My story “Belief”, which first appeared in Fusion Fragment, has been republished in the latest Dunesteef, Episode 132. It’s in audio form, so grab a pair of headphones and tune in.
Episode 132: Belief
“Belief”
Posted in fiction, short story, writing
Tagged belief, dunesteef, parenting, reprint, sci-fi
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Product Placement: the Next Generation
So what happens when authors start having to account for these new revenue strategies? My best guess: multiple versions of the story — B&N gets copies of my book where Andrea uses a Nook; on Amazon, she has a Kindle; on iBooks, she has an iPad. Copies being sold through Amazon have her using an Oster blender; copies sold through Apple have a Hamilton Beach unit; if the book should show up in Nordstrom’s, maybe it’s a Cuisinart. To hell with artistic integrity — if I want to sell my book to the most people possible, I have to change the character so she uses the right products to fit the market where I’m hoping the book will be sold.
My latest article on Escape Pod is Product Placement: the Next Generation, which asks: what happens when the company selling your e-book has a revenue sharing deal with the competitor of a product your characters use?
Posted in article, escape pod, nonfiction
Tagged amazon, apple, boingboing, holly lisle, ibooks, ibookstore, kindle, product placement, tandy 1000
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Movie Review: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”
I honestly don’t think Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a bad film… but then, I’m biased, because I’m a huge fan of the TV show. If I wasn’t a fan of the show, I think I’d rate the movie much lower — I never really felt the tension, I didn’t buy the love story, and I didn’t feel any empathy toward the main characters. I just wasn’t invested in the movie beyond “hey, what was Buffy like in the filmed universe?” While I think it was a decent, fun film (for the most part), it suffered in many places and, honestly, I’m not sure that the audience was ready for a true Joss Whedon Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.
In honor of its 20th anniversary, here’s a review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie) over at Escape Pod.
Posted in escape pod, movie, nonfiction, review, superhero, supernatural, writing
Tagged ben affleck, buffy the vampire slayer, david arquette, donald sutherland, film, fran rubel kuzui, joss whedon, kristy swanson, luke perry, menstrual cramps, merrick, paul reubens, review, rutger hauer, zorag
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Web Series Review: “Harry Potter and the Ten Years Later”
The Harry Potter phenomenon has spawned countless fan-created works of written fiction, musical awesomeness, and re-cut music videos. It has inspired thousands of people to be more awesome than they might otherwise have been. And that’s good.
But now it’s over. The last film was released in 2011, and if you don’t subscribe to the EWE school of thought, we know what’s happening 19 years later: Harry and Ginny are married with three children, Ron and Hermione with two, Draco with one, and so on. However, lots of good fan-fiction* has changed the outcome of that epilogue.
Harry Potter and the Ten Years Later is the latest entry in that oeuvre, and, so far, it looks promising.
on sex scenes
As someone who’s written a fair amount of sex scenes… yeah, I’d say this is pretty accurate.
Book Review: “Death’s Daughter” by Amber Benson
I have a thing about Death stories. My favorite is, of course, the Death of the Discworld (black cloak, scythe, TALKS LIKE THIS), followed by Neil Gaiman’s perky goth-girl Death of the Endless. Somewhere on the continuum is Piers Anthony’s Zane/Death from On a Pale Horse. I think Calliope Reaper-Jones falls a little ahead of Zane, and that’s something, because Anthony is clearly an established talent in the fantasy field while Amber Benson is a relative newcomer.
From my review of Death’s Daughter by Amber Benson, now up on Escape Pod.
Posted in book, escape pod, fantasy, nonfiction, review, supernatural, writing
Tagged amber benson, calliope reaper-jones, chick lit, death, deaths daughter, deus ex machina, indra, kali, neil gaiman, piers anthony, review, susan sto helit
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Soundproof Digest 2
Soundproof Digest #2 collects most of my reviews from April, May, and June, along with my short-story “113 Feet”, in one handy PDF or MOBI document for your reading enjoyment. It also contains several Hugo-nominated short-stories.
Posted in fiction, short story, writing
Tagged 113 feet, reviews, sci-fi, scuba diving, soundproof
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Book Review: “Kiss the Dead” by Laurell K. Hamilton
Hmm… okay, so, we start with police procedural, and our hero shows up on the scene. She’s got a crap-ton of weapons and abilities, and she uses them to be a monster and save the day, sort of, except that nothing really happens and, twenty chapters later, we’re going back to the station for her to have the new guy — let’s make him a gigantic freaking red herring, just for the sake of argument — come out to someone he’s never met. Add in some drama with the other female cops before the hero goes home to her polyamorous lifestyle and has sex with two gorgeous, exceedingly well-endowed men before being even more dramatic, going to a hostage situation, and then dealing with vampire issues. Then she has still more sex with still more well-endowed men — all of whose eyes and hair we get intimate knowledge of — and obsesses over the fact that, holy crap, I’m in a semi-successful polyamorous relationship, what must be wrong with me??? before sitting down for a discussion and having a little action scene at the very end that she’s not even in the same room for most of, and…
…and then the book just stops.
Yeah. Welcome to Laurell K. Hamilton’s latest Anita Blake novel, Kiss the Dead.
I so badly wanted to like Kiss the Dead, Laurell K. Hamilton’s latest novel… but I couldn’t. Here’s my review, now posted at Escape Pod.
