(This is a blog about a life lived while mentally ill.)

I, Dalton Lewis, ran a role-playing game recently. Then over the weekend I went to a small gaming convention and roleplayed three different role-playing games. The entire experience was…a delight. I began roleplaying thirty-five years ago and have enjoyed it ever since. I haven’t been doing it enough recently and am excited to get back into role-playing. Let’s be honest. I’m mentally ill and a failed novelist. This is an exercise, however, that can give me joy.

Wednesday roleplaying.

First I drove over to my friend Addison’s house to pick her up.

Before that I had dinner with my parents. My mom made tuna noodle casserole — which sounds pedestrian, but my mother is a wonderful cook who makes the entire dish creamy and cheesy and delicious.

I ate early dinner at 5 pm because I had roleplaying starting at 6. I ate dinner quickly and then walked to the car. I had put fifty or so wargaming miniatures in my car along with my backpack with my Chromebook, three rulebooks, and Addison’s character.

…

It’s been a couple of days.

I don’t fucking remember what happened during role-playing.

Let’s talk about that for a second.

I don’t memorize things very much — or very well.

I picked up Addison, I suppose, around five-forty, and drove us to role-playing at the gaming store. Ricky stood at the reserved table, waiting for us. Finnegan, of course, hadn’t arrived yet. He was showing up at six-twenty for role-playing that started at six o’clock.

I felt nervous.

Why?

I’ve role-played before. I’ve been a dungeon master before — many times. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed. Still — it’s a form of storytelling, and I want to be a master storyteller.

I’m a failure.

A fuckup.

A loser.

I need to write better.

I got there and took out thirty or so miniatures: ten or so normal guys, ten or so knights, and ten or so orcs. For next time I will add chaos knights.

My wargaming miniatures are ugly and mostly broken. I brought out my Chromebook and my three large books — the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and the old Monster’s Manual — the new Monster’s Manual hasn’t released yet.

Addison played a mage whose master was murdered by a paladin who betrayed the castle for orc invaders.

Ricky’s character was a ranger who wasn’t the best person in existence — I liked his attitude and ability to be sarcastic and yet advocate for his character. He really, really wanted his ammunition.

Finnegan was a monk who wanted to prove himself as the greatest martial artist.

The premise of the adventure: an orc warlock felt badly about enslaving them and gave them a second chance to become gladiators instead of running away from a castle that was getting attacked by orcs.

They had three situations or set-pieces. In the first set-piece they prepared for the orcs attacking the castle and then lost a fight to the orc invaders and their paladin allies.

The second set-piece was a situation in which the slaves met the slave-masters and began to fight back. They convinced the orc warlock to free them and hire them as gladiators.

Set-piece three: they fought the guilty betrayer paladin and two of his cohorts in the arena.

The game went pretty well.

Then, Thursday night, Finnegan called me.

“Wanna go to a convention this weekend?” he asked. “Two days. Friday and Saturday.”

“Would we stay overnight?” I asked.

“We could,” he said. “Yes, let me check the hotels. It’s not sold out. It’s a small con. I got us into a good game. Coyote and Crow.”

“Cool,” I said.

Coyote and Crow:

Coyote and Crow is a Native-American themed roleplaying game. It’s a story in which Europeans never went to the New World and it’s just Native Americans in the Americas. It’s a wonderful game with alternate tech and interesting lore. We looked for four missing women and solved a mystery and fought a battle at the end of the mission.

Tiny Mechs and Monsters:

This was fun but uneven as far as the rules. It was a massively altered ruleset to an easy, rules-light game that featured mechs fighting against other mechs or giant monsters. The game’s mechanics were such that we were able to min/max pretty effectively and do a lot of damage to the enemy and abuse the rules. The roleplaying element was light. Still, it was a fun game to play.

Dungeons and Dragons: Into the Sewers:

I played a tiefling warlock who was supposed to be chaotic neutral. The players were told to clean out the sewers of the city of bad guys to protect the city. I worried that I’d end up drenched in sewer water — and of course that happened. I played a warlock — which was one of my favorite classes.

We fought a gelatinous ooze and some goblins and a little version of a beholder. It was fun but once again role-playing light. We had a blast with the game. Some of the other players were role-playing for the first time and had a lot of fun.

Overall the weekend was fun.

I’m still a failure as a writer.

I still haven’t made it big as a novelist.

That needs to happen.

Soon.

