Friends

November 10th, 2009

Interfictions: LA + Henry Jenkins

smallbeer_rss

11/10/09 06:03 pm

http://smallbeerpress.com/not-a-journal/2009/11/10/interfictions-la-henry-jenkins/

http://smallbeerpress.com/?p=6426

First once-was-MIT honcho Henry Jenkins heads for LA, now he’s writing about interstitialism (fantastic intro here), and now tonight there’s a huge event tonight in LA.

La what? No! L.A.! Don’t miss the latest Interfictions event tonight in LA (and then on Friday in Boston) with a huge selection of readers, musicians and so on. Here’s the info straight from the horse’s mouth:

Q&A with Cecil Castellucci, and Interfictions 2 hits LA tonight!

To celebrate the launch of Interfictions 2, we’ve been arranging a number of interviews with the contributors, which will be posted to the new Interviews page in the Interfictions 2 section of our site. The first of these is with none other than a host of (and a featured performer at) tonight’s Interfictions 2 Reading in Los Angeles – Cecil Castellucci!

In addition to being the author of the Interfictions 2 short story “The Long and Short of Long-Term Memory”, Cecil is the author of three YA novels, Boy Proof, The Queen of Cool, and Beige, with a fourth, Rose Sees Red, coming in 2010 from Scholastic; two YA graphic novels, The PLAIN Janes and Janes in Love, illustrated by Jim Rugg; and numerous short stories. She is currently working on a hybrid novel and the libretto for a multimedia opera. She has played in bands, produced and directed a feature film, a few one-woman shows, a play, and does the occasional confessional stand-up comedy gig. She is always on the lookout for new ways to tell stories. Having lived on both coasts and both sides of the 49th parallel, she appreciates a well-coordinated snow removal operation but wisely hides out where none is needed. For more information, go to www.misscecil.com or visit her blog at castellucci.wordpress.com.

For those of you in or around Los Angeles, here’s the rundown on tonight’s event:

LOS ANGELES
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 from 8 to 10 PM
@ M Bar – 1253 Vine (at Fountain)

Liz Ziemska and Cecil Castellucci invite you to an evening of readings from INTERFICTIONS 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing edited by Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak!

Performances by: Patty Cornell, Dave Foley, Kimberly Huie, Michael O’Keefe, Rasika Mathur, Darcy Martin, & others reading stories by Cecil Castellucci, Elizabeth Ziemska, Brian Francis Slattery, Ray Vukcevich, Peter Ball, Nin Andrews, and Stephanie Shaw. Directed by: Flint Esquerra. Musical accompaniment by: Jonathan Stearns. No Cover + $10 food minimum. Reservations are strongly encouraged: 323-856-0036. Books will be for sale available courtesy of Skylight Books
http://castellucci.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/interfictions-2-anthology-reading-los-angeles/

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=154863864759&ref=mf

Sounds like quite a party! Until then, though, why not check out the interview? And stay tuned – we also have interviews with Jeffrey Ford, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Ray Vukcevich and others coming soon!

Leave a comment

Meet Ellie Kemper at the NBC Experience Store

officetally23

11/10/09 09:35 pm

http://www.officetally.com/meet-ellie-kemper-at-the-nbc-experience-store

http://www.officetally.com/?p=13841

Meet The Office’s Ellie Kemper (receptionist “Erin Hannon” and Subtle Sexuality diva) on Thursday, November 12th, at the NBC Experience Store in New York. The first 20 people in line will receive The Office Clue Game. Ellie will also be visiting The Today Show that morning! As always, please post your report/photos if you attend. :)

Leave a comment

The Physics of Writing

ccfinlay

11/10/09 03:42 pm

I'm working on a new theory of the Newtonian physics of writing...

The law of writing inertia: A novel at rest persists in a state of rest unless acted upon by an external force. (I think that this is the most widely observed phenomenon in writing.)

The second law of writing: Force equals wordcount times acceleration. The graph of this is commonly called a "deadline".

The third law of writing: For every fiction there is an equal and opposite re-fiction.

For example, if there is The Hobbit, eventually someone will inevitably write Goblin Quest. It's worth thinking about before you send your finished story out into the world. Or if you don't have any story ideas to write.

The quantum physics of writing deal with the uncertainty of publication and the probability distribution of readerships, but I don't think I'm smart enough to suss out those laws.

Leave a comment

half a lifetime?

officialgaiman

11/10/09 05:49 pm

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/half-lifetime.html

posted by Neil

The editor at CBS Sunday Morning asked if I had any photos of my son Mike back at the period when I first had the idea for The Graveyard Book - late 1985. I looked. We really didn't have any. I wandered next door and asked Mary (his mum, my former wife and for these last five years my friend and next-door neighbour) if she had any photos from back then. "No," she said. Then, "Do you mean those transparencies? I have them in an envelope somewhere." She vanished and came back with a large manila envelope from a long time ago. "Here."

Half a lifetime ago -- literally -- I was nearly 25, and working for magazines. Henry Fikret, who photographed a lot of the interviews I did, volunteered to take some photos of me and my family, and he did.A week later the envelope arrived, and I realised that everything he shot was on colour transparencies -- like huge slides -- and I was never sure what do with them, other than being fairly sure I couldn't take them down to Boots the Chemist and have prints knocked out. So they stayed in their envelope, and they kept their secrets, and were forgotten.

