Benjamin K. Hewett's Blog

About 30 bajillion years ago, I was in high school. I’d like to say that my friends and I were “normal,” but that would only be true if you think an unhealthy obsession with 90’s era video equipment is normal.

Even though we only had one camera between us, we tried to work in a home video whenever the teachers gave us open-ended group projects.

There were no iPhones. No fancy digital video editors. Just my friend Jared and two-paired VCRs, slaving away late into the night.

When filming, it was also essential to get it right on the first take, because the project was always due the very next day, and the crappy lighting was just going to get a whole lot crappier as the sun went down.

When I went to college, I left the video camera behind, and in my aging vernacular, “home-video” gradually redefined itself as something you did when your kids were acting silly.

But in 2019 or 2020, I came across a hilarious video of one of my writing friends pretending to get reviews from all around the world. Every time I watched the video, I laughed at the funny things Mike says while “advertising” some of the best middle grade fiction I’ve read recently.

We talked on-and-off about doing a spinoff, but we didn’t get around to making it until 2023. And then I had to relearn how to video edit.

It was fantastic fun.

Enjoy!

Watch “Foreign Experts”

My sister-in-law was sorting photos with my mom tonight and sent me this gem:

Yep.

That really is me.

I’m surprised somebody caught this on honest-to-goodness camera film, mid 1990’s. It made me laugh. Pretty evident that I’ve always been into fantasy.   

Last weekend, I got to do a show in San Antonio. And people like this always come, dressed up in costumes just like the one above.  Or rather, a hundred times better. Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington were both there, but then this guy shows up (not pictured here) looking more like Kit Harington than Kit Harington, wolfskin pelts and all.  

And then there were these other costumes.  More my speed. Kids showing up in homemade outfits, made from the best they had. And you can tell they didn’t have a big budget or professional tailors. But still awesome.  

So just for funsies, here’s my costume, and my blog post, made from the best I had, which was about 13 minutes and an old picture from 1995, in a sparkly shirt, with a real sword, and a Robin Hood feather cap made by my dad.  (I think.)  Not perfect, but good enough.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to talk.

MINECRAFT MINISERIES

(for Part I, click here)

“Won’t I suffocate?” I ask my sixteen-year-old son, whilst standing in a three-block-deep hole and trying to remember the super-secret Xbox handshake for laying sod.  It isn’t enough to promise your son a day of Minecraft. You also have to survive it. And not just in the physical sense.

“No.”

“But I’ll be completely sealed in!”

“Exactly. Minecraft monsters have no concept of object permanence. If you seal the hole, they’ll wander off.” [Like some adolescents, whenever chores start.]

“Are you sure that’s my best strategy?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t look at me, deftly maneuvering his character for the greater good of Minecraft. He avoids directly mentioning my crappy grasp of avatar control. “That’s the best you can do ‘til morning.”

I throw a block of freshly mined dirt into the air as instructed, but it does not seal the opening above me as promised but falls back into the hole and bounces around by my feet.

Stupid dirt.

“Not the B button, Dad. The left trigger.”

“Very sound advice.  Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

I consider again the possibility of slipping the controller to my daughter (the youngest) and incrementally teleporting myself to the home office. I have other, very real holes to dig out of, and burying myself alive (virtually) hits a little close to home. But somehow, at Christmas, leaving feels wrong. Welch on this promise and I might as well douse the Christmas tree in gasoline and light a match.

“That’s the right bumper, Dad,” he corrects me again. “Use the trigger. No. . . No. . . the left trigger.”

Dirt sails ineffectually through the air again. “Crap!” In terms of advice, I can confirm that it is much easier to give than receive.

I can hear monster sounds: grunts, groans, and creepy music that promise all sorts of impending doom.  One split-screen over, my son is halfway through turning his own sod-tomb into a hobbit mansion.

A mottled-green monster plops into my unfinished hole, sizzling like fuse.

“Ope!” My son says. “That’s a creeper.”

“It’s flash—”

KABOOM!

My son’s avatar stops digging and face-palms.  

