This week, I’m wrapping up “Once Upon a Dream” and discussing more on the idea of creating a creative arts collective. Last week, I created a private Facebook group called Thirteenth Hour Arts – For Creators, Not Haters. Many thanks to all who joined!
This week, I’m launching a Patreon of the same name and idea – a place to share in the creative process, though more specific to things related to the creation of The Thirteenth Hour books, music, podcast, pictures, figures, and the like, as well all the other things that have influenced those properties. Hopefully, people will be able to share what they do as well so we can all build off each others’ creative energy.
You can go to the Pateron by clicking the picture below of going here:
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, I’m adding vocals to “Once Upon a Dream” and discussing more on the idea of creating a creative arts collective. To start, I ended up creating a private Facebook group called Thirteenth Hour Arts – For Creators, Not Haters.
Here’s the premise I’ve copied from my inaugural post there:
Welcome to The Thirteenth Hour Arts Collective – a place to create, not hate!
There are so many ways to be creative in the world. Although I publicly create books, music, and toys for The Thirteenth Hour stories, those are informed by a number of other things, like 80s films, new wave music, martial arts, dance, and so forth.
I’m sure you have or had many things in your own life that are kind of the same. Please share them here – you may inspire someone else (or yourself) to make time and space for creative pursuits!
When Logan’s hoverboard flies in The Thirteenth Hour, it emits a cloud of rainbow colored smoke. There were rainbows all over the place in the 80s (Rainbow Brite, Skittles, Reading Rainbow, etc), and if not exactly rainbows, plenty of kids’ shows used the idea of different colors coming together to represent strength or unity through diversity and/or teamwork (Voltron, Captain Planet, etc). Rainbows encourage us to look off into the distance, towards that ephemeral spot where the rainbow ends. To me, they have always represented hope and possibility for the future, so I’m using them as a symbol for this group to represent creativity, especially the diversity of creative pursuits and people that practice them in hopes that it can be something we all share in and benefit from.
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, I’m continuing to record the backing tracks for “Once Upon a Dream” – the solo, the chorus, and so forth. Next will be the vocals, the outro riffs, and maybe a few electric guitar accents here and there.
Speaking of which, I thought it might be a nice thing to add some of the magnet dolls I talked about recently as part of the special edition of the Once Upon a Dream LP. Here are the magnet dolls, by the way, of Logan and Aurora plus all their stuff:
In the latter part of the podcast, I talk about the idea of trying to create some kind of online community to showcase the creative process. I touch on that in many of these podcasts, and I’ve been thinking about trying to help people showcase the creative things they do in their own lives. In may ways, that’s one of the messages of The Thirteenth Hour – creating the world you want to inhabit. You may have noticed that on my Instagram posts, I have little emoticons before the post, kind of like these: 👾🎤📖🎸🍓🎨🕹🏹🙋🏽♀️🤸🏼♂️🌈🎭🎬
I’ve organized the different kinds of art types by sense, more or less, to showcase them
Sight
🎨 – visual art (e.g. paintings, illustrations, sketches, sculptures …)
🕹- digital worlds
🎬 – films
📖 – stories
Sound
🎤 – audio entertainment (e.g. podcasts, audiobooks …)
🎸 – music
Taste / Smell
🍓- food, gardens
Touch
⚒- tools made of metal, wood, plastic, ceramic …
🪑- furniture
🏕- places to live
📟 – electronics
💍 – jewelry
🧣- clothing
🧸- toys
Movement
🏹 – safety, confidence, inner peace (e.g. through martial arts disciplines)
🤸🏼♂️- movement, health (e.g. dance, gymnastics …)
Mind
🙋🏽♀️- knowledge (e.g. through teaching)
🎭 – characters (e.g. acting)
👾 – memory
👨👩👦👦 – community
🌈 – hope and possibility, freedom of expression
Especially in 2020, when there is so much turmoil in the world, we could all use a little positivity to bring out the better parts of humanity – our desire to explore and create – rather than human drama and politics.
I’ve been thinking about creating a Facebook group for this for awhile or perhaps a Patreon community to do this. What do you think?
