China Ascendant In Hummingbird
SCI FI Wire just published a piece I wrote about Chris Roberson’s novel Iron Jaw and Hummingbird, which he recently sold to Firebird Books.
Knaak Bullish On Ogre Titans
SCI FI Wire published a piece I wrote about Richard Knaak’s new Dragonlance trilogy, The Ogre Titans.
Music Reviews & Used Books
On Wednesday night, I attended a Media Bistro class on writing music reviews, taught by Mike Wolf, music editor of Time Out New York. The class was at 7PM, and I got out of work a little early, so when I got into the city I had some time to kill before the class. Gordon recommended I check out the Housing Works Used Book Cafe, which I did. It’s a very cool little bookstore, with lots of nice (and unoccupied!) chairs to sit and read, and a nice selection of ultra cheap books, which is the only kind of book I’m allowed to buy since I get pretty much anything new I want for free (I don’t even have time to read all of those). I found a few interesting books which were all a dollar or fifty cents. Here’s what I got:
Since I was there because I was waiting around to take a class on how to do freelance music reviews, I thought the Freelance Writer’s Handbook was particularly appropriate. As for the others: well, Pirates, Pirates, Pirates–duh! Pirates rule. There’s three SF anthologies there, which I’m totally a sucker for, especially when they only cost fifty cents. That one you probably can’t make out there is a year’s best from the seventies (I think) edited by Forry Ackerman. The Ten Tomorrows is an antho edited by the infamous Roger Elwood, who apparently flooded the market with anthologies in the seventies and almost single-handedly ruined the SF anthology market (because he put out so many, and they were shoddy). This book, however, looks to have a very impressive TOC, so this doesn’t look like one of the shoddy ones. And if it is, <shrug>. It only cost fifty cents. As for Herbert’s Space Trip–that looked so strange, I had to have it.
After plucking those gems off the cheapie shelves, I settled down to get some reading done, and discovered that the instrumental band Mastery is pretty good music to read by. I generally find music with lyrics to be too distracting, and I’d never have been able to concentrate with the sounds of people talking all around me.
So I read for about an hour, then headed over to 494 Broadway, home of the Media Bistro classes. The class was good–I feel like it gave me a better understanding of what I should be putting into a music review. At the end of the class, the instructor critiqued some reviews the class was assigned to bring in, and it was pretty helpful to hear his edits of the other students’ work.
As for mine, he read it during class because I’d asked a question and used my review as an example. He said it was “not bad,” and seemed pretty pleased with it. For everyone else’s reviews he critiqued at the end of class, he had a lot more negative remarks, so I took his lack of criticism of mine as a positive thing.
The assignment was to write a review of your favorite album ever (100-150 words)–no matter the genre, the original release date, etc. I had a hard time deciding on my favorite album, then just decided to pick a really great one I’m infatuated with at the moment. So I chose Slaughter of the Soul by At the Gates. Here’s my review:
In 1995, Swedish metal gods At the Gates released Slaughter of the Soul, the crowning achievement–and swansong–of their legendary and influential career. Whereas their “greatest hits” compilation, Suicidal Final Art, showcases the best of the raw talent and potential of earlier albums, Slaughter shows them realizing that promise, with its pure, relentless ear-crushing fury: the brilliant and complex guitar melodies, the primal anger of Lindberg’s (harsh, but understandable) vocals, the dark but deep lyrical content. Although At the Gates contemporaries In Flames and Dark Tranquillity are often credited as the founders of the Gothenburg melodic death movement, Slaughter is the album that paved the way, and every band playing that style now is standing on the shoulders of these giants.
First, I should note that I was wearing an In Flames t-shirt, which Wolf noticed and said “Cool shirt. I like In Flames.” (So he knows about death metal.) The only specific comments on the piece he had were that “legendary” is cliche and should never be used. He also initially questioned me calling them “metal gods,” but then reconsidered, as that sort of thing kind of goes along with metal reviews. He did question them being godly–saying, who are gods really? Metallica, Slayer, bands like that. I conceded the point, but added that perhaps I should have called them “death metal gods,” which they certainly are (and the rest of the review goes on to back up).
The rest of the class gave me lots of ideas of how else I could have written that review, and what other kinds of things I could have added to it to make it better, if I had more words to work with.
