Saturday, April 14, 2012

Week In Review (Apr.8-14)

Bit of a shorter selection this week, as I’ve been away and not really paying much attention to Twitter or my RSS feed. I’ll try to keep on top of things and do better with compiling a list of next week’s most interesting articles.

Terrible Minds: “25 Reasons I Hate Your Main Character” by Chuck Wendig [Article]

“The list…? Entirely personal… in the hands of a master, none of this shit applies. A masterful storyteller can break all the rules and make the breaking of the rules seem like that should’ve been the rule all along… I thought it an interesting exercise to list those things that make me want to punt your main character into a pterodactyl nest. Where he will be promptly ripped into ribbons and gobbets of man-meat.”

Some excellent advice and pointers (as always) from Mr Wendig. While I’m on the subject, I really have read altogether not enough of Chuck’s writing. I shall remedy this very soon, with Blackbirds.

Discordia 19: Neil Gaiman interviews Stephen King

A very interesting pairing.

“The article is behind a paywall and I'd usually just put some juicy parts of it here and link to the original piece but for this one the whole article is below. You can download the Sunday Times app for iOS and buy the April 8 issue if you feel bad reading it here for free.”

I did not feel bad.

Speculative Scotsman: “Justin of Staffer’s Book Review on Sex in SFF” by Justin Landon [Article]

A very amusing article, as expected, and one that shares my own opinion on sex in SFF (fiction in general, actually). It’s always a pleasure to read Justin’s commentary. I recommend you do, too. It may change forever how you look at breasts. And puppies…

The Shared Desk: “Love of Adventure: The Crossover Between Steampunk Tales and Epic Stories” by Helen Lowe [Article]

As far as I can tell, The Shared Desk is a blog written by authors Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris. This is part of Helen Lowe’s blog-tour to support the release of The Gathering of the Lost [review imminent from Alyssa].

More on CR: Interviews with Helen Lowe and Philippa Ballantine

***

A little bit of a quieter week on CR, with Alyssa’s review of Timeless by Gail Carriger and an interview with Gini Koch. In addition, a review of mine appeared elsewhere: the Speculative Scotsman hosted my review of Tobias S. Buckell’s The Executioness. Big thank you to Niall for letting me stop by, and if you don’t regularly follow Speculative Scotsman already, then I heartily recommend you start doing so.

It’s been a more hectic week, one with very little time spent in front of my computer, and not so much time for proper, long reading session. Apparently, even unemployed people who blog need to decompress and step away from the internet from time to time.

Next week, I hope to have two novel reviews for you (the Gotrek & Felix Anthology edited by Christian Dunn, and The Alchemist of Souls by Anne Lyle); an interview with David Tallerman, author of Giant Thief; a couple of graphic novel reviews (Gates of Gotham by Scott Snyder and Kyle Higgins, and DMZ Vol.1 by Brian Woods – both excellent, and the latter in particular); and the usual host of comics reviews, news items, and probably some new cover artwork as well, if I can find any striking new pieces.

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