Bad Worlds, Bad Language, and Worldbuilding Gone Bad
Recently, I’ve been reading Star Carrier Book One: Earth Strike by Ian Douglas. I was intrigued by the epic military SF setting and decided to plow into it. What begins as a solid piece of action writing, however, quickly dissolves into a linguistic nightmare in the first chapter written from an alien POV. In this […]
Question: When Will the Tramp-Stamp Urban Fantasy Novels Die?
Anthony Stevens was kind enough to ask the following question my Google+ page: When are the mass-market paperback publishers going to outgrow the cute-young-thing-with-the-tramp-stamp-and-a-sword/pistol/flaming-ball-of-plasma cover art? What comes next to catch our eye? Technically, that’s two questions, but I don’t have a life to prevent me from answering them. First, the “tramp stamp” urban fantasy […]
Gritty Fantasy: Why Do I Love It So?
Today’s post is based on a question from Dirk Reul: What is it that people find fascinating about gritty fantasy compared to the classic story types like The Hero’s Journey? As I noted when the question was asked, I can only talk about this topic from my personal perspective. Sadly, the radiation from Japan’s nuclear power […]
Question: Is “Solar System SF” the future of Space Opera?
Paul Weimer (who podcasted a review of Prometheus with me about a week ago) was kind enough to ask the question in the title, perhaps in some vain hope that I actually know what I’m talking about. I’ll start by first saying much of what follows is uneducated speculation, in part because predicting trends in […]
Urban Fantasy: Ignoring the big question?
In a recent episode of Read It and Weep, one of the hosts criticized urban fantasy’s strange habit of ignoring what I call “the big question.” The criticism was fairly light — being a humorous podcast and all — but it convinced me to blog about it here. First, the big question: Why do so […]
My Current Thoughts on Self-Publishing / Traditional Publishing Gurus
To all the people out there telling me how I should publish my first book: please take your advice and shove it. You have no frakking clue what you’re talking about. Anyone who says “there is only one way to do it” should be discounted as idiots. J.K. Rowling got rich publishing the old fashioned […]