Friday. Worked on a freelance murder mystery expansion pack for Freeform Games. Gave up on it; it felt like pulling teeth, trying to write out character sheets for my ten characters. It seemed like such a good idea, too: motive, method, opportunity; participation in major pre-existing plots; goals; bonuses; loves, hates, knows. Sucked the life […]
by Daniel Abraham. If you’re the kind of person who likes Gene Wolf or Umberto Eco but is left wondering whether you really understood what was going on, don’t read the rest of this description, just read the book. It’s be more fun to be surprised. A Shadow in Summer is a fantasy about…hm…let’s say
It seems like, every season or so, I gravitate to one easy-to-make dish and eat the heck out of it. This winter it was canned tomato soup. Last summer and into fall it was ramen with peanut butter and the kitchen sink. Last spring it was sushi. Now, it is the SALAD. I buy a
In the mail I got a box. In the box was another copy of Repo! The Genetic Opera, Beirut’s Lon Gisland EP, and a book of Russian fairy tales. A very good box.
Warning—>don’t read this if you don’t like embarrassing bits of information about yours truly. Mom. Not that’s it’s horrible or anything. “The erotic instinct is something questionable.” — Carl Jung. Ice cream; elephant trunks; stroking a ukelele; riffling the pages of a book; walking through crowds before a concert; ceiling fans; the sound of a
From yesterday. If I were truly empowered, I would run away from home and never come back. No, I could come back with a gun. No, I would come back with a run and flamingo-pink high heels, because I am empowered. To find myself. To say any outrageous–to do any outrageous thing whatsoever, without regret,
Eden Moore books, by Cherie Priest. Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau Wilce. — There’s dark fantasy all over the place. Vampires! Werewolves! Tattoos! Sex! Did I Mention the Vampires?!? Cherie Priest’s Eden Moore books aren’t dark fantasy. They’re ghost stories. I love ghost stories, which may or may not contain ghosts but at least contain something
So here’s improv writing: No critiquing (especially in read-aloud situations). No censoring anything on paper. If necessary, say “bleep” when reading out loud. The prompts are just prompts, not binding. First prompt: The door wouldn’t open. The door wouldn’t open. The window wouldn’t close. The cat wouldn’t scratch. The snatch had been stolen. And we
Today was a good day, but a hard one. It started out with not making the first cut on the ABNA award, which is never an easy way to start the day, being impersonally notified of your not-brilliance. But then it did a quick segue into being accused of something I didn’t do, but would