Yesterday I had the transparencies scanned, and finally got to see lots of pictures I had never actually seen before of Holly as a baby, Mike at the time that I would have watched him riding his tricycle around the graveyard, and me... at exactly half my age: A young journalist who had sold a very small handful of short stories and two non-fiction books, with dreams of writing fiction and comics. At the time I was dressing in grey, but was getting tired of the way that you would buy something grey and take it home and discover that it was a blueish grey or a brownish grey, and wondering if I'd have the same problem if I just started to dress in black.

And half a lifetime on, it seemed like it might be good to put one up here. I checked, and Mary didn't mind. What odd clothes we wore back then. What big glasses. And look, my hair is practically normal.

So long ago, and it went like the blink of an eye.

...

Birthday wishes are flooding in from around the globe. I wish I could reply to everyone personally, but it would take the next 365 days... so thank you. Thank you all.

And a particular thank you to Garrison Keillor, who announced my birthday on NPR and who also told me that on my thirteenth birthday they burned Slaughterhouse 5, and that on my ninth birthday Sesame Street was born. The Writers Almanac is a marvellous thing.

...

In January I will be part of a free concert for all ages on January 16, 2010, at 7pm, in the World Financial Center Winter Garden, New York. I'll be the narrator for the performance of Peter and the Wolf, performed by the http://www.knickerbocker-orchestra.org (whose website you should visit to get details).

Kissing is about spreading germs (and this is a good thing), a scientist says.

Alan Moore is leaping aboard the Underground magazine bandwagon. Following the success of IT and OZ, Alan's Dodgem Logic is coming out. There's a great interview with Alan at http://www.mustardweb.org/dodgemlogic/

(And enormous congratulations to Alan, who is now a grandfather, and to Leah and John, who are now parents, and Edward Alec Moore-Reppion, who is now, um, born. A Scorpio, like his grandfather and his whatever-exactly-I am, sort of honorary great-uncle or something. Not that we Scorpios believe in that sort of thing, of course.)

Again, thank you all for the birthday wishes...

Labels: birthdays, NPR, Peter and the Wolf, Garrison Keillor, Dodgem Logic, why Alan Moore should be made Wizard of England

Ah, the journalistic integrity we’ve come to expect

failblog_rss

11/10/09 06:00 pm

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/failblog/~3/6PKrtQm52Ww/

http://failblog.org/?p=29459

Fox News Fail

Submitted using the FAIL Uploader

This video is also viewable at: MySpaceTV | DailyMotion

Leave a comment

Free books, songs, arguments

smallbeer_rss

11/10/09 08:47 pm

http://smallbeerpress.com/not-a-journal/2009/11/10/free-books-songs-arguments/

http://smallbeerpress.com/?p=6416

BSCreview has 3 free copies of A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2010 to give away. Want Want Freebies?

Lev Grossman included Kelly’s Magic for Beginners in a list of “the six greatest fantasy books of all time.” Ladies and Gentlemen, start your arguments.

Richard Nash calls out BEA (via Shelf Awareness) on their rather silly decisions not to have a big party and not to let in the grand reading public. BEA is dying and no one seems to care. The American Booksellers Association has sensibly started a new thing, the very successful Winter Institute where publishers and booksellers get to meet in peace. Book fairs (hello Brooklyn!) do tremendously. ComicCon is spinning off secondary fairs like no one’s business. Kids are lining up to get into manga fairs. Someone else is going to take up the slack (hello again, Brooklyn, LA, Washington DC, Miami). Putting publishers in front of the public is no bad thing. We went to a huge indie book fair in Italy that was 4 days long and bigger than the Javits Center. People love that stuff — come on BEA, get like AWP and other smarter conferences, let the people in.

Hal Duncan has songs (with Neil Williamson) and a successful pay-per-view (or whateveryoucallit) going on on his site.

There have been two fascinating reviews (one website, one blog—there are many on the blogs but I just happen to be posting right now) of Greer Gilman’s Cloud & Ashes: Paul Kincaid on SF Site,

Time and again, in innumerable different ways, we see hints about the ways that the stories we tell shape the actions we take…. This is where the circle is broken, and if events drive us incessantly towards tragedy as stories must, it is a very different tragedy from what has gone before.

Cloud and Ashes is not an easy book to read, but it is incredibly worth while making the effort. Any sense I have given of what goes on here is inevitably only partial, there is so much I have had to omit, major characters, significant plot lines. Above all, I have barely hinted at how much it plays with gender roles, how much it has to tell us about the role of women in shaping the world, indeed how every potent active character is female. It is a book you will barely grasp, but it is a book whose hold on your mind, on your memory, is assured. It is a story about story, and stories are what we are all made of. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

And She Who Must on LJ:

I loved it, and it still took me about a month to read it; it’s quite long, and very, very rich. After a few pages I’d have to stop and digest what I’d read. I don’t think that’s a bad thing – indeed, I was in no hurry to reach the end, I didn’t want it to be over.

Leave a comment

Other end of the stick

smallbeer_rss

11/10/09 08:33 pm

http://smallbeerpress.com/not-a-journal/2009/11/10/other-end-of-the-stick/

http://smallbeerpress.com/?p=6420

Received by email today from one of the trade review journals after we queried them in September about reviewing our current books:

Dear Gavin,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the title “XXXXXXXX.”
Unfortunately, this title was not selected for review by XXXXXXX
as it did not fit our present needs. However, we would
encourage you to send your future titles to us for review consideration,
and we look forward to receiving them.