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, I’m working up and wrapping up few concurrent projects – starting the recording of the backing track for “Once Upon a Dream” discussed last on episode 261 and finishing up a little “kitbashed” minifigure of Aurora from The Thirteenth Hour discussed a bit last episode. The magnet dolls discussed last episode are in the editing process, so I’ll be printing those out soon!
One of Aurora’s costumes is this one from a picture in the book:
I’ve been working on a custom miniature of Aurora in this outfit made from a few different Wonder Woman mini figures.
I ended up using parts from all three different verions of these little Wonder Women to make the figure, plus some Apoxie Sculpt clay and paint. These are the pics from last week. Here’s what the finished figure looks like:
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, I’m talking about some ideas why the main characters in The Thirteenth Hour decide to leave the society they have grown up in and try to make their own place in the world. I couldn’t have articulated the various reasons why that idea was compelling at the time, but over the last few years, it’s made more sense in terms of my family background, the way people in our society typically respond to racial ambiguity, idealistic (often unrealistic) American ideals, and a certain teenage optimism of my own.
In the Like a Hood Ornament section, I’m tying these ideas to the loneliness and isolation the elderly Cliff Secord experiences in the story.
Some pictures from this chapter. These, by the way, all started life as quick sketches and watercolors done with my kids during our quarantine home schooling sessions. So, I don’t spend a ton of time on them but (maybe because of that) they’ve been fun to do!
Stay tuned for Chapter 3!
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, I’m talking about a short story I’m writing for fun called “The Last Rocketeer.”
Here’s the premise:
Cliff Secord was a pilot who stumbled upon an experimental rocketpack and became a high flying reluctant hero, The Rocketeer.
That was in 1938. But now it’s 1983.
Retirement is no longer an option. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance!
I got the idea from my daughter, who asked if we could tweak some of the lyrics of the song, “Superman” by Five for Fighting to be from the perspective of the Rocketeer.
I initially wasn’t sure it would work but the more I thought of it, the more I liked the idea of an older, jaded, Cliff Secord worn out physically and mentally by years of tough landings, crashes, altercations, and other traumatic events. So I tweaked the lyrics a bit to fit that idea, recorded here:
I also really liked the idea of the bitter older man still grappling with his past. The film The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot is a great example of such a character – a man with a violent past trying to make sense of what he did decades later. Mike from the book It by Stephen King had a similar feel, so much so that I used Mike as a model for another character, Alfred, in The Thirteenth Hour sequel.
Since I had to figure out a way to work the 80s in, I figured what would happen if Cliff runs into Centauri from The Last Starfighter? What if Cliff were recruited to help Centauri and in the process, you know, save the world? Ahem – the universe!
There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
On this week’s show, I’m continuing the recording process to a song I started a number of months ago, “The Last Dance,” last discussed on episodes 223, 224, 225, and 256.
We’re discussing the recording of the vocals as well as additional synth tracks, like a simple instrumental solo.
Speaking of which, I added a voiceover to a track that I recently finished, “The Land of Dreams” (see below for the video or here for the audio track) to make the animations match up with the part of the The Thirteenth Hour the track accompanies.
There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
On this week’s show, I’m starting the formal recording process to a song I started a number of months ago, “The Last Dance,” last discussed on episodes 223, 224, and 225.
I got stuck for awhile since the original way I’d conceptualized the song was much slower. It took awhile for it to evolve in my mind and to work out how to play certain parts and sing some sections within my vocal range more comfortably.
The song starts out without no accompanying beat, and although I knew I wanted to fold one in later in the song, the original tempo felt too slow, and I wasn’t sure how to make it work. I eventually stumbled on the right speed (120 beats/min), which in may ways felt right, as it fit the 80s new wave songs that I’ve always liked. (E.g. “If You Leave” by OMD from the Pretty in Pink soundtrack is also 120 bpm.) The original, stripped down, slower version I had originally envisioned may still work but probably not with my vocals or this arrangement. This speed probably also fits better with the other songs on the upcoming album this one will be on.
