Skulls and Bats

I posted my review of The Book of Skulls, by Robert Silverberg yesterday. A very solid dark fantasy/mystery/thriller/coming of age story. In some ways, it reminded me of Stephen King's The Body, the basis for the film Stand By Me.

The Baseball Draft went pretty well this past weekend, the early rounds worked out just as I hoped they would. I was able to pick up the run-producing machines of Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon, so I got my Yankees out of the way early and picked up a lot of runs, doubles/triples, and some stolen bases in the deal. With four keepers per team, the first round of the draft was actually like the fifth round. I'm pretty satisfied with my team, plus or minus a couple of guys, so we shall see what the season holds for my team, the Voodoo Tribe.

Hello Children

Lost, while not a complete disappointment, left me unsatisfied. Even more so because of the long wait between new episodes. A little bit of development in the Henry situation, and we see some more backstory about Sun & Jin didn't cut the mustard. The island cured Locke, so why can't it cure Sun? As is too often the case lately with this show (and the Sopranos for that matter) the previews for next week's show was the best part of the episode.

On the other hand, South Park was brilliant. I don't think they could have handled the Isaac Hayes situation any better. On one hand they dug even deeper at the Scientologists, and on the other, they really did a nice tribute to Chef. The soundboard quality of Chef's lines was probably the funniest aspect of the episode, aside from the final fate of Chef.

Best of luck to Jim Rigney (aka Robert Jordan) and his treatment. I haven't been a fan of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time for a while, although I admit to enjoying the series when I first graduated college. In recent years, I haven't paid much attention to the storyline, and try to keep my distance from the books. However, say what you will about the books, there's still a person behind the story and output . I wish the man well on his road to treating what looks like a rare and difficult disease.


Lastly, and randomly, here's the mix of music I've been listening to at work:

• Ozzfest Summer Sampler 2005 (Some nice metal from Trivium, Soilwork, In Flames and Bruce Dickinson)
• Avenue Q Original Broadway Cast Recording
• Rob Zombie, The Sinister Urge
• Bon Jovi, Bounce
• Rage Against the Machine, Renegades
• Dream Theater, assorted songs
• Nativity in Black, A Tribute to Black Sabbath
• Lacuna Coil, Comalies (with some Savatage and Avenged Sevenfold thrown on the end of the burned CD)

WIN A FREE BOOK!

Over at SFFWorld, I posted a bunch of David Forbes stuff, my review of his novel, The Amber Wizard, the interview Pat and I conducted with David, and a contest for a free ARC of The Amber Wizard. I enjoyed the book, but it was a bit flawed. I think his next book will be even better.

The fantasy baseball draft is approaching - this Sunday I will be drafting the 2006 roster for the Voodoo Tribe. As I mentioned about a month ago, I am keeping four players from the 2005 roster, Ichiro, Brad Lidge, Mark Buerhle, and Cliff Lee. I've been strategizing with my baseball guru pal for about a month now and things look pretty interesting. The most fun is usually the draft day itself, so I'm looking forward to that.

Writerly Wrumination

Writing is a very personal thing for some people, myself included. When people I work with discover that I'm writing fiction in my spare time, they ask me questions like what is it? What is your story about? Is it a fantasy? Does it have castles? These are things I'm sure many a writer has dealt with when their "secret" is discovered by the people they see on a daily basis.

The current writing project isn't my first attempt, but right now, I know it is my strongest attempt at telling a novel-length story. I've been a lot more consistent with my writing schedule, writing at least five days a week, and very often seven days a week. Is all of it my best work? I don't know, I don't have enough distance yet to judge the quality, but more often than not when I finish my writing for the morning or night, the day seems a lot better. However, when I refer to something, which occurred at an earlier point in my story, I do read some of what I wrote a month or a week ago and a big smile grows on my face. I have the sense that, yes, I have something of a clue about this writing thing.

Another strange thing about funneling your creative energies into fiction writing is how the brain must be continually "on." Writer's jobs never finish once the computer is turned off, and I know that statement is no schematic for wheel reinvention. I'm a person who goes to the gym three, mostly four days a week. What do you think I do between reps and sets? Work out plot points of my novel, or I hone the dialogue I want my characters to use, of course. For some reason, exerting physical energy also allows me to focus my mental and creative energy. This writing, it is really a continual thing.

