Picking up where we left off with last week's post, we're continuing a storyteller's exploration of the modern disaster epic Chernobyl. Which is an absolutely outstanding example of the form. So much so it's easy to forget that this is a dramatic retelling of events, versus a real-time camera-lens view of the catastrophe as it... Continue Reading →
Chernobyl, Episode 1: The Modern Disaster Epic
Anyone who was alive and paying attention in the 1970s remembers the rise of the disaster epic. Whether it was Airport or The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure, these spectacular ensemble melodramas roared through the American popular imagination. Almost all of them depended on smaller interpersonal conflicts to inform the larger, looming conflict which... Continue Reading →
Why read me when there are new books out?
The new Alternate History Anthology edited by James Young, Trouble in the Wind, has stories by current and MGC members Sarah Hoyt, Brad Torgersen, and Peter Grant... as well as S.M. Stirling, Kevin J Anderson, and David Weber! Long-time commentor J L Curtis (Old NFO) has finished the Grey Man series - contemporary westerns with... Continue Reading →
Wednesday’s double-barreled BOOK BOMB!
WEDNESDAY MORNING DOUBLE-BARREL BOOK BOMB! My friend and colleague Larry Correia has been kind enough to double-promote Tuesday's releases of A STAR WHEELED SKY and Dan Willis's IN PLAIN SIGHT. Please, please, please, share wide and far! Dan's noir urban fantasy is only 99 cents on Kindle right now. It's a steal! And there is... Continue Reading →
Book launch for A Star-Wheeled Sky
Amazon paperback. Amazon Kindle edition. Amazon Audible.com audio book edition. Barnes & Noble paperback. Barnes & Noble Nook edition. FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS the Waywork has been both boon and bane: an alien interstellar highway system, which offers instantaneous travel between a closed network of stars. Within this bubble, the orphaned refugees of Earth—long... Continue Reading →
Trial by mob, the SJZ preference
I won't devote too much time to rehashing this past week's slanderous sabotaging of Larry Correia (at Origins) which bore an eerie similarity to the slanderous sabotaging of John Ringo (at ConCarolinas.) In each instance, it was a political hit job. And in each instance, there was no proof offered to substantiate the lies which... Continue Reading →
Blast from the Past: What is “legitimate” in the 21st century publishing environment?
(Brad is away from his keyboard today so I pulled this post of his from January 2017. It is as timely now as it was then. -- ASG) Not very long ago, the intarwebz — or at least that part of the intarwebz which is fascinated with all things authorly — became infuriated over this... Continue Reading →
Crumbly bits of good author stuff, from LTUE
Life, The Universe, and Everything is Utah's premier symposium for serious SF/F creatives (who aren't always so serious!) and has been an ever-expanding project of the local SF/F fan-creative community for almost four decades. My first one was in 2009, and by the following year I wound up on the other side of the panel... Continue Reading →
Let an old Western teach you about good story elements
A couple weeks ago I had the great pleasure of seeing an old favorite from the 1980s: Silverado. In its time, it was not a blockbuster. Nor did it achieve the iconic silver-screen cultural footprint of other contemporary Western productions like Young Guns or Unforgiven. But it did have a long life on the cable... Continue Reading →
Camestros Felapton is Toby Meadows, spouse of Foz Meadows
I don't have much for you on this wintery Sunday morning, other than to tack up a broadsheet with information on it. Since Facebook has deemed such information beneath its community standards -- in the same manner that the Bolsheviks deemed both the White Guard and the Trotskyites beneath community standards -- I feel compelled... Continue Reading →