Still — to have fun and try something with new people and new experiences is a good thing. I can find some new story elements from this weekend and write a more successful story based on it.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: Losing

Teen Slasher Zero — Kindle edition by Trump, Daniel. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Losing.

I, Dalton Lewis, writer extraordinaire, am used to losing.

So are the Chicago Bears.

I’ve written twenty or so novels. They aren’t bestsellers. That sucks.

A lot of you read them, but not enough of you buy them for it to pay for itself. That’s on me, not you. Why should you? I haven’t written something you consider a masterpiece yet. I wrote Teen Slasher Zero and got pretty damned good ratings. No one gave it a huge, five-star review, though. You — reader — haven’t rated it a masterpiece. Why?

I don’t know. Trying method after method to make a novel unforgettable and perfect and marvelous hasn’t worked yet. Most recently I tried to write an essay about the novel as I wrote it. The characters had to be perfect, I decided — wonderful, fully realized characters had to face a horror slasher villain. I thought that would make for a dramatic and heartful story.

I created Jalon and Beatrice. Jalon is the ultimate geek leader, fearless and wonderful, scared and having no idea how to stop a slasher killer — but wonderful nevertheless. No one believes him that his friend was murdered. Beatrice is the pixie goth girl who turned beautiful in high school but still remembers how horrible the pretty people can be to everyone else. She tries to figure out the meaning of life while mourning lost loved ones.

So many stories in Hollywood have the thinnest of characters die in droves against horror slasher villains. My characters have depth and passion when they die. Why isn’t mine better? It isn’t. That’s on me.

I won’t quit. Why won’t I quit? Twenty novels and no profit equals a failure. I have failed at my chosen profession. Will I give up?

No. I will try harder on the next one.

I promise you: it will be better.

The Chicago Bears also know losing.

The fans are giving up after one loss. It was an ugly loss, albeit to a great team — the Washington Commanders. Chicago lost to a last-second Hail Mary play that was botched by the Bears and nailed by the Commanders. They had been losing all game until coming back with a touchdown with 25 seconds to go in the game.

Do you know what I think about the Bears?

I think the Bears played beautifully and that a team needed a last-second miracle to defeat them. I think the game was a classic. I think the Bears should congratulate the Commanders and try harder the next week — a tough game against the surging Cardinals. They’re in first place, just like the Commanders. That will be another difficult game.

They are laying blame. Podcasters scream about coaching mistakes. Well, mistakes were made. Yes. The coaching will get better, though, and the team will improve.

Have I lost heartbreakers? Yes.

Have the Bears lost heartbreakers? Yes.

Will we quit?

Hell no.

We’ll work harder next week.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: I Wrote a Draft of a Novel In 53 Days…

I, Dalton Lewis, aka Daniel Trump, fearful novelist, wrote a draft of a novel in 53 days. That’s an accomplishment — I’m proud of myself for working hard to write a book that is 250+ pages and makes some sense and follows a coherent story and tells a good tale.

At least that’s how long it took to write the draft. Before that — on July 27th- my last novel was published. That means that 20 days passed in between the publication of Teen Slasher Zero and the beginning of the current iteration of the new novel.

That means that I spent 20 days brooding, reading research materials, playing Pokemon, playing video games, watching preseason football, and generally being mentally ill in preparation for writing this draft of this novel.

I screamed internally at the voices inside of my head but didn’t let them interrupt my normal life. They can’t derail my normal day anymore.

Initially I wanted to write a fantasy story but changed it at some point. I couldn’t get my head around the lore and culture of a fantasy realm. The fantasy realm didn’t feel vibrant and real enough, and the idea of a space station sounded amazing and fun to me. So a space station became the subject of the novel. I still based it on London in the year 1348 — it was just in the farthest reaches of space and with amazing technology.

Then I started to write this draft. I write about two to three hours in the morning and usually write about 2000 words of a draft a day. It takes a lot of time to prepare the chapters as well. I have a lengthy essay which I wrote which is a rambling series of notes on the story and how it should go. After that I cook myself lunch — which usually means a meal kit. Today, for example, I was supposed to make cheap steak and fries. I didn’t want to bother to take out my mother’s pot roast to cook the fries and knew that fries were bad for me anyway and that they took half an hour to cook and I didn’t want to bother. So I put the potatoes away and just cooked the cheap steak and made steak sandwiches with cheese and sauce and mayo and bread and the little cheap steaks. Delicious.

What is the book about?

I haven’t the slightest.