Best,

Oh well. Next time.

New Theme mini web sites

brickset

11/10/09 03:22 pm

http://www.brickset.com/news/article/?ID=462

As we move closer to the next wave of set releases, LEGO have launched a couple of mini websites that tie into new themes, Atlantis & Ben 10.

Not much content on either just yet, but keep checking them over the coming weeks as more & more content is added.

Thanks to brickset members nadnerb112 & GameOn99 for the news (but how about emailing it in next time, rather than spamming the news articles - thanks guys)

Leave a comment

Star Wars Brickmaster sets now available from LEGOshop.com in the UK

brickset

11/10/09 02:44 pm

http://www.brickset.com/news/article/?ID=461

The two recent sets available exclusively in the USA to Brickmaster subscribers are now available to order from LEGOshop.com: 20009 AT-TE Walker and 20010 Republic Attack Gunship . These are great stocking-fillers either for yourself or someone else, although they are perhaps a bit pricey.

Leave a comment

Little help please?

monkeyprincess7 posting in

nanowrimo

11/10/09 03:35 pm

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Current Location: home
Current Music: 21 guns - Green Day

(no subject)

benrosen

11/10/09 03:26 pm

"John saw the man with a telescope." What's sketchy about that?

NEW COMIC RIGHT HERE

when goths discover brown

matociquala

11/10/09 03:10 pm

So the thing about the steampunk aesthetic that everybody's talking about: it's weird to me, like watching a band you've loved for years get popular.

Maybe I've just been writing steampunky stuff for too long now (I think I started AtWS in 1993 or 1994, and the idea for the city of Eiledon dates back way before that), but it seems to me that the aesthetic roots here have been around for a long time. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, of course, but we've been mining that field for a long, long time. Castle Falkenstein and Brisco County, not to mention the venerable The Wild Wild West. (Non-Will-Smith edition, although I am a Giant Spider In The Third Act apologist.)

There's a whole world of Beyond Thunderdome postapocalyptica in the grunginess of it, but the color scheme is different, resulting in brown leather and brass fittings instead of black leather and tattered chainmail. (Seriously, run Master Blaster through a couple of filters and see what you get...)

Which is not to say the steampunk thing isn't cool. I've been playing with technofantasy since I was in high school. I'm pleased to see it finally becoming an overnight success, after twenty or thirty years of obscurity. And besides, it's nifty looking.

...Maybe it's just what happens when kids who grew up on Krull and Labyrinth get jobs and money and a little bit of time on their hands.

Or maybe we just finally figured out how to run the 80s through Photoshop to achieve a sepia tone

I do think it's interesting how trends and fashions work. They're a way of skinning reality, of creating an aesthetic that reflects a worldview and vice versa. Time periods look like themselves, and there are all sorts of visual cues there as to what's important and what's the focus in any given era. I find it all intensely cool...

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Bad Religion - Let Them Eat War
Tags:
bone & jewel creatures

ROF: Three Tidbits Make a Post

douglascohen

11/10/09 02:47 pm

Tidbit 1: The latest issue of RoF (December 2009) has been reviewed by Lois Tilton over at the Internet Review of Science Fiction. Now, long ago I stopped commenting on the reviews of various reviewers (and after this past summer I've also given up responding online to folks with strong opinions about me and/or RoF--just not worth it!) However, I would like to issue one factual statement. In regards to "In Time of Great Despair and Darkness" by Ken Scholes, Ms. Tilton finishes with the following sentence: "It's not entirely clear that the ending wasn't cut off in the printing process, as the last line seems odd and is not followed by the usual end sign." She's right that the usual end sign is not there. That is unfortunate. However, I would like to assure readers that the last sentence on the page is in fact the last sentence in the story. I have confirmed this twice over, once in communicating with Ken, and twice by checking this against the original document he forwarded us after the story was accepted. No disrespect is intended to Ms. Tilton or her review with this statement. I merely wish to assure any concerned readers that the story in RoF is in fact complete.

Tidbit 2: Yesterday I received a low-res .pdf from Warren for the February 2010 issue. I always receive the .pdf shortly before the magazine goes to press. If all goes as planned, that should happen today.

Tidbit 3: I received an email from Shawna today asking if I had any input. About what? She had received an email from the good folks at Locus, inviting her to nominate three stories for their final Recommended Reading List of 2009. So I shared my three suggestions with her, and am pleased to say that her three selections matched up with mine. That's pretty cool, and it's even cooler that she would ask for my thoughts on this. She certainly didn't have to do that. I'm not sure if I could ask for better working relationships than those I have with Shawna and Warren. Anyway, much as I'd like to share the names of these stories and their authors, I don't want to steal any thunder from Locus. So you'll just have to wait until they're ready to share.

Tags:
rof magazine, rof reviews

question

keladry_lupin posting in

nanowrimo

11/10/09 11:38 am

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Tags:
discussion

This Bodes... Poorly

arienna

11/10/09 02:43 pm

My ~~kitten~~ young cat fell asleep in the little valley between my calves and ankles the other day. This is not a surprise, but he fell asleep with his head resting on the comfortable pillow made out of my foot... First he started drooling against my foot, which is acceptable behaviour. What I find worrisome is as he slept, his mouth opened and his little cat teeth settled around my foot and he began gnawing on my foot. Not hard, not drawing blood, just slowly and gently gnawing on my foot.

