Deeply disappointed that you weren’t able to make it to KGB’s June Fantastic Fiction reading to hear me read from A Furnace Sealed and Chuck Wendig read from Wanderers?
WELL BE DISAPPOINTED NO MORE! Because the full audio from the reading is now available. It’s just like being there! (Really, it is — the lighting in KGB is ridiculously low, so you can’t hardly see anything anyhow, so the audio is pretty close to the same experience……………)
It’s fascinating to me to see which movies in “4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch” garner lots of comments and which ones don’t. I did a look at this a while back, but I thought I’d take another look, especially since that last one was before I got to MCU Phase 2 or the DCEU.
An excerpt:
It’s frustrating, because the pairing of Bridges and Reynolds should’ve been comedy gold. Instead, it is comedy pyrite.
At least the supporting cast is fun. Kevin Bacon puts on a Southie accent and is delightfully evil as Hayes. Mary-Louise Parker provides deadpan awesomeness as Proctor. James Hong and Marissa Miller do a wonderful job channeling Reynolds and Bridges (hearing Pulsipher’s cowboy aphorisms come out of Miller’s mouth is hilarious, and nobody ever went wrong casting Hong in anything). And it is a true joy to see Robert Knepper bringing the nervous sleaze as a deado.
This movie is trying oh-so-very-hard for a Men in Black meets Ghostbusters vibe, but without any of the verve and wit that made those movies enjoyable, instead being more like Men in Black II meets Ghostbusters II. None of it works, as Pulsipher is a low-rent K, Walker is a low-watt J, Parker is a little too much Zed, and the deados transforming into monsters are all pale copies of Vincent D’Onofrio doing the bug in an Edgar suit.
Since December 2017, I have been providing content on my Patreon. For $1/month you get movie reviews, and each tier upward from there also gets you more stuff: cat pictures ($2/month), TV reviews ($5/month), short excerpts from works in progress ($7/month), vignettes featuring my original characters ($10/month), and first looks at my first drafts ($20/month). Plus there are occasional bits of commentary for all patrons.
This post will be updated regularly with the new content that shows up on Patreon: the movie and TV reviews, the vignettes, and the commentary.
Movie reviews ($1/month):
TV reviews ($5/month):
Vignettes ($10/month):
Commentary (for all):
Last Wednesday, KGB Fantastic Fiction hosted me and Chuck Wendig reading from our latest books. It was a delightful evening, with the KGB Bar filled with people, and lots of folks promising to order/preorder our books.
I went first, reading most of Chapter 5 of A Furnace Sealed. While I have two new novels out this year, I thought it made more sense to read from the book that takes place in New York City at an NYC reading than the high fantasy police procedural Mermaid Precinct.
After a brief break, Chuck read the opening from his forthcoming novel Wanderers. Chuck is an amazing writer, and an awesome reader, and now I’m dying to read his novel.
We had a wonderful time, and some people bought books, and then we had a great dinner afterward, and a good time was had by all.
While Chuck and I knew each other through online interactions, mostly on Twitter, we’d never met until last week, and he’s as much a delight in person as he is on Twitter and on his brilliant blog. (If you don’t read Terrible Minds, you totally should.)
There will be audio of the reading on the KGB Fantastic Fiction site very soon……..
As I have every year this millennium, I will be a guest at Shore Leave 41 at the Hunt Valley Inn in Cockeysville, Maryland, just north of Baltimore. I’ll be doing my usual programming, including a Boogie Knights concert Saturday morning, Meet the Pros Friday evening, and other keen stuff. And I’ll be putting in time at the eSpec Books booth as well.