My tiny effort is now a giant, smoking crater. The few, pitiful treasures I’ve painstakingly gathered are splattered across an empty grassy plain, glittering like dewdrops of pain beneath the night sky.

The screen fades from red to gray. (Well, my half of the screen fades. My son’s half is fine.)

After a few seconds my avatar reincarnates again, alone and unequipped in a field full of monsters, including the green explody kind.

“Dig!” my son commands. “Dig, you fool!” [Insert Gandalf link.]

I dig. Miraculously I manage to seal myself in the sod tomb, hands shaking on the controller. A happy little accident, as Bob Ross would say.

I am never going to survive a day of this, I think. I ready my ‘dig/punch’ function, determined to land at least one hit before getting detonated.

“Good job, Dad.”

Wait, what? Was that positive reinforcement?

Gradually the thrill of not dying is replaced with the dissatisfaction of sitting in a crummy hole. “This is boring. When do I get some payback?”

“Stay there,” my son says. “We’ll get to that.”

I look over at his side of the screen: he’s sprinting across the monster-laden plain recovering my lost goodies. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

And suddenly, it’s my son, the wise, old mentor.

“We’ll talk about retribution, after you make some armor.”

I LOVED THIS BOOK . I loved it the first time I read it: unfinished, unedited, and arriving in small bites. It sucked me in and captured my imagination. Finished, polished, and published, I’ve read it again and love it even more.

The Talent Thief is the story of Tiffany Tudwell, an unlucky girl with an unfortunate name, cursed to live in the shadows by her uncanny knack for embarrassing, highly-public mistakes . . . until the day she realizes she can borrow other people’s talents.

Slowly and carefully, Tiffany makes her exit from the shadows, despite Candace Palmer’s best efforts, a girl who lives for stealing the spotlight and making other kids feel insecure. The Talent Thief felt like a heist, hallmark, and heroine story all balled into one satisfying package about confidence, friendship, and self-acceptance.

And it’s funny:

Brady did a double take. “Do that again.“

I had hardly even meant to do the trick. It was so second nature to me that I’d simply done it without thinking. “Do what again? Buy a muffin? I only had two dollars and eighty–”

“I will give you another muffin, if you do that trick again.” Brady looked expectantly from my hand to my eyes. “Consider it like getting paid for a performance.”

“I can’t, actually.” I clicked my tongue.

“Why not?”

“Quarter keeps on disappearing,” I said, acting as if I were going to hand him the quarter, only to have it vanish. It wasn’t just that my moves were smooth. My performance, banter, misdirection were smooth. Maybe it was all part of the magic-act talent.

Brady blinked in amazement. “Please tell me you’re not gonna pull it out of my ear.”

“I can’t do that either,” I said, reaching across the counter to the side of Brady’s head. I pulled my hand back to reveal a handful of muffin crumbs. “Too much muffin crammed in there.”

If you liked The Deep End of Life, you will probably like The Talent Thief. If money’s tight and you can’t afford to buy it, message me, and I’ll let you borrow my copy. Fair warning on that front, though: It already has four “holds” on it. . .

MINECRAFT MINISERIES

Sometimes I’m a bad dad.

About two years ago, my son made this point effectively and unintentionally. We were visiting my sister, and an argument broke out around the XBOX., and whose turn it was. I went to the game room to investigate, and in the mayhem, somebody handed me a controller.  Cool uncle, right?

“Here, Uncle Ben, it’s your turn.”

“Um. Okay. What are we playing?”

“Minecraft.”

I’d heard of Minecraft. I’d heard a lot about Minecraft. In fact, I’d heard so much about Minecraft that I’d deliberately avoided it. “Mine-Crack” some of the kids called it. With all those nieces and nephews staring at me, though, I froze. The people had decided. Who was I to argue?

I am not an uncoordinated person, but the XBOX controller for Minecraft can be tricky, with its colored buttons, dual control sticks, dual triggers, D-Pad, and dual bumpers. Even worse when all your nieces and nephews are staring at you, and you’re trying desperately to maintain that thin façade of coolness that all adults think they wear, even after getting blown up several times by a green proximity bomb with legs.

