Darswords

Today a coworker stepped into my office to invite me to a function celebrating World Animal Day. She handed me a flyer showing photographs of native wildlife, house pets, and exotic animals. I told her that might be fun and I laid the flyer on my desk.

“Hey, do you have any pets?” she asked.

“No, I don’t.” I answered.

I live alone in a third floor condo. Between work days and weekend travel, any pet I owned would spend most of its time alone. Unfair, I think. Before I could explain that to her, she had a question.

“You don’t like animals?” she asked, in apparent disgust.

I tried to respond, but she interrupted.

“Your parents never let you have pets.” she assumed, and rolled her eyes.

Again I tried to respond, but she had another question.

“You never even had a hamster?” she asked as she appeared…

For those that don’t know the story behind Raiden: There is a popular video game series called Metal Gear Solid.  My friend is big into this series, so he knows more than me.  I do know that the main character of the first Metal Gear Solid was Solid Snake (codename, of course) and they changed things in Metal Gear Solid 2.  The change was that you played as Snake for a bit in the beginning and then you play the main game as Raiden.  People didn’t really expect this and Raiden got destroyed because he was the effeminate male hero instead of the grizzled macho hero like Snake.  Basically, he was to step in as the new hero and failed because people didn’t want him.  I believe something similar happened when they tried to make Gohan the main hero of Dragonball Z instead of his father, Goku.

For long series…

My friend, John W. Howell, is a funny man and made a post today about what not to do when on a movie date.  I got to thinking about my movie pet peeves.  So, upon request, I’m going to make a silly list:

1. The cellphone!  I can handle vibration mode because for all I know the person is really, really lonely.  Who am I to judge?  Just turn the brightness down, buddy.  It’s a strange annoyance, but noticing a glowing fucking light to the side while watching the movie is distracting.  Besides, if you’re going to play Angry Birds instead of watch the movie, have some fucking skill in it.
2. Kicking of my seat.  Funny thing is that I can take it from kids as long as the parent tries to stop them.  Not parental move then I get annoyed and will glance back with a ‘I will dump…

Today marks the one-year anniversary of ShannonAThompson.com!

I wanted to thank everyone for encouraging me as I continue on this journey of writing and publishing. You might recall that I announced a GIANT giveaway to celebrate 9,000 followers, and it is now up and running:

a Rafflecopter giveaway (for U.S. residents only)

You can enter the raffle until October 9, so have fun and enter to win all of these fantastic novels:

• Minutes Before Sunset by Shannon A Thompson, paperback
• 2013: A Stellar Collection – a pre-release of the upcoming anthology from AEC Stellar Publishing
• Matter of Resistance by Raymond Vogel, paperback
• When Stars Die by Amber Skye Forbes, ARC
• Shifting Sands by T.L. McCown, paperback or ebook
• Creating Shamsiyah by T.L. McCown, paperback or ebook
• Indigo by Jacinda Buchmann, ebook
• Legends of Windemere: Beginning of a Hero by Charles Yallowitz, PDF
• Legends of Windemere: Prodigy of a Rainbow Tower…