Ray Lilly kills wizards

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The Suvudu Cage Match starts tomorrow and Ray Lilly is in it. What’s more, in the first round he faces Anasûrimbor Kellhus, the super-powerful wizard/monk in R. Scott Bakker’s Prince of Nothing series (first book here).

Yeah, as characters go, Kellhus is way up there on the power scale–so powerful, in fact, that every time I want to type his name I have to copy and paste it from Wikipedia because I don’t know how to make that mark above the “u”. But here’s the thing: Ray Lilly kills wizards. That’s his whole thing, and what’s more the sort of magic he has (and the cage match format lets him pull together spells from the different books) make him a very well-protected tank.

That’s how I’ve written the scene between them, anyway.

Anyway, the whole thing comes down to a popularity vote contest, which means I expect Tyrion Lannister to win the whole thing, and good on him for it. However! If Ray wins this first round of voting (which is iffy) and Tyrion wins his (much less iffy) then I have something special in mind for the write up between the two of them.

Vote for Ray if you want to see it.

I’ll post a link to the match when it goes live. Hey, it’s up to you guys if Ray lives or dies.

Randomness for 3/4

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1) United Artists’ Rejection Letter for STAR WARS. via @rodramsey

2) The Internet Justice League

3) Minecraft Middle Earth

4) Finally, a lit contest I can care about: 2011’s Oddest Book Titles of the Year. I’m rooting for the chicken sexer.

5) Why do innocent people confess to crimes they haven’t committed?

6) Against Big Bird, The Gods Themselves Contend in Vain. Big Bird wrests celestial justice from an Egyptian god in a Sesame Street special. For real.

7) A prosecutor and cartoonist creates A Criminal Lawyer’s Illustrated Guide to Crime.

Two blog posts in one day??

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Unthinkable!!

Actually, I had no plans at all to write in my blog again, but fate intervened. Today was supposed to be a “large goal” day, but instead I hit the small goal only.

To explain: I try to do about a thousand words a day as my small goal, but on days like today, when I have no other commitments during the morning and afternoon, I slip out of the house as early as possible and try to do twice my usual goal. At least. This helps make up for the days when I typically can’t write at all.

However, today I was hit with a really bad histamine reaction. To what, I don’t know, but the itching was really bad and it slowly spread down my arms and then down to my knees.

This happens every once in a while, but we’ve been unable to find the trigger. It wasn’t clothes, it probably wasn’t food, and…

Really, what it seemed related to was sweat. I had started to move my body a bit, and the sweat on my torso started itching. From there it got worse and worse.

At one point I had my wife take a picture with the idea of posting it, but it was… er… too much. I didn’t want to gross anyone out.

My skin has mostly settled down now (thanks, Benadryl!), but it’s past time for me to take another long walk. I’m hoping I can make it home without peeling my own skin off.

Van Eekhout for the Andre Norton Award

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Longtime readers of this blog may have noticed that I’m not much interested in awards. I don’t pimp my own stuff and I don’t talk about yours. When the Hugos or Nebulas get handed out, I skim blogs for drama but otherwise ignore it. A few days ago I got a notice from SFWA announcing the Nebula Award nominees for this year and I deleted it unopened (not that I didn’t see all the names plastered all over my window into the web by lunchtime.

I don’t have anything against awards, but I just don’t care.

Well, as I was scrolling past one of the many, many copies of this years Nebula Award nominees, I noticed one particular book up for the “Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy”

“Hey, son. Remember that book The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout? You liked that, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, it was awesome! He should get paid a million dollars to write a million sequels.”

“Well, it’s up for a big award.”

He read over the list, but The Boy… was the only one he’d read. “Cool!”

“Do you want it to win?”

“Yeah, Dad. Tell everyone I said they should vote for it.”