Take for example this past week. I've been mulling over a plot hurdle for a while now, trying to figure out exactly why a put a character in certain place. I knew the motivation, I had a pretty clear idea of the end result of his visit to this place, and I was trying to work out the specifics of some of the intermediary points. After doing a set of bicep curls, or some other exercise, it came to me. I laid out, perhaps subconsciously, reasons earlier in the story that would logically funnel into later portions of the narrative.

It was at that point I felt like "Yeah, maybe I DO have a good idea of this writing thing." I'm sure the other people doing their workouts in my area were wondering why a huge grin suddenly appeared on my unshaven face, but I wasn't going to tell them. Writing is a personal thing. Besides, they can find out when I publish the book.

Words, Genes and Guns - A Family Returns

My interview with Keith Brooke and review of his novel, Genetopia, are now posted for your reading pleasure. Keith is a vet at this inter-web-sf-genre thingy and he had a lot of very good things to say in our interview.

So, after a ridiculous hiatus, The Sopranos returned last night. I thought the beginning muddled and confusing, but the show settled in pretty nicely after that. I saw one part of the ending coming from the start of the episode, but was surprised about the other portion of the ending. I'll have to watch my TiVO'd Family Guy tonight.

That is all for now.

Linkdump Friday

Happy Birthday Pyr!

I counted up the votes for SFFWorld's Favorite book of 2005 and the winner is R. Scott Bakker's The Warrior-Prophet.

I'm sure most of the people who read this thing have seen the big hub-bub and controversy the new idiot Science Fiction reviewer for the New York Times has caused. My take - I wouldn't be too surprised if what he said was calculated to ilicit the reaction we are seeing across SF spheres.

I've just rediscovered Steve Savile's Web site and blog. Steve hangs out at SFFWorld's forums, with a forum of his own. This looks like a big year for him, publication-wise, with a vampire trilogy set in the popular Warhammer 40,000 series with Inheritance.

Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology co-edited with Alethea Kontis, is publishing in May. I've got an advanced copy, and it looks very impressive.

Equilibrium Unchained

TiVO is a cool thing, most of the time. Based on my viewing and recording patterns, it recorded Equilibrium, which I watched for the first time yesterday. I have been seeing/hearing good things about the movie for a while now and I was happy to finally watch it, I'd seen it compared to The Matrix in some circles. There are similarities, but I think I might like Equilibrium more than The Matrix, or at least as much.

I think the writer of the film, Kurt Wimmer, must have read Orwell's 1984 every year of his life, because there are a lot of parallels. The premis is that after a third World War, society has crawled up from the wreckage into a totalitarian state. Bale's character is a policeman, who tracks down and elimates people for the offensive of showing and having emotions. Not exactly the most original plot but I really think the execution was spot on. However, Bale's character kicks a little bit more ass* than Wilson Smith ever did in Orwell's Oceania. Between this and Batman Begins, I think Bale might have it in his contracts that he has to kick ass all the time. Granted he can never kick as much as ass-kicking as Chuck Norris, but to say he handles himself pretty well is an understatement. Anyway, I'm something of a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories, and I do think the story was pretty strong, the SFX and future world interesting looking and as I said, a lot of good fight scenes, particulalry when Bale's character was having what looked like a sword fight with Robert the Bruce. The fight was choreographed like a sword-duel, but the characters were using pistols, it made for something interesting I haven't seen much of before. I'd like to see some kind of special edition DVD of this thing.

This movie should have received more attention than it did when it was in theaters, considering the familiar faces in the cast - Sean Bean, William Fichtner, Taye Diggs, and Emily Watson. Granted they are not all huge stars, but they are all recognizable.

*of course by a little bit more I mean not just a can of whoop-ass, but an entire brewery's worth.

I posted my review of Judas Unchained today, while I liked it a lot, I thought the pace slowed down a bit too much from Pandora's Star. On the whole, these two books are extremely impressive.

Ambergris

Click the above banner to read the excerpt we are hosting on SFFWorld.com. Jeff VanderMeer is an amazing writer and this is the definitive edition of what many consider to be one of the most important and imaginative fantasies in the past ten years. But most of the poeple reading my blog already know that.