Oh, there is a surface story about a sickness that is causing trouble for a group of people living on a space station, and there is a battle at the space station. But what the story is really about is the question — and I’m looking for the answer. I think that it’s something to do with a problem facing the moral community which leads to this plague and the results of this plague.

I know that I have two main characters with arcs — very different people who both talk and collaborate on trying to save the day. I know that they will fight each other almost as much as they will fight the enemy forces. That’s part of fiction; that’s how these things go. They will face overwhelming problems — in themselves and their own lives and in the environment around them.

I also tried to improve the description of the sci-fi setting on this one. Developing a real-feeling world makes a story much more effective.

This means that I spent 53 days at an average of three hours a day on this novel. That means I should be owed 159 * 15.00 for this book. (I’m suggesting that I should make $15 an hour.) I should make $2,385 on this draft of this book. Had I gotten myself a normal job I would have made several thousand dollars. Instead I wrote a novel for myself and probably will lose money on the enterprise.

But, hell, a few of you will read it, and a few of those might like it — or feel something about it.

That’s why I do it. That’s why I’m doing it.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: Nope/Riot Baby

I, Dalton Lewis, watched a movie and read a book – both by black people about black people. The movie was called Nope. It was about a brother and sister. The sister tried to take care of the troubled brother. The book was called Riot Baby. A sister tried to take care of a troubled brother. See any parallels?

I want to spoil a point about Riot Baby because it says a lot about the novel and its themes and symbolism and irony. Read on if you’re willing to have it spoiled. Before spoilers – book and movie are both good.

Okay? The brother, Kev, gets a job making metal or mining metal or something like that. This metal is then used to strengthen the bones of white racist cops to make them unkillable and unstoppable in combat. This is the sort of racism prevalent in Riot Baby. The character of Kev is born during the riots started because Rodney King’s attackers were cleared in 1992. His sister, Ella, has powers and tries to use those powers to help him and take care of him.

They end up in a rodeo, a racist rodeo with Confederate flags. They had the prisoners dragged around in comedic fashion, making fun of the black convicts at the rodeo.

The sister, Ella, has the power to burn it all down. I liked that – the fact that someone had the power to just destroy everything if she wanted to. That was a nice touch.

The reality of life in a black neighborhood with white cops really frightened me. Ella’s powers didn’t stop racism from happening or being overwhelming. A black man’s view of the world is disturbing in this case: he is rightfully worried and angry, and this book shows it.

The view of life in prison – with incredible injustices – was also a frightening series of scenes in the novel. It haunted me.

The movie? Nope. The movie was called Nope. It was about a pair of brother and sister who wanted to prove alien existence. They try very hard to do so. They run a horse farm which trains horses to ride for Hollywood productions. The sister wants to act and write and direct and model and the brother just doesn’t talk a lot and wants to do the business of running a horse farm.

There’s also an odd subplot involving a chimpanzee and a former television star. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with the rest of the movie except that the television star seems to be a glutton for punishment. The brutality of the scene impressed me. There’s real violence in the movie, and real death. I liked the way that people can die. It’s a horror story. I liked that. That’s all I understood from that subplot.

The themes of capturing something on film were interesting. Proving something in today’s age is an interesting and difficult thing, and they try to prove that they are right in a conspiracy theory that few would believe.

Part of the strength of the movie lies in the characters. We grow to like and care for them and like them and want them to survive and thrive and not get taken by…something. They also recruit a geek squad type person to help them. He’s nice, too, and we want him to survive, too. The story has a climax in which the characters try to survive something terrible. It’s a fitting climax. I liked the movie.

Book: recommended.

Movie: recommended.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: The Handmaid’s Tale 

I, Dalton Lewis, read a book! And it’s an old book — from the 1980’s or so. It’s considered to be one of the greatest novels that has ever been written — in the history of the written word. That’s amazing! I’m impressed by how important the book is. And let’s be honest – some of these books are snooze-worthy. This one isn’t. It’s about women being treated as second-class citizens and denied basic civil rights. Ring a bell?

I read those books sometimes, the classics. Sometimes I read the sci-fi pulp novels, sometimes I read the best fantasy novels, and sometimes I read the classics. This one is a classic. It’s 300 or so pages, so it’s not overly long, and the book isn’t as difficult as Faulkner or Woolf or Joyce, but it’s still written in an intelligent and wonderful flowery prose. 

The premise is simple yet complex: America is taken over by conservatives and turned into a religious state who institute backwards laws which mistreat women. Women become property who are used to make babies and mistreated by the men who are in charge of the country. People who disagree with the conservative government are sent in vans to a place you never leave from — a place to be punished or re-educated or something. I really didn’t understand where someone went when they caught you.