His subconscious mind has realized I'm made of meat.

It's only a matter of time, now. O_O

Want a Cameo in someone else's Comic? Now's your Chance!

lastres0rt posting in

comic_creators

11/10/09 02:45 pm

Quick Refesher: I draw the webcomic Last Res0rt, about a futuristic reality show (and the girl who signed up for it before figuring out she's also a vampire!). I'm almost done getting Volume 1 ready for print.

With Volume 1 looming on the horizon and the holidays coming up, now’s the time to put together what it’ll take to make sure this preorder stays on schedule — which includes no small amount of fundraising! Since the start of Volume 2 (if not throughout Volume 2) is going to involve, among other things, a veritable battalion of Star Org soldiers, why not ask you to help me find a solution to both?

You can help support the comic and keep Volume 1 on track, and I can draw you into the comic as a Star Org soldier instead of having to come up with random extras! You’ll not only be helping me, you’ll become part of the story!

Continue reading at lastres0rt.com and get full details...

TL;DR: Pay at least $50 and you'll get not only a custom conbadge of yourself / your fursona / whatever in their new role as a Star Org character, you'll also get a future cameo in Last Res0rt as well. If you don't feel like spending that much money, I've got a new wallpaper and some new Zazzle merch available as well. I'm doing this to raise money for the books; if I don't raise enough money, don't count on seeing the books anytime soon.

Leave a comment

(no subject)

matociquala

11/10/09 02:45 pm

Breaking news--

~~Mass market paperback~~ Trade hardcover* edition of METAtropolis. Or however you capitalize that.

*Yeah, I don't even know what paperwork I'm signing. I'm writing a book.

"Angry Woman"

oc_superheroine

11/10/09 01:20 pm

http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2009/11/angry-woman.html

Hey, I figured I'd just let you know that I've got a lot on my plate at the moment, but will be back on Monday the 16th – which of course is the 3rd Anniversary of "Goodbye To Comics." I think it is too early to say whether or not I have anything special planned for this blog for that date – but you never never know. Stay tuned.

Leave a comment

All hail the Sucky First Draft

davidlevine

11/10/09 11:13 am

Word count: 2188 | Since last entry: 2188

After far too many weeks of research, noodling, and outlining, none of which seemed to be going anywhere, I decided to adopt a new strategy: just start writing. I'm driving cross-country in the dark with no map, no destination, and no visibility beyond the reach of my headlights. It feels weird and I can see plenty of problems in what I've written so far, which I know will have to be heavily edited when I'm done, but at least I'm putting down words and it feels good.

This is an unusual writing strategy for me, but for the moment it seems to be working. This book is not like anything else I've written because I'm already familiar with (a version of) the characters and setting and because it's structured as a collection of related short stories. I was beating myself up about the linking überplot and character arc that ties them all together, but I've given up on that for now. I'm just writing one story about these characters (not even necessarily the first story in the book), and when I'm done with that one I'll write another, and after I've written a few I bet I'll understand what bigger things are happening and I'll be able to put the stories I have into the correct order and insert the necessary bits to expose to the reader the überplot that, in some subconscious way, was there all along.

I'm putting a lot of trust in my subconscious here. This is kind of the opposite progression from what jaylake did with his New Model Process a year or two ago, but then his process and mine started off very different and I'm sure we have different lessons to learn.

Alas, the writing isn't going any faster this way -- still about 500 words a day -- but at least I'm moving.

Vote for The Office in the People’s Choice Awards!

officetally23

11/10/09 06:27 pm

http://www.officetally.com/vote-for-the-office-in-peoples-choice-awards

http://www.officetally.com/?p=13809

Vote for The Office in the PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS 2010. You can vote as often as you like, so LET’S GET THESE AWARDS! The show airs January 6th, 2010. Please vote in the following categories: Favorite TV Comedy: The Office Favorite TV Comedy Actor: Steve Carell Link: Vote here (remember you can vote like crazy!) P.S. Thanks to [...]

Leave a comment

Old Radio Bits? – Make a raygun!

brassgogglesrss

11/10/09 06:29 pm

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BrassGoggles/~3/Gd_HxRWaP0I/old-radio-bits-make-a-raygun

http://brassgoggles.co.uk/blog/?p=1950

While this is not 100% Steampunk in style,this is still quite a nice bit of re-purposing of old bits and gubbins.

For the handle of the gun, the creator used an old super-8 movie camera into the handle for the raygun. The flash mount is an 8mm projector lens which forms the barrel. Vacuum tubes from a vintage radio go into the other parts of the gun. This raygun certainly captures that a nice vintage look to show off and this gun does provide one heck of a visual blast.

More photos of the construction process maye be found here:

Leave a comment

A Glorious Dawn

pgdf posting in

theinferior4

11/10/09 02:02 pm

Somehow, for the past two months I've been unaware of a "new" (ie, remixed) Carl Sagan rap with guest vocals by Stephen Hawking. One point six million other viewers were not so ignorant. But maybe you too have not yet seen this.

Posted by Paul DiFi.

