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Time Element

Time Element

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fine-print-poster1The false motivational poster to the left has nothing to do with the rest of my post today, except that it came as a reward to myself after a week of tough self-disciplined writing, aided by the simple power of time awareness. As I finished my enormous work on late Sunday evening, I celebrated my triumph with a small but exquisite waste of time, creating one of the many “demotivational posters” that travel around the ‘net as humor or an approximation of humor. Better than LOLCats, at least. This is my deep inner Tolkien Geek, who has always wondered what the Lord of the Nazgûl thought as he died under Éowyn’s blade on the Pelennor Fields. My guess: “Damn fine print!”

It’s little time-waster rewards like this that make getting through heavy writing projects just a bit easier.

But the real writing-aid VIP for me, and which has been a tremendous help since I started using it about two years ago, has been a time log. I’ve written previously about how I did revising “on the clock” for National Novel Editing Month (a March event—edit for at least fifty hours during the month) by turning on a desktop stopwatch whenever I sit down to do any writing or editing. I hide the clock, and have it set to chime at the half-hour. I use Apimac Timer, a Mac OS X application, for the stopwatch. For specifically timed exercises, I use a countdown on the same timer. After each work day, I record in a notebook how much time I’ve spent working, and my word count (if applicable). Apicmac Timer also also you to record a log on the program and not lose count of the time you spent

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A Review of King’s Blood Four, by Sheri S. Tepper

A Review of King’s Blood Four, by Sheri S. Tepper

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kb4aKing’s Blood Four, by Sheri S. Tepper
Ace (202 pages, $2.50, 1983)

I know Sheri S. Tepper primarily as a science fiction author. She tends to write sociological stuff, a little bit like Ursula K. LeGuin’s science fiction. I feel that she’s prone to having her message hijack her story, but I still read her books whenever I see a new one in the library. I wasn’t sure what to expect out of her fantasy.

As it turns out, King’s Blood Four might or might not be set in a fantasy universe. There is a strong hint that it might be crypto-SF. In a way, it doesn’t matter; fantasy or science fiction, it’s still a study of an alien society.

The story is narrated by Peter, a fifteen-year-old boy who lives at a boarding school devoted to teaching a peculiar chess-like game. In fact, it’s a training exercise for the deadly True Game. It seems that many people in this world have magic — or possibly psychic — powers, and the True Game forms a framework for their power struggles. It includes everything from dueling to intrigue to outright war, and children such as Peter are sent to the Schooltowns so that the True Game doesn’t chew them up as cannon fodder before they can come into their power. (We find out later that peasants — called pawns, in keeping with the chess theme — don’t ordinarily get this privilege, although at least one pawn’s mother found a way to manage it.) We also find out that Peter has been seduced by one of the teachers, a man named Mandor. The affair is forbidden, and one of the other teachers tries to warn Peter about it, but he’s convinced that he has it all under control.

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Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.4 “Weekend at Bobby’s”

Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.4 “Weekend at Bobby’s”

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The most recent episode of Supernatural brings back a major hanging plotline focusing on one of the major secondary characters in the series. Bobby Singer is a sort of mentor and father figure to the boys, the closest thing they have left to family (except, of course, for the sudden arrival of their previously-deceased grandfather and an entire family of hunters they never knew about).

SUPERNATURAL
Bobby Singer (right) helps Rufus Turner (left) dispose of the body of an Okami, a Japanese demon.

Last season, Bobby made a deal with the demon named Crowley in order to stop Lucifer. (He also got healed from paralysis, allowing him to walk again.) He had to offer his soul up to Crowley, but it was sort of a short-term deal … Crowley promised to “rip up the lease” when they beat Lucifer.

In the first few moments of this episode, we see that Crowley didn’t hold up his end of the deal. In a flashback to a year previously, just after Lucifer’s fall, it’s revealed that Bobby summoned Crowley about getting his soul back. Crowley says he can’t do it, citing a loophole in the contract that says he’d make his “best efforts” to give back his soul, which means “I’d like to — but I can’t.” Crowley gives him 10 years to live before collecting. Bobby’s attempt to capture Crowley in a Devil’s Snare is thwarted because Crowley summons hellhounds, forcing Bobby to let him out.