Women, in this story, are subjected to being second or third class citizens. They wear conservative clothes and do what they are told. Sometimes people try to rebel, like the lesbian Moira. This is one of the dystopias — like 1984 — which is more about what is wrong with society and less about a revolutionary actioner about fighting bad guys. 

Serena Joy is the wife of the Commander, the man in charge — who seems pathetic and powerful at the same time. Serena Joy uses her little power over the other women as a weapon, hurting the women who can bear babies for her by lording her position over them. 

The men? They are universally despicable. I didn’t like any of them, even the lovers of the main characters. The men are universally bad but don’t intend to be bad. They are monsters but aren’t particularly impressive in comic-book terms. They are simply the asshole white men in charge of society. Ring any more bells?

The quiet details of a life in subjugation make this novel worth reading: the life of a person in suffering. Those details make the novel pop. Those memories make this into an important and necessary book. I highly recommend this novel to anyone.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: Bad Reviews

I, Dalton Lewis, don’t know why I do it.

Why do I keep writing novels? I’ve been writing for twenty-five fucking years and I’m not a millionaire yet. I shouldn’t keep working at it. I should quit and open a bakery, bake people diet cookies. People like diet cookies.

I don’t understand.

I’ve written around twenty books without making a profit. That’s terrible. Someone should pay me. Someone should throw me cash.

No one seems to care. It’s harsh — I’m sorry to those of you who read my work— but it’s true.

I got another one-star review.

I immediately crashed. I had been feeling great — above the moon — but I immediately felt depressed.

I had felt so great.

I had 2,000 downloads of my most recent book — I was delighted with 2000 free downloads. I went out to breakfast with my dad. I had weighed myself and was under 286 pounds — I had lost twenty-four pounds. I had a five-star rating for my book. I had spent countless hours writing a spaceship battles book which was a recreation of the World War II battles at Guadalcanal. I created interesting and unique characters that had arcs and dramatic tension between each other.

And I got one star.

I work so hard and get one star. I don’t know what I do wrong — so colossally wrong that people think that my writing is awful, just awful. Not two stars or three stars or something — no, I regularly get one star ratings. I’m forty-four — I shouldn’t be a beginner at anything, as Red Letter Media likes to say.

Why do I persist? I should quit. It should be bakery time.

And yet I persist in writing about what’s wrong with America and its unpopular men.

I continue to write, to push boundaries, to try to tell the truth. It’s hard — to show that involuntary celibates have a perspective, that the unhappy men in life are hurting and are lashing out and need to be listened to and understood. I need to get at the reality beneath the veneer that is respectable society, to show what is wrong with America today, to always show people’s flaws, to show a society which doesn’t care about its people, because that is always the novel — what is wrong with America today. That is always the point. That is always the irony. Something is wrong with America today.

So I persist. I continue to fight an upwards battle towards respectability. I wrote American Starfleet Independence about a group of wonderful soldiers fighting like crazy to take a small planet far from Earth to save lives and protect Earth from alien invasion. I’m proud of it. I worked hard on it. I want people to give it a chance. To the one-star person — I worked really hard on that book. I’m sorry you didn’t like it.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: A Quiet Tiny Rebellion

I, Dalton Lewis, want to rebel. I don’t want to do what’s normal and appropriate and allowed. I want to spit in the face of the fearful masses. I want to write something surprising and unconventional and unexpected. I don’t want rising tension and then a conclusion in which a good guy stops a bad guy. I don’t want to write that.

I want to point out how wrong things are. I am ignored and forgotten, a ghost in today’s America. I have a few friends and some family, but mostly America doesn’t notice me. I get my disability check each month and spend it on wargaming miniatures and food and computer games.

I am ignored. I don’t talk to anyone except my parents some days. How did I get to this point? I have written fifteen books and taken zero chances. I have not written anything difficult or dangerous. Why? Why do I write what you want to hear? Why don’t I take chances with my writing?

I recall Grendel by John Gardner. It takes chances. It involves a main character who kills people – who does not get along with society, who questions society. I like that. I recall World War Z, a book scathing in its discussion of society’s preparation for disasters. It was before its time.

Brave New World talked about a society in which people had fun but didn’t have any intelligent thought or disagreement with its society. 1984 had a society with misinformation and lies that prevented people from knowing the truth about their lives or their world. I want to write something like those stories.

