Bundle of Holding +2 = Indy RPG splendor

I was going to wait and read all these books before posting about them, but they are on sale and the sale ENDS in three days, so heck with waiting.

Here's the link where you can get this: http://bundleofholding.com/index/current

I was lucky enough to get pointed at the link to this bundle by someone who thought I'd be interested. But I didn't actually look at it; I was busy and assumed it was a computer gaming bundle. I forwarded the link to my son, who then came after me to split the cost with him. Because he was actually interested in what turned out to be a collection of indie RPGs.

I've long been interested in these types of games, specifically the ones that have a pretty specific setting, simple rules, and are designed to be played with a minimum of prep. But except for Donjon, I haven't actually managed to play any of them. Like My Life With Master, which I still aim to play. So I wasn't initially up for buying more games to sit on a shelf.

But now my SON is interested, which greatly increases the chance of play. They look great and we bought them; they're running a pay-what-you-want sale right now so you can get a BUNCH of games cheap. Also I really like that they are being offered as totally unfettered PDF files. Here is the list of books. (The bonus items come if you pay more than the average price, which was at about $13.50 when I bought.)

• Kagematsu: Men play women and women play men, in feudal Japan.
• Shooting the Moon ... a 2- or 3-player game where two suitors pursue the same beloved.
• Grey Ranks ... you play young Polish soldiers in the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis.
• Penny for My Thoughts: You've lost your memory; you and the other players work together to figure out how and why.
• BONUS BOOK: Monsterhearts: about 'the messy lives of teenage monsters'. Pretty much had me at teenage monsters.
• BONUS BOOK: Hollowpoint: 'Bad people killing bad people for bad reasons'. Agents who are good at being bad.

I've been really enjoying this volume of Dashiell Hammett _Lost Stories_ ... only now I can't find it

My dad mentioned this book to me. While on the phone with him, I put it on hold at the local Austin library. Within a few days I picked up a copy.

Usually I am not very interested in the introduction and about-the-author/about-the-story stuff in a volume like this, but this book tells you something about Hammett's life to frame each story in a really interesting way.

However, now I can't figure out where I put the volume!

Great story by a Slug Tribe member

I'm very glad to report that fellow Slug Tribe member Peter Enyeart has his first publication, and it's in a pretty prestigious place, Nature. I've read at least two previous stories by Peter and they are always interesting. Transmission Received.

"Daughter of Mettle" now up on the Daily Science Fiction website

Now my story, previously mentioned here, is up on the Daily Science Fiction website: http://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/superhero/aaron-damommio/daughter-of-mettle

Urban fantasy short "Road Test" by Lane Robins, on Strange Horizons

I was kind of blown away by this short story, "Road Test." It has many surprises as its two characters contend with each other.  A new take on the idea of the magic of cities.

Big day today... my first pro short story sale: "Daughter of Mettle" on Daily Science Fiction

An exceedingly short story by me went out to Daily Science Fiction e-mail subscribers today. It will show up on the Daily Science Fiction web site http://dailysciencefiction.com/ in one week (4/18/13).

The story is called "Daughter of Mettle". I hope you will find it... super. :)

This story is my first sale of a story to a venue that pays professional rates, so yea me!

Chess boxing?

Why is it that no one had told me about chess boxing already?

It's exactly what it sounds like: a combination of chess and boxing. You play a round of chess, then a round of boxing... you can win by checkmate or knockout.

I don't even know if I believe in it. All I have is this Wired article to go on. But I like the geneology of it: someone made it up for a comic book, someone else made it real...

http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2013/03/laurra-pannack-chess-boxers/

"Leaving the Witness" describes adventures of a Jehovah's Witness in China, and the action is all inside

I was kind of floored by this article in The Believer: 

http://www.believermag.com/issues/201302/?read=article_scorah

...which describes the author's journey to China as a missionary, and how she found her way out of the walls of Witnesshood through exposure to such a different culture. 

I had a Jehovah's Witness friend in high school, who was a fantastic student but made it clear she had no intention of going to college; I didn't know, though, that discouraging college was POLICY for the denomination. That rather makes me angry. The author paints a picture of a church that carefully discourages exposure to outside thought ... but the idea of proselytizing to China breaks that paradigm.

Particularly striking were paragraphs like this one

"I now understood, [that in Vancouver] I had been nothing more than an English tutor, pulling up in a Volvo and offering free English practice to baffled but appreciative immigrants. In China, there was no mincing of words, now that I could understand the words. These 1.3 billion people I was trying to save looked at life in completely different ways. The concepts I pressed them to grasp and adopt were bizarre abstractions, a not-unpleasant idiosyncrasy one put up with in order to have a Western friend."

_The Cabinet of Wonders_ and the rest of the Kronos Chronicles, by Marie Rutkoski

I bumped into these books because of the the nice cover designs, when volunteering at our elementary's library. Turns out they are set in the Bohemia of an alternate Europe, with Czech speakers and all that. A little steampunk, a little magic, but mainly a great, spunky main character, Petra Kronos, with terrible, terrible problems.

I found the first book enchanting, the second gripping, the third heartbreaking, and I liked how the author lined everything up so that a young teen could, with all the allies she gathers, have a shot at saving the world.

I also enjoyed how the books' villain was motivated; he was simply single-minded in his pursuit of power, and that was more than enough.

But probably the reason I actually sat down and read it was the scholarly and helpful tin spider, Astrophil, who is the main character's pet. He offers sage advice and reads at night while she sleeps.

Great stuff. It's marketed as youth or young adult, but I thought it played well as an adult book series.