Posted in book, escape pod, fantasy, nonfiction, review, supernatural, urban, writing
Tagged anita blake, kiss the dead, laurell k. hamilton, polyamory, urban fantasy, vampire, werewolf
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Movie Review: “Ted”
Sometimes movie trailers try to be too cute. That is to say, they hide the entire story from the viewer, or try to create mystery where there is none.
And sometimes movie trailers tell you exactly what the movie is about. Sometimes, the trailer says “you’re going to watch a 100-minute live-action episode of Family Guy, and you’re going to laugh your ass off doing it.”
Ted is one of those movies.
My review of the new film Ted is now up at Escape Pod.
I loved this movie. So will you.
Posted in comedy, escape pod, fantasy, movie, nonfiction, review, writing
Tagged boston, cgi, enterprise, family guy, farts, flash gordon, mark wahlberg, mila kunis, movie, review, romantic comedy, seth mcfarlane, ted, thunder buddies, trailer
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Book Review: “Hunter and Fox” by Philippa Ballantine
My review of Philippa Ballantine’s Hunter and Fox is now up. TLDR version: it was a good book, but it wasn’t really up my alley.
Posted in book, escape pod, fantasy, nonfiction, review, urban, writing
Tagged cliffhanger, doorstop, geist, hunter and fox, philippa ballantine, review, spectyr
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“113 Feet” now published
My short-story “113 Feet” has been published by Escape Pod. Read it or listen to it here. If you choose the latter, enjoy editor Mur Lafferty’s performance.
“113 Feet” is the first short-story I wrote when I started calling myself a writer. It took several years and a lot of revisions to get it to the point of being published. It used to be 5000 words longer, for starters. And on top of that, it was actually inspired by Escape Pod – specifically, episode 147, “Pressure”, in which former editor Steve Eley said he wanted to read more underwater SF. I wrote this story in the month following that episode.
If you want to give feedback on the story, Escape Pod maintains forums for you to do so. You’ll find them here.
Posted in fiction, short story, writing
Tagged 113 feet, escape pod, family, mur lafferty, sci-fi, science fiction, scuba diving
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Obsessed With Doing Something Else. ANYTHING Else.
Like many writers, I get obsessed with doing things that aren’t related to writing. Here’s what’s been obsessing me lately.
Obsessed With Doing Something Else. ANYTHING Else. : Escape Pod
Posted in article, escape pod, nonfiction, writing
Tagged brentalfloss, civilization, civilization v, father's day, obsession, singlemindedness, tunnel vision, writing
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“The Lady Swordmaster” by Brock L. Noel
I have a few minor roles in this bawdy tale of swordplay and crotch-adjustment known as Dunesteef Episode 130.
Posted in audio, dunesteef audio fiction magazine, performance
Tagged brock l noel, dunesteef, fantasy, the lady swordmaster
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Movie Review: “Another Earth”
Imagine that, a year or so ago, you saw a trailer for a film in which humanity discovered another planet Earth growing slowly closer. Humanity made contact with Earth Two, as they called it, and realized that each and every person on the planet could have a duplicate up there.
Then there’s some cuts of a young blond woman, a car accident, a relationship, and the chance for Our Heroine to win a trip to Earth Two. She seems all introspective; a Coldplay-like song runs in the background; the trailer ends.
The problem, though, is that the movie I saw wasn’t quite the movie I was advertised.
From my review of Another Earth, now up at Escape Pod.
Posted in escape pod, indie (or indie-style), movie, nonfiction, review, sci-fi, writing
Tagged another earth, brit marling, fall on your sword, review, richard berendzen, rot13, william mapother
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Book Review: “Railsea” by China Mieville
When I first downloaded the book, I thought there was something wrong with my copy, so I went over to Amazon & checked the first chapter. Nope, it was that way on purpose. In fact, one of the shorter chapters in the book is devoted to explaining why the ampersand is used instead of the word “and”. Unfortunately, this little contrivance got annoying the further I read. Maybe that was one of Mieville’s techniques to control reading speed — you read faster by recognizing the shapes of words, & if you aren’t used to seeing & where an “and” should be, you’re forced to slow down.
From my review of China Mieville’s Railsea, at Escape Pod.
Posted in book, escape pod, fantasy, nonfiction, review, writing, ya
Tagged ampersand, china mieville, moby-dick, mocker-jack, rails, railsea, review, trains
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“Kill Screen” by Chris Lewis Carter
I’m performing (most of) Pseudopod #285 – “Kill Screen” by Chris Lewis Carter. Click here to listen.
Posted in audio, escape artists, narration, pseudopod
Tagged chris lewis carter, horror, kill screen, pseudopod
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“The Plumbers and the Princess”
My short-story “The Plumbers and the Princess” is now available in Aoife’s Kiss #41 – their 11th anniversary issue. Click here to purchase a copy.
(It’s pronounced “EE-faw”, if you were wondering.)
Posted in fiction, short story, writing
Tagged aoife's kiss, fantasy, modern myth, mushrooms, myth, plumbing, the plumbers and the princess, video game
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Tangent Online’s review of “Greener”
Josh Roseman’s short story, “Greener,” is a love story set in the medium future (if I read the hint correctly, 2080). When Scott decides not to renew their four-year contract for a third term, Naomi is furious. Scott tries to distract himself with other women, but nothing works, and Scott soon discovers he can’t live without her. A thoughtful, well-written story in a credible future world.
Tangent Online had the above to say about “Greener”.
Posted in fiction, short story, writing
Tagged greener, medicine, relationships, review, sci-fi, science fiction, sex
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Josh Roseman: Writer, Voice Guy, Dad, Human 