What hasn’t worked about my stories? I know. I have had good people fighting bad people and defeating them in the end in a traditional battle. That says nothing. That says less than nothing. That promotes the mindless society in which we believe that everything is fine and nothing is wrong with anything.

That’s not true. There’s a lot wrong with our society. We lost almost a million Americans to a terrible virus. That’s a shame. We also failed to stop a war in Ukraine. That’s terrible. War is a terrible thing that we humans do. Racism is rampant in America – it’s real and it’s terrible. It’s something that happens.

I don’t know what to say. I have to do better.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: Teenage Nightmare Chronicles

I, Dalton Lewis, am finishing an old project from a long time ago. I tried to start Teenage Nightmare Chronicles eleven years ago, in 2011. I lived with a friend in a messy apartment in Mundelein. I was in my mid-thirties and worked as a bagger at a grocery store. I decided to write the most messed-up, nasty, dirty, screwed-up horror piece that I possibly could – and yet still have a point and have something to say about life and society. I also wanted wonderful characters I loved and cared for – and a few that I hated. I guess I’m that pretentious – to write genre trash and try to make it literature.

The problem? I wasn’t as strong a writer eleven years ago. I didn’t make my characters likable enough. I didn’t create scenes that followed a strong through-line and developed from scene to scene. I didn’t introduce the main characters early enough for the reader to have someone to latch onto and root for. I wanted to purposely mask who the main character would be – but I streamlined the story and lessened that in the rewrite. I wanted to have someone you can root for in the story.

I also cut a couple of the characters for clarity. This book is 200 pages and contains at least a dozen or more characters, all different and unique and with personalities and conflicts and desires. I want to give all of them enough room to breathe and grow and develop. I didn’t want to have a lot of forgettable people.

Truth be told: I love this project. I want it to succeed. I really care about it and its characters and its storylines and I keep on going to it even when it didn’t work eleven years ago. It didn’t. I remember showing it to my sister. She didn’t think it was ready for publication because she didn’t like the characters and because there was no one through-line connecting the whole thing.

That’s why I rewrite, over and over, slowly and carefully. That’s what revisions are for. I need to patiently go over those eleven year-old passages and figure out what works and change what doesn’t – to sculpt those parts into something fantastic.

I also want to show the characters turning twenty-three or so. Teenager-dom doesn’t last forever, and I want this story to reflect that. I want the characters to change and grow and become the adults we know they can be. That’s a positive change.

Life update: I am sleeping during the day a little more. I am playing with wargaming miniatures still – Adepticon is coming up and I need to be prepared to play in the singles. I don’t want to lose every game. That is a possibility. My mental health is still not too terrible right now – I don’t have the worst mental state. The meds are working. I appreciate that I have a place to stay and a chance to write books.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

 

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Control: Ascension

I should blog about Halloween Kills or describe my progress on my latest novel – it’s going well. I’m not. I, Dalton Lewis, fearful blogger, am blogging about Ascension, my novel about life with schizophrenia.

I decided to rewrite Ascension – said realistic novel – every year. I want to continue to update the novel until it’s perfect. I sat there, a few days ago, and wondered about my writing career. I have thousands of free downloads and over a hundred novels purchased – but my books recently have looked like Marvel movies with their action sequences and bad guys and big set pieces and epic stories. I looked around the world and realized that I started to write because, fuck, I wanted to create art. I wanted to write about life with schizophrenia. I felt like I had gotten away from that.

In my mind the voices said the same bullshit they said every day – I had to ignore them again and again.

I ordered an ad to run on Monday – this was Thursday. This allowed me Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to rewrite 212 pages – about 50,000 words. I started to cram and rewrite 50 pages a day starting Thursday late evening. I budgeted fifty pages a day – crushingly difficult but not impossible.

I didn’t mind the book at all – I felt like it reflected the life of someone with schizophrenia. I started the book with a picture of my life right before a breakdown – a period in which we switched to the wrong medication and I couldn’t function and needed to go to the hospital. I showed the way I can go to a park and scream at the bushes in my mind that I’m innocent and not be able to convince them. Stuff like that.

Then I showed my life growing up – starting with middle school. I focused the first hundred pages on my growth as an artist and my developing skill as a writer. In middle school I wrote a poem that got laughed at and a speech that got applauded – my first hit. Then I went to high school, where I studied journalism and worked on an award-winning school paper. I also overcame loneliness and found a good core of friends.