Virconium & Handmaid's Tale

I know a few of the people who read my blog enjoy the work of M. John Harrison. This month in our Fantasy Book Club our feature book for March is Virconium by Mr. Harrison. Even though it is early in the month, the discussion is pretty lively.

I am hoping to get to the book myself very shortly as I've had it on my shelf since November of last year, when the classy-looking US version at left was published by Bantam Spectra.

In Science Fiction during March, we are discussing The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I liked the book quite a lot when I first read it years ago in college and a good bit of it still sticks with me today.

Being a Post of Briefness

I'm happy that the Olympics are over and the NHL can resume their normal schedule, at least until the All-Star break.

I finished up David Forbes's The Amber Wizard and should post my review in the next couple of days. On the whole, I enjoyed it, and I will elaborate in my review.

My laptop crapped out the other day which is really annoying. I suppose I can't complain too much considering the laptop was free. I still have the desktop PC, but the laptop made life, and writing especially, much more convenient.

Bumpeses!

They say death always comes in threes. Don Knotts passed away over the weekend. Darren McGavin also passed away. He, of course, is best know for the quintissential father role of all time - The Old Man from A Christmas Story. Of genre note, he starred in the cult television show, Night Stalker, I've never seen an episode. Lastly, science fiction writer Octavia Butler passed away over the weekend, too. I haven't read all of her books and stories, but those I have read were thought-proviking and moving. I first read Dawn in my Science Fiction Literature class at Rutgers many years ago. The book really opened my eyes, made me think, terrified me, and made me want to read more of her work. I eventually picked up an omnibus of the Xenogenesis saga and really enjoyed it. I've read a few of her short stories and liked them, too. Her most recent book I read was Parable of the Sower for the SFFW SF Book Club a couple of years ago, and I've heard great things about Fledgling, her take on the Vampire myth.

On a happier note, I took Mrs. Blog o' Stuff to see Shinedown at the Starland Ballroom last night. I gave her the tickets as a Christmas gift, since Shinedown is a newer band we both enjoy quite a bit - they are a mix of southern rock and hard rock and lead singer Brent Smith has a deep, powerful voice. Shinedown was great, even if Smith's voice wasn't holding up the whole time, it sounded as if he had a cold. They dedicated their cover of Skynyrd's Simple Man to the late, great Dimebag Darrell and my only criticism of their performance was that it wasn't long enough.

Of the two opening bands, Flyleaf and local Philly hard rock band Halestorm, I enjoyed Halestorm much more. Flyleaf reminded me too much of the Cranberries, and I would never consider myself a fan of the Cranberries. Anyway, both bands were fronted by women and Lzzy Hale of Halestorm has an incredible, powerful voice. We liked Halestorm so much, we picked up their CD at the show.

Minor post & links

I decided to sign up with LiveJournal, if for nothing else to have an account with them.

Allan Heinberg will be writing the new Wonder Woman series when it launches. I thought the arc of JLA he co-wrote with Geoff Johns was OK and his Young Avengers series is pretty well received. Of course I'll give it a chance, but despite the last few issues of Rucka's run on WW being crap, Heinberg does have some pretty big shoes to fill.

Via Franklin and his new blog, I came across this very well thought-out article by the Bookslut, Jessa Crispin. For the most part I agree, as a reviewer for SFFWorld, and hearing what the other reviewers have said about vanity/self-published book titles, she pretty much nails the points.

I may be the last one to point this out, but ABC is starting up a Masters of Science Fiction anthology show. Sounds good to me.

Don't have time for more blogging now, until next time.

Random Round-Up

Pitchers and catchers are in camp, baseball starts soon, and I’ve got to finalize the four players I will be holding over from last season Fantasy Baseball League. I finished in probably the worst position possible last season – 4th place. Fourth is just shy of winning money and results in picking 7th overall the following season. Granted, first place picks last, but the way we rotate the draft the first and last pick get back-to-back picks as the draft proceeds. I would have rather finished in last place, which of course is out of the pot, but at least last place guarantees first pick in the following year’s draft. As it is, I’ve got a few decent players to keep in Ichiro, Brad Lidge, and Mark Buerhle, I just need to figure out the final holdover. Of course the men are separated from the boys in the middle rounds when the rankings don’t mean is much and you’ve got to build the heart of your pitching rotation and outfield.