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Harry Connolly and the Black Gate Interview

Harry Connolly and the Black Gate Interview

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childoffireWhen people tell us about their favorite Black Gate authors and stories, one name that inevitably turns up in both staff and fan discussions is Harry James Connolly, whose tales have appeared three times now in our pages, with more on the way. You may not have seen much of him lately over at Black Gate, but he’s been very busy writing some best selling novels. You can find all about that over here, and a little bit more about Harry and his writing if you just keep reading.

A Conversation with Harry Connolly

Conducted and transcribed by Howard Andrew Jones October 3 – Oct 10 2010

BG: First tell us how long you’ve wanted to be a writer, and how long you were mulling over the novel that launched your career before you finally sat down to draft it.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was very small.  I was an early reader — like, age 3 — and when my parents explained that people made a living writing books like the one in my hands, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

Not that I had any idea what that meant.  I do have a distinct memory of sitting in kindergarten learning to write the letter “M” and thinking  this is totally going to come in handy! (to paraphrase my young self).

As for Child of Fire, it’s a setting that I’ve written in before (some short fiction and a pair of novels–but with different characters), butI knew I wanted to do something very specific with it.  I spent several weeks working out the story and, more importantly, the tone before I dug into the writing.

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The Time is Out of Joint: The Silver Skull, A Review

The Time is Out of Joint: The Silver Skull, A Review

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silver-skull2The Silver Skull is the first book in a new series by Mark Chadbourn, Swords of Albion, following the adventures of Will Swyfte, spy for Queen Elizabeth the First of England, as he fights a secret war against the faerie-folk of the Unseelie Court. That’s a brilliant hook for an ongoing series of adventure novels. And in fact Chadbourn’s new book is best described as modern-day pulp, with all the strengths and weaknesses that implies.

It’s a swashbuckling tale of adventure, filled with sword-fights, melodrama, action set-pieces, heroes, and villains. But its characters are flat and uninteresting. And, ultimately, its depiction of its setting is gravely disappointing.

Let’s look first at what the book does well. The plotting is strong and sure, and builds nicely through a series of action sequences. Tension is manipulated skillfully, and the staging of events is imaginative and clearly described. Chadbourn moves his story through a number of interesting places in the Elizabethan world, filling those places with cloak-and-dagger suspense, mysterious riddles, ancient Indiana-Jones-style deathtraps, and the like.

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Black Gate 14 Sneak Peek: “Destroyer” by James Enge

Black Gate 14 Sneak Peek: “Destroyer” by James Enge

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Morlock the Maker. Art by Chuck LukacsThe second novella in Black Gate 14 was “Destroyer” by James Enge, the sixth of his extremely popular Morlock stories to appear in our pages. Here’s what Tangent Online had to say:

Thend, his mother, Morlock and the rest of the family are fleeing some calamity from Sarkunden in the south towards a high pass in the northwest — attempting not to be seen by the insect-like Khroi and the Khroi’s enemies, the giant spiders, by staying between the territories of the two species. Thend and Morlock come upon a Khroi, trussed up and hanging from a tree — awaiting his eventual fate as a meal for the spiders — and because Thend is young and passionate about doing the right thing, [he] frees the Khroi, which will have consequences later… I’m going to search out Enge’s other stories about Morlock.

Lois Tilton at Locus Online comments:

Part of a dark fantasy series which has by now accumulated a massive weight of backstory. Fortunately, most of it has been left behind as the wizard Morlock and his companions continue their journey across a range of mountains infested with spiderfolk, dragons and the insectile warrior Khroi. It is the Khroi who capture the party, with the intention of laying their eggs in the human bodies. But their primary purpose has been the elimination of Morlock, whom they call the Destroyer; their seers have foretold that he will be the destruction of their horde, despite Morlock insisting that he has no such intention. Intention, however, isn’t everything.

And Sherwood Williams at SF Site observes:

It turns out that the Khroi have been told that Morlock would cause their destruction, which is why they must destroy him first. This causes a fascinating debate between the Khroi leader and Morlock on dreams, foretelling, and predestination, echoed by conversations among the companions. Enge builds an imaginative world with intriguing details, but never loses sight of character development. Thend, the boy who is struggling to understand his own visions, is an appealing contrast to the mysterious Morlock who talks to dragons.