College was tricky because that’s when I started to write a novel, Illusionary Paintings, about a boy who loses his magic and wants it back – and an alterna-girl who is tormented by her peers. I tried to show the full college experience – the friendships, the drinking, the writing, the pain, and the hope that every student has to become someone rich and famous – and how hard it is to actually accomplish that.

Then I wrote about the breakdown and how I got paranoid schizophrenia in painful detail. I also included personal daydreams and nightmares that I rarely share with anyone else.

I wanted to show the duality – I was down but never doubted that I could become an artist and move people with my words, become a writer. I also wanted to show the ascension of my writing skill and career parallel with the descent of my mind into madness and pain. Oh, and my friends and family are in there, too.

I included most of my friends and family in this year’s edition of the book. I tried to show direct scenes with them and let them be themselves. Gilbert is angry and disillusioned and knows that most of us won’t be famous; Phillip is too brilliant at writing and strategy games for his own good; my sister is the smartest, best person I know; and Finnegan is ceaselessly nice to everyone around him, especially the damaged ones. I include all of them and more.

Everyone told me that they wanted to read a realistic view of schizophrenia. Well, this is it. I wrote it; now you should read it. It’s free for a couple days and then three dollars after that. And remember – if you read it, write a review.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: Tournament Results

1. Drukhari didn’t win the tournament. They just won best general for getting the most points. The overall winner was a Grey Knights player with a better theme, painting, and overall score.
2. Game one: Thousand Sons. I faced a nice guy who played with Ahriman and a lot of spellcasting and some chaos spawn and the like. I attacked the middle objectives and did some good damage to the enemy. Game one: win.
3. Game two: Ynarri. In game two I played against harlequins with 26 fusion pistols and 3 grey seers and 9 dark reapers – a ridiculous amount of firepower. I tried to kill as many opponents as possible and take as many objectives as I could but it wasn’t enough. Game two: loss.
4. Game three: Blood Angels. In game three I played against a nice person who played blood angels. I liked the matchup and the opponent placed incursors on the middle objectives before the game started. I attacked them and killed them turn one. Then the opponent attacked me with death company and sanguinary guard. The opponent killed my ten blightlords on those two objectives. It took most of the game to retake those objectives, but Typhus and my terminator sorcerer killed the death company. The plagueburst crawlers and myphitic blight-haulers killed the sanguinary guard, and my deathshroud attacked the back ranks and killed my opponent’s eradicators. I was losing but tabled my opponent, who got nothing for turn five. Game three: win.
5. Then I went out to a bar and grill on Saturday night and watched Terry and the guys drink and ate a burger basket with French fries and some nachos. The entire thing was delicious and fun to relax and hang out with friends, but I drank a Red Bull and had some trouble sleeping that night. I woke up Sunday morning very groggy and not feeling well mentally.
6. Game four: White Scars. I started playing poorly at this point. My opponent played better than me and asked if I was well. I wasn’t. I wasn’t feeling well. He had two impulsors with bladeguard in them. I killed one impulsor but couldn’t kill the second. I found myself not scoring very many points. I failed to do much with my terminators. Game three: loss.
7. Game five: Orks. At this point I was exhausted from playing a zillion games of Warhammer 40k over the weekend and hardly paid attention to the game. I played against Ghazkull Thraka, the Beast of Armageddon, and 120 of his best ork friends. I killed 100+ orks but couldn’t hold middle objectives and lost. Game five: loss.
8. I went 2-3. That was a bit of a disappointment. I wanted to go 3-2 or 4-1. I didn’t want to struggle so much on day two.
9. We went to a nice steakhouse on Friday night. The whole thing was delicious. I ate the sirloin with cheese on top and some mashed potatoes with butter – flawless. We hung around talking about Warhammer 40k, life, and love. Good times.
10. Terry went 3-2 with Space Wolves. My other friend, Marvin, went 2-3 with Thousand Sons/Death Guard. We mostly had a lot of fun playing a lot of games. We didn’t win anything at all.
11. My keycard didn’t open my hotel room door twice. I had to go back to the front desk twice to have the card rescanned in order to get into my room.
12. I intended to take notes and create scenes for novels from incidents that happened during the weekend but failed to do so.
13. I think I’m switching away from Death Guard. I couldn’t get onto objectives quickly enough or move around the board with enough agility. I want to try Ad Mech going forward. They seem powerful and interesting.
14. Thank you to everyone who made it a fun weekend. I hadn’t been away from Grayslake for a long time, and that felt good.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: Tournament Predictions

I, Dalton Lewis, will travel to a wargaming tournament in Lansing, Michigan this weekend. I have made a list of predictions of things that might happen this weekend.

