know it, but Nero followed me in, too. Phantom hissed at the dogs. Nero jumped him. He had him down and was whaling on him. At the time, it went through my mind that this was a stupid thing to do, but Nero had him pinned against the wall under my computer hutch, and I was afraid he was really going to do some damage. I have quick hands and I'm pretty strong. I thought I could grab Nero and pull him away. But it was awkward and I had to reach in with my left hand, and Nero's front shoulders are so broad that I could barely span them. He flipped on me, sunk his teeth (to the gumline) into my wrist and started raking my forearm with all four claws, holding on for dear life. I kept saying, calmly, "Nero, let go Nero, let go." It took about ten or fifteen seconds, and then a look came over his face like he suddenly realized what he was doing, and he did let go. I started running around the house, trying to stop the bleeding, the two dogs following me, as well as Nero, meowing piteously. Finally, I remembered what Gail says in times of emergencies like this (Apply pressure and elevate.), which I did. I rinsed with disinfectant, washed thoroughly. It didn't look TOO bad. Then, two days later, my fingers started to curl up and the infection set in. It spread from my wrist to the middle of forearm in the time it takes to go out for dinner and come home. I had aleady decided to see the doctor the next day; the spread of the infection took us to the emergency room. I was there about eight hours, getting shots like you wouldn't believe. My blood sugar went up to 500. The doctor was astonished that I hadn't passed out. I took two bags of intravenous antibiotics (which cleared up the sinus infection I'd had for two years), multiple insulin shots, and tetanus shots. By about four in the morning, the redness had faded (good thing, because they told me the next step was going to be to cut my arm open from elbow to wrist and scrape out the infected flesh). They told me to see my doctor the next day (another story about that, but this is already way too long and I'm sure people are starting to snore) and sent me home with a brace thing for my hand, because Nero had probably nicked a tendon which was causing my fingers to curl. Had to type one handed (as well as everything else) for the next three weeks.
But now, Nero and Phantom are best of friends. Everyone is getting along well and Nero doesn't feel he has to obsessively guard me. He's up to about sixteen pounds. We have learned our lesson. We will not become crazy cat people. Eight is more than enough.
John Jos. Miller
*****************************************************************************
Now Reading: READING JUDAS: THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS AND THE SHAPING OF CHRISTIANITY. By Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King
Now Writing: It's a secret until the official announcement at the end of August.
In the Publisher's Pipeline: A graphic adaptation of George R.R. Martin's "In the House of the Worm" for Avatar Comics. But "Mortality's Strong Hand" is also knocking at the door.
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