After a small break Carlos and B.J. return for a Christmas review of gift ideas for the geek in your family. Along the way they talk Justice League speculation, the new Superman and Star Trek trailers, and engage in various other geeky topics.
Category Archives: Books
COTB 015 – The Geeks make the world go around
Carlos and BJ wax philosophical about the weather and wedding anniversaries before diving into recent geek news. BJ pleads for some help with a new campaign idea and is upset with Carlos for not making him aware of a very special Kickstarter campaign.
COTB 012 – All Zombies all the time special
Carlos, Ben, and special guest host Scott discuss Zombies in popular culture and their impact on movies, television, books, and video games. Ben and Scott then go off on the new modification for Arma II called Day Z and explain that despite its many (MANY) flaws that it’s one of the best Zombies games ever made.
Also, Ben takes off for Australia on Wednesday, so there may not be another podcast for a few weeks (And this one was already delayed a few weeks, for which we’re sorry). We’ll see if Carlos can pull together a few special co-hosts to fill in for Ben.
NOTE from Carlos: Batman Spoilers ^_^
COTB 011 – The All Star Wars Special
For a topic so massive in scope, Carlos and BJ call in their backup expert JJ to help them analyze all things Star Wars related. All manner of Star wars geekdom is discussed, including the Movies, anime, books, video games, television, and role-playing games.
COTB 009 – Dresden Files and Some Online DM tools
Carlos and Ben review the Dresden Files in novel, comic book, television, and RPG format. Then they talk about the variety of online tools available for running games via a virtual table top or play-by-post campaign.
COTB 002 – E-Books and DnD 5th edition
Carlos and BJ discuss different issues facing e-book distribution and some great books, then they delve into 5th edition speculation. Finally, they revisit the new 52 and many of the issues facing the new comic universe.
Last minute Geek Christmas Gifts already?
Cripes, it’s Christmas already. What’s going on? Well, here’s gift suggestions- maybe for your geek friends, maybe for you.
Of course, I expect lots of folks around these parts are playing Skyrim or Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’m certainly doing the latter at the moment. The only problem looking at those as gifts is that it is incredibly likely your fans of the material already have them. ^^ But it wouldn’t hurt to check. Also, the Humble Indie Bundle 4 looks great, and half the profits go to charity.
Hey, look- The Guild Season Five is now out, just in time for Christmas.
Right Stuf Anime is having a bunch of sales. Of particular note is the remastered Utena DVD box sets. The series had been hard to find for awhile. It’s one of my wife’s favorites. I may have picked up the Soul Eater holiday package…
For the budding RPGer, or someone who might want a bit simpler rule set, Pathfinder’s Beginner Box has been popular. And the Bestiary 3 was just released! Another interesting up and coming d20 game seems to be Legend. It’s a little over the top at times, but it’s an interesting approach to mixing classes, races, and specialties via mix-and-match tracks. That is, you can take a bit of ranger, combine it with a bit of steampunk robot-making, and be a dragon. Or you can be an elven ranger with all of its ranger-y goodness. (I suspect the former option might be more popular, but ya never know.) ^_^ Plus, right now all proceeds go to the Child’s Play charity. Nice. And lest I forget, although I haven’t had the opportunity to play it, the 3rd edition of Mutants and Masterminds sounds fun.
For the eBook fantasy readers out there, check out B. Justin Shier’s Zero Sight and its sequel, Zero Sum. Check out Zachary Rawlin’s The Academy. Both are marketed YA, but fun reads. Of course, if you haven’t picked up Sanderson’s Way of Kings, that’s fun. And Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind and its sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear. If you’d like RPG tie-ins, Paizo’s James Sutter’s Death’s Heretic is really very good.
Come to think of it, I can recommend books forever. =P
Oh, and I did pick up Betrayal at House on the Hill, for board gaming goodness…
And who can go wrong with a squishable Narhwal? (Picked one up for Q, it’s great. ^_^)
Other suggestions?
