A Publishers’ Weekly article today led me to Laura Miller’s essay in Salon.com, which in turn led me to Eleanor Catton’s essay in New Zealand’s Metro Magazine. Both should be read in sequence, and are probably a far more valuable use of reading time than my blog. I cite them because they hit a nerve with me,…
Read More Fancy ten-dollar college wordsCrossed Genres Publications has just released a new spec fiction anthology with a wonderful premise: stable, functional, ‘alternative’ families in science fiction and fantasy. (Because we all know the trope of the Orphaned Hero, or the Hero with A Dysfunctional Family.) What if that wasn’t the case – what if the strong hero or cunning…
Read More Fierce Family anthologyIn January of 2013, I wrote this post about J.R. Ward’s then-upcoming paranormal book Lover At Last, and the new opportunities for M/M romance to reach mainstream audiences. I was hopeful but nervous. The jury of public opinion has since spoken about Ward’s experiment, and as usual, fans had mixed feelings. Die-hard fans gave it…
Read More State of the (M/M) union (adult content advisory)…A line taken from an editorial by Will Blythe, former editor at Byliner, in a NY Times piece today. Blythe talks about the ‘nondisparagement’ clause in his termination agreement: in effect, he’d gain two weeks of severance pay in exchange for never, ever, saying or writing anything bad about Byliner. Blythe also gives his reason…
Read More Truth’s caustically cleansing powers(Seriously, seriously adult content, especially if you follow the links, so be warned.) This is going to be a review of an explicit M/M Avengers movie-verse fan fiction story. If any part of that bothers you, stop reading this post. I won’t mind. Background: Some good friends dragged me back into fan fiction in 2013,…
Read More ‘Born from the Earth’ review (adult content advisory)This started as a simple review of Alfonso Cuarón’s new movie Gravity. As usual with my posts, it morphed into something else. In this case, a study of three very different sci-fi films, and only one that lived up to its potential. First: Gravity. The commercials had to be dumbed-down for a general audience, I’m afraid.…
Read More Gravity, Elysium, and Titan AEI’ve blogged about how industrialization has simplified the process of making art and craft: hobby stores gave us relatively cheap and pre-prepared art materials, artists like Bob Ross showed us how to cleverly fake our way toward a sense of achievement, and Ebay and Etsy give us outlets to peddle the results. Sometimes it’s a…
Read More Pour a drink and lift a paintbrush (language advisory)I just found out that one of my fiber art pieces has been juried into the wonderful new show Eco Editions, which will be seen at my friend Laura Russell’s 23 Sandy Gallery, in Portland, Oregon, from November 15 – December 28, 2013. I’ve been in 23 Sandy shows before, and they’re always beautiful and thought-provoking examples…
Read More Art and the Animas River…steal words from other people. Now, hold on there, pilgrims. I know that most artists ‘steal’ from each other. Most of the time we try a little finesse, taking bits here and riffs there, and sewing it up into a recognizably different package. There are only a few basic plots, after all. But with the…
Read More What to do when you can’t write…(adult language advisory)“Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone,” runs the quote from poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Maybe not. The NY Times Bestseller list almost always has at least one example of ‘Misery Literature’. Misery memoirs (and their cousins family histories and autobiographies) have been made into major movies and won significant literary awards. And…
Read More Misery Memoirs and Pay-to-Play PublishingApplicable quote heard yesterday: “YouTube and Spandex are a responsibility, not a right.” Applicable parable (paraphrased from a kid’s book I can barely remember and can’t track down): There once was a vain and clever gaucho who won admiration at every festival he attended, for the intricate ponchos he wove and flaunted. But weaving was…
Read More Cosplay, Manufactured Drama, and the Lazy GauchoThe first title for this post comes from Berke Breathed’s amazing comic Bloom County, and this particular strip, seen here at Robots From The Future’s comic feed. The second title for this post comes from this quote by author Samantha Geimer, via a Publishers Weekly interview in which she talks about the fallout of her 1977 rape by…
Read More Offensensitivity and the Pressure to Be Damaged (adult themes advisory)I had meant to add this information to my earlier ‘Banned in Russia?’ post, but there was just too much going on. It needs its own post. The Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church are working together to hold power in a stalled if not decaying country – and they’re blaming homosexuals, ‘atheist scientists’,…
Read More Banning Russia, or why we shouldn’t look the other waySci Fi Con PSA! Phoenix area! Affordable and fun! Got your attention? For those of you in the east to southeast Metro Phoenix area this upcoming weekend, I’d like to point you toward CopperCon Revolution, a local science fiction and media convention with a long history – both with me and the SSF community. My…
Read More CopperCon RevolutionI was going to name this one ‘Male Objectification’, but that’s wrong. For one thing, it follows the standard practice of somehow ignoring bi and trans* issues, in favor of a strict dichotomy of ‘straight’ vs. ‘homosexual’. The truth of human experience, and thus the grist for writers’ extrapolations thereof, is rarely that simple. I’ve…
Read More Objects of Desire, or Girl Cooties, Part 3 (adult content advisory)I’ve talked about this before, but not in so much detail. By now we’ve all seen the ‘girl cooties’ issue from the POV of the old guard of male Science Fiction and Fantasy authors. The old guard was about ‘business as usual’. Their opponents argued that female characters were marginalized for decades. That female authors…
Read More Love By Any Name, or Girl Cooties, Part 2 (adult content advisory)I don’t know how many readers are familiar with the art phenomenon that was Bob Ross. Love him or hate him, the guy made painting accessible for millions of hobbyists around the world, with formulas that relied on brushwork tricks, simple colorways, and solid composition. Cheesy as they were at best, Ross paintings of trees,…
Read More In praise of happy treesWords fail, but I’ll try, anyway. Paramount and Annapurna Pictures (the latter brought us the Cheney Apology-Fest that was Zero Dark Thirty) want to update the Terminator trilogy. Here’s the link: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57591478/terminator-to-get-a-trilogy-reboot/ Now, CG has advanced to breathtaking levels. There’s a new crop of action heroes and heroines waiting for a shot at career-defining roles. Or…
Read More Terminate ThisVery soon, the United States Supreme Court will hand down at least two decisions on marriage equality and gay rights in this nation. I’m not even going to try to second-guess SCOTUS. Gay rights do not directly affect my life. I’m straight, and happily so. But since I have gay friends and I write gay fiction…
Read More Rainbow NationWe knew this was coming, when he announced in April that his gall bladder cancer was terminal. We had chances to say farewell via his blog and other online outlets. But I am no less subdued for expecting this, and no less thankful that I discovered Banks’ writing many years ago while he was alive.…
Read More RIP, Iain Banks