A bit late, but here’s the third part of “Homecoming,” here in The Home Front. This particular file got corrupted, so I didn’t have any choice but to rewrite about half of it, which put things off a bit. And here we are!

Of course, it occurs to me that Greg Fishbone, my former editor, children’s author, and man about town, might well have a copy of the file sitting on a zip disk somewhere. On the other hand, I think he has better ways to spend his time than coming up with my old crap for these purposes.

Anyway, here then is the third chapter in our story. I hope you like it. And yeah, I know full well there’ll be theories on what the All American Lad could have done differently. Just keep it to 1946 technology, if you will. ;)

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As the title says, this is my entry to mckenzee’s Sinister Bedfellows: Anthology. The idea behind the book was simple enough. The prospective authors would go through the webcomic, find a strip that spoke to them, and write a short-short about it. mckenzee would then put them all together and self-publish through lulu.

It was fun, and I was happy to agree. I searched the strip, and found the exact one I would want to use.

Namely, this one:

Which would be great except Rob Callahan grabbed it before I could, which means I couldn’t write that story. I’m tempted to so anyway.

This is the actual story I contributed. It’s based on the strip from April 10, 2005. And it’s probably a better story than I would have written for the self-portrait strip. It is indeed a short-short, under a thousand words long, so it won’t take you long to get through it.

I’d encourage folks to have a look both at Sinister Bedfellows and the anthology. It’s a nice little book with some nice vignettes and short stories in it, and it’s a nice hook that’s a little more interesting than a simple print collection of the strips might be. And mckenzee’s eye and viewpoint (not always the same thing) are very cool.

So. Here’s my entry, preceded by the strip. Please enjoy!

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Part thirteen of “Interviewing Leather.” This is, if anything, denouement and epilogue, and a chance for some voices on the other side of the fence to chime in on a few of the points Leather herself made. It also sets up the last part, which should come out next week. God knows what we’ll replace Leather with.

In the end, if there’s one thing that I think has come clear in this series, it’s that Leather isn’t quite as simple as she appears on the surface.

Regardless, when it’s over I’m going to miss Todd, Leather, Marco and the gang. We’ll have to see what comes next.

Enjoy!

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Man, I love autumn. I just do, and you can’t stop me. And hand in hand with loving autumn please enjoy this myth. It comes to us from reader teckstphyle, who asks:

Why is there a disconnect between Art and Industry? Why can art not be “useful?” Why can’t industry “inspire?”

More correctly, why are few cases where they overlap the exception and not the rule?

It’s a good question, and one I’m happy to answer. It also leads us to our first myth callback, because we actually touched on this, at least briefly, back on July 9, when we answered the question Why can we walk past beautiful artwork without noticing it?.

The answer, as you’ll recall, involved a union dispute.

And that brings us to today’s myth.

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A week and a half wait. And (with the possible exception of the Dynamo Girl leg) the most anticipated part of the interview so far. Part twelve of “Interviewing Leather.” It’s also four thousand words long.

I hope folks like it.

We also (finally) have some fan art to put up. The first comes from Brian Stinson, based on Katie Tandler’s art, and is called Leather the Series. Click on it to see it in full size — and you want to see it in full size:

The second is from old friend of the writing Tephlon, who — like quite a few of the readers — really enjoyed Leather’s Dynamo Girl turn. So here she is in all her lycra glory!

Beyond that, please enjoy! With luck we’ll be back on Tuesday next week, and things will be cheerfully normal.

And yes. That means this is not the last part.

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We’ve added a few links to the sidebar, for those who might be interested. That includes various Alexandra Erin project links, and a link to Mason Kramer’s new 1Kaday — Mason’s vowed to do 1,024 words a day through the year, and coined his own term for a post that’s exactly 1,024 words long: the kayble. Which is like a drabble, which itself is a post that is exactly 100 words long. The kayble is exactly 1,024 words, which fits his needs perfectly.

I like experimental writing. I always have. I’ve been enjoying Anacrusis for years now, for example. I think the kayble might be a good ‘stepping stone’ between drabbles and actual short stories, and when I get my writing a little more under control (right now, I’m way off script, doing actual composition on things like “Interviewing Leather” when the idea was myth on Monday, new story or vignette on Wednesday, novel chapter on Friday. Ah well, I figure no one’s complaining) I might employ the kayble form for some of the Wednesday work. (Or even for some of the myths. That seems like an ideal size for such things.

