The Thirteenth Hour Podcast

Thanks for listening!

https://13thhr.wordpress.com/2024/11/11/the-thirteenth-hour-podcast-483-and-like-a-hood-ornament-62-reading-the-rocketeer-movie-novelization-chapter-5/

https://13thhr.wordpress.com/2024/10/28/the-thirteenth-hour-podcast-481-and-like-a-hood-ornament-60-reading-the-rocketeer-movie-novelization-chapter-3/

Of note, I had previously hosted all my podcast episodes on the Internet Archive, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving various bits of pop culture that otherwise would disappear into the ether. They recently got hacked and are working on getting back online, but if you believe in free access to information, in the meantime, please help support them - https://archive.org/

https://13thhr.wordpress.com/2024/10/28/the-thirteenth-hour-podcast-481-and-like-a-hood-ornament-60-reading-the-rocketeer-movie-novelization-chapter-3/

Thanks for listening!

https://13thhr.wordpress.com/2024/10/14/the-thirteenth-hour-podcast-479-and-like-a-hood-ornament-58-reading-the-rocketeer-movie-novelization-chapter-1/

The past few months, I've been happy to host an adult open gym at a local gymnastics school.  Adult bodies are different from those of kids, and kids programming is mostly what gymnastics facilities tend to cater to.  Gymnastics for adults often ends up looking and being different than it does for kids.  We are older, our bodies don’t move in the same ways as they used to, and we may feel rusty or uncoordinated.  But if the desire is there, it’s like anything else - the first step is the hardest.  So needless to say, I've been very proud of the folks who have shown up to train!   

I started gymnastics as a sophomore in high school, mostly because a friend asked me to sign a petition to help save the boys' gymnastics team from being cut.  I signed and eventually decided I'd make good on the signature when the petition worked.  I ended up doing it the next three years and have been doing it every since (though not all the events). 

One thing that always puzzled me, though, is why there were so few opportunities for folks, especially men, outside of a high school or college, to practice.  And while I have been fortunate to have been able to find places over the years that have allowed adults some windows to practice, those gyms have generally been few and far between.  (The situation has not improved ... my high school's gymnastics team was eventually cut, and even at a college level, gymnastics, especially men's gymnastics can be tough to find - see this article about Ohio State). 

My high school gymnastics coach used to say that a lot of gymnastics is mental. I think he said that partly to motivate us to do our homework, but at this point, I understand another meaning … because you are doing things that are unnatural and deliberately putting your body at risk, you are constantly battling your own fear and sense of self preservation … which you feel more as an adult with more developed frontal lobes.  

So I think for anyone who falls a lot or has the potential of falling or getting thrown -  martial artists, wrestlers, football players, rugby players, breakers, stuntpeople, acrobatic skiers and skaters, the list goes on and on, some time spent in a gym to not only learn how to fall and develop airsense but also combat your own fears by deliberately doing things that disorient and scare you in a controlled and safe way are critical.  Obviously, I'm biased having done this since I was a teenager, but I will say that despite the intervening years and changes brought on by aging, my views have changed little.  Although as humans, we naturally want to move 180 degrees away from things that frighten us, we don't grow unless we push ourselves outside out comfort zone.  You can obviously take that to the extreme, but if done at a pace you can control and in a manner that allows you do get better at skills in a stepwise fashion, there is a real sense of ownership over your body that you start to attain, which leads to confidence. 

And that's why I wanted to include a bit of it in The Thirteenth Hour when Logan and his fellow Imperial Rangers are going through their initial training.  At the time, I had only in a few settings experienced the melding of martial arts and acrobatics.  I had not done things like capoeira or kung fu yet, and of the styles I had done (tae kwon do, tang soo do, a bit of hapkido), the main crossover happened around learning breakfalls and rolls, and that was about it.  The style of "martial arts tricking" had yet to reach its heyday - that would happen in the late 90s and 2000s ... read more at

I'm doing this episode as a future note to myself about some projects that I've been toying around for awhile that I'd like to delve into in the next few months:

-An illustrated children's book that I'm temporarily calling "The Imperial Ranger's son" - a story written from the perspective of a child in the Capital City of Tartec (the kingdom where a lot of The Thirteenth Hour takes place), who is in school with other kids his age whose parents don't necessarily work for the Empire of King Darian.  Logan in The Thirteenth Hour grapples internally with the idea of being a representative of a government whose actions he doesn't always agree with, but he is an adult.  What happens for children when no adults are around is complex, especially as children try to come to terms with opposing views of the world and how their parents fit in.  We learn views (and prejudices) from those around us, so what would happen when a child who has a parent working for the Empire is mocked at school for such a lineage or told his father is not going to live very long as an Imperial Ranger?  What happens to him and his mother when his father leaves for months and the others in the class whose sensibilities lie elsewhere respond with a mixture of pity and derision?  Isn't it not dissimilar to the current black and white state of affairs to separates the current political climate in the US?  I think it's something that could be written simply, with underlying themes of love and parental responsibility with deeper undertones that comment on tribalism and fear of what we don't understand/agree with that could be appreciated by adults or older children.

