mikegriffiths

Abandoned Towers Issue 3

Published By Cyberwizard productions


Abandoned Towers’ third issue is the slickest one yet. It is a full 92 pages of Speculative Fiction and with cover art by Richard H. Fay, plus its new soft bound spine, it is looking real sharp.
Although Abandoned Towers tends to focus primarily on Science Fiction and Fantasy pieces, three tales of horror managed to creep into the current issue. The cover story by SJ Higbee, ‘The Ghost of Preston Manor,’ brings back shades of Poe. The English writer Higbee, makes the story of a ghost tour clutch at you with her vivid prose. When the tour ends with a seance that summons the tormented spirit of the house, trouble quickly ensues.
The second tale is my own, Pathless, and is my personal tribute to HP Lovecraft and the hills of New England. When a young graduate gets hopelessly lost in an ill planned quest to find himself, he instead finds something else, a thing better left undisturbed and forgotten.
Lastly, we have Bradley H. Sinor’s, And The Wind Sang. Don’t let the title fool you. This is a story full of action that revolves around the continuation of the noblest knight of King Arthur’s Round Table. Why, you might ask, are these adventures able to continue? Because, as the reader quickly learns, Sir Lancelot has been cursed to walk the decades as the living dead, a vampire. Upon returning to Camelot, Lancelot not only has to deal with a man masquerading to the great Knight Lancelot, but the mysterious power of the Armor of Loki.
Sinor has a whole series of these Vampiric tales that follow the thread of Lancelot’s cursed existence as the centuries pass. Since this is the first of this series, it is worth checking out.
Twenty-seven other stories and features fill the rest of the pages. Abandoned Towers has obviously come a long way in just a short year.

By:
Mike Griffiths

By Michael D. Griffiths



I read an article in a Greenpeace magazine quite a while ago, but there was one concept in the piece that stuck with me. In the article the writer was defending Greenpeace’s use of motorized vehicles, which could in turn could be loosely associated with helping destroy the environment that Greenpeace is sworn to protect. The writer’s response was something along the lines of, “our work is so important and with the almost unlimited resources of the cooperate giants that are being used against us and the world at large, we need to use any resources that is at our disposal if we are to have any chance of making a difference.”
Now promoting a local bands or organizing show dates for a band’s tour, might not be as important as saving the environment from the thoughtless expansion of international corporations, but I think most people in these situations feel that they should be using whatever resources they have available to them. These days, this usually means the Internet.
Gone are the days when one could keep track of things like all the new bands starting up, blossoming authors, or even movies that are coming out. In America there is a nationwide glut in all creative markets. Never has there been more competition for things like bands, artists, and writers. We are a nation of overeducated people that were all raised to believe we were all special and would grow up to be rock idols and movie stars. When this didn’t happen and we quickly found out that we couldn’t get a job that even paid a fraction of what our parents made, and even if we could, things like houses were going for six times as much, we had to turn somewhere.
For most of Americans you either just give up, or you follow some dream that is usually focused around your creative desires and skills. This article concerns the latter group.
So I have my new, fill in the blank: Band, Book, Art Collection. Now what do I want to do? Well, I would like to make it go somewhere, promote it, and dare I even whisper out the possibility…make money off it. But when I look around, I see that there are thousands, make that tens of thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands of people that want to do the same thing, because here in America, no one is average and normal, right? We are all gifted and special and everyone needs to be showing off their special projects. Everyone is an individual and deserve to be special, isn’t that what we were always taught?
So in this flooded marketplace full of competition, what can I do? Turn to the Internet of course. So this is what people do. “I’ll start a web site. I’ll network.” These are fine ideas, but when was the last time you looked up a band that you had never heard of or bought jewelry from someone you never met?
I think the World Wide Web is aptly named, for that is what happens if we are not careful, we get sucked into the web. Did spending a dozen hours online do me more good than using those same twelve hours to actually work on my projects?
There is a point to all this. We can now keep in touch with our friends across the country and the globe and make connections with strangers we would have never met otherwise and that is… well good and fun and all that, but in the end what is the cost?
Are we sacrificing local connections and energy to stay in touch with people we rarely see or may never meet? How much does the local scene suffer because of all the creative time and energy that gets used to promote and communicate over the WWW? Sure it can be useful for things like promoting shows and booking venues, but how many hours are being eaten that could be spent meeting people that actually live near you? People that you could meet face to face?
When I was younger, I knew a man named Terry Trash. He told me something that I will never forget. “If you want to have a scene, a strong scene, it involves people hanging out. Not in bars or restaurants, because they suck our resources dry. To have a strong scene people need to hang out with each other at houses.”
Whether you agree with Mr. Trash or not, it is easy to see that the trend has moved away from that sort of communication and contact. Oh shoot, I just remembered that I was supposed to visit my buddy Tony Ballz, but I’m not sure I’ll have time because I need to check my email, update my Face Book, and check out to see if anyone responded to my spew of the three forums I wrote on today.

There is something that used to always bother me and that was how society divides what it considers fantasy from reality. Somehow sports is more real that say Star Wars or a good television show. I suppose a sporting event really happened, but is it somehow more real than my experience watching a movie that produces real emotions in me. If I'm writing a fantasy story, is my character less real to me than what is happening to someone in another country?

Objectively one would say of course that person in India is real and your character is not, but what seems more really or important to m? Even thinking about a fictional character such as James T Kirk. His ethos influenced me more than some real people that I know, so does that make him more real or important to me. I might argue yes.

Now I think this line is even more blurred. Sometimes when I get to know someone online, I want to call them friend, but can you really be a friend with someone you haven't met? Also I could become a friend with someone who I think is a 25 year old girl and find out it is a 50 year old guy. If this was true would we be less friends?

Is talking to 10 people online for 2 hours more or less real than talking to my friend face to face for five minutes, what if it was just the guy I'm chatting with that is checking out my food?

I'm not sure how far this will continue to go, before the system eventually fails, but it will be interesting to find out. It could be a hell of a right.

Mike Griffiths

Yes people

        I know America is going broke, but there are some things that just demand our attention. One of these is just having the common decency to not allow our countries mentally ill to become homeless wanderers in the streets. Does it help anyone fell better about themselves and life in general, to see people dumpster diving when you go to buy your food. Can you really relax knowing their are people freezing in the streets just a mile from your warm home?

      I work at a mental health facility and our budjet was just cut about 2 million dollars. We had a lay 20 people in my department off and will be able to offer less services. Would people rather have these folks in jail, using up our tax dollars that way, or have the children we support fail to not get the help the need to they can drain ten times as much tax dollars as an adult and probably give birth to more children that they will start the cycle over with again?

    Sometimes we need to realize that spending money actually ends up saving money and I know I for one would rather not live in a country that neglects its helpless. That was not the America I grew up in and I sure hope it is not the America I retire in.

Thanks

Mike Griffiths

Oh good

     No more rioting in the streets for me. I'll just post something here and it will be just as good.

MDG