D.E. Dunlop
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Stephen C. Mills

2/26/2013

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Watch for my upcoming blog interview with internet cartoonist and the creator of web comic "Worth It", Stephen C. Mills, right here at dedunlop.com

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Happy Valentine's Day

2/14/2013

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Happy Valentine's Day Kelly, my Love. My heart dances to the sparkle in your eyes. I love you forever.

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The Name of the Wind

2/10/2013

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"The Name of the Wind" is the first instalment of the "King Killer Chronicle" by Patrick Rothfuss.
The story is told in first person narrative.  An Inn Keeper going by the name of Kote, a pseudonym, we learn early on, is actually a living legend whose true name is Kvothe.  He tells the tale of his life, beginning when he was a child growing up in  a high quality travelling troupe.  He learns Sympathy from a travelling Arcanist, but his troupe is murdered and he left alone.  He finds his way to the University where the Arcanist was trained.  He loves music to the point of life itself.  At the University he wants to learn the name of the wind.  Naming is one of the disciplines there and the students learn the true name of a thing in order to manipulate it.
"The King Killer Chronicle" is set up in days.  Each of the three novels is one day of Kvothe telling his tale to the Chronicler.

It is incredibly believable and fantastically written.  It reads like a real life tale.  The fantastic flows seamlessly and effortlessly throughout.
I fell in love with this book at the Prologue.
A Silence of Three Parts

It was night again.  The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.
The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking.  If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn's sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves.  If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night.  If there had been music...but no,of course there was no music.  In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.
Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news.  In doing this  they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one.  It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.
The third silence was not an easy thing to notice.  If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar.  It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire.  It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar.  And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.  
The man had true-red hair, red as flame.  His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.
The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his.  This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself.  It was deep and wide as autumn's ending.  It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone.  It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die."
Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of The Wind.



The Name of the Wind is an absolute must read.  I cannot say enough about it.  I eagerly await the third instalment. 
Again I say, read it.  If flows like poetry.
D.E.


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Bleary

2/9/2013

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He stood in the door for a moment.  An increasingly longer moment, he noticed as years progressed.  He removed the floppy leather hat and placed it on the peg beside the door once he could see well enough to find it.  He raked his fingers through his bushy beard and inhaled the soft bite of stale smoke.  The interior of the shack was just as faded as the exterior.  The dim light strained through the single grimy window on the south wall.  Dry plants hung from the low rafters. Traps of various types and size hung on the wall.  He shuffled over to the wood stove in the centre of the room.  It was slightly warm to the touch.  He opened the iron door, a swirl of ash breathed hope into the coals as some fell to the mantle.  Without concern for the new mess he through a small piece of wood into the midst.  The addition caused a more violent rustling of sparks and ash.  After making the appropriate adjustments to fuel and heat he closed the door to within a few centimetres.  He shuffled back toward the door with his "green" coat in hand to hang it on the other peg by the door.  He clapped his large leathery hands and rubbed them together briskly.  The sharpness of new smoke caught his attention and he adjusted the flue to prevent  more smoke pouring into the room.  Immediately the brightness of flames leapt out of the vents.  He blinked out the smoke and momentary blindness while rolling up his flannel sleeves.  He struck a match to the oil lamp on the table as the last rays of the setting sun fell from the window ledge.  Once again he raked his fingers through his salt and pepper beard, mostly salt at this junction in his life, he mused.
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More Books at Smashwords!

2/8/2013

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Check out, "Stolen" at Smashwords.com
Picture
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Faded

2/7/2013

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The man trudged wearily through the meadow.  The sky was grey and the sun was low in the west.  The grass danced lazily in the afternoon breeze beneath a handful of sparrows as they flitted from the varying heights of weeds.  Time passed and the man's progress remained unmarked, so slow was his traverse.  The shack he eventually approached was nestled in the side of the low rolling foothills of the nearby mountain range.  The grasses grew waist high around its walls. Some even sprouted from its roof and from between the hand hewn logs that made up its construct.  The wood was sun bleached to a dead grey, but the man's memory told him his home was still a rich reddish brown.  He stopped at the door and turned to the west to gauge the rest of the day.  Unimpressed, he wiped his nose from elbow to cuff of the tattered woollen coat.  That too, had a deadened look which was obscured by yet another lie from his memory.  He always referred to it as his green coat in remembrance of its original deep and vibrant colour.  His eyes briefly scanned the horizon, he turned, ducked his head and entered through the low colourless door.
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    Author

    I was born in Southern Ontario. I now live in Southern Alberta with my Beautiful wife and our three awesome boys.  I sneak as much time as I can for writing.

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