In the next few weeks, watch for the final iteration of this song once I record the vocals and a few other layers for the chorus and outro. Once that’s done, I think it’d be fun to add a pixelart visual for it since there are no pictures of this part of The Thirteenth Hour, and it’d be a fun illustration, with lots of fantastical creatures (faeries, elves, griffins, unicorns, a backflipping chimp, and many other dancing animals) besides our protagonists, Logan and Aurora, awkwardly trying to navigate the beginnings of young love, with all its stops and starts, trials and tribulations, and bittersweet awkward moments familiar to anyone who’s been there and/or watched a teen movie.
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week’s show is all about flying, both in the traditional part of the podcast as well as in the Rocketeer segment. I’ll always aim for them to be related if possible, since, after all, The Rocketeer was one of the things that influenced the writing and creation of the Thirteenth Hour world.
In the first part of the show, I’m reading from the chapter where the main protagonist, Logan, is gifted a silver hoverboard he calls Lightning that has its own onboard magical “computer” (though that’s never exactly stated), allowing for a kind of magic artificial intelligence, and runs off the power of the sun (again, never exactly stated, at least not in this one).
Just to get us in the mood, I thought I’d include the intro from the 1984 film, The Neverending Story, for the quintessential audiovisual cloudscape experience:
Here is the passage from The Thirteenth Hour:
Lightning beeped cheerfully and drifted slowly forward down the lighted blue pathway that I had walked down earlier. She really picked up speed in the windy section near the entrance. I crouched down low, white–knuckling the board with both hands. Maybe I should have practiced a little first, I began thinking to myself. But Aurora was in trouble, and I needed to concentrate on that. The flight to Cordel would have to be my practice. Lightning shot out of the Palace and began to climb steeply. My heart plummeted into my stomach, and I prayed that we would slow down, eyes shut, knuckles even whiter as I gripped the edges of the board for dear life.
The board beeped then; I opened my eyes slightly, and by shielding them against the torrential winds, I was able to see a message flash across the complicated, yet impressive looking front of the board.
“Relax, Logan! There’s no way you can fall. Both your feet are now strapped in. You can let go of my sides if you want. Have fun!”
I looked down; my right foot was now securely strapped onto the board. I stayed crouched low, but let go of the edges, first one hand, then another. As soon as I did, I felt as if I were going to fall backwards and began to flail my arms. Lightning slowed down a little, allowing me to regain my balance. But at every dip, my stomach felt like it was shooting up to my throat. I wanted to grab onto something solid, but I realized that there was nothing but air to hold onto! In desperation, I gripped the side of the board again, but it didn’t do any good.
“This is harder than I thought!”
Another message flashed across the screen.
“Well, it really isn’t too hard once you get the hang of it. Just relax and let me do the work. Now, how about some aerobatics, my favorite?”
“Uh, wait a minute! Aerobatics? Is that anything like acrobatics? I don’t think I’m ready for that!” I yelled.
“Sure you are! You just don’t know it yet! All you have to do is hang on!” flashed the screen.
I yelled a succession of curses as my stomach shot up to my throat as Lightning spun around three times in succession. The screen read, “Barrel roll maneuvers complete.”
Whatever that meant! She ended up in an inverted position, with me looking at the sea, dizzy. I had paid so much attention to the insides of my eyelids that I hadn’t looked around to notice how high we were. We seemed to be traveling at an insane speed. The waves far below flashed by in a blur. The wind kept getting caught in my gaping mouth and bellowing out my cheeks while I struggled to close my mouth. At one point, I felt like I was going to fall out, dangling only by the straps holding my feet onto the board. Instinctively, I grabbed both sides of the board. Lightning rolled back over, and I breathed easier.
“This might help you out. I am going to deploy an invisible shield that will surround you and myself. It’s just like a big bubble. It will cut air resistance and protect you. And just in case you’re interested, it will prevent you from falling should you manage to slip out of the foot restraints.”
“We couldn’t have done this before?” I croaked, as wind caught in my mouth, hard that time, stunning my vocal chords.
“No, my programming instructs us to be at least fifty miles away from the Palace before I deploy the bubble shield.”
“Why fifty?”
