This week I’m reading The Shadow of Black Wings by James Calbraith, another book I got free from the BookBub mailing list. This one is sort of an alternate Victorian history/steampunk/fantasy mashup. Oh, and there are dragons. (T’Sian would, I think, eat them for lunch, but still, anything’s better with dragons right?) And now, on to the two-sentence quote!
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday: “The Shadow of Black Wings””
This week’s free book is Deadland: Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland, by Mainak Dhar, in which, apparently, Alice follows an undead rabbit (or something like that) down a hole and becomes a zombie-slaying machine. If this reminds you of American McGee’s “Alice”, you’re not alone.
This week’s free book is Black Onyx (A Superhero Thriller), by Victor Methos. Evidently this involves a relic from a lost civilization, which appears to be a suit of super-powered armor, but I haven’t yet gotten to the point where the armor has actually been found, so I’m sort of guessing. But given that the book description calls it the “Black Onyx” suit, reveals that there are more than one of it lying around under the Antarctic ice, and gives away quite a bit of the villain’s activities in his attempt to get one of the suits for himself, it seems like a pretty good guess.
Well it’s been a while since I reached into my vast trove of ancient publisher response letters, so I figured it was about time to do so again. And what did I find this time? An acceptance letter from the old ‘zine “Mindmares”, for my old story “Rush Hour”. (See, it’s not ALL rejection letters in there.) Nothing to do with Jackie Chan or Chris Tucker, this is the story of a man who is stuck in traffic, reading the paper, and failing to notice that there’s a Very Bad Thing heading his way. Whoops.
Continue reading “Random Acceptance: Mindmares, “Rush Hour””
This week’s book, from the Baen free library, is Starliner, by David Drake. This is about an interstellar passenger ship (the “starliner” of the title, natch) that gets dragged into a war between two planets along its route. At least, I assume it’s going to get dragged into the war. Otherwise there’s not going to be much going on, is there?
The first one or two times I make editing passes on a book, scenes tend to get longer. This is because I’ve found that if I keep going back and fleshing out earlier scenes as I think of more stuff, the book never gets finished. Here is an example, from a scene that introduces a character new to the story in part two of Shards: Brennendah, a scientifically-minded Rittandic whose job is to study the Æther, also known as the void, which is gradually consuming the region where the Rittandics live. (This loss of territory, known as the Unraveling, is what gives the territory—the Ravels—its name.) Here is the original paragraph, followed by the revised version:
This week I’m reading Reversion: The Inevitable Horror, by one J. Thorn, which purports to be for fans of Clive Barker, Stephen King’s story “The Langoliers”, or a previous Teaser Tuesday entry, Hugh Howey’s Wool. I can sort of see the comparison to “The Langoliers” in that Reversion also takes place in a world (possibly a pocket dimension) that is in the process of disintegrating, but (so far, anyway) it is nothing like Wool or anything I’ve read by Clive Barker. In fact I wouldn’t even categorize it as horror, despite the presence of hordes of zombies, who mostly stand around in large groups attempting to prevent Our Heroes from moving. In that, they are not unlike all the drivers who clog the freeways around Southern California. Hmm, perhaps it’s a horror novel after all …
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 7/30/2013: “Reversion: The Inevitable Horror””
Still reading The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut’s classic from 1959, this week. We’ve just gotten to the point of meeting the members of a new religion whose members handicap themselves by carrying heavy weights, dressing in ugly clothes, wearing bad makeup, etc. Shades of “Harrison Bergeron“! And by “shades” I do not mean “dark glasses worn to impair your eyesight and eliminate any advantage you may enjoy due to your superior vision.”
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 7/16/2013: “The Sirens of Titan””
This week’s free Prime book is The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut’s classic from 1959. I haven’t picked up any Vonnegut since Hocus Pocus, but now that I’ve discovered that most of his books appear to be available to be borrowed for free via Prime, I’m sure to pick up more of them.
Despite some recent challenges with the dogs, I finally finished up the first draft of the heavily-rewritten The War of the Ravels, which concludes the story begun in Shards. At almost 50% longer than part one, The War of the Ravels wraps up the contest between Mercy, Kihantroh, and a few new players in the quest to reassemble Tyndallëau’s Heart and put it to use saving the world, or something.
Viscosity 