I just started reading this book by Bill Quick, and while I’ll be sure to follow up with a review, I wanted to link to an article about it, published on John Scalzi’s blog Whatever.
Monthly Archives: March 2014
Writer’s Block Sucks
Here’s a post from Bare Knuckle Writer that’s a little closer to the usual meaning of Workshop Wednesday. Not only does she have some good ideas, her writing style is, shall we say, blunt, pointed, and quite enjoyable. This doesn’t offer any advice on escaping writer’s block, but it is encouraging.
Novella Review: Lair of the White Ape
Signore Davide Mana is a paleontologist and author in Torino, Italia who blogs over at Karavansara. A half-year ago, he discovered my rather hagiographic essay about Sword and Sorcery over at Way Too Fantasy, somehow thought it was interesting, and told me that he had a Sword and Sorcery novella up of his own. At the time I think one of my biggest complaints about it was that it ended. Thankfully, he wrote a second part, and it is just as engrossing and entertaining as the first one was. If anything, the prose is a little tighter and the suspense sharper, though neither one of those things were exactly problems in the first part.
BIAS ALERT: I love novellas… they are perhaps my favourite form of fiction. Stories like these, however, are why I like them. They are long enough to really dig into the characters and the setting, but not so long that you’re committed for days or even weeks. Especially in the realms of Sword-and-Sorcery and Adventure, I prefer these good long tales over novels. They seem to be of the length that your war buddy would tell over a long night of drinking at the tavern, not so long that he has to keep coming back to the story over and over.
I recommend this for anyone who likes quality Sword-and-Sorcery and those who miss the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser as much as I do. The artwork may be a little off, but really, there is not much else I can say to critique the book. Amongst the things I really like is the fact that it’s set in the classic Roman world, and not the generic Western-Europe-Vague-Mideval-Setting-with-Inscrutable-Middle-East-off-the-Edge-of-the-Map that most S&S (or even High Fantasy) novels take place in. I’m looking forward to a new one. Four of Five stars.
Workshopping Wednesday: Web Development
Beyond just having a good handle on HTML and CSS (even if you’re entirely using a third-party design from WordPress or another blogging site, it’s nice to customise) some of us like to take a little more control. One forum I go to on reddit is the amazing “www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming” one, and their hypercritical (that’s a good thing) denizens recently put up a link to a new Web Development Curriculum. I spent this morning poking around a little bit of it, and it’s quite well laid out. If you have any kind of interest in doing something with your site besides dragging, clicking, and activating, take a look at it.
Workshopping Wednesday: New Themes
It’s not exactly the kind of editing I usually talk about on Wednesday, but one thing writers often forget to take care of is their online presence. And I know from bitter (and yet occasionally amusing) experience, the only thing worse than no blog is either a crappy blog or one that is never updated. Today, I’m going to link to some articles about blog editing, themes, and other fun things we can do to get our name out there without buying an hour-long infomercial on public access TV.
First up: From the early theme adopters at WordPress, here is a new theme which seems promising. I think it may be too focused on pictures to serve this blog, but I really like the way it feels. Check it out.
from Stark Writing Mad http://ift.tt/1hrOSS6
via IFTTT
Workshopping Wednesday: New Themes
It’s not exactly the kind of editing I usually talk about on Wednesday, but one thing writers often forget to take care of is their online presence. And I know from bitter (and yet occasionally amusing) experience, the only thing worse than no blog is either a crappy blog or one that is never updated. Today, I’m going to link to some articles about blog editing, themes, and other fun things we can do to get our name out there without buying an hour-long infomercial on public access TV.
First up: From the early theme adopters at WordPress, here is a new theme which seems promising. I think it may be too focused on pictures to serve this blog, but I really like the way it feels. Check it out.
Inspiration Tuesday: Weird Art
If you’re not already a fan of Weird Tales, I highly recommend you check out their Facebook page and their website. Lately, they’ve been my source of odd, inspiring, and chilling artwork. Here’s something from one of the artists they featured today. Enjoy…
Poetry Monday: Religion and Politics
I have no poem for today, though I do have a story drafted which will be up on Thursday as scheduled. So for your poetry-loving ears, I’m linking to one of my early influences, Mr Scott Beach. Personally, I would have loved to hear him recite The Song of Hiawatha (or even better yet, Lewis Carroll’s phenomenal “Hiawatha’s Photographing”) but alas, that won’t happen.
And that just reminded me. This folkloric version, based on a parody by George A. Strong, was perhaps my earliest poetic influence. My Dad used to recite this, and we even had a dog named Mudjokivis.
Science is Hard. Talking BS about Science is Regrettably Easy
An interesting article about the often-dangerous intersection of Science and Politics, one of my pet causes/ things to complain about, linked from Sarah Hoyt’s According to Hoyt blog:
Here’s a clue. If it gets called a science and the most important parts don’t have any math? It’s not a science no matter what it calls itself. Ditto if there’s no observation or extrapolation and testing against predictions from observations.
Friends Don’t Let Friends Abuse Science
EDIT: I’ll be putting up my own version of these arguments, thanks to some commentary by a friend of mine.
First Things: The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe is definitely an acquired taste, one that took me a couple of tries to acquire, but it’s worth it. In some ways, he’s like a darker version of C.S. Lewis or Stephen R. Lawhead; his books also have a lot of Christian metaphors and ideas, but they’re much more shadowy and uncertain. I recommend this essay if you’re at all interested in dark, speculative fiction, though it may whet your appetite to read his books. Yes, there is definitely a Christian subtext to his work, but much like the Chronicles of Narnia, it’s in no way essential to enjoying the books. This Jewish Taoist recommends them.