“If I overheat, I could self–destruct. The explosion would level anything in the surrounding area within a fifty mile radius.”
“Self–destruct?” I repeated, horrified.
“The shield has never been tested before. There’s a very slight chance that it will overload my systems.”
“Overload?”
“Is it just me or is there an echo here? It’s alright. The shield’s up now. All systems are operating well within normal limits. However, it’s written in my programming to warn all passengers if they aren’t.”
As if they could do anything about it, except maybe jump off and die hitting the ground instead of in a mid–air explosion. The wind didn’t seem to be blowing as hard now, though I couldn’t see the shield, nor could I feel it. But I noticed that it was much quieter, and I could talk without shouting, although there was still a ringing in my ears from the rushing wind.
“It seems to work,” I said, feeling around tentatively.
I looked back; I couldn’t see the Palace. When I asked how far we were away from it, Lightning flashed across her screen, “About 75 miles right now.”
Jeez, we were going fast. We couldn’t have been in the air very long; under an hour, I guessed. I looked back again and noticed a plume of colored, sparkling mist in our wake. It looked just like a rainbow. I looked under the board; the mist was coming out of three separate locations on Lightning’s bottom side.
“Those are my engines.”
I realized that I had been so caught up in the excitement/horror of my ride with Lightning that I had never even questioned how she generated her power.
As if reading my mind, Lightning flashed, ”I can show you the owner’s manual later that discusses more of the specifics, but for now, all you need to know is that there’s a readout on my display that shows how much power I have left.”
I found the icon on her display, which read 95% power.
“You know, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or anything, because I really appreciate you going fast since you know I’m in a hurry and all, but do you think you could slow down just a little? I think I left my stomach somewhere behind the last mountain.”
“No, according to my scanner, you still have it.”
“Oh … it was just a manner of speaking, you know …”
“A joke?”
I laughed. “Well, almost, I guess.”
“Tell me a joke then.”
“Oh, I don’t know any good ones. When we find Aurora, we’ll ask her. She’ll know some.”
“All right. Nothing like learning how to swim by jumping in the deep end, huh, Logan?”
“Right. Without a lesson.”
“Well, no one ever did learn to swim in a turtle pool.”
“What’s a turtle pool?”
“You never had one of those? One of those little plastic kiddie pools about a foot deep that you fill up with a hose?”
“Plastic? Kiddie pool? Hose?”
“Ehh, never mind. Probably just some stuff that hasn’t been invented yet. One of these days I really have to organize my files.”
“So … how long until we reach Cordel?” I asked.
“About thirty minutes. How do you like flying around like this so far?”
“I like it, especially with the bubble shield.”
“Good! We’ll always fly with it on from now on. I’m glad you like flying! I knew you were a flyer when I first saw you!” flashed the board, with a few friendly beeps.
“We’re going to take a little detour, and I think I’ll throw in a few tricks, just to keep things interesting. Wouldn’t want you to fall asleep or anything!”
“Oh, I really don’t think you’ll have to worry about …”
Just at that second, I tried to scream as Lightning shot upward suddenly, but my voice was still somewhat hoarse. All that came out was some kind of croaking sound. Then she hung a hard right, shot into a loop with a couple of twists thrown in, and straightened out high above the clouds. My stomach, however, took a little longer.
“Guh … give me a minute to recover,” I panted.
“Okay. It’s pretty much a straight trip from here, so we’ll take it easy so you can get used to doing turns and things like that. Of course, you can always count on me to fly, but I thought you’d like to give it a shot yourself.”
By shifting my weight left and right, I was able to make turns. By leaning forwards or backwards, I could either climb or dive. I even tried a tentative loop with all the grace of a one–legged stork.
“Hey, not bad!” flashed the message board. “See, it’s not so hard!”
“I guess …” I said.
“Logan, I know what you need! A little attitude! How about some music? ‘Cause there isn’t much to see up here. Just clouds, and when you’ve seen one, you’ve pretty much seen them all. And there’s nothing like music to boost your confidence!”
“Music?” I asked, a little surprised.
“Yes. One of my unsung talents.”
“Hey, Lightning, that was a joke! Well, kind of, anyway. I think that’s called a pun.”
