the website of author and local favorite blake michael nelson | about | contact: theblakeshow@gmail.com
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NEWS AND VIEWS - FEBRUARY 2019
WRITING NEWS I'm currently working on the last chapter of Champions Weekly, the latest Signalverse novel; I should have it done in a few days. I usually just release these books straight to Amazon, as soon as I'm done with them, but this time I'm planning on running a small Kickstarter to pay for the cover art. I tried this once before, with The Adventures of Jack and Miracle Girl, and didn't have any real success, but I think I'll do better this time: I won't be asking for all that much, and I'll have a lot more rewards to offer besides: the hugely detailed Signal City Visitor's Guide, copies of the previous books in the series, etc. We'll see how it goes. In other news, I recently updated the Jack and Miracle Girl website -- there's sample chapters there now, of all the books, along with some little insights about how I came to write each of them. * * * * * * * * ON WRESTLING I've never been a big fan of professional wrestling, but growing up in the 80's and early 90's, it was kind of hard to avoid; the WWF (now WWE, ugh) at that time was a big part of kid culture. There were action figures, video games, cartoons (or one cartoon, anyway -- Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling), t-shirts, and so on, and the most famous wrestlers were household names: Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, the Undertaker, Jake "the Snake" Roberts. Lots of fun characters. Although I was never all that passionate about it, and although I never took it all that seriously, I started watching WWF Wrestling Challenge pretty regularly around 1991, probably because it came on right after my Saturday morning cartoons. It was silly, goofy fun, and it became kind of a guilty pleasure for me. I liked Bobby Heenan's and Gorilla Monsoon's repartee; I liked the insane, over-the-top interviews; and I especially liked the crazier characters: Kamala, Bastion Booger, the Berzerker, Doink, Giant Gonzalez, the Repo Man, Papa Shango (Papa Shango's purported magic voodoo powers always made me laugh). This era is probably kind of embarrassing to wrestling fans now, but I thought this stuff was great. Unfortunately my dad regarded pro wrestling as perhaps the stupidest spectacle ever devised by man -- whenever he caught me watching it he'd throw me outside to mow the lawn or something -- so I almost never made it to the end of an episode. 
* * * * * * * * WHAT I'M READING Still in the middle of Brian McCllelan's Wrath of Empire; I also started reading Harry Connolly's novella The Twisted Path this month. As for non-fiction, well, I finally finished The Greatest Knight, which was fantastic (William Marshal was a heck of an interesting guy), but I'm not quite done yet with Stephan Talty's Empire of Blue Water, which is all about Henry Morgan. * * * * * * * * WHAT I'M WATCHING Watched the first episode of a Japanese school drama called I"s a few days ago. This is a show, apparently based on a manga, about a luckless Japanese dude trying to get with his crush, the prettiest girl in school (here's a review with some screenshots). It's kind of a drama, kind of a comedy. Lots of pervy stuff in it (the camera tends to linger around the so-called "absolute zone," the area between a girl's skirt and her thigh-high stockings). I guess I liked this first episode, but it was hard to watch at times; the protagonist is such a socially awkward loser that I found it hard to believe any girl would be into him, let alone the prettiest, most sought-after girl in school. But it's really well-made (with a certain cinematic quality) and I think it has potential, so I'll probably stick with it. I've also been watching lots of anime lately: Goblin Slayer, Boku no Hero Academia (I was kind of late to the party on this one, but I'm into the third season now), the lovely Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara, and a few other series. Good stuff. * * * * * * * * FEBRUARY You kind of expect lousy weather in February, in Minnesota, but man, we're really getting pounded up here. We're coming up on March, but it still looks like the ice planet of Hoth outside; the snow is three feet deep (higher in the drifts), the wind is constantly blowing, and it's cold all the time: we're looking at highs of five, nine, sixteen, and thirteen this week, with lows well below zero. High on Saturday (March 2nd) is supposed to be a mere two below, with a low of nineteen below! It's also supposed to snow another two inches tomorrow. This sucks. 
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