The Downside

sacae posting in

nanowrimo

11/10/09 01:59 pm

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Current Location: Ohio
Current Mood: Discouraged
Tags:
discussion

with one fist raised in anger. with one foot in the fire.

matociquala

11/10/09 02:03 pm

2184 words on Grail since 7 am, and I'm calling it a good day's work. If I can keep up an average rate of at least six pages a day, I will be done by early January. Which gives me time to revise the horrid steaming mess that is The White City, and then, once

truepenny wraps up her current extravaganza, get pushing on A Reckoning of Men in time to have it done for the summer deadline--which leaves me some time to write The Steles of the Sky.

Oh, yeah, and there's all that Shadow Unit due between now and then.

If I seem like I'm not around much on the internets or for social obligations, that would be why.

Grail is persisting in being sort of interesting to write. Today, it pitched a fit at me and drew a line in the sand structurally, telling me (in essence) that I can't make it skip ahead in the narrative to kill some time for sub-lightspeed-travel, thank you very much, and I can just suck it up and write that part of the book. Which part of the book doesn't currently seem to have much bearing on what I thought was the main plot arc, but I am pretty sure than when my right-brain plants its feet like this, it's usually on to something, and all the left-brain can do is go along with the program and quit whining about why?

So today was nine pages of backstory I hadn't been expecting to write. But it's wordcount, and go me.

I think I've sort of learned to go with the flow and stop trying to microsteer so much. Maybe I'm actually learning to write! Stranger things have happened.

Mean things: loneliness of command, nobody wants to believe that Tristen isn't a war criminal any more, Daddy issues, privation, Balkanization, civil war, religious baggage.

8206 / 100000 words. 8% done!

Oh, yeah, incidentally, I know elizabethbear.com and shadowunit.org are hosed. It seems to be an ISP problem. Hopefully it will be fixed before too long.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: Kansas - Dust in the Wind
Tags:
dust, progress notes

Dang....

zxora posting in

nanowrimo

11/10/09 01:51 pm

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Current Mood: Stressed but determined

Wichita Pregnancy Fitness Examiner

silk_noir

11/10/09 12:35 pm

Hooray, I got another piece up!

Obesity guidelines should not be a yardstick for morality.

Current Mood: cheerful
Tags:
examiner column, fat, pregnancy, weight issues

(no subject)

jdeveryhope

11/10/09 06:02 pm

Phantasmagoria: Illusions (Draft Four) now contains 67,000 words. I am on Chapter Twenty-Five, and I have forty-one chapters plotted.

Since the time I have last written, I have learned that baking-by-guessing sometimes doesn't work. It now gets dark at around three-thirty. I have had trouble sleeping for more than two or three hours at a time. And, I am now twenty-three.

Tonight, I am going to see 9.

Current Mood: happy

Petman

pgdf posting in

theinferior4

11/10/09 01:06 pm

Yet another uncanny robot, certain to give John Crowley the whim-whams!

Posted by Paul DiFi.

Scripts

warrenelliscom

11/10/09 06:02 pm

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7954

People often ask me what comics scripts look like — or, at least, what my comics scripts look like, as there is no industry standard for comics scriptwriting. I have a few scripts up here on the site, and you’re welcome to download them. I write in OpenOffice and save in RTF. Beginning writers may find it instructive to compare the scripts with the published work.

(Please, don’t ask to be shown other scripts instead. These are the ones I have available. Okay?)

MINISTRY OF SPACE #1.

DESOLATION JONES #1.

DESOLATION JONES #7.

(Yes, JONES will be back one day.)

FELL #1.

(And so will FELL.)

Leave a comment

The Mechanics Of POD

warrenelliscom

11/10/09 05:29 pm

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7953

Ariana again, on a FAQ: how was the SHIVERING SANDS book built?

Leave a comment

SUPERGOD #1 Preview

warrenelliscom

11/10/09 05:24 pm

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7952

At Bleeding Cool. The comic’s out from this Wednesday.

3797731955_fbe915f328

Leave a comment

First broadcast ...

farragoblog

11/10/09 10:57 am

Noise is coming ...

Salvage Country will teach you to raise a new nation state.

Read the rest of the entry at F.M.I..

Tags:
literature

Leave a comment

Recommended For Creative Folks

catrambo

11/10/09 09:53 am

I wanted to point people at BOOKLIFE: STRATEGIES AND SURVIVAL TIPS FOR THE 21ST-CENTURY WRITER. We just hosted Jeff VanderMeer while he passed through on the Finch & Booklife tour, and it's been busy enough that I haven't sat down and gone cover to cover with it yet. I have used part of it in a class already, skimmed through it, and attended one workshop and one lecture on it, though, so I feel comfortable recommending it. ;)

It's addressed not just to writers but to people with creative projects of all types. Jeff uses the term "Booklife" to describe one's existence and career path as an artist and sections include: Building Your Booklife (mapping your future, choosing platforms, managing involvement, etc); Communicating Your Booklife (networking, PR, leveraging opportunities); Balancing Things, figuring out your writing process, and appendices by a number of people on things like podcasts, press releases, book reviews, and reputation management.

There's an accompanying website for Booklife that is well worth checking out. Jeff is thorough, lucid, and has a healthy sense of humor about the absurdities of the field, so it's an entertaining as well as informative read.

In the interest of full disclosure, this was written by a friend and I even contributed the part on writing workshops. Still worth picking up!

