Everyone has got to watch this!! Brilliant costume.

A question though. Why isn’t it fair that only one person has this costume and the guy with the camera doesn’t? Maybe Camera Guy is just envious and protestations of fairness have come to mean that.

I am envious too. I fully admit it. Even I, who hates parading around in front of others, would walk around in this.

Check out Anthony the costume maker’s Youtube page here.

Buy it from this website by clicking here to get your very own autographed or personalized copy.

Read what others are saying about The Lightforce Rebellion:
“Being such an avid reader, I often run into the problem of being able to predict what is going to happen next in a book. With The Lightforce Rebellion, that was definitely not the case.”
—Crissy, The Ink Puddle: Rated 5/5

“Christopher Walker is a good writer who has crafted problem a story that is fast paced. It has plot twists and character developments that keep you guessing what’s going to happen next! You aren’t sure who are the good guys or the bad guys until the very end.”
—Amazon Review: Rated 5/5

Description:
Zach Moran has never measured up. When he runs through a mysterious door in order to escape a bully, he unwittingly finds himself trapped in the strange, yet familiar world of Foronar. The thief Soren has stolen the teleportal device that Zach needs to return home, so he sets out to recover it with the help of his newfound friends Sid and Walter, and a beautiful girl—Erika.

But Erika has a dark secret of her own. She is Soren’s adopted daughter, tasked by the thief to lead Zach to him. For Zach is the key to Soren’s own designs. Designs fit for him, and him alone. Now Zach must conquer his fears, face death, and stop Soren… or remain trapped forever.

Buy The Lightforce Rebellion in trade paperback now!

I was a fairly dense kid while growing up. I wasn’t stupid. I easily managed A’s and B’s throughout school. I just wasn’t very aware of anything outside of my own immediate interests. I wasn’t aspiring to anything. I just ducked my head, hoping I’d make it to the next day, and missed out on lots of pop culture as a result. When my brother got me my first adult novel for Christmas when I was fourteen, I didn’t even notice that it was the last book in a series.

“Star Wars: X-wing: The Bacta War” ignited my love for space opera and fantasy. I felt like I could have been Corran Horn in another life…. I became obsessed with the movies…, then consumed the rest of the Bantam line of novels, starting with Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy…. Zahn got me to look beyond my own shell for the first time in my life at the actions and reactions of others…

Check out the rest over on The Irreverent Muse!

Turns out this story is false.

More or less.

I was right that Mike Daisey’s primary interest was in his play and not in the human rights abuses. That should have been my first clue. But who knew that his interest in his play was so overriding that he made the whole thing up? The idiot torched his career and made fools out of a bunch of people, including myself. And he may have done worse than that.

I was foolish because I thought he was actually telling a true story. He lied, plain and simple. And apparently it’s not enough anymore to trust that sources like This American Life and NPR will properly vet the stories they run, which is what I did.

The filters I set up to separate the BS from the truth failed me. And that’s my fault.

I’m usually very skeptical about sob stories about human rights abuses because I recognize what many self-proclaimed social justice types don’t; that cultures are different and it is not right to simply assume that the way our culture approaches work with its 40-hour work week, paid vacation and benefits, and weekends off is The Way Things Ought To Be Done. That doesn’t mean anything goes, but it doesn’t mean our way is the only moral way, either.

When Foxconn finally did bow to pressure and cut the hours of the workers, many of those same workers complained rather bitterly since that income was being sent to family back home. This reality just underscores the complexities created by the intersections of human rights issues with economies, cultures,  and the political and worldview shifts that affect those economies and cultures. And it shows that just treating the apparent problem–the apparent abuses themselves–is often only just treating a surface-level symptom. And treating those symptoms often exasperates the causes that makes those abuses possible. Now families in rural China are going to have less to live on thanks to us compassionate folks in the West. And in rural China, having less can be the difference between surviving a cold winter and not surviving at all.

Those long working hours are only symptomatic of a much larger problem in China. And it shows that how we all reacted was foolish and harmful.

Hopefully what this will do for a few of us is wake us up to the larger reality that simply feeling good about the belief that we’ve helped others doesn’t mean we’re actually helping others.

But I think that for most people, what Mike Daisey has managed to do is make us a lot less likely to ever subscribe to this kind of thing ever again, even when a human rights abuse is legitimate. Congrats, Mike. Hope those ticket sales were worth it.

Listen to the retraction episode of This American Life.

