C. S. Thurman

July has been such a crazy, but wonderful, month.

Besides having my wife go on a trip with just her immediate family to Disneyland (leaving me to watch the kids which I wholeheartedly supported) we also had the opportunity to Baptize my oldest.

I was such a wonderful experience. We had been worried that the baptism wasn’t going to happen. You see, the day we had picked was July 31st (and I know that it’s Harry Potter’s birthday my son let everyone know that who would listen to him) and it happened to be particularly stormy in Utah. For a week we were praying for clear skies for that day, but the closer we got the more we began to realize that it wasn’t going to be as clear as we had hoped. After that we just began praying that it would stop long enough for us to baptize him and then run back inside.

That’s right. We had our son baptized in our backyard pool.

Well, technically it’s my in-laws pool, but it was still a fantastic experience to do it in such a person setting.

This moment is one that I will cherish with him forever.

And as I said, my wife did go to Disneyland which I heavily endorsed since she loves that place so much. While she was gone I spent a wonderful week with the kids and having a great time to getting to be with them. As some of you may imagine, there were many instances where the phrase “I want mommy ” was heard from more than my mouth alone.

During the past month I was able to finish Marie Brennan’s Lady Trent series. It had such a great twist in the last book and I absolutely loved the fourth and fifth books! It was such an awesome series and I wish there was more of Lady Trent. I know that there was another book made about one of her grandchildren, but I need more set in this world.

I was also able to finish a book series as well that took me a year to get through (mainly because I had so many other things to do this past year), but I finally read through The Erth Dragons series by Chris D’Lacey. It was a great series but it has a lot of characters that are introduced and then reintroduced, making it hard to keep track of who was who except for the main characters. The first two books I would rate as 7.5/10, but (slight spoiler warning) the third book I’d rate it at 6.5. I was just expecting more and it fell flat for me. Also, the main characters fates are left in mystery and I want to know more, I can’t stand this ambiguous ending where the characters fates are left to ones imagination. For an adult’s book, then maybe I could see that kind of thing getting by. But in a children’s novel? Why can’t we just say what happened and show how everyone moved on from the problem? It was a good book, but I think he rushed the ending so as to not make it “longer” than what his readers could “handle.” If kids are enjoying the books then they’ll read it no matter how long the ending is. So flesh it out, don’t hide what you want to share, or what the readers want you to share.

Because of all the craziness, I have yet to make the dent in The Necromancer’s Deceit that I was hoping to reach. And the same goes for a short story. I realize that my goal to be done with the book looms ever closer as the end of the year approaches, but life does happen. It just means that I will have to work that much harder to make the time to complete the story before then.

However, I do have a comic strip that I made that I’d like to share with you all instead of my customary short story. I hope you will all like and share it with others, and enjoy the love of dragons like I do. See you all on the 15th!