1. I will win two games out of five and be mildly disappointed but overall pleased with the result. I think that 2-3 or 3-2 are most likely results for me. I have played the army regularly and know how it plays and how to use it to maximum effect.
2. Drukhari wins first prize. I know that drukhari was the big hotness a few months ago, but I haven’t seen evidence that the new books will beat them. They still have the speed and damage potential to wreck anyone out there.
3. Space marines will be the most commonly played faction. This is true of almost every tournament.
4. Virtually no one will play tau, Astra Militarum, or genestealer cult because, well, their rules aren’t very good right now.
5. Same for knights and chaos knights. They aren’t in a good place in terms of ability to sit on objectives.
6. One of my friends will lose early on and get frustrated with the game and complain. Or that person may be me.
7. Many delicious meals will be had. We will go out to eat Friday and Saturday night at someplace good and eat well.
8. I will lose a game to Custodes. I always lose a game to Custodes.
9. Someone will cheat at a game of toy soldiers – and probably get away with it.
10. I will get a rule wrong – and apologize afterwards.
11. I will miss the Chicago Bears game.
12. Terry will watch the Minnesota Vikings game while playing 40k even though they are struggling this year.
13. One of my friends will win four or five games and be in contention to win the whole thing.
14. The whole thing will be a lot of fun.
15. Money isn’t unlimited, but this is a fun thing to spend it on. This is a fun weekend of games. This is something that I can do to try to entertain myself and enrich myself and challenge myself to get better intellectually.
16. I may take notes during the weekend and write a story based on the notes.

We’ll see how many predictions are true come Monday or so.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: 700,000

The super psycho death virus has killed more than 700,000 Americans. America could have handled this better – fewer people could have died. People who wear masks – and keep them on in public – are much less likely to get Covid-19. People who get vaccinated are much less likely to get Covid-19, and they are almost certain to not die from it. We could stop this thing, but we don’t – because we’re stupid. We won’t get vaccinated because we’re stupid. We don’t wear masks because we’re stupid. That’s it.

I self-isolated for a year or so. For one year I sat in my home, ordering food from outside but not going out, not seeing movies, not going to the gaming store, just writing and reading and playing video games. I played Mass Effect, tearing through alien and AI hordes and saving the fictional galaxy as Commander Shephard. I played through the Star Wars Old Republic games, living the life of a Jedi in a place far, far away in a time long, long ago. I didn’t go out at all except to work out by walking around the neighborhood.

I read some books – not an overwhelming amount. I read 20 books in the last two years or so. I wrote. I wrote a book about middle school and middle school experiences. Then I wrote a horror novel based on something that I had written twenty years ago. I wrote a number of books during the Covid-19 self-isolation.

I ate a lot of food. I ate fast food from take out – chicken sandwiches, french fries, breakfast foods like muffins with sausage and egg, breakfast burritos, crunchwraps, many crunchwraps. I ate good food from take out – crab with linguine alfredo, steak with broccoli and potatoes, chicken with cheese and potatoes, and salads with steak or salads with salmon.

Everyone could have self-isolated. Everyone could have stayed at home, not talking to anyone in person for a year. Then everyone could have worn a mask when going out after the worst was over. Then there were the vaccines.

These vaccines seem safe. They seem effective. I don’t understand not taking the vaccine. I understand that the Black community was hurt by vaccines in the past, but this is a vastly different situation. This isn’t that. This vaccine saves thousands of lives and can end this. We are looking at living with the super psycho death virus pretty much forever now. That’s some bullshit. We shouldn’t have to live like this. We should stop this thing by getting everyone a vaccine. I’m sorry; that’s just a fact.

I feel badly that the super psycho death virus can kill so many overweight people. My friend Phillip thought that I might die because I am overweight. I didn’t yet, and I have the Moderna vaccine, and it’s been around for almost two years now. It hasn’t killed me yet. We need to get vaccinated as a society, fast.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

Control: Bears Game Observations/Notices/Thoughts

I, Dalton Lewis, am a fan of the Chicago Bears. They won 24-14 against the Detroit Lions on Sunday. I am glad for a win. I think that this was a good win, a good solid game plan executed correctly against a hungry, angry team. Wins are hard to come by in the NFL so this meant something.

