Tag Archives: reading

Catherynne M. Valente’s Space Opera

It is difficult to describe how Catherynne M. Valente’s new book Space Opera manages to be so wonderfully resonant of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy yet so insistently, inimitably her own. And yet, that’s the challenge. Valente’s … Continue reading

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An Armload of Fur and Leaves

In the last year or so, I found a genre that hadn’t previously been on my radar, but which I really enjoy: furry fiction. Kyell Gold had put up his novel Black Angel on the SFWA member forums, where members … Continue reading

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Where I’ll be at Norwescon, 2018

I have a table in the Writers Alley this year and will be there starting Friday morning. Stop by! I will have books for sale as well as the “Writers Just Fucking Write” keychains. Friday Literary Techniques for Genre Fiction: … Continue reading

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Reading Doc Savage: The Czar of Fear

This is number twenty-two of the Bantam Reprints. On the green-toned cover, Doc is menaced by several figures in black hoods with glowing green eyes. A trick of the light makes it appear that the middle figure actually has three glowing green eyes, but the text does not support this, alas. This figure also has a shape half-obscured on its chest that will turn out to be a green bell but in this looks more like one of those things you put over food to keep them warm. Doc is posed very awkwardly, head turned towards the men and stepping toward them while wrenching his chest towards us in order to display rippling muscles half-obscured by the customary ripped shirt.

The narrative begins with a radio squawking and a man in a lunch-room: “pale fright rode his face”. He’s gulping his fourth mug of coffee, accompanied by two women, one “a striking beauty” in her twenties and the other “a pleasant-faced grandmother type.” We learn their respective names are Jim, Alice, and Aunt Nora and they’re in search of Doc Savage.
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Media Consumed in October, 2017

Not much October travel, yahoo! Game-wise it’s still StarDew Valley and Skyrim on computer and console, D&D5E and Star Wars RPG (Fantasy Flight) for tabletop. In television, I’m happy to have a new season of DC Legends and The Flash … Continue reading

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Media Consumed in September

I was on the road for most of September. That photo’s taken in the elevator of the Flatiron Building while I was in NYC, but other places I stayed included Dallas, Texas and Pocatello, Idaho. (More on that to come!) Here’s what I read in September, according to my notes, which always seem to leave out some stuff. Continue reading

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Westercon 2016 Schedule for Cat Rambo

Friday 11am Writer’s Workshop Lincoln Fri Jul 1 11:00:am – 12:00:pm This is a pre-registered event. Potential writers meet with a selection of professionals for constructive feedback regarding recent work. Cat Rambo, Frog Jones, Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Lizzy Shannon … Continue reading

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End of the Year Reading Recommendations

I spent a good chunk of my summer reading through a multi-volume fantasy series for the sake of completeness. The series will remain nameless, because I can’t in good conscience recommend it, but it did impact the amount of other … Continue reading

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5 Things To Do In Your First 3 Paragraphs

Display your command of language. It’s worthwhile for a writer to think about poetry, and all its devices like assonance and alliteration, metaphor and allusion, internal rhythm, even meter. Save scraps of speech that you like, stud those paragraphs with wonderful things and spend with wild abandon from your store, because this is the make or break moment, when your reader decides whether or not to continue. You cannot lavish enough attention on your reader in the form of these paragraphs. Continue reading

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