So, if you enjoy delicious fiction, here are some new places for you to… um… enjoy delicious fiction.

So, this is one of those stories I can’t believe I still have kicking around on my hard drive.

For the record, this is a thirteen thousand word story, set wholly in my Imperial Space universe, with a Hotchkiss/Leopold drive and transitions and the Orgalins who confederated with Concordia in the war that’s the centerpiece of Trigger Man.

Which is all fine and good, until you realize this story was written in 1991. Now, the setting made some changes between now and then. Transitions and N-Space and the H/L drive don’t work, in the current setting, quite like they do here. And the story itself isn’t the most polished I’ve produced — which implies that I’ve learned a thing or two about pacing and storytelling in the last sixteen years, which seems reasonable to me. I mean, this story is older than some of the regular readers of Banter Latte. That’s kind of humbling.

I’ve also learned a few things about science, engineering (small things, but things), and the willing sense of disbelief since then. And I’ve learned a ton of things about spelling since then. I swear to God, I did a complete round of spellchecking when I decided to put this story up, but I can’t possibly have found every last crime against nature and the dictionary, so please remember I was young and incapable, apparently, of reading what I just wrote.

Still, as an artifact of a time when the Imperial Space setting was still called (I swear to God, and embrace my shame) the “Terraesteller Empire,” and as a bit of my life given form once again, I’m happy enough to see this return to the light of day.

And, while I hope you take this story with six or seven grains of salt, I also hope you enjoy it.

Here’s Hephaestus Fallen.

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I’m about halfway through part eleven of “Interviewing Leather.” It seemed wise not to push to get it done and possibly compromise what may be one of the more engaging bits (or not be, depending on how well it goes, of course). On the other hand, it certainly can go up on Thursday without any difficulty, and that means that “Homecoming” gets a second run on Tuesday this week.

I like “Homecoming.” I like it in part because it examines heroism, and in part because it examines transition, and in part because it shows a very heroic person having very unheroic thoughts. In a way, if a lot of Justice Wing is informed by DC Comics, then “Homecoming” is informed by Marvel. Human beings with human frailties doing the best they can to overcome their flaws and do the right thing.

This part also makes the ‘historical record’ nature explicit, which I think fits The Home Front, as I’ve mentioned before.

I hope you enjoy!

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As you know, I didn’t write a myth last week. It was that sort of a week. The sort where you work, oh, fifteen days in a row, mostly longer than eight hours in a given day, and feel the burn of exhaustion. But it seems people liked the retelling of the Viscountess, which is always nice to hear.

Still, that’s a question we’re missing in the lexicon, so it makes some sense that this week we would in fact answer two questions. And as it turns out, there are three — count them three — questions that directly correlate to one another.

The first of these questions comes from Filipe Cadete, who asks us:

Pigeons. How come those flying disease vectors and overall polluters are fed by thousands of people all over the world?

The answer, of course, is “ninjas.”

But that leads us to a question by long time reader, friend, and Superguy-gadabout-town LurkerWithout, who asks us:

Ninjas. Why the hell them and not one of the other pseudo-religious/mystic cults of killers?

And the answer to that is, as you can imagine, is “Manannán mac Lir,” sea god and psychopomp of Manx mythology.

Oh, this surprises you?

Well, we’ll elaborate on all of this soon enough. Because we still have a third question that was asked, in direct response to LurkerWithout, this time by Joel Wilcox:

In addition to Lurker’s comment: Why pirates vs. ninjas?

See, now we’re getting into details and that means that really, we should just be starting the myth already and not being all stressed out about the whys and wherefores. And that brings us, inexorably, to:

Manannán mac Lir and the Isle of Ninjas.

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Sadly, it seems there’ll be no Leather this week. Once again, there’s just too much to be done, and by the time I get home I’m way too tired to consider writing. And so it’ll be a poetic week instead.

This is another poem written as a response to a painting from an Art History class I took back in ’92. This time, the subject is Albrecht Altdorfer’s The Battle of Alexander at Issus, which is kind of an amazing painting. If you have follow the link, be sure to look at the higher resolution version. It’s gorgeous and stunningly detailed.

Which informed the poem, really. And the kind of drive that has an artist go way beyond what anyone might expect of him.

Which, you know, can be said of writers too now and again.

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