A new month, new energy, and plenty of new creations under my belt…
Come on, 2015, there’s still a little time left. Let’s finish it with a bang!
(And some poetry, of course…)
Outside, the snow is falling
silence stretches in the weight behind
the distance flakes have traveled
what they have seen
what they have known
lonely mementos of their fading.
Whether you’re a Jon Stewart fan or not, I implore you to watch his segment above on the Charleston shootings this week. I could not think of any better sum, analysis, break down, what have you. Honest and raw, it truly says the things everyone in this country needs to here.
Watch it because this week, this…this is everything.
And afterwards, when you inevitably need a pick me up, watch the interview with Malala that followed, because that woman is an inspiration, and will restore your hope and faith in mankind.
“Jon Stewart forgoes laughs for a heart-to-heart. Care of: TV Guide.”
RIP Terry Pratchett. You were an inspiration to many young writers.
Building on the media buzz of women in geek culture, friend and fellow writer Emmie Mears has banded together with fellow SuperWomen editors to celebrate the role of women in geekdom… Geeks, Writers, Countrypeople, go check it out!
Good morning, gentle viewers!
Oh, I’m so excited.
If you’ve been around these parts for a while, you’ll remember a series of posts about SuperWomen. Ever since I was a kid, I longed to see female superheroes, but as we all know, they’re rather thin on the ground. After my recent post about superhero clothing and the sexist attitudes toward women displayed by the creators, I got to thinking.
There’s been a lot of stuff in the media lately about women in geek culture, from Jim C. Hines posing like the women on fantasy covers (with John Scalzi, and for charity to boot!) to showcase how ridiculous the poses are to Tor.com posting about one particular pose. Then there’s the amazing Hawkeye Initiative and my new favorite Tumblr in which artist Alex Law uses the superhero costumes of little girls to show that their gender expectations haven’t…
View original post 239 more words
A great contest for those of you practiced in the shorter form of fiction, with a lovely prize for its winners. Go forth, fellow writers!
$2,500 Awaits Winners of Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition
Writers of short fiction are encouraged to enter the 2013 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. The competition has a thirty-one year history of literary excellence, and its organizers are dedicated to enthusiastically supporting the efforts and talent of emerging writers of short fiction whose voices have yet to be heard. Lorian Hemingway, granddaughter of Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway, is the author of three critically acclaimed books: Walking into the River, Walk on Water, and A World Turned Over. Ms. Hemingway is the competition’s final judge.
Prizes and Publication:
The first-place winner will receive $1,500 and publication of his or her winning story in Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. The second – and third-place winners will receive $500 each. Honorable mentions will also be awarded to entrants whose work demonstrates promise. Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts was founded by editor-in-chief…
View original post 564 more words
Good morning, happy people. Today I draw your attention to this essay on Fantasy, from the Self Aware Nerd. Quality stuff–and includes classy Tolkien being classy. Read on!
This week I had a conversation in which I defended a book I have never read because the primary criticism I heard leveled against it was simply that “it has magic.” My response was, equally simply, “what’s wrong with magic?” The magical and the fantastic has long been seen unfairly, in the minds of some “serious” readers, as fundamentally lesser works or as lacking in basic literary merit. I have to ask, though, what are The Odyssey and The Tempest if not works of fantasy?
I read a lot. I watch a lot of movies and I’ve seen what is probably more than my fair share of television, and I tend to read a decent amount of comics, or graphic novels for those too afraid to admit that they like them. In my countless hours of “study”, I have come to some conclusions about what makes a work valid or consequential. A…
View original post 1,301 more words
Poet among Poets, Semaphore, is talking the art of the beautiful Cento on FormForAll–showing that even the patchwork can be beautiful.
Samuel Peralta here…
A collage is an artistic technique, whereby a piece of artwork is assembled from fragments of art from numerous sources, creating a new whole.
While its origins may be traced back hundreds of years, modern collage is said to have begun with Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, who led the Cubist school of painting. Braque is said to have applied the technique first to his charcoal drawings, applying cut swatches of textured wallpaper to his drawings; almost simultaneously, Picasso began pasting materials to his oil paintings.
Both Braque and Picasso used the term collage – stemming from the French word ‘coller’, or ‘to glue’ – in discussing this new, modernist technique.
Their example led to an explosion of works using this new technique, and today it has become a highly-developed form, rather than a novelty.
Collages now utilize a plethora of sources – newspapers, photographs, handmade papers…
View original post 675 more words
Join the wonderful Emmie and a host of toothy smileys on the path to poking that Vampiric genre…
I love vampires.
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but it was Christopher Pike‘s Last Vampire series that did it for me first. I was about eight years old (I know, precocious) when I read them, and I loved all of them. I was entranced by the idea of someone old enough to have been around when Krishna walked the earth, and at the time I didn’t even know who Krishna was.
Throughout the 90s, there were tides of vampires. From YA writers like L.J. Smith and the Night World series to Anne Rice‘s Interview With The Vampire, a steady stream of bloodsuckers existed for most of the decade.
And then came the twenty-first century, and with it the craze of Twilight. Fast on the heels of Edward and Bella came the Southern Vampire books, The Vampire Diaries, The Passage, vampires, vampires, more vampires.
Vampires…
View original post 406 more words
Marvelous battle plan from writer Emmie Mears. Get the grenades. You’ll need them for this editing session.
(If you’ve not yet basked in her equal parts wit, humor, and style, you’re not trying hard enough.)
I’ve had my nose in a bunch of books lately in regards to novel structure and the nit-grit oft-ignored parts of creating a polished story. All of that used to seem about as romantic and creative as scraping the walls of a septic tank, so back when I finished my first novel, I just ignored it. Much like I would ignore anyone who told me to scrape the walls of a septic tank.
My approach to editing used to be something like this:
(Brian Regan had it right when he asked why we think it’s a good idea to hand a kid something sharp, spin them around till they almost puke, and then turn them loose in a crowd of children.)
The point is, I had a goal, but I was so spun around I wouldn’t have been able to tell you if I was headed toward it or…
View original post 1,143 more words
**IMPORTANT NOTICE: Due to a web hosting problem that has now been resolved, we have extended our 2012 deadline to May 31, 2012. This applies to our 2012 competition only.
View original post 574 more words
The Waking Den 