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Nanci Griffith - Rubi's Arms
Tags:
jeff vandermeer, recommendations, reviews, writing resources

Congressman Boehner's Terror Alert Skin Set Back To Orange

theonionfeed

11/10/09 12:00 pm

http://feeds.theonion.com/~r/theonion/weekly/~3/WpnI3doXuQ8/congressman_boehners_terror

http://www.theonion.com/content/from_print/congressman_boehners_terror?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

News In Photos

Leave a comment

Scripts

warren_ellis

11/10/09 11:02 am

(Please, don’t ask to be shown other scripts instead. These are the ones I have available. Okay?)

MINISTRY OF SPACE #1.

DESOLATION JONES #1.

DESOLATION JONES #7.

(Yes, JONES will be back one day.)

FELL #1.

(And so will FELL.)

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

(no subject)

the_gabih posting in

nanowrimo

11/10/09 05:42 pm

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Tags:
discussion

Fedor Emelianenko Tribute Post

lucius_t posting in

theinferior4

11/10/09 09:44 am

Back from the shore for a couple of days...

I grew up in thunderstorm country, hurricane country, and all my life I've been fascinated by storms, by their pyrotechnics, their effects on places and people. I had a fantasy when I was a little kid that the lightning was writing enormous words in the sky, words in another language that we only saw fragments of, and I would stay outside against my parents' orders and look on as the lightning cracked down along the Florida shore. Several times lightning struck down relatively near to me, but I was never hit--now I'm chicken, but I still like to watch and my lightning habit is getting to be a story.

Anyway I just saw this documentary about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning, Act of God, by Jennifer Baichwal. Trailer here:

The stuff with Paul Auster was not so good--he seemed to be concerned mainly with establishing his cool self, but the parts with Fred Firth, the experimental guitarist who played with Captain Beefheart were really interesting. There's a lot of half-baked mysticism and half-baked pragmatism here, but the survivor stories were compelling and the shots of the lightning strikes were some of them gorgeous and some of them scary. All in all, not a movie you need to see unless you're writing a story about lightning or unnaturally intrigued by the subject; but if it comes on PBS, you might want to keep watching.

There are so many great documentaries these days and ther subject matter has an incredible range, sports, family stuff like Meeting the Friedmans, war journals, etc etc. I hope to be doing an article on documentaries for Cinema Journal and need some guidance. Do you watch documentaries often, occasionally, rarely? Which are your favorite films? Do certain subjects appeal to you or is your taste in documentaries more random, something just strikes your fancy? Thanks.

This is Fedor:

The greatest MMA fighter in the world.

New METAtropolis Edition Coming From Tor, Mid-2010

scalzifeed

11/10/09 04:33 pm

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/11/10/new-metatropolis-edition-coming-from-tor-mid-2010/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9051

For those of you who hankered after a printed edition of METAtropolis but didn’t get to the limited edition put out by Subterranean Press before it sold out, good news: I’ve just signed the contracts for a new, non-limited edition of the anthology, which will come out through the good graces of Tor Books. Right now the scheduled (but tentative) street date is mid-2010, which is not nearly as far away as you might think.

Naturally I am hugely thrilled about this; between this, the Hugo nomination (only the second one for an anthology, ever) and its successful audio and limited runs, this has been the Little Anthology That Could, for which all credit goes to my fabulous collaborators and co-conspirators Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Jay Lake and Karl Schroeder. I was lucky enough to sort of nudge myself next to them and bask in their awesome.

I’ll post more details when I get them, including a more specific date of release. And until then, remember that the audio version is still out there for the listening. And for those who play their audio books old school, there’s now a CD version of it as well, in both conventional audio and MP3 CD flavors.

Leave a comment

Comics Comment Contest: Name That Villain!

michaeljasper1

11/10/09 05:03 pm

http://michaeljasper.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/comics-comment-contest-name-that-villain/

http://michaeljasper.wordpress.com/?p=2486

As the Zuda Comics competition moves into its second week, the comic created by Niki Smith and I continues to hold onto the #1 spot. We’d love to continue the comic, so we’re hoping you read IN MAPS & LEGENDS and voted, favorited it, clicked the stars, and even made a comment or two.

And we’re sure you told a friend or four about it as well, right? Thanks!

To encourage people to check out the site, and to also get some good discussions going on our comic’s page, we’re running a CONTEST for this week, starting RIGHT NOW.

The Rules:

Check out our comic, of course.
After voting, making it a favorite, and clicking as many stars as you want (we’re leaning toward FIVE!), scroll down to the Comments section.
Scroll ALL the way to the bottom of the page until you hit the empty Comment box.
Type a comment in the box. After you preview the comment, click Post.
NOTE: You must be registered and logged into the Zuda site to comment.

Now for the fun part. Between noon today (11/10) and running through Friday (11/13), ending at 5 p.m. EST, Niki and I will be reviewing the comments that are made on the comic’s page.

The best comment made in this time frame will get to name one of the villains in the upcoming pages of our comic. You can use your own name or make up a name (so long as the name is appropriate and safe-for-work, etc.). If there’s a tie for best comment, we’ll pick one at random.

So go, read, and comment away. No limit to how many times you can comment, and even if you’ve already made a comment before the contest started, you can make more. The more the merrier. Feel free to respond to other comments, or just state your own case.

Remember, the name of a villain rests in YOUR hands.

Happy commenting, and thanks again for reading!

