RIP Harold Ramis

I'm sure a lot of us are upset to hear about this. I've heard about the demises of lots of actors, but nothing has really upset me, personally, the way this has. Ghostbusters and my worship of it made up a significant part of my childhood, of course.

But more than that, Harold Ramis lived in Highland Park, Illinois, which was two towns south of where I lived for most of my life, and I always thought it was so cool living and going to school relatively close to one of the Ghostbusters. A couple years ago I went to a Q&A panel at the Highland Park Library and like many of the people in attendance brought Ghostbusters merchandise to see if I could an autograph, and ever since once of my most prized possessions has been my copy of Pumpkin Patch Panic. For a few minutes, I was close enough to touch one of my childhood idols. I didn't even mind that he kept the marker.

Goodbye, Harold. You'll be sorely missed.

Changes

A lot of things have been going on for me over the last couple months. The biggest one is that I have a steady job again, which of course is going to limit the time I have to write. That and other things have forced me to prioritize what I do with my time, and so I think it's only fair to say the frequency of reviews is going to slow down. I'm going to try to stick to one New Moon chapter a week at the very least, until I get finished with that book. Currently, I don't plan on following up with Eclipse. There just doesn't seem to be enough hate anymore for me to do the entire series, though once again I might reconsider if people want it. Plus my Eclipse has an error cover and is thus kind of a collector's item, and so to review that I'd have to have another one, and I for one think I've given Stephenie Meyer too much of my money already. But hey, I changed my mind about continuing those reviews once.

I'll try to start doing cartoon reviews again too, if I can pick a Generation Z episode worth heckling, or find a whole new show worth heckling. Dino Squad's looking a little played out.

Also I want to finish up my original stories, Stellarman and Kamen Rider Altis. Sorry to anybody enjoying Kamen Rider Tarock, but I've put so much work into those other stories it seems kind of dumb not to finish them up. I'm not going to stop writing Tarock, but new chapters are going to be showing up slower than for the other stories. Goofus that I am, I'm even thinking about starting a new Sentai, once I get a good idea for one. We'll see what happens on that one.

Thanks to all my readers, wherever you read my stuff. You may not be the most talkative people out there, but I want you to know I appreciate each and every one of you.

Fabled Lands Sales Plug

I may be a little late to the party asking for help with this now, but I thought I would anyway.

Back in 1996, the first couple installments of a gamebook series called Fabled Lands was released. Unlike the more well-known Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf where you got one adventure per book, Fabled Lands was instead an open sandbox series. Each book covered a different part of the game's world, and you could explore them in whatever order, play any class, worship any god and side with any faction you chose. If you got too close to the borders of one country, it'd tell you to turn to the appropriate section in the appropriate book and you'd just keep going. Before you worry about dying and losing all your progress in such an epic series, you could even make arrangements in most temples to be brought back to life in case worse came to worst.

The bad news is only the first six of twelve planned books were ever released, but the good news is the books are being rereleased now, and if they sell well enough the authors will get the rest of the series out.

You can buy the books off amazon, and if you're into interactive fiction you'd be doing the whole community a favor by adding your sales to the overall numbers.

Thank you.

Next Review Series

Bad news everybody, I've decided I''ll start picking on the next book in the Twilight series (I'm not going to argue terminology but I have a hard time thinking of it as a "saga") in the not too distant future. It's just a question of when I'll have finished settling into my new place and can take time out from job hunting to write another review. Also keep your eyes on the Razzie awards, Eclipse is nominated for just about everything.