Why Michael Don’t Publish Fiction

Deep Thoughts by Boba Trice
I realized late tonight that April was the 5th anniversary of the one short story I ever sold for cash. Frankly, there’s been few stories I’ve sold for even magazine copies, let alone for a real honest to goodness check. Much of my lack of fiction publishing is honestly a straight up lack of trying and commitment. I tend to assume my analytical style lends itself to nonfiction, and I’ve had plenty of success in those venues. While I’ve never had the romantic attachment to nonfiction that I have for creative storytelling, I’ve always been easily seduced into writing what gets me recognition over what I love. When a talent comes naturally and generates quick praise, too easily we can think of it as our fated partner and grow to love the ease of the gift more than the gift itself. To some degree that’s true for me and nonfiction, though I do love many apsects of my research. It’s just a different kind of love. Nonfiction is a safe, reliable love. Fiction offers anything but that.
Sometime this year, my first chapter in an academic book will go to the presses at McFarland. It likely won’t sell much, but it’ll almost certainly be my most read piece of writing to-date beyond a few articles in Dragon Magazine and the Daily Texan. And the ScreenBurn blog. I tend to forget the ScreenBurn blog because it was mostly silly fun.
Of course, Grammy was silly fun as well. I wrote the first draft in three hours and spent about a two weeks editing it, with few significant changes before submitting the story to Anotherealm. It was later published, and I’ve spent the last five years tinkering with it every time I got frustrated with whatever story festered within my brain at that moment. Grammy became a safety blanket for me. I could pluck at its story and characters while working, going back to school, and writing everything under the sun except fiction. So long as I had Grammy, I could feel okay about writing only one or two stories a year. Not that I would ever complete most of them–let alone send them out. When I wanted to feel rewarded for writing fiction, I’d workshop Grammy or send it out to some minor contest in a revised fashion: Grammy the novel, Grammy the play, Grammy the flamethrower! Hell, the Writers’ League of Texas actually gave me an award for this heroin of the mind back in 2006.
And while this behavior has undoubtedly inhibited my growth as a storyteller and writer of fiction, the same choices nurtured a handful of successes in game writing and many in scholarship by feeding my passion for storytelling just enough to allow my productivity to flow elsewhere. In an admittedly convoluted way, my addiction to Grammy earned me a Fulbright every bit as much as it stagnated my creative growth.
Now I’ve started writing a bit more fiction this summer. Thanks in no small part to a flash fiction contest I did at the end of last year that forced me to finish several stories, no matter how small. I’ve even returned to a novel inspired by Grammy where the first order of business was stripping out all the elements based on the old Grammy short story. I doubt Grammy’s dead since I have to get through a ton of research articles this year. Still, maybe after five years I’ve found a way to nurture that creative side with a bit more productivity reserved just for it.
We’ll see.
I secretly enjoy Pride & Prejudice.
There. I’ve been outed.
I was never exposed to Austen as a child. My first real introduction to Pride & Prejudice was through a girl I had something of a crush on; her sister informed me it was her favorite movie, and I purchased the BBC mini-series DVD set for her as a present. This act is probably directly related to our now being married, so I suppose I owe something akin to gratitude to the work. My wife, like countless others I’ve since met, loves Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy. Bridget Jones’s Diary would not have made sense at all had I not known about this particular fascination that many people seem to have.
I suppose she enjoys Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth Bennett as well, but I must say that I’ve heard about her less. ^_-
At any rate, the work has grown on me. I’ve seen the BBC version many times (albeit never at my own behest), as well as the newer movie and the original 1940 version, which has its own charms. I even went so far as to read the book. ^_^ Recently, though, the magic of the public domain has caused another book to be written. Credited to Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, it proclaims itself: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! Pride and Prejudice and Zombies arrived at my door yesterday, so I’ll let everyone know how it holds up soon.