A quick refresher on how to register and vote for IN MAPS & LEGENDS:

If you haven’t already done so, register at Zuda by clicking the Sign Up link in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
Verify the account via your email.
Sign into ZudaComics.com with your new user name and password.
Select “IN MAPS & LEGENDS.
Read the comic!
To the right of the comic, please click the VOTE button, rate the comic (five stars if you liked it) and click Add as favorite. The vote is by far the most important of these three things.
Have your family members and friends do the same before the end of November.
Down below, add a comment to be considered in the villain-naming contest! Contest ends Friday the 13th at 5 p.m. EST.

Leave a comment

At Whitechapel This Afternoon

warrenelliscom

11/10/09 04:47 pm

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7951

At my shithole today:

* The MATT FRACTION Interrogation 2009 - comics writer Matt Fraction kindly taking questions from the proletariat

* REMAKE/REMODEL: Zero

* Whitechapel Radio Is On

* Warren’s Ancient Jukebox - fear

* Warren’s Work FAQ (Revised Nov 2009)

* Eliza Gauger’s SWEATSHOP

Leave a comment

In Focus: Sniper Draws Moustache on Crosshairs

theonionfeed

11/10/09 11:17 am

http://feeds.theonion.com/~r/theonion/weekly/~3/jebpc76F_Kc/sniper_draws_moustache_on

http://www.theonion.com/content/from_print/sniper_draws_moustache_on?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

News In Photos

Leave a comment

Opinion: Excuse Me, But I'll Be Handling The Gentleman's Discourse For The Rest Of The Evening (by A

theonionfeed

11/10/09 11:00 am

http://feeds.theonion.com/~r/theonion/weekly/~3/bu_9XocT4K8/excuse_me_but_ill_be_handling

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/excuse_me_but_ill_be_handling?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

Ah, pardon me, milady. May I have a word? I trust you're enjoying tonight's festivities? I should say I am. Nothing stirs the blood quite like an...

Leave a comment

Sports: Tim Duncan Makes Citizen's Foul Call

theonionfeed

11/10/09 10:43 am

http://feeds.theonion.com/~r/theonion/weekly/~3/OHKqVBuJZ1Y/tim_duncan_makes_citizens

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/tim_duncan_makes_citizens?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

SAN ANTONIO—Spurs center Tim Duncan took officiating into his own hands Saturday when he made a citizen's foul call on Kings guard Kevin...

Leave a comment

That’s a WIN in my book

failblog_rss

11/10/09 03:00 pm

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/failblog/~3/aFM-WnQYbXw/

http://failblog.org/?p=27054

epic fail pictures

Wireless Network Fail

Picture by: dunno source Submitted by: dunno source via Fail Uploader

Leave a comment

Vet again...

j_cheney

11/10/09 10:36 am

Took the dog to the vet yet again. Xrays show something indeterminiate going on in the spleen area. Going back for an ultrasound this afternoon to find out what's there.

Oy.

Still not eating, but he's alert and wanting to go to the park, even if he does run on 3.5 legs.

At Whitechapel This Afternoon

warren_ellis

11/10/09 09:47 am

At my shithole today:

* The MATT FRACTION Interrogation 2009 - comics writer Matt Fraction kindly taking questions from the proletariat

* REMAKE/REMODEL: Zero

* Whitechapel Radio Is On

* Warren’s Ancient Jukebox - fear

* Warren’s Work FAQ (Revised Nov 2009)

* Eliza Gauger’s SWEATSHOP

Leave a comment

Thoughts on NaNoWriMo and Writing Process

jimvanpelt

11/10/09 09:14 am

The always thoughtful

lmarley is teaching a writing workshops for teens next week, and she posted her thoughts about National Novel Writing Month. She asked, "How does this exercise teach you how to 'learn and master' style and craft and pacing? If you don't revise, rewrite, edit, and examine, what improves?"

Her questions got me thinking about the value of sprinting through a 50,000 word month:

I don't think the NaNoWriMo helps much at all with craft and pacing, but I do think there is some value in discovering voice. One of the big problems I see with wannabe writers is that they just haven't produced much, and what they do produce is overthought. Where I see this most clearly is in my creative writing classes where I have them keep 1,000-word-a-week journals. The stories they turn in can be tortured, stilted and mechanical, but their journals often have passages (sometimes very long passages) of smooth, readable, interesting and even compelling language.

I think the difference comes from their mindset and the process. When they are writing for me, they are thinking about all they know about writing and about me as a critical reader. They seize up, write slowly, and kill their voice. But when they write in their journals (especially after we've been doing them for a couple of weeks), they are writing quickly and for themselves.

NaNoWriMo puts writers more into that journal writing mindset. It's okay if it's bad. It just has to be done, and in the midst of trying to get it done, passages with real voice emerge. What they learn from the process is not only to get words on the page, but also to write from a more direct place in themselves--not the heavily filtered place where they normally wring their sentences.

The editing that comes later will be about picking out the good, adjusting the not so good, and tossing away the bad, but they can't do the editing if they don't produce something to edit first.

The cartoon is from the very funny writer and artist, Debbie Ridpath Ohi. She has lots of other insightful writing illustrations at her site.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: "Like a Hurricane," Neil Young
Tags:
teaching, writing

Rainn Wilson’s life in 140 seconds

officetally23

11/10/09 03:41 pm

http://www.officetally.com/rainn-wilsons-life-in-140-seconds

http://www.officetally.com/?p=13793

The Office’s Rainn Wilson will be a judge for Nikon Festival’s “A Day Through Your Lens” video contest. Entries are required to be 140 seconds or less. Here is Rainn’s video: The contest is open now through December 15th. You can win up to $100,000 and some cool Nikon gear! Link: Nikon Festival’s “A Day Through Your Lens”

Leave a comment

What's the point of that story?

nihilistic_kid

11/10/09 08:00 am

I hope my specific examples below don't come off as picking on people. (No really! Really!!)

