“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!” shouted the red-suited man from atop the roof.
Then he shot a web to the next building and swung out of sight.
Author: Shane
COINCIDENTALLY
The church is getting check 666 as an offering tonight.
COINCIDENTALLY.
FRA-GEE-LAY: A USPS Story
I ordered a Christmas present for Sara which was extremely fragile. Since I could go on about the USPS for QUITE some time if I get going, I am presenting these pictures mostly without comment:
I will say that, through some herculean packing efforts on the part of the sender, the gift inside was not damaged.
The efforts of the USPS strike me as…less than herculean.
(Unless you consider throwing things around and destroying them herculean, which, you do have a point there.)
I am a crowdfunding reward!
Perhaps some of you are weary of crowdfunding campaigns (I may have gotten overzealous in my sharing of MST3K updates)
BUT
This one has something that no other crowdfunding campaign has…ME!
You may remember when The Pulp Stage adapted my story “My Heart is a Quadratic Equation” for a couple of performances a while back. Well, they are currently running a fundraiser on Indigogo to finance their 2016 season.
Among the many cool rewards is this little gem:
New recordings of work by acclaimed fantasy authors Tina Connolly, Shane Halbach, Ken Scholes and Alex Shvartsman. Narrated by Pulp Stage company members Racheal Joy Erickson, Matt Haynes and Kaia Maarja Hillier.
I would like to point out that this is not a reading of “My Heart”, but an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY not previously produced by The Pulp Stage. I’m not sure which stories by Tina, Ken, and Alex are included, but I know they are all super talented, top-notch writers, and I’m happy to be included among them.
Anyway, the CD is only $15 until Dec. 27th, so if you’d like to snag a copy, this is the time to do so. Scroll down on the right side and select “Audiofiction Deluxe” as your reward.
And in the meantime, you can hear a *tiny little teaser* of my story here:
Star Wars – The Force Awakens
This post will be spoiler free.
So, I didn’t buy tickets to see Star Wars, because this baby had the unfortunate timing to be due opening weekend (kids — not even born, and already inconsiderate!).
But a friend of mine bought me a ticket and said, “Hey, if the baby’s not born you can come and see it, and if you can’t make it I’ll eat the price of the ticket and call it a baby gift.”
BEST. BABY GIFT. EVER.
First off, let me start by saying that I’m a little confused by all the Star Wars love these days. I’m now dubbing this the “nerd’s dilemma”: on one hand I’m excited that everybody is excited about this thing that I am excited about (Yes! Star Wars IS awesome!), but on the other hand, why do all these people now get to appropriate my fandom?
These days everybody loves Star Wars, but where were you when I was wearing Star Wars shirts in high school? Respecting how cool I was, probably. And when I slept outside in line overnight to get tickets to Episode I, you were just thinking how awesome and mainstream and not-nerdy I was, right? Since you’ve always been this huge Star Wars fan?
I mean, either you’re lying now – secretly hating Star Wars but pretending you like it to fit in – or else you were lying then, and desperately wishing you had the chutzpah to spend Friday night staging Star Wars miniature battles with us in my friend Eric’s basement.
::Whew:: Okay, got that out of my system. On to the movie.
OMG you guys it was so good!!! It was exactly what I thought Star Wars would be under the iron boot of Disney: fan service, and exactly what I wanted to see. Say what you want about Disney, but this is what they know how to do. They’ve created the perfectly consumable piece of Star Wars: delicious and sugary, fully reminiscent of your childhood while also leaving you full and satisfied at the end.
It does everything: establishes great new characters, revives great old characters (in both senses of the word old), makes you laugh, tugs on your heartstrings, sets up further movies without leaving you hanging, epic in scope, but full of small moments…
It is a masterpiece of setting out to do something, and then fully and completely doing that thing.
I could absolutely see myself watching this over and over, the way I did with the original trilogy (and the way I didn’t with the “new” trilogy). This is a must see (as if you didn’t know that already), and honestly feels like it will mean the same to the current generation of children that the originals meant to me.
In short, I loved it.
Shane Halbach 