Sorry for the radio silence; there was work and then family and then writing and then I looked here and realized how long it’s been since I posted. (The Sherlock Holmes posts are miiiiles late.)

Tonight, though, writing takes a back seat, and I’m finally sitting down with the director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven. I’ve put it off for a while because the theatrical version was so horrible I made a Choose Your Own Adventure out of it. However I had heard that the difference was striking, and knowing how much difference it makes for the director’s cut of Blade Runner not to have the voiceover, I thought I might as well see what Ridley could do with more hours in his day. (And he has to have more hours in his day then normal people, since this version looks about four hours long.)

After watching it for two minutes, I can already tell this is going to be amazing, if not for the quality of the film, for Ridley’s little video essay up front promising you how much better this version is going to be than the theatrical version. I laughed, you guys. That is awesome on so many levels. What would have happened if they’d said no? I can picture him going door-to-door with a copy of the movie. “No, it’s organic character development! Just give it a try!”

Full report to come.

This month’s Top Ten at Fantasy is Fantasy’s Top Ten Ham Jobs.

Things to know:

1. That is the bluest pun I have ever worked in my LIFE.

2. This list was so hard to narrow down to just ten, you cannot even imagine. There are three dozen actors gnashing their teeth and ripping scenery to shreds right now because they just missed the list. (These people include David Thewlis in Dragonheart and Ray Liotta in In the Name of the King, both of whom were just stellar, but David Thewlis was too lethargic to chew scenery with the necessary aplomb, and Ray Liotta will come to my house and yell at me if I make him angry, so they both get a pass. THIS TIME.)

My short story “Wondrous Days” is live at Apex Magazine! The entire issue centers around the 2012 prophecy; my story involves mankind taking care of destroying stuff without any celestial interference whatsoever.

Fair warning: it’s a little on the downbeat side even for me.*

She never said what she had been doing in the forest. She hardly ever talked. I talked; when we met I talked about what had happened, about where my girlfriend was. (“Dead,” she said.)
…
The map is stuck with little green pins where explosions are most likely to affect the tectonic plates. There are circles drawn in black and red, in orange and purple and green. The map key names them: twenty years, ten years, five years, one. The black circles are widest, and marked Xibalba.

Sleep tight, kids! Sweet dreams.

* Amy: Bender was a good friend, who-
Bender: LOUDER AND SADDER.

So, sometimes you see a costume and think, “That must have been a lot of work!”

Then you see a jacket based on a 17th-century original and handmade over a period of three years by over 250 people.

Enjoy the opulence of the finished product, and then realize that the silk lining was made by hand on a loom that the guy in question may or may not have BUILT HIMSELF.

I mean…I vacuumed this weekend and thought I had been really productive, you know?

You can follow the progress of this amazing jacket at the Plimoth Plantation blog.

It’s seriously mind-boggling how much work went into this jacket, both because of the historical implications of the work inherent in the sort of clothes you see in portraits, and also because it means that 250 people agreed to do work on things like cutting out tiny spangles that would eventually trim the edges of the lace that would trim the shoulders on a jacket they would never even see. Just…awesome.