The question in the subject header came up twice yesterday about different stories ("Guts" and "A&P") and also came up last week. I described the events of Stephen King's New Yorker story Premium Harmony to

la_nausicaa and she asked what the point of that story could actually be. (That said, she liked "Guts", but then she read that one and only heard about "Premium Harmony.") She's also a school psychologist in training and said to me over email, "but it is interesting. do you have any idea how ashamed most kids are about masturbating. this totally normalizes that. it is like a public health advertisement: masturbating is normal and ok. just be careful, li'l dude," when I wondered if assigning "Guts" would just accelerate the usual gossip and rumors about a teacher's personal life that is such valuable currency to students.

And then there was the Escape Pod podcast of my novelette The Uncanny Valley and the now-traditional searching for and failing to find the point common to the listener forums for that site, and when a friend proofread my story forthcoming in Phantom (yeah yeah, it's been forthcoming for a while but this time it really really is coming out next week, so I'm told) she concluded her queries and requests for changes with, "Well, that was utterly pointless."

So, you know, I'm curious about this idea of what the point of stories should be. At first I was wondering if "What's the point of that story?" is just another way of saying, "I was grossed out!" but as we've seen stories like "A&P" are called pointless, and some people who ask after the point of Gross Story #1 like Gross Story #2 just fine. I wondered if confusion was also an issue—someone who finds a story confusing may suspect that there is a point that they just happened to miss (and that it's the story's fault). But then again "A&P" isn't confusing. It isn't even all that boring. I kinda liked it when I was first assigned it, though any drama it had has long since been sucked out of me by repeated assignments.

(Aside, I was thanked last weekend at WFC for "That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable" because at least one person interpreted the story as the first new thing to be said about "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" in a loooong time.)

Of course, plenty of people find "A&P" boring and feel it is plotless, which also ties into the idea of confusing stories (whose plots cannot be followed) being pointless.

So sometimes a pointless story is a story that grosses out the reader, confuses the reader, or bores the reader. Each seems to be a burden. There's an expectation of enjoyment (and I presume enlightenment given the search for a "point") that is crushed somehow.

So what kind of points do stories with points have? Do people pick up a magazine or a collection and think to themselves, "Oh boy, am I gonna get a brain full of points tonight, baby!" Is a point something even sought after or only missed when it appears to be gone? Do writers sit down with a point to prove when they write a story...and don't many people object to being "preached" to? Of course, in that last case people often don't feel preached to if they already agree with the writer's point, but even that isn't universal. A libertarian acquaintance of mine told me that he can't read L. Niel Smith at all these days because the deck is so obviously stacked in favor of libertarianism that the political explorations aren't sophisticated enough for him. "I find myself arguing against my own politics!" he said, and then he described throwing a book across the room.

(That's another thing I still wonder about. I can't be bothered to dig up the link, but I did ask a few years ago if people really do that and as it turns out, people do! One day I'm going to start doing that with pizza slices I don't like. California will never be the same!)

So what do you all think? What's the point of stories? Can you think of some stories that have made good points, or that are good and pointless? Let the world know!

Links to pages about IN MAPS & LEGENDS

michaeljasper1

11/10/09 03:22 pm

http://michaeljasper.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/links-to-pages-about-in-maps-legends/

http://michaeljasper.wordpress.com/?p=2472

Just because I like lists and like to organize, here’s a list of all the various places that have to do with our online comic IN MAPS & LEGENDS:

The In Maps & Legends Facebook page
Artist Niki Smith’s announcement page at her site: “In Maps & Legends a Zuda.com Finalist!“
My announcement page: “American Idol Meets Batman. Or… Zuda!“
My In Maps & Legends page here at this site
My announcement page at the Fangs, Fur, & Fey online community
Niki’s announcement page at the Absolute Write community

Fun stuff:

An overview of how we put together the first four panels of the comic: “Building a comic, panel by panel“

Nuts and bolts about the competition:

Niki’s How to Vote at Zuda page (with tips on how to help Maps win!)
Zuda’s Frequently Asked Question: “How do I help a comic win?“
Current standings for the November competition
How to add an image to your web site or blog to show your support

Reviews:

Please let me know if I missed anything, and I’ll add it to this list. And thank you, thank you, thank you for reading. It’s so amazing, getting our work out in front of so many people. It’s a huge rush.

A quick refresher on how to register and vote for IN MAPS & LEGENDS:</p>

If you haven’t already done so, register at Zuda by clicking the Sign Up link in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
Verify the account via your email.
Sign into ZudaComics.com with your new user name and password.
Select IN MAPS & LEGENDS.
Read the comic!
To the right of the comic, click the VOTE button, rate the comic (five stars if you liked it) and click Add as favorite. The vote is by far the most important of these three things.
Down below, add a comment, if you want.
Have your family members and friends do the same before the end of November.

Leave a comment

Alex Wilson

Alex Wilson

View

Navigation

Links

November 10th, 2009