Charlie Hebdo and PEN
Are you still Charlie? I never was, but the question of what to do bout Charlie Hebdo has come up again thanks to PEN America giving the French comic paper PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of...
View ArticleGood Writing vs Bad—Hugo Edition
I often use these two lines from Farewell, My Lovely in class, as an example of excellent writing:"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window."I then ask what we...
View ArticleMonday Quick Notes
I'm racing against a deadline...a December 2014 deadline, so not much has been going on. But here are a couple of things:Michael Cisco's The Narrator has been re-released. It's a brilliant novel....
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"A Single Samurai" by Steve Diamond
"A Single Samurai" by Steve Diamond is a current nominee for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story. It's not one I'd read before, but when I downloaded my Hugo packet, I made a beeline for it.Among the...
View ArticleFriday Quick Notes
Here's a little book sale some of you might be interested in. Lethe Press is selling Spicy Slipstream Stories, which I edited with Jay Lake, for ten bucks! Down from fifteen! Includes stories by Carrie...
View ArticleWednesday Quick Notes
I am trying to finish a book in five days. Looks like it'll be ten. Maybe fifteen.Gene Mapper got a nice review in Publishers Weekly, calling it a new kind of cyberpunk novel. We should have a handful...
View ArticleRocket to the Red Planet
Originally a comment over on File770.com (one of many many threads on the topic of the Hugo Awards) in response to the claim that all who oppose the Sad Puppy/Rabid Puppy Hugo slates are Marxists:It's...
View ArticleKwangju
A wonderful personal and political essay on Kwangju, the uprising, the massacre, and history by Tim Shorrock, in The Nation: In my view, the most damning document, obtained from the National Security...
View ArticleWhy Can't Publishers Make Writers Behave?
Recent events have made it clear that many people do not understand the relationship between companies and freelance contractors generally, and publishers and novelists (or other contracted writers)...
View ArticleDusty Rhodes, RIP
When I was a kid, I did not appreciate Dusty Rhodes. He was heavy, a cloying babyface with dumb moves like the "bionic elbow", and was Ric Flair's perennial whipping boy. When he came to the WWF and...
View ArticleBe About It!
I'm reading tonight:Be About It Fri., June 12, 7 p.m. FreeRelease party for the zine Be About It with readings by Gina Gold, Keeley Ann Finn, Jesse Prado, Cassandra Dallett, Vernon Keeve III, Nick...
View ArticleI'm a Bad Boy
Hugo nominee Jeffro Johnson is extremely upset with me, as he believes I have delivered unto him "the biggest insult I have ever received in my life..."What I said was: “Do not refer to yourself as a...
View ArticleTwo Day Job Titles
Over at the ol' day job, we have two books coming out today I think you might like.The first is Gene Mapper, the new hardish SF title from Haikasoru, by Taiyo Fujii. Publishers Weekly called it a new...
View ArticleShort Stories and Money in a Golden Moment
I am not a fan of the advice that beginning writers should write short fiction before they tackle a novel. The plain fact is that many aspiring writers don't read short fiction, don't like short...
View ArticleOne more post about mentally ill terrorists
With the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white guy with a bowl haircut shot and killed several black parishioners, we again come to the big conversation: was he a terrorist, or was...
View ArticleBuy a Tor Book Day
Because of Puppy-related boycotts against Tor Books for Irene Gallo supposedly insufficiently apologizing for her political description of Puppy movements, there has been launched a countermovement to...
View ArticleAll this stuff and more...
Hey, I'm back. July is bachelor month for me, and finish-this-book month, so it may even be possible. Some quick thoughts:1. gay marriage is now legal in the US. A good reform, though marriage is...
View ArticleMy Hugo Ballot
My ballot:Novel:The Three Body ProblemAncillary SwordNO AWARDNovella:One Bright Star to Guide ThemNO AWARDNovelette:Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to AlluviumThe Triple Sun: A Golden Age TaleNO...
View ArticleThe New Oxi Day
Like most toddlers, Oliver learned the word "No" right away. He uses it a lot. It's especially funny when he uses it to get his mother to play a different song while driving in the car. If he doesn't...
View ArticleThursday Quick Notes
Let's see: I have finally have Move Under Ground on non-amazon electronic retailers, thanks to Siliva Moreno-Garcia. One hopes that'll keep the piracy to a minimum. Anyway: NOOK, Kobo, Smashwords.A...
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