My youngest daughter sets down her controller and tries to re-explain the controls to me while the rest of the cousins giggle at my poor performance. And from the back of the cousin pile my son’s voice cuts through chatter like the infamous diamond blade of Minecraft:

“You know, all I ever wanted in elementary school was to spend a day playing Minecraft with Dad. And I never got to.”

That hit me right between the left and right trigger. Or maybe the D-Pad. He’s 16 years old now, and probably too grown up to care. I had never once played Minecraft with him. Not even for an hour, though I’d listened to him talk about it endlessly.

The point of being a parent, I think, is so you can feel bad about yourself more often.

The point of being a parent is perhaps also hoping eternally, that you might get at least one thing right.  

So for Christmas, I gave him a copy of Minecraft in his stocking. I’m probably the only historical example of a lame dad giving his sixteen-year-old son a five-year-old copy of Minecraft. About eight years too late, if you don’t think too hard about the math.

He sorta grinned when he took off the wrapping paper. “You know how old this is, right?”

“Yeah.” I grinned back. “But I’ve got the day off.”

BLUSHING AT REVIEWS

A while back, I got this great review on Amazon. In fact, it was so kind it made me blush. So I did what any normal person would do and copied it off Amazon to read it over and over.

And then I modified it, because I couldn’t help myself:

Thanks for all the great reviews. They help the right readers find and purchase my books.

Announcing the publication of my second German novel translation, “Die Schwerter von Fortrus”, which is out today!!! If you speak German and enjoy Fantasy stories with clever (anti) heroes, lots of action and some dark magic sprinkled on top, check out this series. (If you don’t speak German but want to do me a favor, download anyway [image error] and share with all your German-speaking friends.

For a behind-the-scenes look at working with a translator, check out this video from Life, the Universe, and Everything, February 2021.

For more information on my German releases, go to https://bkhewett.com/buecher/ .

Buy on:

Amazon.com

Amazon.de

Thalia

Hugendubel

Genialokal

You can find me this weekend at America’s Center Convention Complex, booth A317. Come say hello!

#convention2022 #fanexpostlouis2022 #comiccon

I’ll be at Life, the Universe and Everything this year – as a panelist and panel moderator. There’ll also be a book signing (more details soon). 

For those of you who don’t know, LTUE is a three-day academic symposium on all aspects of science fiction and fantasy, with panels, presentations and papers on writing, art, literature, film, gaming and a chance for fans and writers to hang out. 

I’d love to see you there. 

OTHER EVENTS

“Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it.”

–Agatha Christie

Idlewood Manor is about to be torn down.

In a rare show of generosity, it’s cantankerous caretaker Mr. Llewellyn opens the manor doors to ten groups from different walks of life. At face value, it’s just a weekend romp, a chance to experience the discomforts and delights of a bygone era. But each group or has its own secret. One group is constantly looking under chairs and peeping through keyholes. A man wanders around the grounds with a stick that looks suspiciously like a metal detector. A young couple flees each time the other guests approach them.

Anna, Charlie, and Emily begin investigating the mystery of Idlewood Manor independently. Gradually, Anna’s fearless exploration, Charlie’s gift for codes, and Emily’s eye for detail coalesce into a clearer picture of what’s been happening at Idlewood, and the kids come together to solve the mystery of the manor.

I loved the quick-stroke character sketches that come out naturally through the narrative:

“Mr. Llewellyn struck Emily as the kind of man who liked children fine, but only after they’d celebrated their eighteenth birthday.” 

Or

“‘It will be fun,’ his mother said. ‘Anna’s probably already out there.’ Charlie doubted it. Hitting a ball around the lawn with a mallet didn’t seem wild enough for Anna.”

The kids sounded like kids I knew, and the suspicious characters like mix-breeds born of Encyclopedia Brown and Agatha Christie. The prose felt so confident that I googled “explorer Virginia Maines,” only to realize she’s a fictional rather than historic personage. And despite by best intentions, Allison had me ciphering out codes by the end of the novel, and not because the narrative requires it.

My favorite part was the underlying theme: Not all treasures are found in deep in a musty vault.

The Explorer’s Code, Allison K Hymas

A Junior Library Guild Selection