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Curtis Smith

Autor/a de Deadly Reigns

25+ obres 196 Membres 12 Ressenyes

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Obres de Curtis Smith

Obres associades

Ghost Writing: Haunted Tales by Contemporary Writers (2000) — Col·laborador — 32 exemplars
The Best Small Fictions 2016 (2016) — Col·laborador — 19 exemplars
Deadly Reigns III (2009) — Col·laborador — 14 exemplars
Flashbacks Redux (2011) — Autor — 5 exemplars

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

Data de naixement
20th c.
Gènere
male
Nacionalitat
USA

Membres

Ressenyes

I've had this forever and never played or read any of the "Oriental Adventures" material before. The current campaign I'm running is set in a world created by a company called Cobramode that does 3D printed miniatures and decided to spec them out for 5e and create a world. It definitely has an Oriental Adventures feeling to it, so I thought this might give some ideas about how to make my game more realistic and add more "Asian flavor" to it.

It didn't.

This just seemed repetitive and filled with a bunch of boring encounters. The overall plot was pretty standard, there were a couple of fun npcs. The only thing that really stuck out was the final battle which has the characters taking over a dragon and fighting the big baddie using the dragon. That was original, and maybe kind of fun to get to use powers you don't usually have.

If I was going to run this I would remove about 65% of the encounters, reduce the number of valleys to about half and add more meaningful encounters that served a purpose and didn't just feel like grinding.
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Marcat
ragwaine | May 21, 2023 |
Becoming 'street wise' is the key.-Tracy Milavec University Times

The focus of Curtis Smith's 'Buy yourself a minute' method of self-defense is on awareness and becoming streetwise. According to Smith a person with 'Street wit' can reduce his or her chances of being the victim of assault. The following suggestions come from the book:

....Avoid walking alone, but if you have to do so, walk with a fast pace and with authority.

...Check the inside of your car before you get in.

...Keep moving. Don't stop if a stranger asks you a question. society conditions us to be polite, but you can politely give the time while you continue to walk.

...Do not walk near bushes or alleys, between dark buildings, or on unlighted streets.

...Park in a well-lighted area away from columns, vans, or other barriers.

...Vary your everyday routine.

'The BYAM book and program is built on sound training principles and is delivered in an exciting and informative manner.'-Michaelene Wnatik, Ph.d. Organizational Development

...When walking toward your car, have your keys ready and approach with caution.

...Never carry your purse loosely. Carry it across your chest or under your arm.

Contents

Bibliography
Foreward
A message from Universal Professional Training
Rape....
Rape-Legal definitions
Rape-The most frequently commited crime in America
Myths and facts about rape
Doing something is important
What is BYAM?
Trust in your thoughts
Observation and awareness skills
Protecting your home and apartment
Your personal space
Defense against a telephone assault
Your mental weapon
Threat assessment
Psychology of walking
Weapons for self-defense
Protection against scams
Self-defense methods
Cnclusion
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AikiBib | May 29, 2022 |
Lovepain by Curtis Smith is a novel about life and the people and experiences that make it real. Smith has published over one hundred stories and essays, and his work has been cited by or appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best American Spiritual Writing, The Best Short Fictions, and in the Norton anthology New Microfictions. He’s worked with independent presses to publish two chapbooks of flash fiction, three story collections, four novels, two essay collections, and one book of creative nonfiction.

I have previously read Smith’s short fictions and his nonfictional personal examination of Slaughterhouse Five. This is the first novel of his I have read. Love Pain is the story of a short period of time in the life of Eli and his son Mark. Smith opens the novel with a wonderful and densely descriptive scene that shows the writer’s ability from the start. Eli is a social worker who truly believes he can help people and he does go out of his way to do it. He does so in a natural way not trying to be a hero. His role to his son is much the same. He is patient and indulging of his son and his interests. Things would be fine for Eli if that was the entirety of his life.

Unfortunately for Eli, and the rest of us, life is not so simple. Eli has a sinkhole near his house, there is a wild animal on the lose, his wife has other goals, his client, Zoe, has difficulty maintaining traction, and then there is the Christmas play. Eli is faced with choices and with a destiny that does not seem to allow him peace and comfort. Lovepain describes the competing forces: The love for his wife and the pain of her actions, the effort into Zoe’s future and the slipping back, being everything he can be to his son and still be a responsible adult and father. It is not only people that disrupt life. Man’s own development leads to problems like sinkholes in the neighborhood. Even nature itself faces threats and blame. An escaped zoo animal suddenly is the center of blame as it tries to fit into developed society.