Now my royalties weren’t that much. Just over $24; enough to buy the pizza. But they are still royalties. I’m not going to report every month on how much I earn, but I wanted to share my first time, because it’s just thrilling to see my hard work begin to pay off, and my writing career, well, begin.

As to what’s been going on in my writing world, I did get The Lightforce Rebellion up on Nook, Smashwords, and the Apple iBookstore. Just do a keyword search or click on the links in the previous sentence. I can’t link directly to it on the iBookstore, but you should find it easily enough. Of course, it is already available for Kindle.

I’m also busy working on a print version of the novel, which I will be resuming as soon as I finish my church’s podcast this evening. I’m using inDesign to do the layout, so expect professional-level results. I’m looking forward to getting it finished!

Finally, I was the guest on the first episode of the QuestCast, a podcast that is recorded live on Middle-Earth Network Radio. It was a lot of fun and I hope to do it again sometime!

Life in General:  I’ve started the Dave Ramsey class! I’ve been following his advice for a few years, but I thought I should make it official and go through the actual class. I’m already learning some nuances of his financial methods that you don’t pick up listening to the daily podcast.
Work: If you remember, I was working on earning a raise. Well, I earned it, but so did the entire company. So it doesn’t really count in my opinion. So I’m working on earning another raise!
Exercise: I bought an elliptical, which creaks. I may have to call the service department and have them tighten up some of the screws I can’t get to without considerable effort being expended on buying a tool I will only use once; a 90-degree screwdriver.
SW City and Active Worlds: Teh forum drama llamaz is still hurtin! It’s no longer entertaining. They got banned for a week, which was a blessing. But geez, they’re back at it again this week. I think we’re about 9 months into this nonsense, and I’m pretty sure the mods gave up a long time ago. Bad mods! Bad! It’s also put a damper on SW City. I think Ferruccio is the only person whose citizenship account is still active.  This will make the video scrapbook project of the city that I want to do all that much harder to complete, because I need my friends’ accounts to be active in order to place virtual cameras into their scenes. I may have to resort to doing it like my SW City Revolution video; virtually handheld. I would rather add some pizzazz. 

Hello Nathan,

I thought I’d write in with a book review of Choices of One. I have stayed away from major spoilers here, which was challenging since the reason I liked this book was because of how Mr. Zahn handled his plot twists. What makes a good book for me is one that does well overall with both plot and characterization. If the characters are handled in such a way as to be believable, and if the plot has unexpected twists and turns in it, then it is a good book to me. If you have different expectations, then please keep that in mind.

First we will get to characterization. I really enjoyed Car’das’/Sorro’s motivations and characterization. It was handled very well. I also enjoyed Han and Leia’s relationship and how Han had to deal with not being in the inner circle of the Alliance when his friends were, perhaps because I’ve been in a few situations like that and it wasn’t very fun. Luke’s characterization was a bit off, in my opinion. Maybe a bit too milquetoast and naive for this point in his life, seeing as he’s relatively recently just blown up the Death Star and had his aunt and uncle murdered. I know what Zahn was going for; that of a kid in over his head and completely untrained in the ways of the Jedi, but I think he overdid it. However, the other characters in the novel make up for this oversight.

What really impressed me though was how Zahn handled the plot arcs. One of the plots really had a Holmes-vs-Moriarty feel to it in some respects, though this isn’t readily apparent. I also enjoyed the twists and turns with Jade’s plot arc. It went exactly where I thought it would go… and then turned left. I love it when plots do that.

Thrawn’s plot was the one that I was very impressed with because of a particular twist that I did not see coming. Mr. Zahn took a large risk with doing it the way he did because if the first few chapters didn’t do something for the reader that it was intended to do, it would fairly make the book less enjoyable as a result. In fact, because we’ve talked ahead of time about our different reactions to the novel, Nathan, I suspect that your realization of this twist in advance of where you were intended to realize it is what really killed the novel for you. But that twist is what made the novel for me. If anybody listening to this has already read it, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, read the first chapter online or in the book store and see if you pick up what Thrawn is really up to. If you did, like Nathan did, then you may not enjoy the rest of the novel.

For me, it was great. Definitely a must read. As a writer myself I really appreciate the craftsmanship Mr. Zahn put into this story and the guts he had to trust that his readers would enjoy the story in the way he told it. Whether he succeeded, I guess that’s a matter of opinion. But as as a reader, all I can say is that this novel is a really fun ride. Test drive the first chapter, then go buy it.

Here’s the blurb:

Zach Moran has never measured up. And when he runs through a mysterious door in order to escape a bully, he unwittingly finds himself trapped in the strange, yet familiar world of Foronar. The thief Soren has stolen the device that would allow Zach to travel back home. Now he sets out to recover it with the help of his newfound friends Sid and Walter, and a beautiful girl—Erika.

