Wordpress offers a much better blogging service, so I'm making the switch. My new blog will be at Fire and Motion.

JD Roth (of Get Rich Slowly fame) recently wrote an article detailing his "secret" to creating a high-traffic blog. It's amazing how many people just don't think about things.

While I'm definitely not an SNL fan anymore, this skit really brings it home. The sad part is that it happens all the time!

I recently borrowed George Mead's Portal from my local library. It's a fantasy taking place in "elseplaces" and revolves around four main characters: John Tinker (the hero), Sorrowful Mistidings (a dwarf), Mountain-That-Walks (a giant) and Smoke of the Velvetmist (a telepathic carnivore...the most interesting character).

The book starts in a whimsical fashion and gets into the action rather quickly. I enjoyed this aspect, and once the character building started, I found the story rather hard to put down.

As I got further into the book, I realized that the misspellings I noticed in the beginning were just a small taste of things to come. While it didn't spoil the story, how hard is it to run a book through spell-check or hire a good editor!?!!? I'm not just talking about one or two misspellings/skipped words either...it was rough.

This book had some good ideas. The character of "Smoke" was well-presented and had some good plot involvement (albeit short). Unfortunately, the end of the book lacked in the worst kind of way and ultimately tarnished the story as a whole. When I finished the book, I had fond memories of the journey, but the end brought me back to fourth grade "write me a kiddie story" busy work. IMHO, endings are meant to make a story memorable and add some sort of meaning/closure to what you just read. At this point, I'd like to use a screwdriver to remove Mead's ending from my mind permanently.

Portal was edited by Than Grimdel, who clearly doesn't understand the English language (or perhaps slept on the job) and Published by E-Cat Worlds, who should be laughed at for allowing some a dismally boring ending to see the light of day. Honestly, it was as if Dr. Mead just got bored and stopped. I'd be curious to hear what the heck happened when/if they edited this book.

I'd give Portal two stars out of five for a decent idea, one good character, horrible editing, unpolished delivery, and one of the worst endings I've read in quite some time.

If you're looking for a good fantasy, hack-n-slash, hero type of thing, I wholeheartedly recommend Glory Road by Robert Heinlein.