Mistletoe Spear Video Trailer

Excerpt 1 Cloning Freedom

 

Nukekubi ��️ (Audiobook) Urban Fantasy Book Excerpt ��️ by Stephen B. Pearl

Start with a Bang

This video is an overview of how I feel on should start a story long or short.

https://youtu.be/YJz_wWXZmk4

Stephen B. Pearl: www.stephenpearl.com

Stephen on Amazon: www.amazon.com/author/stephenpearl

Stephen on Face book: www.facebook.com/StephenBPearl/?ref=bookmarks

Worlds Apart video trailer

More on Monsters

Ok, I know I write fantasy and a lot of leeway has to be given, but let’s play with making a monster real for a moment. I’ll take the Giant Spider because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this one. Hay, I’m not slamming your hobbies, am I? :-)

Actually, I spent a lot of time thinking of how to up-scale anthropoids when I wrote War of the Worlds 2030 since the alien invaders used genetically modified earth life forms as their troops.

Bugs make good monsters in large part because of their psychological effect on humans. They seem almost like aliens on our own world with their body plan and exoskeleton.

A lot more goes into making a giant spider viable than just upsizing it though. First you hit the oxygen transfer limit. Anthropoids breathe through their skin as such they can’t get too large and still supply the oxygen needs of their body cores. If you want to upscale a spider, an arachnid, part of the anthropoid group, you have to deal with this. More oxygen in the atmosphere is one way, which was the case in the Devonian period, adding some kind of a lung or blow through vents to the body is another.

Next you run into the limitations of an exoskeleton. An exoskeleton may be built in armour, but it is not as useful for supporting a creature structurally as the solid pole construction of an endoskeleton. So if you want a giant spider you must A – reinforce the material of the skeleton. This process is useful in fantasy because it makes a more powerful beast. Or B – add an endoskeleton. This would make cutting off limbs even harder.

You might want to look at adding additional hearts when you upscale a spider as well to keep the blood flowing.

In the Fate of the Norns Ragnarok gaming system the giant spider is highly intelligent, which means a large, complex brain. The thing to keep in mind is that for life on earth the size of the brain is less important that the ratio of brain size to body size.

A T-Rex had a fairly large brain, but in relationship to its body size it wasn’t that impressive.

This is only a start. When making monsters for fantasy and books a little understanding of biology coupled with a lot of imagination and problem solving is a very useful mix for getting it right. One thing that often bugs me on the show Face Off, I really enjoy the show but nothing is perfect, is some one will be tasked with making an alien or monster and what they come up with seems to have no relationship to any conceivable environment. Evolution trims away the superfluous, go back to the T-Rex and the stubby arms, and keeps the useful. A pragmatic approach to survival in an ecological niche is, in my opinion, the best place to start when designing a monster. Undead are a notable exception to this as they operate under rules that may step outside the natural environment. Then again the Draugar in the Fate of the Norns cannon are fairly straight forward as they are corpses possessed by a spirit and juiced up with extra power.

Until next time.

Buy links:  http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-B.-Pearl/e/B00FEOLLIC/

Monday reading of Horn of the Kraken at Milton Pirate Festival.

Hi all, this is another reading from Horn of the Kraken performed at the Milton Pirate Festival.

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Video address: https://youtu.be/ZglbDM45WFs

Stephen B. Pearl: www.stephenpearl.com

Stephen B. Pearl on Amazon: www.amazon.com/Stephen-B.-Pearl/e/B00FEOLLIC

Milton Pirate Festival: www.thepiratefestival.com

Stephen B Pearl Horn of the Kraken reading. Jarl Erik BloodAxe

Another Reading from Horn of the Kraken.
This one with Words on the Outside. Wordsontheoutside.wordpress.com

The Dead Haunt the Northlands

This is a link to a reading I recorded at the Milton Pirate Fest it is from Distant Early Warning by Elizabeth Hirst.

About Distant Early Warning:

Because redemption is a place... All they need to do is find the right co-ordinates. Canada is in crisis. Global warming has taken hold, and amid the flooding and the super storms, another horror has risen, more devastating than the rest. The dead begin rising from the ground at night, screaming out strange gibberish songs that terrify and entrance anyone who hears them. With people dying and fleeing all around, the north quickly becomes a wild west, without the west. Felicia "Denny" Dennigan lives far from the crisis, with a good job at the university and a roof over her head, but her life is far from perfect. A perpetual loner, she relies on sporadic visits from her Dad as her only lifeline to friends or family. So, when Dad doesn't return one fall day, and his dog, Geoff, shows up without him, Denny is concerned for his safety. The last postcard he sent her was from Sudbury, on the edge of the chaos up North... Denny's worst fears are confirmed when she sees Dad on TV, dead, and screaming. Desperate to end his suffering, Denny gives up her job, buys supplies, and heads out with Geoff to discover the truth behind her father's death, but truth always comes with a cost. What Denny discovers in the wilds of Northern Ontario will shatter all of her assumptions about her life, and what lies beyond

