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Science In My Fiction » Life, Death, and Water Mythology

The Writer Mom Made

I wanted to take a moment to share my mom with you guys in honor of her birthday and Mother’s Day. I hope you will have a look.

via Science In My Fiction » Blog Archive » (W)hole Hearted.

via My King Sojourn | Apex Book Company.

Hello to the new faces and old friends stopping by my site. Hope you guys are doing well. Leave me a comment and let me know you’ve visited.

Yesterday’s art entry was But Can You Dance To It? by Kay Holt

APEX BLOG TEASERS:
Wanna Get Published? Get Teachable! - Nicole Cushing
“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”   – Asian proverb  Much to the lament of slush pile readers, no one needs a license to write fiction.  For that matter, you don’t need an M.F.A. or even a Bachelors degree in English.  Phillip K. Dick dropped out of college.  Lovecraft never even went. But you do need skill….

Temporal Disjuncture: A Supposedly Fun (Literary) Thing We Do All Of The Time  - John Ginsberg-Stevens
“. . . your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time.” – Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”…

Catching you up on recent blog posts with links to each and a bit of text to intice you.

Marveling at the Territorial Literary Mutt in the Alley

Genre is a bizarre concoction.  The anthropologist in me would love to discover why this was the cultural creation we decided upon to recognize, organize and shape literary output.  It is a practice of making sense of words, and of making sense of the production of words, that says a lot about the world that has produced the idea, and about the social networks and professions who use it.  The way that the concept is used as a particular framework gives us some generous insights into the power of literature to bring people together in communication and creativity….

Practice is for losers

Awhile back, I was perusing a local gallery on one of the busier nights, and I overheard an interesting conversation about art and sketching. Being curious (and being two feet away in a crowded gallery) I listened to both sides of the discussion…

“Unwarranted Serendipity” by Jason Sizemore

I’m at a rest area off the Bluegrass Parkway doing my business when I started to smell cigarette smoke floating over from the stall next to mine. Smoking in the boy’s room in public areas wasn’t something uncommon in these parts, so I paid it no mind. But when the smoker took things to that next level that he caught my attention…

Creating an Alien Language: Rudimentary Symbolic Language

Last month, I launched this series with a post entitled Creating an Alien Language: Your Language, Your Rules. By now, you should have answered the basics of what you want out of your new alien language. If not, here are some quick questions to ask yourself about the alien race you’re designing it for…

ReaderCon: Aftermath

The Japanese plan is to have Alzheimer’s plagued, 80yo cyborg rice farmers. ~Charles Stross, Science for Tomorrow’s Fiction

A friend, new to the writing scene, never been to a convention, asked me why I was so excited about ReaderCon. Why was it different from any of the others?…

Hello Again From Argentina – World Domination and Mind Expansion

Let’s be frank.  Although there is some great work by translated writers out there (if you haven’t read anything by Jean-Cluade Dunyach, for example, you are doing yourself a grave disservice) and even in the literary section of the bookstore (García Marquez could easily be published in any slipstream magazine) it can be said with no risk of error that the genre world is essentially English-speaking.  And, if one wants to be brutally honest, it is a world dominated by the US market…

The Conqueror’s Shadow and Interview with Ari Marmell

They called him the Terror of the East. His past shrouded in mystery, his identity hidden beneath a suit of black armor and a skull-like helm, Corvis Rebaine carved a bloody path through Imphallion, aided by Davro, a savage ogre, and Seilloah, a witch with a taste for human flesh. No shield or weapon could stop his demon-forged axe. And no magic could match the spells of his demon slave, Khanda. Yet just when ultimate victory was in his grasp, Rebaine faltered. His plans of conquest, born from a desire to see Imphallion governed with firmness and honesty, shattered. Amid the chaos of a collapsing army, Rebaine vanished, taking only a single hostage—the young noblewoman Tyannon—to guarantee his escape. This is the story of what happens seventeen years later. (Review and Interview…)

Nineteenth Century House Meets Twenty-first Century Literature

Last month I had the privilege of participating in the McConnell House Showcase of Authors in Wurtland, Kentucky in Greenup County. This was no ordinary book signing and selling event. Over twenty authors were to arrive in nineteenth century attire and decorate their tables with items from that era. I did and had a blast…

To Tour or Not to Tour

me: I think I may write about how much of a book tour is living out the “writer’s life fantasy” vs how much of it is effective marketing.
Elvis: How about “how much of the book tour is not going from tv show to tv show and 4 star hotel to 4 star hotel, but instead is driving a lot of interstate miles to sit at a table in a bookstore and watch people go stampeding past you to look for the new Twilight novel” …

Apex Magazine Reviewed – June & July

Michele Lee has reviewed the last two issues of Apex Magazine. She took a bit of time with the stories. Go check out what she has to say and then read the magazine for yourself!

Redemption And Motive

I’m a sucker for redemption. It never fails to work my emotions into a frenzy. Hand-in-hand with redemption comes sacrifice; a killer combination used often in books and movies. Cliché as it may seem, one of my favorite redemptions is Darth Vader’s. His redemption is undeniable, as is his sacrifice. Awesome stuff—but what made him do it?…

The Difference Between Writing and Publishing

I write because I have to, I publish because I choose to.

There is a definite difference. AP Fuchs, publisher of Coscom Entertainment and writer extraordinaire, said it best in a recent interview with The Black Gove e-zine, “I’ve learned two major lessons and these were the hardest I learned, ones that I just didn’t learn overnight but over many years: publishing is just one giant crapshoot. It really is. Stuff succeeds and sometimes we know why, other times not. Same with the failures. I’ve learned good books don’t get you contracts and sometimes bad books do.”…

Knowing Self and (Own) Space As A Writer
 

“Form a circle.”

My longsword instructor’s orders were simple. We obeyed and formed a circle.

“You. On guard.”

The person in the center of the circle assumed the basic guard position. And so the exercise started with the student (who was on guard) having to deal with simultaneous opponents coming at him at every direction. The student had to remain cool, his response time quick enough to change his guard…

Leveling Up—It’s Not Just for Video Games!

Have you ever played those old FRPGs (fantasy role playing games) like the Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy, or the newer versions in the MMORPGs (massively multi-player online role playing games), WOW or Everquest?

Remember all the time that would be spent leveling up so that your avatar would be stronger, healthier, and get the most powerful gear?

Leveling up in writing requires much the same persistence, dedication, and effort. Here are some of the ways you can power boost your writing to the next level…

Today’s entry is Southpaws: The Hops in Humanity’s Beer? by Athena Andreadis.

My next entry will also involve Tenochtitlan. It goes up August 23rd.