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This is an interesting fantasy world that doesn't really have magic. There is a very large series of these books, including a couple of spin-off series. It's a well-developed world and the books do have some good emotional impact. There is one note of caution here. For some strange reason, the books in this series are NOT stand alone. They end abruptly without warning and start right back up in the next book. So be aware, that if you pick up this book and like it, you're looking down the barrel of 9 books to get the full story with them getting a little more book-like towards the end. Definitely an enjoyable series!

I hope everyone is having a great week! I'll be filling in for Renee for a while. It's time for this weeks prompts, supplied by our prompt guru, Comicfan. Just a reminder, and for those who haven't worked with the prompts before: prompt responses under 1,000 words must be posted as part of a collection. Prompt 676 – Creative Tag – The Myth There are myths all are all around the world to explain nature. Your task is to write a ta/’le explaining why volcanos explode. Prompt 677 – Creative Tag – List of words Use the following words in a story – An old photo, a book, a bird, a topaz ring, and a newspaper. Did you write a prompt response last week? Don't forget to share it below.

The first thing I need everyone to do today is click on the Follow Button. This blog is something Authors should be following as a great way to participate in the community. Whether it is writing an anthology story or two or three for the Fall Anthologies or reading the ones below and leaving a review, participation is a great way to get yourself or your stories in front of more people. And in case you need this... *hint* *hint* This week's flashback brings us up to Spring of 2012 with the topic of It Wasn't Me!

If you are looking for a distraction... this does a good job of that. It is not as powerful as the Xbox One X, but it's hard to tell unless you uber snobby on your 4k screens or have a 4k projector. Anyway, it's a good system with some great exclusive story based games. For my comparison on gaming systems, I posted a little topic in the Video Game forum, if you haven't read it.

Instead of the usual Tuesday Tech Blog this week, I'm taking the day to wish my first online author friend a very very happy 20th Anniversary of him posting his stories for us all to enjoy! On June 19, 1998, 20 years ago today, Comicality posted his first chapter of New Kid In School on Nifty. https://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/highschool/new-kid-in-school/ (If you look at chapter 1-2, you'll see the date stamp) Comicality hooked me right away on his stories. I emailed him early, and we had a few exchanges. Eventually, I formed Gay Authors, and I got him as my very first Hosted Author here. Comicality is, in fact, the only author who still has a hosted site here on Gay Authors. https://www.gayauthors.org/comicality/ 💗💜 Love you Lots Comsie! 💜💗 Thanks for all the great memories for the last 20 years! 🍹 Here is to many, many more! 🍹

I mentioned the Eragon books a few weeks ago. They did make a movie out of the book. I liked the movie enough, but it has some weaknesses. The director's leather fetish for the young male actors was not one of them. This is worth seeing if you enjoy fantasy, dragons etc. The effects were done well and Jeremy Irons always adds some gravitas to what he shows up in. And the bad guy is played by John Malcovitch. Check it out.

Tolkien strikes me as too much of a world builder. The stories drove me nuts because he'd spend far too much time on songs and languages and not do anything to move the story forward. A Milieu story from Orson Scott Card's MICE quotient: http://blog.karenwoodward.org/2012/10/orson-scott-card-mice-quotient-how-to.html Milieu stories typically drive modern folks crazy. Example: The excessively long starship opening sequences in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien, etc. Parodied in Spaceballs. Drawing it out to show scale and induce wonder. Modern audiences don't have the attention span for that anymore. lol. Doesn't matter if it is a book or a movie.

There is quite a history in the 30's of two friendly writing rivals... Mr. C.S. Lewis and Mr. J.R.R. Tolkien. They inspired and challenged each other. Both of them had a desire to write the moral tenants of Christianity without propagandizing it. The Chronicles of Narnia roughly parallel the Bible, actually. The Magician's Nephew is the story of creation. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is the story of the resurrection. The Horse and His Boy is a parable of sorts. Prince Caspian is about the perseverance of faith. Voyage of the Dawn Treader has a number of parables as well as the perseverance of faith (Reepicheep) and redemption (Eustance). The Silver Chair is a parable. And The Last Battle is the end and what comes next. All that is if you want some deeper meaning from the stories. If you're just looking for something good to read, then this is worth the time.

@Timothy M. this is a personal favorite coaster of mine : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYNvlfAvlvs Heck, my life is so much like a roller coaster I even hear the screaming. lol. Another great article @Comicality

That is the hardest of the bunch to read, yes. This was my favorite of the books when I was in 6th grade.

This is a 7 book series. It is also a complete classic, though most people are only familiar with The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. (Book 1 in published order) There has been a long debate amongst fans of what order you are supposed to read the books. This single volume version puts the story in chronological order, instead of published order. It makes a lot more sense this way. The books Chronologically: The Magician's Nephew The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe The Horse and His Boy Prince Caspian Voyage of the Dawn Treader The Silver Chair The Last Battle They are a pretty quick read and if you've never taken the time, they are well worth it.

Welcome back to the weekly Anthology Flashback. We'll start up again with cool thoughts from Winter 2011 as summer starts to heat up everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere.

