Regan MacArthur Writes

  "Gara scuffs apart the horse dung with the toe of her boot. The seeds from a plant spill out of the dung and they tell her what part of the world the horses came from. She's familiar with the tribe in that area and the knowledge makes her frown. She has always hated those pricks." -excerpt from a fantasy novel I'll be writing later this year (God willing)

Words of wisdom courtesy of Bok the Dragonman. (Excerpted from the current Flash Gordon comic strip by Dan Schkade, which has my highest recommendation, by the way.)

  "Now, in stories I'd read...when a man passed out he would always come to hisself with a pretty girl a-pattin' his brow... When I come to it was dark, and wet and muddy." -excerpt from TUCKER That's Louis L'Amour poking fun at himself in 1971 because the cliche he's describing occurs in almost every book he wrote in the '50s. Made me chuckle.

  ON THE WANDERING PATHS (2023) Plot? No. Story? Yes. I liked it a lot. I didn't move once during the 88-minute runtime. Jean Dujardin plays a writer who, once he learns to walk again after suffering a bad accident, sets himself the task of crossing the length of France - all 1300 km - on foot. Based on the real-life experiences of author Sylvain Tesson, France's answer to Henry David Thoreau.

Every time I happen across this movie synopsis, I fall in love with it all over again. 

An Enduring Thought About John Hughes He wasn't Ferris Bueller in real life. He was more like Ferris's gloomy best friend, the one played by Alan Ruck. Hughes was trying to tell himself something with that story. He wasn't the funny one played by Anthony Michael Hall in 𝑊𝑒𝑖𝑟𝑑 𝑆𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒. He was the shy one. He wasn't John Candy in 𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑠, 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐴𝑢𝑡𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑠. He was Steve Martin. In film after film after film, Hughes kept trying to tell himself something. I wonder if he ever listened.

SHALAKO by Louis L'Amour It's a rewrite of LAST STAND AT PAPAGO WELLS, which was a rewrite of HELLER WITH A GUN, but I'm not complaining. I think L'Amour liked the story and wanted to see if he could improve upon it. SHALAKO makes a good case for itself. The writing is above-average quality for L'Amour and he gives us some great action scenes. The love interest, Irina, isn't too shabby a characterization. (If I had been L'Amour's editor, I would have encouraged him to write an argument that Irina wins or at least ties with Shalako.) Like LAST STAND, there is a sandstorm at the climax of the story, but it's nowhere near as good. Page breaks whenever the POV changes would have helped the reading experience, too.