Ryan McFadden

I have a secret.

It’s a great secret.

And it’s my key to coming home with an additional $1200 in my pocket. Unfortunately for me, I’ve lost my secret. It’s not in my money jar, and it’s not in my junk drawer. It’s not even in my bedside table.

Damn it, it’s gone.

I’m talking about my lucky Binion’s chip. Just a chip you say. But it’s not just a chip. You see, after a night of winning at Binions, I had 3 chips left in my pocket. I gave one to Brian and John…and we didn’t lose from that moment on. After the Bellagio gave us several hundred dollars, we even had our famous Ocean’s 11 closing scene — where we stared wistfully at the dancing water sprays.

That chip also meant I would never come home broke. I would always have $1 in my pocket.

But my chip is gone. And that means I will come back poor. The Bellagio is calling my name. And Caesars still owes me money (with interest) but I know I cannot win.

Does that matter? No. I will still go into the Den of Sin and I will battle.

But I will lose.

The Bellagio has waited two long years for its chance at revenge.

This weekend, we do battle again.

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Decided to clean up my websites. I have a LOT of websites and it’s time that I start consolidating them. I have ryanmcfadden.com (this site), Relentless Unleashed.com (a Dungeons and Dragons site), Black Swan Press.com (site offering my short stories for download).

I’ve decided to start putting them all under ryanmcfadden.com. Drive traffic and begin to increase readership (thus my short-shorts series, hopefully to get the curious reader).

I may even add all my girls’ sites (paigemcfadden.ca, cordeliamcfadden.com, gottaluvpink.com). I’d keep those domain names, but all of those would redirect here. Mind you, when my girls are older, they may find it odd that their sites are under my name — me being a geek and all. So on second thought, maybe I’ll keep those separate.

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The Sorcerer’s Wife must be very lonely. She keeps getting rejected. This time from Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. How sad.

I sent it to Jim Baen’s Universe today They reply in 2-10 days. So that’s at least positive. The ‘not-so-positive’ was they show all the submissions from other writers. There were at least ten a day. Wow, that’s a lot of submissions. And that’s what I’m fighting against. The editorial staff usually spend 30 seconds to a minute on each manuscript. They don’t care if the story is wonderful — because they’ll never get to it. They’re looking to reject a story.

I need that one break. To get that break, I have to make it a numbers game, I guess. Write more, send out more. More rejections.

I should probably start another project…I have one in mind that I’ve been mulling over for several months. It’s about an assassin who ‘jumps’ into someone else’s body for a job. When the job goes south, the assassin is stuck in that body and the accompanying identity.

His identity – a world famous stage actor. The assassin continues in this role, becoming an actor in his own right…forgetting about his days as a killer. Until the day when his body comes looking for him…

Still working on the outline for the Secret of Folloman Finn. I’m on Chapter 3 still. I’ve done extensive outlines for Chapters 1, 2, 6, and 7. So I’m getting there. I’m just not writing which can always be a danger.

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Sadly, I pick movies like this all the time. A night-out comes so rarely that most times, I pick something that is safe, popular, and won’t engage me in any way except for pure entertainment.

Sometimes, that strategy works (Talledega Nights) but most times, it’s a failure. Night at the Museum was a failure.

Derivative, unoriginal, and not funny. We’re left with some great special effects (skeletal T-Rex) and not much else.

It’s also one of those movies where you can tell the studio got involved and told them to add a Romantic Interest though there’s no real room for such an interest. In Museum, the interest doesn’t even develop into a sub-plot. Seriously, we won’t be upset if there’s no romance. Sure, a good romance can add a lot to a movie. It can drive many movies. But it can also bring down a lot of movies.

Luckily for Night at the Museum, the movie can’t really fall, because that would require it to be, well, good in the first place.

I’ve never read the book that this movie was based. I’m sure it was much better than the movie. I’m sure it was also a book aimed at 12 year olds.

The ‘what-if’ that generated the idea was probably the same one that created Toy Story, Jumanji, and many others (what happens when the lights go down at the — fill in location here). Soon, there’ll be a movie about what happens when the fridge door closes.

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In a rare epiphany for Randall Quintal, he realized that he wasn’t nearly as clever as he’d thought. At the age of 25, he’d always prided himself on his ability to out think the opposition; it didn’t matter that he had never held a steady job, or graduated from high school. Randall had just added those to his list of why he was smarter than others.

Bomb making was dangerous. Randall had known that. He had taken all the precautions. Fan in the window. Rubber gloves. Clean work area to prevent contamination.

The Hydrogen Peroxide came from Wal-mart and cost $1.99. The Magnesium Oxide he had farmed from old double D batteries. The Sulfuric Acid he had stolen from his night school chemistry lab.

He realized now the flaw in his plan was not writing down the instructions. Instructions? What did he need those for? After all, there were only three ingredients. But perhaps if he would’ve had some guide, he wouldn’t have added them out of order.

Perhaps he wouldn’t have been smoking.

In the duration it took the blue fireball to burst to its limit on the second floor of his Mother’s home, he realized that something had gone terribly wrong. The white siding outside his bedroom buckled like an overripe blister. Shingles cart wheeled from the roof, imbedding themselves in surrounding houses like ninja stars. Windows across the neighborhood reflected the blue explosion like flashbulbs of an old-time press camera.

Randall’s innards squashed as if clamped with a fist, before the concussion smashed him backwards into the blister. His vertebrae popped loose from his spine. In one small bit of luck, his nervous system was severed from his brain, disconnecting the signals of screaming pain. His head smacked into wood and concrete, his sight vanishing as his cranium dissolved.

The fire held him, his skin melting like wax.

Then he was ripped through the building’s blister by the final shove of the fireball and he plummeted to the interlocking brick of the driveway.

At least it would take weeks to clean up this mess, he thought.

He bounced twice. And died.

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