“Really? Well, see, things are looking up already!”
I heard a sound suddenly. Or sounds, rather, but they were like nothing I had ever heard before. The music sounded slow, at first, then it picked up pace, until the speed of the music matched the speed of our flying. It was strangely futuristic, but at the same time, it seemed like I had always known the melody. [When I was originally writing this passage, I had the melody from When in Rome’s “The Promise” in mind.]
There were words sung, too, but in a language that I neither understood nor wanted to understand; somehow, the mystery of the words added to the mystique of the music. In a way, this is in vain, as my description here will do no justice to the melody, because there are some things that are perhaps impossible to describe in words and are better left unspoken.
I felt, at that moment, an incredible rush of energy and indescribable exhilaration. I felt ready to take on the world – or, at least, a dragon or two. All my fears of flying vanished like the mist of the rainbow behind us. The feeling of gliding through the air with the wind rushing through my hair, sleeves and pant legs flapping back and forth, and the music rushing up to meet my ears was indescribable. But it is perhaps best compared to that day, long ago, when, as I stood at the top of the hill near the castle, looking out at the landscape around – I let the wind take my hand and lead me to dance.
I later wrote a song for Long Ago Not So Far Away about this part of the book that became the song, “I’ll Fly Away.” It has two versions, both below – with varying levels of synth and tempo depending on your mood!
Today’s Rocketeer segment is also about flying – the Rocketeer’s rocketpack!
Today marks the third Rocketeer segment as a part of the podcast. Below are a few previous episodes about the Rocketeer:
This week, we’re discussing three versions of the rocketpack (in descending order below): 1.) the sliver-purple one with fins from the comics, 2.) the finless silver double barrelled Art Deco one from the movie, and 3.) the silver and purple double barrelled one with fins from the cartoon that came out this past fall.
Here are a few design ideas on the gloves and rocketpack from the film, showing the original prototype (closer to Dave Steven’s original drawings), then how it evolved into the double silver bullet shape seen in the film (these come from The Rocketeer Official Movie Souvenir Magazine).
Here are some excerpts from the original comic drawn by Dave Stevens about how the rocket pack was controlled and refueled. (The images below come from The Rocketeer: The Complete Deluxe Edition, which is unfortunately quite difficult to find now – look on Amazon and eBay for used copies at more reasonable prices).
This little animated .gif is, of course, from the point in the movie where the Rocketeer, not above a little self conscious vanity, asks how he looks. Peevy, not above a little blunt honesty, says “Like a hood ornament!” The Rocketeer blasts off for the first time, Peevy gets blown backwards into the hangar, and I get a name for this part of the podcast!
Stay tuned for more Rocketeer gear talk next week! Stay safe!
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If you haven’t checked out “Arcade Days,” the song and video Jeff Finley, Brent Simon, and I finished one year ago, click on the link below to do so!
You can find more pictures and preview clips of “Arcade Days” on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
On this week’s show, I thought we’d do a little more quarantine / seclusion real talk – specifically on self reflection when alone with your thoughts, as many people are these days, kind of like Logan in one part of The Thirteenth Hour, which we’ll be reading from shortly. We may ignore or put off deep thinking in day to day life, either out of discomfort, fear of what we’ll find, or lack of time. But, on the other hand, sometimes being alone with your thoughts offers the most freedom of expression, since there is no one else to censor your thought process except you (and the voice of society, upbringing, etc – though that’s still you, just your interpretation of those things).
Here are are some of passages from The Thirteenth Hour referenced in the episode:
I don’t know how long I sat there – I was vaguely aware of the sun going down at some point, but my mind wasn’t really on that. I struggled a lot that day, but not with nausea or sleep. I had always been a pretty optimistic person – most dreamers are, I think – and liked to think that people were basically good inside. I wanted to believe that there were happy endings, and that it wasn’t just something people wrote about in books so they could vicariously experience something they never knew in real life. I basically wanted the world to be a good place, or if not good, at least non–imposing, leaving me free to do what I wanted. I had always thought if you left people alone, they’d leave you alone. But that didn’t always happen, did it? It was like being a grain of sand in a desert where a simple gust of wind or footprint could shift the position of the grains all around you, changing your own position. Perhaps accepting that was part of something called growing up, but I sure didn’t have to like it.
