The great American novel, rant, blog post, essay, short story, quip, text, email…
Killing time, surfing Feedly feeds and saw this post from Willy-Bob Wheaton recalling a story about the time he sent his first draft of his a book he was working on Cory Doctorow to read and Cory gave him the honest truth: there’s a good tale in there but the writing ain’t so great. Eventually Wheaton overcomes self-doubt generated by said tough love, and does … Continue reading Yes, Thank You Cory Doctorow
Of all the great authors I read in the last decade or so, none seemed to possess the combination of utterly fantastic imagination and optimism in the future of humanity that Iain Banks put into his culture novels. It was startlingly sad news to read his post about his terminal cancer only two months ago; it is less startling but still sad news to see … Continue reading Farewell Iain Banks
My daughter’s English class spent a lot of time on poems this semester and her grade had a “poetry night” this week where every kid read one of the poems they had written. It was fun — the kids, um, young adults, gave it a good shot and no one died on stage. What can I say — I really liked my daughter’s poem. I … Continue reading Snap Snap Snap
So yeah Warren Ellis has written a metric ton of comics, but only two prose novels: Crooked Little Vein and Gun Machine. Crooked Little Vein was a blast of weirdness, weird subcultures and hypnotic conspiracy building that if you had the stomach for was your favorite book that year. Gun Machine, relatively, feels far more straightforward. It’s still strapped to a framework of something deep … Continue reading Bookmark: Warren Ellis (Novels)
Another great talk from Cory Doctorow on the nature of the Internet and its relationship to society. You might also be interested in this recent interview between Tim Wu and Cory Doctorow hosted at Slate: Continue reading Everything Is Internet Policy
I can’t figure out how to get Photoshop Elements 8 to scan in directly from my Epson V33 scanner. Weird! Manga Studio will scan in from it but this version of photoshop won’t. Technology advances but it often leaves simple functions behind. Weird… An idea for a story I noodled on earlier this year — a quick concept sketch I scanned in and started playing … Continue reading Accelerated
Steven Gould is one of my favorite authors because of the way he takes one impossible idea and then logically delves into a world with this one new impossible idea in it. He has a scientific method feel to how he writes science fiction that I really enjoy and he generally has a nice touch with action and characters as well. He’s probably best known … Continue reading Bookmark: Steven Gould
Game of Thrones is the first novel in the A Song of Fire and Ice saga and the teevee series adapting that string of novels. But you know that, everyone knows that. The popularity of this story is surprising to me; clearly the HBO teevee adaptation had a lot to do with it but it seems like the novels had gathered a lot of steam … Continue reading Bookmark: Game of Thrones
Here’s a shot of my current list of graphic novels I’m reading. Working my way from the top down probably: Faith Erin Hick, Hope Larson, Kazu Kibushi, Vera Brosgol, Lewis Trondheim, Mark Siegel, Arne Bellstorf, Dean Haspiel, and Joe Sacco. That’s a pretty impressive list of creators’ work on my shelf right now. Continue reading To Read Stack of Comix
These “Bookmark” posts are useful for me; hopefully a few other people get something out of them along the way. I really enjoy Neal Stephenson‘s books. Unlike Stephen King, another novelist where the length of the book increases with each new effort, I never read a Stephenson book and wonder how badly he beat the editors. Stephenson books revel in their research, the density of … Continue reading Bookmark: Neal Stephenson
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