“Destroyer” appears in Black Gate 14. You can read an excerpt here, and the complete Black Gate 14 Sneak Peek is available here. You can find additional reviews of the entire issue here.

Art by Chuck Lukacs for the very first Morlock story, “Turn Up This Crooked Way” (Black Gate 8).

My First Novel Sale

My First Novel Sale

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childoffireThis essay first appeared as a part of Jim C. Hines’s First Book Friday series, in which authors describe their first sales. You can read the entire series on his blog or LiveJournal. This piece has been lightly edited for clarity.

The first thing to know about selling Child of Fire, my first novel, is that it happened after I’d already quit writing.

I’d spent years trying to sell longer works, but had no success; you might say I was a smidge discouraged. The book I’d written just before Child of Fire was very difficult and very personal; I’d literally wept while composing the first draft. What happened when I sent it out? Form rejection after form rejection.

I was angry (with myself, not with the people who’d rejected me; that’s one of my most important rules). I thought I’d been doing everything I needed to do, but apparently not.

For my next book, I used my anger as fuel. I started with a strange incident that needed to be investigated. I loaded the story with antagonists and conflicting goals. Then I ramped up the pace and kept it going, making even the slower parts, where the characters just talk with each other, quick and full of conflict.

But I was sure I was wasting my time. If my last book hadn’t gone anywhere, why should this one?

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Short Fiction Roundup

Short Fiction Roundup

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230_295__final_coverOxford American Magazine is a literary quarterly focusing on Southern culture. A particular favorite of mine is its annual music issue that features articles on both well-known and obscure Southern musicians with an accompanying CD.  The current fall issue’s theme is the future, including 11 short stories set somewhere around in 2050. I’m not familiar with these authors, the one exception being Charles Yu whose first novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, has been getting some attention.

Marvel’s The Monster of Frankenstein, Part One

Marvel’s The Monster of Frankenstein, Part One

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300px-essential_frankenstein1Click on images for larger versions.

Following the success of The Tomb of Dracula in 1972, Marvel Comics launched The Monster of Frankenstein the following year. Gary Friedrich and Mike Ploog kicked the series off with a fairly faithful three-part adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel.

At the outset, Marvel determined to keep the Monster in period. This was an interesting approach considering the modern update Dracula had received. Vampires were an easier sell for the twentieth century as numerous film and television updates had already established contemporary vampire stories whereas the Frankenstein Monster somehow seemed an antiquated concept, despite the character’s ongoing appeal.

It is important to remember that at the time the series debuted, literary critics had not yet embraced Mary Shelley’s work as a classic. Shelley, like Bram Stoker, was looked down upon as low-brow and her work was not afforded serious consideration.

Television syndication of the Universal Frankenstein pictures of the 1930s and 1940s and the character’s transformation into the patriarch on the 1960s sitcom, The Munsters were largely responsible for its longevity. It would be several more years before Shelley’s cautionary tale would gain widespread acceptance as a modern myth whose resonance had not diminished with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

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Goth Chick News: Candy Corn for the Imagination

Goth Chick News: Candy Corn for the Imagination

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image0062The six-foot grim reaper is out in the front yard pointing eerily at the tombstones poking out of the grass. The fog machines are strategically placed; one in the bushes and one in the coffin leaning against the house. There’s a sound-activated specter that will slide from tree to gutter, moaning and waving its arms at the slightest hint of a visitor. And most important, there’s an eight-foot python curled around the mailbox.

The python is the sure-fire giveaway; it’s Halloween at Chateaux Goth Chick.

Now all that’s left to do is relax and wait for the thirty-first when, decked out in full zombie regalia, I will lie in wait in that front yard coffin, concealed in machine-made fog and scare the crap out of the neighbor kids.

The anticipation is brutal.

But adequately filling the moments between now and then calls for a lot of activity, some of which I described to you last week; the rest of my time I spend buried in my favorite Halloween-time books.

Are there really books such as these, you ask? Stories that make the blood run as cold as the dry ice in my cauldron of rum punch? Tales that cause more terror than running out of bite-sized Snickers before the doorbell rings for the last time?

You betcha.

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