All in all, a pretty good learning experience. If you live in or near a major city, check Media Bistro out–they offer classes in several different locations, and on a wide variety of subjects. If you’re at all interested in freelance writing (non-fiction mostly, but there are some fiction classes), it’s worth checking out.
Nulapeiron Reaches Resolution
SCI FI Wire published a piece I wrote about the conclusion of John Meaney’s Nulapeiron Sequence, the appropriately titled Resolution.
Three New Sinclair Titles Due
SCI FI Wire published a piece I wrote about Linnea Sinclair’s new three-book deal.
River Flows In Future India
SCI FI Wire published a piece I wrote about Ian McDonald’s novel River of Gods, which makes its US debut this month.
Alpha, the SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers
If you’re a young’un and you write SF/fantasy, check this out:
Alpha, the SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers (http://alpha.spellcaster.org), is a one-of-a-kind residency workshop for teens who write genre fiction. The application deadline is coming soon–at the end of March. The best twenty writers (14 to 19 years of age) who submit original science fiction, fantasy or horror stories will be accepted. For ten days in July, the students will stay at the University of Pittsburgh branch campus in Greensburg, PA. They’ll learn how to write from authors Timothy Zahn, Tamora Pierce, Dora Goss, Wen Spencer and others.
This is Alpha’s fifth year. Former Alpha students have sold stories to prominent publications including Boys’ Life, Realms of Fantasy, Writers of The Future, Fantasy Magazine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Fantastic Stories, Corpse Blossoms, Aberrant Dreams, and Fantastical Visions.
Don’t Quote Me On This
I was just reading a book review in the New York Times, and I was going to post and say “Why the hell does the NYT put book titles in quotes instead of italics? Don’t they have an AP Style Guide?” It turns out, however, that putting quotes around book titles is the correct procedure according to AP Style. What’s up with that? No other style guide does that, why does the AP? It’s actually kind of stupid, if you think about it, since using italics to denote book titles and quotation marks to denote shorter works is a convenient short-hand way of differentiating between the two forms in a review. Do quotation marks have more journalistic integrity than italics?
On another note, this review is by the Times’s new SF reviewer, DAVE ITZKOFF, who is a former editor of Spin and Maxim. I know what you’re thinking: yes, those are the perfect qualifications to review SF for one of the most respected review venues in the world.
Now to be fair, I don’t know much about the guy–I didn’t know who he was until I googled him, but he says things in his review that make me scratch my head. First, he starts off with “Why does contemporary science fiction have to be so geeky?” and goes on to refer to the genre as “sci-fi” several times. He also says that, though he enjoyed Counting Heads very much, “[he] cannot [recommend the book to Kite Runner readers, friends, or anyone] in good conscience because if you were to immerse yourself in most of the sci-fi being published these days, you would probably enjoy it as much as one enjoys reading a biology textbook or a stereo manual.”
And this is the guy who the NYT decided would be the best person to review genre books for them?
CBS Award Nominations
Everyone likes to nominate things for awards, right? Well, have you nominated stuff for this one yet? They extended the deadline just for you.
The Carl Brandon Society has extended the deadline for nominating works for the Carl Brandon Parallax Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award; two juried awards recognizing excellence in speculative fiction by or about people of colour. Each award comes with a $1,000 prize. The awards will be presented at Wiscon 30, to be held May 26-29, 2006 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
The CBS Parallax Award will go to a work of speculative fiction in English, written by a person of colour. Nominees may be asked to provide a brief statement self-identifying as a person of colour. Statements should be sent to the awards administrator. CBS Parallax Award Jury: Celu Amberstone; Steven Barnes; MJ Hardman; Karin Lowachee; Jennifer Stevenson
New deadline for nominations: March 15, 2006
For more information, visit the Carl Brandon Society website.
LibraryThing
Today I discovered a wonderful way to waste time: LibraryThing.
LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. Because everyone catalogs together, you can also use LibraryThing to find people with similar libraries, get suggestions from people with your tastes and so forth.
Here’s my LibraryThing profile: http://www.librarything.com/profile/slushgod
And here’s my LibraryThing catalog: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/slushgod
It’s got sortable ratings and lets you link to your own reviews (or publish your own reviews). So, if you’re curious about my likes and dislikes, you can browse through my library by rating, either going to the top for good stuff, or going to the bottom for stuff to avoid. My library’s not complete by a long shot, but there’s a good sampling there. I mostly started with stuff I’ve reviewed.
Check it out!