If it’s just one person, perhaps life is simpler, but when there is another, things get more complicated. I wanted to believe that love could work out, too, even though I still didn’t really know what it felt like. But I was an optimist and wanted to believe that I would know what love was like one day. But if love meant surrendering part of yourself, could you really do that if you felt ashamed of what you had to give? …
… And though I never asked her to, she came each day after that, even if it was just to sit by me and put cold compresses on my body as I drifted in and out of feverish sleep. Sometimes I wondered why she did, since I had so little to offer in terms of companionship. But finally, one day, the fever broke, and I awoke to find that the pounding in my head had gone. I looked out my window – night. I did not feel like sleeping anymore and began to test my unsteady legs. As I hobbled in and out of the shadows of my darkened cell, I found my mind wondering when Aurora would stop by. Of course, not until daylight, many hours from now, a realization that stung a little at first. But the more I thought about it, the sting became an ache that racked my body painfully until I was forced to sit down on the floor. There, with labored breaths, I thought back on specific things that had happened over the past few weeks, over the past few years, over the course of my life. Then there was a spark, a sudden flash of light, and it all became so clear; I marveled how I could have been so blind.
It was then that I understood why the bards so often sung of love, because for the first time, I actually knew what they were singing about. Because it was then I knew that it was love that I’d been falling into all along; I just hadn’t known enough about it to realize what it was. And then, to my surprise, I rolled over onto the floor and began to cry. Maybe I was happy, maybe I was sad, I didn’t know. But I hadn’t really cried in such a long time that it was like I was experiencing it for the first time. The tears that flowed from my eyes pushed away the dirt and sweat and grime, leaving a clean streak behind, fresh and ready for the future.
(POV change to Aurora) I found him sleeping there on the floor the next morning. He did not stir when I walked in. I knelt down and felt his forehead; the fever had passed. For the first time in many days, he looked like he was at peace. I did not disturb him. But after a few minutes, he opened his eyes and saw me next to him. Then, he sat up slowly, looked at me, and smiled. There was something different in his smile, but I smiled back all the same. And then I knew what it was; he understood! Then we put our arms around each other and stayed that way in that dank, dirty cell for a long, long time.
I wrote a song for Long Ago Not So Far Away about this part of the book that I talked about a little back in episode 51 (recorded around the time I wrote it). The lyrics and associated chords are below:
C There’s this girl that I know G Am Actually, I’ve known her all my life, F It seems, to me.
C G And when she found me, as a child Am F All alone, without a soul, to call my own. C Best friends were we G Am F Did I ever say how much that meant … to me?
C And so … the seasons go G Am Promises of childhood seem so bold. F Can they grow old?
C G Now I hold her hand but Am As an adult man, and something is … F G Different this time.
C That grey dress she wears G Am Seen it a hundred times before F But not like tonight, not like tonight. ‘Cause C There’s a fire in her eyes G Am The wind catches a lock of her hair F And my heart lifts in time. C There’s a smile on her face G Am One I know that time can not erase … F But it feels new.
C G And then all at once, it hits me like a thousand tons Am F How I could’ve been so blind? C G And that’s when I knew why songs are sung of love Am Because, because, because … it was love F C I was falling in … this whole time.
Instrumental: C G Am F C
The album version of the song (instrumental version above):
When I was producing the song, I added more layers and an electric guitar segment to the latter parts of the song to beef up the song what is essentially a four chord folk ballad to create a dichotomy between the slow, tender, piano part with a louder, more biting, aggressive part reminiscent of an 80s metal ballad. I wanted it to be that way to capture the balance between Logan’s tender realization in a time of vulnerability contrasted with the flash of insight that he must lift himself up out of a hole in the ground (quite literally – he is a dungeon, after all) with his strength of will.