In episode 448, I spoke about a idea concerning a Thirteenth Hour card game that would fill in a part of the book, near the end, that I never got to write about.

In episode 446, I spoke about a Tomb Raider card game that might take what I learned making the Rocketeer card game and apply it to another fan project, also using sprites I designed before. 

Speaking of the Rocketeer, while I was making the Rocketeer Twine game as the backstory for the card game, I got the idea for a Twine text based game featuring Aurora from The Thirteenth Hour, since there's a part near the beginning of the book where she is working at a inn.  I thought it might be interesting to have a sort of "inn simulator" with some kind of overarching storyline (?a mystery - e.g. perhaps a crime is committed in one of the rooms and Imperial soldiers are sent in to investigate.  Aurora mentions at one point in The Thirteenth Hour that she doesn't have an especially high opinion of Imperial soldiers and hopes Logan won't turn out like them, so perhaps this is how that came to be) that occurs as she is trying to navigate the ins and outs of helping customers, serving food and drinks, and mucking out the stables. 

Thanks for listening!

https://wordpress.com/post/13thhr.wordpress.com/14610

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #477: Ideas on Some Future Thirteenth Hour Projects and More – A Children’s Book, Card Games, a Twine Text Game

https://archive.org/download/podcast-477/Podcast%20477.mp3

I’m doing this episode as a future note to myself about some projects that I’ve been toying around for awhile that I’d like to delve into in the next few months:

-An illustrated children’s book that I’m temporarily calling “The Imperial Ranger’s son” – a story written from the perspective of a child in the Capital City of Tartec (the kingdom where a lot of The Thirteenth Hour takes place), who is in school with other kids his age whose parents don’t necessarily work for the Empire of King Darian.  Logan in The Thirteenth Hour grapples internally with the idea of being a representative of a government whose actions he doesn’t always agree with, but he is an adult.  What happens for children when no adults are around is complex, especially as children try to come to terms with opposing views of the world and how their parents fit in.  We learn views (and prejudices) from those around us, so what would happen when a child who has a parent working for the Empire is mocked at school for such a lineage or told his father is not going to live very long as an Imperial Ranger?  What happens to him and his mother when his father leaves for months and the others in the class whose sensibilities lie elsewhere respond with a mixture of pity and derision?  Isn’t it not dissimilar to the current black and white state of affairs to separates the current political climate in the US?  I think it’s something that could be written simply, with underlying themes of love and parental responsibility with deeper undertones that comment on tribalism and fear of what we don’t understand/agree with that could be appreciated by adults or older children.

In episode 448, I spoke about a idea concerning a Thirteenth Hour card game that would fill in a part of the book, near the end, that I never got to write about.

In episode 446, I spoke about a Tomb Raider card game that might take what I learned making the Rocketeer card game and apply it to another fan project, also using sprites I designed before. 

Speaking of the Rocketeer, while I was making the Rocketeer Twine game as the backstory for the card game, I got the idea for a Twine text based game featuring Aurora from The Thirteenth Hour, since there’s a part near the beginning of the book where she is working at a inn.  I thought it might be interesting to have a sort of “inn simulator” with some kind of overarching storyline (?a mystery – e.g. perhaps a crime is committed in one of the rooms and Imperial soldiers are sent in to investigate.  Aurora mentions at one point in The Thirteenth Hour that she doesn’t have an especially high opinion of Imperial soldiers and hopes Logan won’t turn out like them, so perhaps this is how that came to be) that occurs as she is trying to navigate the ins and outs of helping customers, serving food and drinks, and mucking out the stables. 

Thanks for listening!

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Don’t forget that the original hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is available on Etsy!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well. 

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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ynth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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As mentioned last week, I attended a great event this past week put on by Whistlekick, Free Training Day Mid-Atlantic - took some great classes, taught a class, met some great people, caught up with ones I met last year - all great stuff.  If you are open minded and want to learn, head over to Whistlekick's free training day event page to learn about upcoming trainings (two in the next few months off the top of my head).  If you are interested in writing for Martial Journal, Whistlekick's online martial arts magazine, check out their site - I've done so a number of times and have always found MJ fun to write for as well as read.

The Thirteenth Hour workout deck that I discussed the last few weeks is, I think, an early version of either a more modular draft of something to come or the early whispering of some kind of martial arts game/ training tool; I'm not sure which yet.  Either way, the beta tester digital pre-release version of these cards is available to all free on Patreon.   The box design thus far: 

Check out the deck there, and thanks for listening!

Check out the deck there, and thanks for listening!

Closely related is a class I'll be teaching at Whistlekick's Free Training Day Mid-Atlantic on hot to rain in small spaces, as the very premise of these cards was born out of not really having a dedicated training space at home and what spaces I could use were irregular and generally small.  So we'll be discuss what can reasonably be done in a 3.5-4' x 6-8' space.  If you  are in the Eastern PA - NJ - DE - MD area or just want to take part in a great event where you will learn a lot with some great people interested in learning, not rank or one upping one another or standing around feeling important (or whatever other negative stereotype martial artists have), check it out!

https://wordpress.com/post/13thhr.wordpress.com/14599