What can I say. It was awesome.  Don’t go expecting artsy. Don’t go expecting cinema. Movie reviewers will hate it. Don’t expect these characters to talk about their feelings.  Expect stuff to explode. A lot. And there is lots of shooting, stabbing, and shoot-stabbing. Then more exploding, coupled with some face-punching.  This movie asked the question, what kind of movie influenced Larry Correia’s childhood in the 80’s? Okay. Let’s make that movie. And then kick it until it explodes. 

Stallone is older than my Dad, and he cared enough to break multiple bones doing a fight scene with Steve Austin.  Critics may say that Stallone isn’t a good director, but I doubt most senior-citizen directors are willing to break their necks doing a scene with a man that routinely fights carnivorous dinosaurs for training purposes.  (I would, however, actively encourage Roman Polanski to do so).

I found that picture at: http://www.termlifeinsurance.org/expendables/  Where somebody actually took the time to add up how many people the various actors had killed in all their different movies.  Dolph Lundgren wins, but we all already knew that. He looks like a Viking and he’s got an IQ of like 180, of course Dolph wins. Are you going to argue with him about it?  He could write a Noble Prize winning essay on the mathmatics behind the gravitational flux of black holes and then roll that essay into a point and stab you in the neck with it.

You may hear people insult the Expendables. These people will usually cite some rule of film or something. They are wrong. They may talk about how the movie didn’t have enough plot, or emotion, or blah blah friggin’ blah. They are even more wrong, and I say that as a professional fiction writer. To me, story is really important, because that’s how I pay the bills.

But guess what? The Expendables has a story. It just isn’t the story the critics want it to be.  A good story makes a promise to the reader/viewer, and then goes about either fulfilling or challenging the reader/viewers ideas.  The Expendables makes a promise to kick bad guys in the teeth, stab them, throw them, shoot them, blow them up, and then set the bodies on fire, and it keeps that promise. Twice.  Science has taught us that Randy Couture can punch you so hard that you will actually catch on fire. Is he going to win any Oscars for his performance?  No. Do you think he cares?  SET YOU ON FIRE!

So, as you may have guessed, I liked the Expendables quite a bit. I recommend it.

Good news. Some of you already know Mystik Waboose. She travels the Convention circuit and sells cool shirts. She wanted to do a Combat Wombat shirt from the worlds of Tom Stranger. I agreed.  My share of the royalties on these are being donated to charity. Specifically, Operation Baen Bulk, so I can help pay the shipping on sending care packages to the troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  So this shirt is both awesome, and for a good cause.  I’ve cut and pasted Mystik’s message from Facebook below with the details:

Hi, The Combat Wombat shirt has just been released vor Pre Order. We will send the shirt to the printer on October 1st. We hope to be sending them out to arrive at the same time as Larry’s second release from Baen Books in his M.H.I. Saga, “Vendetta”.
The logo is a bold 11 inches from side to side and top to bottom.
Peop…le who Pre Order will be able to have a slogan added to the back. “Now With 70% More Wombat!” for no aditional charge. After Oct 1st the logo will only be available as a Special Order and will cost $5 more.

Prices are

Small to
X Large – $20 XLT – $23
2X – $22 2XLT – $25
3X – $24 3XLT – $27
4X – $26
5X – $28

Shipping and handling starts at $4. We give discounts for multiple shirts.

This is a Mystik Waboose Design with the original concept and artwork done by Rob Allen.
Larry Corriea is donating his royalties to Operation Baen Bulk to pay for shipping supplies to troops overseas.

I just tried the link to Mystik’s webpage and it seems to be down, but you can find her on FB at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mystik-Waboose-Clothier/109151045780060?v=info&ref=mf#!/pages/Mystik-Waboose-Clothier/109151045780060?v=wall&ref=mf 

EDIT:  If you want to contact Mystik directly, e-mail her at: mystikwaboose@yahoo.com and put COMBAT WOMBAT in the header.

In related news:  I’ve got several hundred copies of MHV coming my way shoon to sign, and I’ll be sending them to the bookstore mentioned in the last post. I’ll post all of their contact information and an ordering link next week.

Also coming next week, I’m doing something else for charity. This time to help the daughter of a local who is need of a kidney transplant. I’m auctioning off red-shirts. i.e. you donate $50 to this charity, and I’ll take your name and use it in an upcoming novel. I can’t promise how you’ll die, but I can promise that you probably will. The body count in Monster Hunter Alpha is rather steep. (well, not Ringo-steep, but the events of MHA aren’t a good time to live in Northern Michigan)  🙂  Details coming next week, and I’ll steer you directly to the charity.

Well, the time is almost here.  MHV officially releases in just over a month.

In the past I’ve just sold autographed copies here on the blog, which is awesome for me, and (I would hope) awesome for you, but there is one drawback to doing it that way. My blog doesn’t report to any bestseller lists. And one of the keys to building a writing career is to have your books show up on various bestseller lists.  MHI made it onto Entertainment Weekly and also onto Locus, both of which are big deals.  I’d like to get MHV up there too.

So, for this release, I’m going to autograph the books, and then they are going to go to a major independent book store. You guys can then order them from this particular bookstore. (and they’re awesome, so you shouldn’t have any issues there).  You get an autographed first printing when it first comes out, and I get to boost my stats. 

Once I get the details ironed out with the store, then I’ll go ahead and post who it is, and all their contact information.  

But I’m going to need to get an approximate headcount first, so I know how many books need to come to me first so that I can sign them, before I then ship them to the bookstore. So what I’d ask is that if you want to do this, please post in the comments below how many you want. Please be honest, because I want this to work out for the bookstore as well so we can continue to do this for future endeavors.

If you’ve got a blog or friends that are MH fans, please help me spread the word. I’d really appreciate it.

I found out yesterday that the house has been delayed another week. A week ago we thought we would be closing today. Well, heck, when we started this process, according to the ETA, we should have been living in the new house for a month now.  Building a house is an adventure. And not the good kind of adventure. More like the dreary middle part of the adventure where they walk to Mordor.

The downside of this is that the frustration level is high, the fact that we’ve got a large family crammed into a tiny apartment, and my total lack of workspace has meant that my writing productivity has suffered. The last few months have been the slowest that I’ve ever written.  I can normally do a couple thousand words in an evening and 10,000 in a weekend. Now I’m doing squat in the evenings and a couple thousand on the weekend. I need an office.  Badly.

Normally when I get frustrated, I can use my good old stand-by 80 lbs. punching bag.  20 minutes of knuckle-bleeding cardio punishment is a good stress managmeent tool. It is always there for me on those particularly annoying days. But it is in storage. Along with just about everything else we own.  And it has been. For 6 months. Wow. Thanks people who can’t stick to a schedule.

Plus, school starts next week. Which means we’ll get to move during the first week of school. Oh, and that means we get to commute to school again.  Three times a day now because we’ve got one in kindergarden. Yay. Oh, and my mother-in-law is coming to stay with us (bought airline tickets a long time ago, back when we thought we’d be living in our house for a month by now).  At least I actually really like my MiL, but it isn’t like I’ve got extra space.

My birthday is this week, so I’m going to go get all-you-can-eat sushi.  Raw tuna heals all wounds.

It’s been a busy week. We should (fingers crossed) be closing/moving soon, so the blogging has been rather light.  So in the meantime, enjoy some Ronald Reagan discussing liberalism and government control.

http://minx.cc/?post=304681

I thought that was very well done.