But Erika has a dark secret of her own. She is Soren’s adopted daughter, tasked by the thief to lead Zach to him. For Zach is the key to Soren’s own designs. Designs fit for him, and him alone. Now Zach must conquer his fears, face death, and stop Soren… or remain trapped forever.

This is my first published novel, and the second one I’ve written. The story is up on Kindle right now, and soon it will be available online at Barnes & Noble edition, the Apple iBook Store, Kobo, and Smashwords. Soon after that, there will be a print edition available on Amazon.com.

Like all first-time-published authors, I’m proud and happy that I’ve managed to get something up. For me, I set the challenge for myself in March that I’d get a novel-sized story up online in time for Christmas. It would be fun to read and not suffer from most of the problems first-time novelists encounter and I managed to do it.

For me, that’s big. And I wouldn’t have been as successful if not for my early readers Adam, Anthony, Andrew, Shanan, my parents Craig and Donna, along with Jennifer, Jeff, Laurie, and Brad whose suggestion for a cover artist ultimately led me to some great cover art. Thank you all.

Over the next few months this site will be undergoing a redesign in order to move some things into the right places and to ultimately transform it into a proper author’s site.  In the meantime you can subscribe to my mailing list by clicking the proper link above.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!

Question for the audience; How many successful human rights campaigns have been waged on the premise of just taking advantage of the products of human abuse only ‘less frequently’?

Big. Fat. Zero.

Mike Daisy is an actor, not an activist. His primary interest isn’t in human rights. It’s for his play. In a year he’ll be on to the next one. But I’m okay with that, because the world needs people who will at least do something to bring attention to the moral evils in our world. Mike has a talent suited to doing so, and I welcome that he’s bringing attention to the labor issues at Foxconn. In fact, he’s the reason I’m posting this and spreading the word, because I care too. I just hope that he stops trying to have his cake and eat it too.

I would hate to stop upgrading my Apple iPod. I really love it. It’s an excellent productivity device. But perhaps it’s time to stop buying products made by Chinese factories that don’t treat their employees right.

I would encourage you to read both pieces. Then come back here and read my response to Colin.

The worst kind of critics are those who don’t understand what one is talking about. In this Colin and I agree. But we probably disagree on most everything else because I don’t believe that Colin understands the argument that he has responded to.

Bennett’s opinion piece does not place the blame on video games for the decline of men, or more accurately, mens’ seeming-inability to take responsibility and grow up. While he does include stats about video game playing, they are clearly intended to be an example or symptom of this trend and not causes, exactly like every previous statistic Bennett cited before he got to video games. The examples he cites reference college degrees, employment, how many men get married and/or stick around to be there for their children, religious devotion, and an article on gender role reversal by Hanna Rosin from The Atlantic.

Colin writes a poorly-considered and frankly petulant rebuttal that straw-mans Bennett’s entire thesis, presuming he is blaming video games and then mocking him for doing so without offering any real counterargument. And yet we would think it odd for Colin to come to the belief that Mr. Bennett blames universities for the decline of male responsibility. But that is exactly the sort of thing he assumes with video games, apparently just because they were mentioned in the article.

Contributing to this misunderstanding is perhaps a misconstrued idea of what Mr. Bennett means by the ‘decline of the other sex.’ He does not mean false notions of machismo or piety, nor does he refer to putting women back into the kitchen to make their husbands sandwiches and babies. Rather he refers to what makes man happiest; being productive, creative, and artistic at his chosen goal and disciplining himself to achieve those ends. After all, one will never create a video game if he never gets up off the couch and turns his console off. Rather, Mr. Bennett is talking about a balanced approach to life. One can enjoy video games and they can have their place in man’s life, but one must also discipline oneself enough to go out and–if it is their passion–make their own games. Men contribute productively to society by doing so, but so do they also when they are devoted to a family as much as to their own craft, refusing to let their children be raised by games and TV and other people but instead raising their children with the same values that made them productive and upstanding citizens without making the same mistakes as their own fathers did when raising them.

Mr. Bennett’s blame for this observed decline rests squarely on other things than mere video games, as should be clear to anyone familiar with how argumentative writing works; the thesis is summarized, then supporting evidence is laid out to support that thesis. Then, only at the end, is the thesis justified and fully explained. His last five paragraphs, starting with the question “So what’s wrong?” are devoted to the real causes. Please read them.