I got two long, white envelopes today, the business-size kind. Both hand-addressed. One came from my Daddy, and one from El Padre (El Padre is my father-in-law; we settled on that as the thing I should call him because we both love old cowboy movies and because Spanish is one of the gazillion languages he speaks).
In the envelope from Daddy was a note in his angular scrawl congratulating me on the piece I'm getting published in "Guideposts" in March, and $40 for Cowboy and I to use to celebrate. Don't I have the sweetest Daddy?
In the envelope from El Padre was a long letter in his mediumly-old-fashioned cursive giving me advice on how to be a better writer and telling me he hopes I don't lock myself out anymore :-)
Just thought it was interesting to get long envelopes from both of my father-figures on the same night, both involving my writing.
And speaking of my writing, I've got a new piece of Combat! fanfic up on the Purple Hearts page (http://www.storynook.net/WQCarver.html). It's called "The Carver", and it's just a short Halloween story...I'm still working on that Angel/Combat! crossover.
...revealing my thoughts about movies, writing, and life to the audience...
I love the opening to the Carver story! Of course I knew it was a misdirect, but I figured he was slaughtering some French cow or something. And pumpkins do grow in France.
ReplyDeleteNot knowing the characters, the part of the Combat stories that I've liked the best have been the parts that got into the horror of war, with the entrails. Maybe that's just the lowest common denominator or maybe you're good at tapping into that for a little impact. It sounds like that's a feature of Combat, a little realism, like M*A*S*H, not the Hogan's Heroes type show I was expecting (but shouldn't have, from a violent bookworm).
You should consider editing to give the full link, http://www.storynook.net/WQCarver.html, because to find the story you have to not give up when you don't find it on the list of Combat stories, and find the little Purple Hearts list, and that's four clicks too. Some less Net-savvy people might get lost.
--housekarl
Oh and I forgot to mention, I had no idea you had a corresponding relationship with my father! I didn't even recognize him as El Padre at first! He doesn't send me envelopes any more, since I got e-mail, but in high school I got many a page of advice written on carbon paper.
ReplyDelete--the comment-happy housekarl
El Padre and I occasionally exchange emails on various subjects, and he wrote me the snailmail letter after his surgery, initially as a reply to reading about my Barefoot Escapade.
ReplyDeleteAbout "Combat!"--I'm going to do a whole post about it later tonight, but I do want to briefly reply to a couple things you commented on. "Combat!" was as realistic as a 60's tv show could be. In fact, a lot of fans watched it with their dads when it was originally on, and these dads were people who had been in WWII and often commented on how realistic it was. It's not like "Hogan's Heroes" although it does have it's lighthearted moments and even entire funny episodes. But it's really like a whole bunch of tiny war movies (152 of them).
I do have some eps on tape that I could loan you. I also have the entire first season on dvd, and I've preordered season two, which comes out on Nov 30th, but you don't have a dvd player and I don't want to loan those out yet anyway. OH! I actually convinced the library to buy the first set (each season is split into two sets) of season one! They just got it a week or two ago! I'm all about gaining new fans for the show...I converted the tiny Chameleon this summer ;-)