For a short novel, Smith manages several subplots with well-developed characters and maintains the ability to include detailed settings. The plot flows along at a respectable pace absorbing the branches in the story and twining them together masterfully. Smith’s talent in short and micro fiction helps create a novel without fluff or gratuitous filler. Well written and meaningful prose examining the duality that is life.
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evil_cyclist | Mar 16, 2020 |
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five: Bookmarked by Curtis Smith is part of IG Publishing's series of Bookmarked books. Authors are invited to share their story of the book that influenced them the most. I have never met Curtis Smith, but it would almost seem that I knew him for a long time. We have quite a bit in common. We are both from northern cities, fathers, spent money on books as kids, fascinated by shortwave radio, enjoy history especially WWI, and are almost the same age. The writing seems very familiar and almost as though we walked the same path. Smith went to college after high school and became a teacher. I went to the Marines after high school. There is the split. Smith wonders what the military and the possibility of dead bodies would have been an experience he could have endured. I wonder if a classroom of middle school children is something I could have survived.

I first encountered Smith's work in Best Small Fictions 2016. His contribution was called "Illusions." After posting my review he asked me if I wanted to read his latest book on the book that inspired him the most -- Slaughterhouse Five. I said, “yes” thinking it had to be pretty dark -- the firebombing of a city and, from what I recalled, a mentally broken soldier. I read Slaughterhouse Five back in the early 1980s and that is what I remembered of it. I re-read it again before starting on Curtis’ book not trusting my memory and came away with a better understanding. Perhaps I was a bit like the Marine major Billy Pilgrim meets at the Lion’s Club in those days.

Smith starts but telling the reader about the book. It is the 29th most banned book in the United States. In fact, a North Dakota school burned all their copies in the firestorm of the school’s furnace. It has been called anti-Christian and obscene without seeing that the true obscenity lies in the destruction of a beautiful city and the amount of human bone meal the new city is built over. “So it goes” punctuates the violence and acts to numb the reader and allow him or her to simply accept violence and mass murder as something that naturally happens. There is so much horror in the book, but it is broken up with a dark humor. Billy Pilgrim is a walking cartoon for most of his military service and time as a prisoner of war -- covered with a too small, fur collared jacket and silver boots.

Paul Lazzaro is the evil man in the story. He promises to kill Billy to avenge the death of Roland Weary who blames Billy for his gangrene and pending death. Lazzaro is by no means a nice guy but he kills Billy with a laser rifle. The whole mockery of death. Slaughterhouse Five was written in 1969. At the time, a laser was seen as a weapon that could split an atom at 20 at light years. Billy’s killer uses precision to accomplish his goal. The bombing of Dresden was the indiscriminate killing thousands. One was evil and the other is accepted.

“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
Josef Stalin, attributed.

So it goes.

Smith writes in a Tralfamadorian style seemingly jumping randomly from one point to another. It works extremely well and earthlings are clued in on the changes by inserted factoids about exemplary humans like Blokhin, the sporting contest of Mukai and Noda in China, and the origin of the word genocide. Smith also includes his stories of growing up, raising a son, and dealing with common core education.

Smith discusses PTSD and talks of a famous picture of a WWI soldier suffering from shell shock. The black and white adding additional emotion to a haunting picture. I am reminded of Septimus Warren Smith from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf also entered my mind when Smith was discussing walking along the beach with his wife and son watching the waves. He also reminds the reader of modern literature in the world today. Conservative, Christian leaders in government service preaching the genius of Ayn Rand while missing the point that she was anti-service, an atheist, and a critic of Ronald Reagan.

The biographical information and the discussion of Slaughterhouse Five tie in superbly. It was like sitting down with an old friend and talking about the past and about that book we read long ago. Far from the dark and depressing story, I was expecting, Smith’s writing on his life and Vonnegut is leveled with good and bad. His historical references in the book prevent it from being a “feel good” book and levels the tone. But all the same, it is a book that embraces the reader into a comfortable learning discussion. Like Slaughterhouse Five’s mixture of humor and horror, Smith finds his mix of book and biography. An outstanding take on life, the world, and the book.

Smith, like Vonnegut, ends his book with a bird’s call of “Poo-tee-weet?” Why does a bird tweet interrogatively? That puzzled me. What could a bird possibly ask? Then I remembered this from Auguries of Innocence and M Train by Patti Smith:

They know, I thought, like the birds of Iraq before shock and awe on the first day of spring. It was said that the sparrows and songbirds stopped singing, their silence heralding the dropping of bombs.

Perhaps the birds are asking is it over, or more likely “are they over?”



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Marcat
evil_cyclist | Mar 16, 2020 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
25
També de
4
Membres
196
Popularitat
#111,885
Valoració
4.0
Ressenyes
12
ISBN
37
Llengües
6

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