Here’s the schedule:
Friday
6-7pm: “Writing for Themed Anthologies,” w/Mike McPhail, Susan Olesen, Joshua Palmatier, and Hildy Silverman (Belmont)
10pm-midnight: Meet the Pros, w/the entire gang of author guests (Hunt/Valley corridor)
Saturday
11am-noon: Boogie Knights concert (Hunt/Valley)
12-1pm: “Star Trek: Discovery Season 2,” w/Rigel Ailur, Dave Galanter, Amy Imhoff, Dayton Ward, and Howard Weinstein (Salon A) — I will be late for this, as it’s right after the concert, and I’ll need time to break down my percussion and change
1-2pm: “Batman Turns 80,” w/Christopher L. Bennett, Greg Cox, Russ Colchamiro, and Glenn Hauman (Salon E)
3-4pm: “Captain Marvel,” w/Rigel Ailur, Hildy Silverman, and Laura Ware (Salon E)
4-5pm: “Self-Defense 101” (McCormick Suite)
6-7pm: “Meeting eSpec Books,” w/Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Christopher L. Bennett, Robert Greenberger, Mike McPhail, and Dayton Ward
Strangely, I have no programming on Sunday. I’ll probably be spending the day relaxing, and/or being at the eSpec booth and/or doing an autographing at the Novel Spaces booth.
Hope to see folks there!
A decade and a half later, and my 2005 political Star Trek novel Articles of the Federation is still getting attention. This time it’s Dan Gunther of Trek Lit Reviews, who has read all of President Nan Bacco’s subsequent appearances, as well as her initial appearance in A Time for War, a Time for Peace, but didn’t get around to reading her solo novel until now. Check it out!
An excerpt:
While this novel came out in 2005, for some reason I never got around to reading it until just this year, despite the fact that the subject matter is right up my alley. This has proven to be a glaring oversight, as Articles of the Federation has now firmly established itself as one of my all-time favorite Star Trek novels. Full of memorable characters and finally showing how the government of the Federation operates on a day-to-day basis, this novel was a heck of a lot of fun to read. I wish there was a lot more focus on the governance of the Federation in Star Trek, as it is fertile ground for new and different stories set in my favorite science fiction universe!
At Shore Leave 41 in mid-July, there will be three anthologies debuting, and I’ll be in all three of them!
Two are the first two science fiction stories of mine featuring a bright young woman named Consuela de la Vega, who lives on the moon in the near-ish future. The first story is “The Silent Dust,” which will be in Brave New Girls: Adventures of Gals and Gizmos, edited by Paige Daniels & Mary Fan; the second will be in Footprints in the Stars, edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, and will be called “The Puzzle.”
The BNG anthology series are all charity anthologies, with proceeds going to the Society for Women Engineers. My story also has an illustration by the mighty Tom Daly (my collaborator on “In Defense of Self” for MINE!).
Footprints is the latest in eSpec Books’s “Beyond the Cradle” of science fiction anthologies, with stories about the discovery of alien life.
My third story is “Alien Invasion of Earth!” which will be in Thrilling Adventure Yarns, an anthology of all-new pulp stories edited by Robert Greenberger. My story will have a nifty illustration by the great Mark Wheatley.
These three anthologies will all debut at Shore Leave, and the following contributors will all be at the con, besides me:
So if you’re coming to Shore Leave, you’ll get the chance for a ton of autographs on all three new books…..
An excerpt:
Just in general, the application of gadgets and technology was horribly inconsistent. The Kingsmen have watches that can “hack anything with a microchip.” Eggsy uses it to hack Charlie’s arm. So why didn’t he use it to hack the two robot dogs? Or, for that matter, Poppy’s laptop? If Merlin was able to adjust the virus so that it acted faster, he would have known enough about its chemical composition to synthesize his own antidote.
Those are far from the only plot holes. Why is there no response from the British government to multiple missile strikes on their soil? Why did Charlie blow up the facility that stores all the antidote? How did Poppy have enough of it when Charlie blew up the antidote? How was it daylight in both Kentucky and Cambodia at the same time? (They’re separated by twelve time zones.) What incentive do people have to be employed by Poppy when she routinely kills people and expects unquestioning loyalty? (I assume she pays well, but it’s not really clear.) Also if you put a live body through a meat grinder, there will be blood everywhere, plus the meat that come out the other side will be filled also with ground-up bone and muscle and, y’know, clothes and jewelry, not just red meat.
And now, because I feel like making a silly list, all the states and whether or not I’ve been to them!
KRAD's Inaccurate Guide to Life 