Vidio Link: https://youtu.be/t5jnxXjkvbs

Buy link: http://www.amazon.ca/Distant-Early-Warning-Elizabeth-Hirst/dp/1502460807/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1442267282&sr=8-5&keywords=Distant+Early+Warning

Author link: https://popseagullpublishing.wordpress.com/about/

Milton Pirate Festival: http://www.thepiratefestival.com/

Stephen B. Pearl on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC14QVfS9kiuc6sK7P3-yOmg

History Could Be lieing To You.

The winners write the history. Much is made by how bloody handed Erik Bloodaxe supposedly was. Maybe he was, but given that Christian monks wrote the histories I’m going to take it with a large salt mine. The mystery of the fire that killed many of Erik’s half brothers offers up several suspects Erik, Hakon and Gunnhild being the most likely as I see it.

            Looking through the haze of propaganda that is recorded history I don’t think we can be sure of much. What I can be sure of from my fifty three years incarnate in this life is no one gets through life without regrets. As I saw Erik he was a fighting man who had seen too many friends die in battle. Erik strove for greatness comparing himself to the impressive yardstick of his father and falling short. Not seeing his own virtue in this equation while condemning his father for lacking those traits Erik dismissed as unworthy of counting in his assessment of himself. Eric, again as I see him, was a man of action and a broad strokes thinker. He was annoyed by miner trifling details and would rush in decisively while others wasted time doting every I and crossing every T. As such, I set up a natural animosity between him and Hakon who was a bureaucrat and tax collector.

As I see Hakon, and again through the haze of history and propaganda I could be wrong, he was an every hair in place berate the underling because he brought him a milk and sugar coffee instead of a double double, kind of guy. Officious and self important. If you get the impression I don’t like the man; you’re right. I’m not found of the type. Again, this is my interpretation and others may see these historic figures in completely different lights.

Dramatically setting up this dichotomy adds to the conflict by making it a clash of personalities and leadership styles. Casting doubt on the Christian monks’ claims of who murdered many of their half brothers opens more conflict and dramatic potentials. Fate of the Norns doesn’t do pure villains or heroes, part of why it is such a great game, people are shades of grey. I encourage anyone to look at history with a view to who wrote it and decide for themselves.

Horn of the Kraken:  Amazon buy link

Could Baths and Privies save your life?

            Two things I have to give the Romans. They were good civil engineers and the baths. In the west, at this time, we take abundant water, and hot water, for granted. This hasn’t been the case throughout most of human history. The Romans, with their heated floors and aqueducts, were a marvel of the ancient world. Admittedly the Romans just soaked and the Norse used soap, so the Norse got clean and the Romans got wet, but even so it was something for its time.

            The Romans also tended to build public baths wherever they went. This opened up some interesting opportunities in Horn of the Kraken, though I will admit that Ragna is annoyed with me. It seemed her head kept finding its way to the privy.  

 

            Ah, the privy. Something so essential but so often overlooked. John Glen, the first American in space, had to ask permission to wet his space suit because the engineers hadn’t thought of this simple, biological function. This blind spot tends to be more pronounced with the wealthy; who can pay someone to deal with their waist. The Romans, with their baths, had a form of public washroom that worked well enough. In medieval castles there was often a hollow wall that would be cut back as the floors went by. These cut backs were used to create shelves that served as drop toilets. The refuse was either collected into a wagon every few days by a scat man and hauled away through a special gate made for that purpose, or a water course was diverted to sweep it downstream. Trust me you didn’t want to swim in a medieval mote.

            In my version of Avaldsnes I included the medieval castle version of refuse removal. I’m not sure if this was done before the twelve hundreds but the fortress of Avaldsnes was supposed to be a magnificent structure advanced and wondrous; possibly made by dwarves, so I exercised some dramatic licence. The important thing is this type of drop hole carries sound from one privy to another offering a perfect opportunity for a Maiden of Ratatosk to snoop on let’s say a Jarl who talks to himself when he gets frustrated.

            I use privies and baths in Horn of the Kraken for several things. No one ever wants to look too closely at a scat cart.

            A final note on the modern world. Have a look at methane composting sewer treatment plants. If we want energy for our grand children we need to start using the resources we have now.

Buy link for Horn of the Kraken: http://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/151000/Horn-of-the-Kraken