Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’

Imagine this guy as an Orc
wearing a battered red beret.

Not much has happened that I haven’t bored my reader with before lately. We’re still awaiting a final loan approval on the house. This part makes me nervous. If, for some reason, we don’t get the loan, we have to come up with a Plan B. Which will be difficult. I’m sure the apartment complex we live in would let us withdraw our notice and stay here. But, then again…

It’s all made more nerve wracking because the guy doing our loan doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. He just asked me a question regarding my income last week that was exactly what he asked me a few weeks ago. And it’s not even a difficult question, and one he, as a mortgage professional, should already know. We were told he can be a bit eccentric, so I hope that’s all this is.

Things are interesting at the Doolan house these days. With my daughter there full-time, I get to see how she and her boyfriend interact on a more regular basis (you may or may not recall we rescued him last November from a very bad situation). For the most part, they have been very well-behaved. Expect that they tend to talk to each other like they are 12, and he can really be a smarmy ass sometimes. I sometimes have to bite my tongue, so they can work out their own relationship. But, it’s starting to affect the younger ones, so I feel that we are going to have to have a sit down with them.

Anyways, enough of that stuff. Last week I finally got around to watching Predators with Adrian Brody. It’s a sequel of sorts to the 1987 Arnold classic, and was really well-done. I thought this one was actually better than Predator 2 with Danny Glover, and I liked that one. But this brought to light that my daughter hasn’t seen some of the great sci-fi action movies that I love, like Predator and Aliens. So, we watched Aliens last night. I think she liked it, but it was so late when we were done last night I forgot to ask what she thought. She did get creeped out at the right spots, so that’s a good point.

Interestingly, when I was watching it, I realized something. One of my recent projects is a military sci-fi story featuring Orcs and other fantasy races in space. I’m building my own universe, but it’s highly influenced by Fantasy Flight’s Dragonstar RPG.  This story is based on a squad of Orc mercenaries. So, when I watched Aliens again, it struck me that I seemed to be basing my main character, Sgt. Gorm, on the character of Apone. And I’m cool with that, though it wasn’t a conscious effort. I worked on that story last week, and may work some more on it today, and this week.

Another note on this project, I recycled a snippet that I had written about an Orc sniper a while back. I might have posted that here, but I can’t recall. Either way, with a bit of trimming and tweaking, it fit perfectly into the story I was writing, and will serve as an excellent opening scene.

Yay for recycled writing!