1. David Montgomery played beautifully and had over 100 yards rushing before leaving with an injury. Let’s hope that it’s not serious because he’s awesome. He fights for every yard and understands the Bears scheme. Justin Fields is much better at passing when Montgomery is running twenty times a game.
2. Justin Fields threw deep, and he threw deep successfully. He had five throws of more than twenty yards. That’s impressive. The Bears never had anyone who could make those throws. That stretches the field and hurts opposing teams that have to sell out to stop the run. Fields also threw the ball away some and ran a couple times, not throwing very many stupid throws. He knows how to win with the Chicago Bears strategies – running game and ball control and strong defense.
3. Robert Quinn and Khalil Mack are awesome. The entire front seven of the Bears just wrecks every opposing O-line that they face. They have sacks in every game.
4. The secondary continues to miss a few coverages that result in touchdowns for the opposing teams. This is a significant problem that needs to be addressed immediately. Eddie Jackson is a great player who is having a year in which he’s having a little trouble managing the deep middle of the field.
5. Matt Nagy never deserved to be fired for a terrible showing against Cleveland, and he bounced back beautifully against Detroit. I pointed out a week ago that we should give him a second chance and I was right. His two best tackles – he drafted two tackles – were injured. That’s just bad luck. Now his two best running backs are injured. That’s more bad luck. He just has to bounce back.
6. Running the ball that many times gives the Bears a strong identity and a chance for a strong chance to win. Nagy said in the press conference that he will have to throw 40 times some games and run 40 times some games. That’s fine – but I’d rather see the games where the Bears run 40 times.
7. The Bears defense plays worse in the second half of the game. They start to give away points. That’s just an observation. I’m not mad or anything.
8. Darnell Mooney is a great receiver. He caught 5 passes for 125 yards. I’m impressed that he can run long deep routes and Justin Fields has the arm necessary to hit him in stride and make those near-impossible throws. That’s something the team never had previous to now. The Bears threw 17 times and had 200+ yards which is an awesome number of yards per attempt. Great job.
9. Akiem Hicks is injured, and that’s serious. He’s a great defensive lineman for the Bears. The next player up played well, but he’s a great player and will be missed.
10. Jaylon Johnson covers people really, really well. He really is a cover corner. The opponent’s top wide receiver has trouble catching the ball against the Bears.

Control Review: Venom: Let There Be Carnage

I, Dalton Lewis, watched the movie Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The reviews have been better than the previous Venom movie but not great – good reviews. And let me say – they are justified. The movie stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, a put-upon everyman who writes newspaper articles about bad guys and what they have done wrong. This time the villain is Carnage – played with sinister delight by Woody Harrelson. Harrelson delights in every scene he is in, feeling emotions to the tenth power and living life without the constraints of conventional morality. Eddie is combined once again with the Venom symbiote which gives him overwhelming superpowers.

Eddie is the opposite of Carnage, a nice guy trying to make it through in a difficult and expensive world. He’s screwed up with the girl, Anne, again (Michelle Williams), and the Venom symbiote that is connected to him is chafing at a constrained lifestyle. He wants adventure and to bite the heads off of bad guys. Eddie wants to control himself and Venom and not have incidents. The story then develops into a tale of friendship between Eddie and Venom and contrasts that with the relationship between Harrelson’s character and his Carnage suit.

Both characters have women that they are in love with. The Shriek, played by Naomie Harris, is trying to get together with Carnage and kill all of their enemies – and a ton of police officers and prison guards while they are at it. The movie is only ninety minutes, but I have no right to complain – most of my books are short. I liked the relationships between the characters – the villain couple genuinely love each other and that’s a nice thing. They don’t frame each other or anything.

The Venom symbiote is a hit and a fan favorite, a benevolent monster who wants to snack on bad guys and eat people who piss him off. He does whatever he wants – much like a lot of the audience wishes that we could do. He runs around the city having whatever adventures he wants and that’s something that all of us desperately want to be able to do. This wish-fulfillment makes Venom the perfect lower-tier movie to be a big hit that the MCU can look down upon and scoff – thinking that they don’t need something like that.

Maybe they do. I liked both Venom movies. Andy Serkis took over directing duties and did an admirable job showing the world a ground-level, fun comic book adventure. I thought that the villainy of Carnage was obvious and overwhelming – the bad guys were bad and the good guys were good, and everything was simple and direct and fun. Nothing happened to change reality or chase Shakespeare, but maybe that doesn’t always have to be the point. Maybe we’ve had too many people with pretensions making these comic-book movies. Maybe we need a simple story about two friends arguing and then realizing that they might need each other.

Thanks, and take care, friends.

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