Today also marks the second Rocketeer segment as a part of the podcast. Below are a few episode mentions about the Rocketeer prior to last week’s show on Cliff Secord’s biography:
This week, I’m reading from some of Dave Stevens’ handwritten notes on the backstory he created for Cliff to give depth to the character and explain some of the motivations Cliff had (which, admittedly, were somewhat self serving). This comes from The Rocketeer: The Complete Deluxe Edition, which is unfortunately quite difficult to find now but has pages and pages of storyboards (like the one below) and notes from Dave Stevens on the characters and story he wanted to create.
There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If you haven’t checked out “Arcade Days,” the song and video Jeff Finley, Brent Simon, and I finished one year ago, click on the link below to do so!
You can find more pictures and preview clips of “Arcade Days” on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, I continue work on a ballad written from the perspective of Aurora from The Thirteenth Hour from a passage in the book where our young protagonists are starting to realize that there might be more to their relationship than just friendship. I’ve been fiddling with adding a beat to the song and was listening to two examples – one by Debbie Gibson (“Lost in Your Eyes”) which adds a beat after a piano intro riff and another by Alphaville (“Forever Young”) which actually has no backing beat at all in the original version until about 1 and a quarter minutes into the song.
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If you haven’t checked out “Arcade Days,” the song and video Jeff Finley, Brent Simon, and I finished last winter, click on the link below to do so!
You can find more pictures and preview clips of “Arcade Days” on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, I continue work on a ballad written from the perspective of Aurora from The Thirteenth Hour from a passage in the book where our young protagonists are starting to realize that there might be more to their relationship than just friendship. Last week I had a rough draft of the lyrics. This week, I’m singing the second draft and playing the chords on the keyboard.
While I was practicing the intro riff, I kept wanting to play the theme from the 1991 movie, The Rocketeer, scored by James Horner. It’s not surprising since it’s one of my favorite soundtracks and one of my most favorite movies of all time, though I’ve never tried figuring out the intro theme, which is played partly on the piano if I’m not mistaken.
I’m playing it in the key of C, just like “The Last Dance,” which is probably why the two kept getting mixed up in my head, even though they don’t sound much alike.
Speaking of the Rocketeer, if you can find a copy of the Nov 2019 magazine, Fine Scale Modeler, you can find a picture of this most excellent painted Rocketeer figurine!
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If you haven’t checked out “Arcade Days,” the song and video Jeff Finley, Brent Simon, and I finished last winter, click on the link below to do so!
You can find more pictures and preview clips of “Arcade Days” on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, I start work on a new ballad written from the perspective of Aurora from The Thirteenth Hour from this passage in the book where our young protagonists are starting to realize that there might be more to their relationship than just friendship (The Thirteenth Hour is occasionally told from multiple perspectives; boldedblack portions of the text below indicate a perspective change from Aurora to Logan):
I hadn’t seen much of Logan the whole dance; he’d been whisked away by an overzealous female flamingo as soon as the dance had started. The last I saw, he was listening to the animated hoots and squawks of the backflipping chimpanzee after they’d had a backflip contest which ended in a tie.
The more I looked for him, the harder he was to find. I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy. After all, we’d come here together. We should have at least once dance. For some reason, that seemed important … I couldn’t explain, but I hoped he would understand.
The animal band suddenly announced that this would the last song, and when the crowd protested, they promised to make it extra–long and slow. Great. These were the kind of songs that required a partner. And if you were a girl and didn’t have one, like me, you either stood marooned on the floor, awkwardly waiting for someone to ask you to dance or retreated to the sidelines. I looked around for awhile but could not find Logan. As I sighed and turned to walk to the side, suddenly he was right there, alone. Among all the faces swimming around my eyes, I saw only his. He didn’t ask if I wanted to dance; he just took my hand, and we joined in the crowd.
“There’s something …” we both said at precisely the same instant. And then we both laughed. “… that I wanted to tell you,” we both finished.
There were a few seconds of silence. I felt like there was an invisible wall that my words had to get over … if I could get them over that barrier, everything would be fine. But I couldn’t do it, at least not yet. Finally I gave a sheepish grin and a sideways nod that said “maybe you better go first.”
