Microsoft Excel is not the first app you would associate with creative writing, but it has become my go to app for thinking through story structure, composing poetry, and doing story outlining. This is how it started. I was working on a proposal that had four major characters, most of …
Mark Texeira delivered the final poster images for A Hero’s Death, our graphic novel. Now we just need to have the book lettered and laid out, then we are off to the presses.
My latest airplane reading was a relatively short book by James Blish. Most of his work is straight up sci-fi, but Night Shapers is quite a different work altogether. The book takes place in 1900-ish Africa, and posits what would things have been like if many of the primitive beliefs …
Jack Vance is one of my favorite writers. The man could come up with the most outlandish ideas and turn them into great stories. Nopalgarth, which is basically a novella, is a prime example. What if there were invisible creatures squatting on your head that fundamentally altered your perception of …
John Brunner is always good for an interesting read. As a writer, he stewed up plots that, to my mind, are rarely matched in originality by other more celebrated writers. As much as I admire Brunner and his work, reading The Shockwave Rider was a real struggle despite the fact …
Jack Vance has been one of my favorite writers ever since I first read his short story “Nopalgarth.” I immediate read my way through everything of his I could find, and when I finally encountered The Dying Earth, my mind was blown. The merger of science and magic and the …
Thanks to Spotify and eMusic, I’ve run across a great goth metal band called Seven Kingdoms. Sounds a bit like Battle Lore, but with a streak of glam metal in it. The songs are surprisingly catchy for a metal band. I find myself singing along surprisingly often, and I’m not …
