Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

You won’t be bringing down any castle walls with this trebuchet but it is a pretty strong floor model sized siege engine. It hurls a tennis ball.

The big thing I focused on with this trebuchet is “fast and easy”. I wanted to try to put together a powerful treb without all the hassle. And this fits the bill pretty good. It took me a few hours to design and make it. You should be able to build it in a couple of hours. I try to improvise all common parts and it uses just a few pieces of two by four and two barbells for a total counterweight of 20 pounds.

The project is located here and I will be posting to that page a youtube video explaining more and showing it firing off. The Tennis Ball Trebuchet

Mead is a bit of a strange brew and if you will excuse the obvious reference it is also a bit of an anachronism.   A lot of people who are interested in Medieval subjects are also very interested in Mead. But it has been my experience that very few people have actually tasted it. It isn’t readily available in your local wine shop, although, this is slowly changing over the past few years. And you can now get it online (depending on what state you live in).

And this brings me to the actual topic of this blog post. What do you do if you want to give mead a try but can’t find it local?

Yesterday I received a bottle of Peach Mead from Hidden Legend Winery and of course, I had to break it open. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is gentle and flavorful and it seems to me that this mead is a great introduction to the art and craft of mead. It has that distinct Mead taste and it has what I consider to be what makes mead beautiful and unique. It has that ability to morph itself to a wide palette of flavors. This is the real beauty of mead as compared to regular wine from grapes. Mead is a blank canvas that lends itself to flavoring. You can get mead in just about any flavor imaginable from Cranberries to pumpkin, apple, pear, and well you get the idea.

But there is one little thing about mead you should know. It has the long standing reputation of being a strong brew that will put hair on your chest, and there is a bit of truth to this. Mead can have a bit of a bite, all depending on the recipe. So, in my opinion, you have to find a mead that is a bit gentler. And the peach mead from Hidden Legend fits this requirement perfectly, it is a subtle mead that will give you a good sense of peach and of what mead is truly all about - in my opinion anyway.

So, if you are looking to try Mead for the first time i recommend you get two bottles. First you should get a bottle of plain mead which is just honey-wine; This way you get to taste a basic mead;  and second you should get a bottle of flavored mead so you can experience what mead truly is all about.  Here are a couple of resources for you.  Mead makes a great conversation piece come holiday visiting.

Hidden Legend Winery - They are in Montana and ship to roughly 15 states so you should check their list of states to see if they can ship to you. And, the delivery has to be signature accepted by someone over 21 years of age - You can’t let the kids take this delivery!

And, if you don’t already know, I have a mead making site where you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about making mead, including lots of video tutorials. The Joy of Mead.

Wassail! and you will get your mead in time for the holidays

Here is the label of the Peach Mead I just tried:

In february a new video game is being released called Dante’s Inferno and it looks like it is going to be a terrific game. It is based on one third of the Triptych poem by Dante, the Inferno (Hell). One of the most interesting things about this video game is the ease of creativity that came with it. It is almost as if Dante were designing a video game when he wrote the Divine Comedy. And it is easy to see how the story could be adapted to a video game.

First off it has an overarching theme “Beatrice has been kidnapped to the depths of hell and our hero “Dante” has to enter and rescue her. - pretty much a perfect overall theme.

Secondly, Hell is broken down into nine levels. Hmmm… can it get any more video game than that? Nine levels to battle through and each level with it’s own theme like Lust, Gluttony, Wrath, Violence etc.

Finally when you are making a video game a lot of thought has to go into the environment or world that the game takes place in. Will it be set in a medieval world? A far-off planet? In the case of this game it takes place in what might be the best environment of all - Hell! Does it get any better than that?

An awful lot has been made of Joseph Campbell’s Heroes Journey. And well, it’s a great idea and a near perfect formula that just about every epic fantasy book or movie follows. Heck, even stuff that is not epic fantasy follows the Heroes Journey. But, it seems to me that Dante had this formula figured out a full seven hundred years earlier!

I have spent the past couple of days working on the medieval website and have added a lot of things.

These things include:

•  a section on medieval words which has a bunch of stuff like the weapons and armor of knights.
• And I have included a drawing and the parts of the medieval armor of a horse.
• I also have a new section on Medieval Shields which includes drawings of the major types of shields
• The Medieval Castles calendars are out for 2010 I have a page here.
• A selection of Medieval Chess sets is also something you might want to look at
• Medieval Christmas Gifts - seeing as Christmas is almost here!

All in all I have done a lot of work on the medieval websites in the past couple of days! Buzz on over and take a peek: All Things Medieval

Also, if you are a mead maker I have made a couple of additions to the mead making website which include Mugs, Goblets and wine glasses for mead drinking.

 So, what else have I been up to?

Lot of stuff going on with me and I am still on track to finish my next novel (The Left Handed Sword) by the end of this calendar year. I am also quite a bit done with a new book on how to make fantasy dioramas. Lot of it complete but I am not sure when it will be published. I also am working on a how to make mead book. Lots of fun stuff coming

At the end of every year Amazon.com releases the best of the year in books. It is a highly anticipated look at the editor picks, award winners, and top tens. They have released their best of for 2009 and on the list are of course a bunch of great books.  These include a Dark Fantasy novel by Kami Garcia called Beautiful Creatures and the latest installment in Rick Riordan’s Olympian series entitled The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book 5). You can see the complete list here: Amazon.com’s Best of 2009

Amazon also does the top ten of each genre and here are the top ten in Best of Science Fiction & Fantasy :

1. Palimpsest
2. The Red Tree
3. The Other Lands (Acacia, Book 2)
4. American Fantastic Tales Boxed Set
5. Boneshaker (Sci Fi Essential Books)
6. The Other City (Eastern European Literature) (Eastern European Literature Series)
7. Yellow Blue Tibia
8. Eclipse 3: New Science Fiction and Fantasy
9. Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing
10. The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

I have chosen my Top Three from this list and you can read more about them on my Fantasy Guide Website here: Will’s Picks in the Science Fiction & Fantasy Genre for 2009.