Random thought – I’ve been trying to weigh the benefits of LiveJournal vs Blogger. It seems most of the kewl kids and writers are on LiveJournal and lord knows I want to be one of the kewl kids. I’ve seen some of the WordPress journals and they seem entirely too restrictive for my tastes. Regardless, I may just register with LJ anyway.

On to the geekery – In watching my Farscape season 2 DVD set, the ninth episode, Out of their Minds, was on deck. During the course of the episode, a very familiar-looking bird-like creature appeared on the screen. Being the Henson fans that we are, Mrs. Blog o’ Stuff and I remarked simultaneously, how much the aliens on this episode (referred to as Halosians) resembled the Skeksis, the giant bird creatures from Henson’s epic fantasy The Dark Crystal. After watching the episode, I did the geeky thing and searched the Web to confirm my suspicions. Sure enough, the FX people behind the show created the Halosians in homage to the Skeksis (scroll down about 1/3 of the page).

I am still churning through both Judas Unchained and The Amber Wizard, and I’m still enjoying both books.

One of the many things that makes Mrs. Blog o’ Stuff the greatest is how she indulges my love for beer. For Valentine's Day she gave me some cool Guinness swag and whenever she stops at Wegmans, which has a very impressive beer selection, she always picks up some random beer for me. The most recent gem of a beer she picked up for me was Yard's Washington Porter. This had to be one of the better bottled porters I've had since Samuel Adams sadly stopped producing their Honey Porter a few years ago. Good, good stuff. She said she picked it up for me in honor of President's Day holiday.

Last, but not least, great news for Mr. Lynch; as if I needed another compelling reason to read this book as soon as it publishes.

Now We Know Why Hurley Hasn't Lost Weight

Two weeks in a row with strong Lost episodes, that hasn't happened in a while. Of course, the f-tards at ABC are skipping next week. This is becoming quite annoying, just when they build up the show's momentum, ABC decides to wait two weeks to show a new episode, and this is the second or third time they've done this during the second season. However, I don't think they will pull any April Fool's jokes on their audience. As it was, there were a lot of things to like in last night's episode. Sayid is a pretty complex character, so anytime the focus is on him, I'm happy. When I saw Clancy Brown's name on the opening credits I admit it, I was excited to see where the Kurgan/Lex Luthor was going to pop up. As soon as Kate's father mentioned a superior with whom Sayid would be meeting, I figured it out. Jack was being unreasonable last night, I thought and I'm pretty sure the numbers flipped to Egyptian Hieroglyphics just before Locke entered the numbers.

I liked the Oz references, too, from Henry Gale to the Hot Air Baloon down to Sayid's quote about it "always being inside me," a reference to the Tin Man. I'll be surprised if none of the characters mention the Oz references, considering what a cultural icon the Oz film and stories have become over the years. I nearly forgot about Danielle still hanging around the island, so I had a bit of a WTF moment when she popped up again.

I think the resolution of the frog hunt also showed us how sick of bastard Sawyer is capable of being. Overall, a solid episode.

Lasty, for the first time in maybe 5-10 years, I bought an X-Men comic book.

Snow & Starships

OH MY GOD THE WORLD IS GOING TO END, ASS LOADS OF SNOW HIT THE TRI-STATE AREA!

Like I said last year around this time, any time there is a hint of snow where I live, which considering it is the Northeast is pretty frequent, newscasters act like the world is going to end. Granted, I was shoveling my long driveway for four hours on Sunday, but I'm still alive. I think most of the tri-state area survived, too.

I've been having this on-again, off-again relationship with the new Battlestar Galactica show on SciFi. I really enjoyed the mini-series and the first couple of episodes of the show. Around the fourth episode of season one, it started to bore me to sleep and I gave up on it. As buzz around the show continued to grow, I figured I would check in again. I haven't been disappointed after watching the last two or three new episodes. I've got it on my TiVO and I'm looking forward to catching up with it when SciFi decides to do the inevitable marathon of episodes. Not surprisingly, there's a Battlestar Galactica Wiki.

That channel is so confounding, though. On one hand they create quality programming like Battlestar Galactica and FarScape, on the other they cease publication of SciFiction and produce an abomination of a miniseries like Earthsea. They've got a miniseries coming up in march that looks to be a guilty craptacular fantasy-fest in Dark Kingom: The Dragon Lord. I'm not filled with any sort of confidence that it will be good, especially when the commercial says "Before Narnia, Before Lord of the Rings..." I will tune in to hopefully, be proven wrong.