This is one of the reasons I bought a PS4. The game is definitely outstanding. Looks great, sounds great. Play is interesting. I'd be having more fun with it, but as an Xbox guy, I have to say the controller sucks for the Playstation and its horrible layout is a hindrance to people used to a good controller. Walking around fine. Doing battle just sucks because I have 12 years of muscle memory for the xbox controller layout. Anyway, the game is great. Check it out, if you haven't.

I thought I would swing around to Clubs again for this Tech Tuesday. Clubs are semi-private groups here on Gay Authors. We have a few different clubs available currently, and you can find them under the Club Link on the main red menu. I strongly encourage our authors to join the Writer's Circle. There are a lot of ongoing discussions in there, and our friend @BHopper2 has been nice enough to start his own ongoing topic discussions each Tuesday which have brought forth some great discussions on writing and interacting in the community. The Pit, of course, is where you can talk about politics. For the Fantasy Writers out there, there is a fantasy writing group. Same for Sci-Fi and Poetry. If you are just a general tech and science geek, there is a club of that. There is also a health group where folks are discussing health and fitness stuff. Getting into a club is easy. Just hit the Join Club button and someone will approve you within a day, typically. When you've joined a club, and you go to the Club page, you can see which clubs you are a member of and the latest updated topics. When you're in a club, theres a button on the home page of the club that allows you to follow the entire club and see the latest activity with notifications. If you are on the Main Forums page and you scroll to the bottom, you can see all of your Club Forums in one place. If you haven't jumped into a club yet, now is a great time!

So I mentioned I am Number Four series of books by Pittacus Lore last Friday in my book blog. They did manage to make one movie of the series. It was a decent adventure with some nice eyecandy. Special effects were good and the movie was decent.

I'm going to have to say PlayStation 4 does... Xbox makes up for it a bit with backwards compatibility and X-enhanced games and giving away 4 free games a month... but... since Xbox is 3rd party games + Halo + Sea of Thieves + Gears of War... it just can't touch the variety you get on PS4... since you get all the 3rd party games Xbox has plus a slew of exclusives. Switch is not even in the ballgame since they don't have much of 3rd party games or first party. Though they do have some outstanding ones.

Now that I've got platform agnostic this generation buy getting every system, I thought I'd weigh in on things. First up, I've been an Xbox guy since early 2006. Before that, I was a PC guy pretty much exclusively. I always enjoyed Super Mario Brothers, Castlevania, and Zelda games on Nintendo though. Current Hardware setup: I have a 7.2.2 (2 Dolby Atmos speakers. 7 standard speakers and 2 sub-woofers). have a late model Samsung 4k tv with HDR. I have an Xbox One X, a PlayStation 4 Pro and a Nintendo Switch. Xbox One X Pros Best Hardware as far as power goes. Every game that is on all systems, looks best here. Friendliest User Interface of the bunch Best controller for people with larger hands With the new group feature, hands down best way to organize digital content on any of the consoles. Backwards compatible games Xbox One X enhanced 4k games... even of multiple 360 titles. Negatives Single player games are a bit weak on this system. There are basically no Exclusive games. Especially good story based ones Store is well organized but can be dog slow far too often. PlayStation 4 Pros Best looking console. The flashy lights on both the console and controller appeal to my inner self yelling "Squirrel!" Best Singleplayer exclusive games (Though Nintendo does well here) Games play great on the Pro console Digital Store has a cart. That's great! Negatives The most god-awful user interface I've ever had to deal with. I can see this being an utter nightmare if you get more than 10 or digital games installed. The digital store's search function is obnoxiously bad. Digital stores doesn't even work. Sony is incapable of processing digital purchases. I had to contact support (I never contact support) and they told me to buy a Sony Gift card on Amazon and load money that way to buy digital games. WTF? I want to spend money and they can't even take it. And It was ANY form of payment. I tried credit cards, debit cards and PayPal and it just choked. Did I mention their store sucks? If you have big hands, their controller is a bit dainty. Did I mention their store sucks? Nintendo Switch Pros Portable Zelda: Breath of the Wild Mario Odyssey Negatives Underpowered hardware, though Nintendo does their thing well with it. Motion controller is gimicky Switch controller joypad thingy is goofy Pro controller is expensive as hell

I got this last night and after a long battle with the most obnoxious digital store I've ever found, I've gotten the game loaded and playing. It looks great.

Thanks, @Comicality for more writing insights!

Agreed... except I'd also add Harry Potter and the Order the Phoenix. I HATED that book. I threw it across the room twice when I read it and I haven't read it since.

I Am Number Four is an interesting book. Human looking aliens are amongst us and they are being hunted by some really bad aliens. It's quite the romp and an enjoyable book. It's the first in a whole series that has a follow up in the pipeline as well. I enjoyed it and I really need to spend some time to finish reading the whole series. Check it out!

So, I mentioned the book for this in the blog last Friday, so I thought I'd mention this movie. The release kind of sucks as for some stupid reason, they haven't released a widescreen dvd or a Blu-Ray. It is a cute little action movie with a lot of familiar British faces. It's a quick romp with nice eyecandy. There are worse things out there.

I got mine too

It's the way the software is implemented. They aren't always consistent on features and Stories is usually lagging when a feature of the base software changes.

I've got an Xbox 360, Xbox One X, a Nintendo Switch and a PC for gaming. There is a big sale next week where I will get a Playstation 4 Pro to round out my game machine collection and finally solve that stupid "exclusive game" issue.