Prompt No. 39

A Quick Edit:

Release 023: Ankyron of Daikaijuzine is now live!

Daily stuff:

Today was a busy day! We spent the morning cleaning the house in preparation for Game Day, which started at noon. For Game Day, we played Artisan, another game by Dux Somnium, creators of Botany and Le Fluer. Our gaming group has played those games several times, and we’ve enjoyed them every time. The artwork is lovely, and the gameplay is always easy to follow, once you get into it. And Artisan’s game play is the most streamlined of the bunch. Easy to play. And I especially loved it, since I won, and I rarely win at our hosted game days. Yay me!

On top of all that, I also got Daikaijuzine ready to launch this evening. This involved formatting all the stories, putting the stories into the database, contacting the authors for final notes if they have any, and so on. This quarter’s issue will go live at 8:00 pm Pacific time. Hard to believe we’ve been running this webzine for five years at this point.

And now on to other stuff:

Last week’s story:

As you probably know, I fell behind in my stories. The story I wrote last week, “The Engineer”, which I finished yesterday, was actually for the week before. I only just started “Specimen”, the story for last week, yesterday evening. I hope to finish it soon, as in, today or tomorrow, so that I can catch up and write the story for this coming week during the actual week it’s supposed to be written.

I know that if I ever get to do this writing thing professionally, I won’t have time to dilly-dally over deadlines like this. I know that at this point in my writing career, I’m lucky in that I don’t have to worry about contract deadlines and what-not… but on the other hand, I do want to get to a place in my life where I do end up worrying about these things.

This week’s prompt:

This week I rolled a 3 on the d8 for Fantasy, and a 4 on the d6 for Humor; in other words, humorous fantasy. Finally, I am free from the diabolical hold that Science Fiction Fantasy had on me! I’ve still got to write the final arc in the love story of William and Sheila, but that will come, hopefully, in my current story, “Specimen”.

Anyway, here’s the prompt:

A halfling wizard wants to foil a scheme involving a mask, but it will cause a cataclysm.

I’ve written comedic fantasy before, I believe I’ve mentioned. And I believe I’ve also mentioned that humor is hard to pull off. Somehow Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett managed to do it, but they had the advantage of being British, which itself is funny. I, on the other hand, am an American which, these days especially, is tragic, but I won’t get into that. Mind you, there are fine authors of comedic fantasy who are American as well; Christopher Moore springs to mind, for example. His latest novel, Amina Rising, is espeically hilarious.

My problem is that when I attempt to write humor, it often turns dark. Like, really really dark. My novel-in-the-trunk-for-now And the Devil Will Drag You Under, has some parts that I think are funny, but other parts which are not just dark, but DARK. And my attempts to write DARK fantasy usually end up being silly.

Still, I think I can write this silly story about a halfling wizard and a mask.

I can do it.

This week’s recommendation:

It’s K-Pop Demon Hunters! Now streaming on Netflix, if you have that service. My wife and I watched this delight two weeks ago and it’s been on my mind ever since; its sense of heroism and sacrifice has stuck with me, the way that the movie Superman has. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Superman, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and Sinners were my favorite movies of the entire year.

I haven’t gotten totally into the soundtrack, playing it over and over again like I did when I first saw Superman (which, by the way, is now streaming on HBO Max). But I probably will get into it soon. Meanwhile, I kind of want to watch it again.

Until next time: As always, be safe, be kind, have fun, and kill demons. And be punk af.