Last and certainly not least, I posted my review of Wayne Thomas Batson's debut novel, The Door Within, last night.

Pandora's Star

I posted my review of Hamilton's Pandora's Star last night. As much as I loved Fallen Dragon, this might be even better. Pandora's Star was an incredible book and I'm lucky enough to be starting on the ARC of Judas Unchained right now. These are huge (PS Paperback 988 pages, JU ARC 827 pages!), epic, sprawling, books that make reading an addictive experience. Hamilton delivers just about exactly what I am looking for when I am looking for excellent, sprawling Space Opera.

On a completely unrelated note, am I the only person addicted to Wikipedia?

Am I wrong for not giving two craps about the Olympics or the World Baseball Classic?

Lost improvement

Lost was an enormous improvement over the previous Charlie-beat down episode. I thought the islanders were a bit unforgiving towards him, and that lead Charlie to doing what he did with the baby. This week's episode was just about a slam-dunk with some more good Sawyer stuff. He'd been too calm and reserved since he returned and it was good to see his character proverbially erupt. Ana-Lucia is still fairly annoying, but I hate to admit she is growing on me. It was good to see Sayid once again, I almost forgot he was on the show. As usual, the preview of the upcoming episode looks almost as good, if not better than the current week's episode itself.

Dark Elves and Dogfish

I finished of the final book in Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy yesterday, and overall, I liked the books more than I expected. A nice amount of fast-paced adventure, with more introspection from Drizzt than I expected. There really wasn't any suspense regarding whether or not Drizzt would survive his trials, but I still thought a bit more tension would have made the overall storyline a bit tighter. I'm still churning through Pandora's Star, but for more of my thoughts, go to the SFFW SF Book Club. In paperback this book is 988 pages, so that may explain why I've not yet finished the book. In the next day or two I'll be starting The Door Within by Wayne Thomas Batson, a YA fantasy I will be reviewing for sffworld.com.

On the beer front, one microbrew/craft beer I've really been enjoying the past few months is Dogfish Head beer. One of the earliest craft breweries, Dogfish started in 1997 and is known for their three hoppy ales (60 Minute IPA, 90 Minute IPA, and 120 Minute IPA), but they do brew a wide variety of beers. The Raison D'Etre is very good as is the Chicory Stout. Word of warning on the Raison D'Etre it is 8% alcohol, almost double that of normal beers. They are both full bodied and very distinctive tastes. During the fall, their Punkin' Ale is one of the best cinnamon-spiced beers on the market. During this past Christmas Season, they started a limited run of Fort beer, which is brewed up with "a ton" of mashed up raspberries. Despite that I didn't find it too fruity, unlike some of the other fruit-spiked beers, and I'm not sure how long the beer will be available. The label is a piece of artwork by Tara McPherson, an artist known in comic circles for her various covers for Vertigo Comics.

Booky Linky

The start of a new month means new bookclub discussions start at SFFWorld.

In Fantasy, we've got two this month:
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin*
The Wraeththu Trilogy Omnibus by Storm Constantine

In Science Fiction we've got
Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton, which I'm reading right now.

A Dark Crystal sequel is being made. With such fond memories of the original, I the potential sequel gives me a case hesitant interest.

*Spoilers for future books will be removed from the discussion.

Truthiness, HA! HA!

I've been watching The Daily Show for a while now and two of my favorite people from that show are no longer on the show, and haven't been for a while. Steve Carrell was always funny on the show, and he is now all over the place in films and being the most hilarious asshole of a boss on The Office.

His sparring partner from Even Stevphen now has a great show following The Daily Show - The Colbert Report. Thanks to BoingBoing, I came across Colbert's recent interview in The Onion. Of course the interview tuoches upon Truthiness and surprisingly, Stephen R. Donaldson and Poul Anderson, albeit briefly. Colbert was always funny and I always enjoyed the segments when he and Jon Stewart were unable to hold their laughter. I also thought the Even Stevphen bit with a drunk Steve Carrell was hilarious, too. Anway, I think it is cool to see both of them doing well now.