“Well, back when I was talking to the unicorn – you know, the Lord of the Earth, he offered to see into my future. And the fortune said in the very near future I’d be married. Can you believe it? Can you imagine me, married?”
I thought for a second. There were a couple of places I could go from there, but I chose the semi–safe route. “I think I can, but … what made you think of that just now?”
“Well, I really wanted to tell you at the baths. But then we got interrupted. And then, at dinner, there was so much going on, and I kinda forgot. And then I saw you just now and, I dunno, that’s what I thought of. I don’t know why, I guess.”
“Did the Lord say to whom?”
“No, he didn’t say.”
“Didn’t or wouldn’t?”
“Wouldn’t. I did try asking.”
“You must have been surprised. You sound surprised.”
“I was. I just never really thought about it before. Maybe it would be nice, if you found the right person, but finding that person … I dunno, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
He wasn’t taking the bait, and I couldn’t really blame him. It was kind of a long shot. Guys weren’t great with these kinds of things, anyway. Still, it never hurt to try. “You really think it would be so hard to find the right person?”
“Well, how many girls have I really known?” I shrugged and laughed, looking down at Aurora’s feet. “I mean, who would I marry, you?”
Ouch …
I regretted it the moment I said it. I’d been joking, but hadn’t meant it to come out like that. If there was any girl I did have feelings for, Aurora certainly would’ve been the one, but to marry someone, you had to love them, didn’t you? I still didn’t really know what that was. There was an awkward silence. I laughed a little and felt like an idiot. Aurora laughed, too, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have just kept my mouth shut.
It was alright, and I said so. Like I said, it was a long shot, and even I didn’t understand the weird mess of feelings inside. But I was forced at that moment to admit that they were there. Things were changing, and I was falling.
“ … but you said that you had something to say, too?” Logan asked.
I just shook my head and looked down at the spinning dance floor. It made me dizzy, and I looked back up at Logan. He was just tall enough so I had to look up a little to meet his gaze but not so tall that I couldn’t rest my head on his shoulder, if the time were right for that. I didn’t, though. Instead, I looked into his eyes but could not tell what he was thinking. I did my best to smile, and we danced that way until the song ended.
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If you haven’t checked out “Arcade Days,” the song and video Jeff Finley, Brent Simon, and I finished last winter, click on the link below to do so!
You can find more pictures and preview clips of “Arcade Days” on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, we’re going behind the scenes to look at the creation of a new song I’m working on at the moment called “There’s a Wild Heart Beating.” It’s for the as-of-yet unnamed sequel to The Thirteenth Hour and is something I’ve been working on for the past few months. If you’ve followed along on the soundtrack Instagram page, you may have caught a few brief previews. The premise of the song is that one of the characters in the sequel is looking back on the life she created and wishing she were there right now. That’s about as much as I can say right now without getting much into the plot, which, to be honest, is still skeletal in my mind.
But like the tracks on The Thirteenth Hour soundtrack, Long Ago Not So Far Away, it’s an 80s throwback done with a synthesizer backing track. And in this week’s episode, I’m trying to create that track and was recording in real time. In the background, I’m singing the lyrics softly to myself, but that will be for a different episode, since this episode is really just focused on the instrumental part. I tried to edit out most the retakes and curse words. I think you probably already know that making a song is a lot of work, sometimes a process of trial and error, so no need to belabor that point. At the end, you can hear the final instrumental result. The final result with vocals should be available in a few weeks on Bandcamp.
Thanks for listening!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s instagram pages: @the13thhr and@the13thhr.ost for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art, 80s music, movies, and pictures or songs from The Thirteenth Hour books.
Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
In the latter part of the podcast, I talk about the idea of trying to create some kind of online community to showcase the creative process. I touch on that in many of these podcasts, and I’ve been thinking about trying to help people showcase the creative things they do in their own lives. In may ways, that’s one of the messages of The Thirteenth Hour – creating the world you want to inhabit. You may have noticed that on my Instagram posts, I have little emoticons before the post, kind of like these: 👾🎤📖🎸🍓🎨🕹🏹🙋🏽♀️🤸🏼♂️🌈🎭🎬
The Thirteenth Hour 