This is how you destroy something beautiful.

/ 53 Comments / Controversies, Rantage, Shorts, WTF World? / By

This is how my Monday morning began: with a slap in the face, courtesy of new Weird Tales editor Marvin Kaye. If you haven’t been following the “controversy” over author Victoria Foyt’s self-published novel Revealing Eden, here’s a good analysis of it with links to others. I put air quotes around controversy in this case because there really isn’t one. On the one side of the discussion you’ve got the author and a handful of defenders — many of whom seem to be sockpuppets of the author herself — insisting that the book isn’t racist because… something. On the other

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The Trojan Girl

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First published in Weird Tales #357 (2011), and reprinted in Escape Pod in audio. Note that everything on my blog is under a Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial/No Derivatives license. If you’re curious, this is part of a story world I’ve been noodling for awhile, and might one day revisit as a YA novel. Another short story of mine (“Valedictorian”), to be published in 2012 in the AFTER anthology, is set in the same world. ETA: And the artist whose illustrations ran with the Weird Tales print has graciously shared those images here! Click images to embiggen, and visit Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein’s site

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Beasts of the Southern Wild

/ 5 Comments / Natter, SFF on Screen, Squeeage / By

You guys! You gotta see this movie. I’ve said this before and will say it again: New Orleans is the only city besides New York to ever win my heart. There’s something different about that place — something indefinable and liminal. Everyone who lives there for long feels it. I’ve tried to capture that sense of magic myself in fiction, and I don’t know if I succeeded because it’s hard to encapsulate something like that in a narrative. I’ve seen lots of other books and visual media attempt this and fail. But now, for the first time in quite a

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Identity should always be part of the gameplay

/ 84 Comments / On Writing, Thinkythoughts / By

This is sort of a tangential response to John Scalzi’s “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting. Good article; you should read it… and the comments. Yeah, I know, I usually say don’t read the comments. But I think they’re illuminating, if frustrating, in this case. If you’re not a straight white male, it’s a good idea to understand how even the most liberal of them think. If you are a straight white male, Scalzi’s talking to you; listen. I’ve been playing the hell out of Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2 on the Xbox 360 lately. This is partly

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An alternate appendix

/ 4 Comments / Snippets / By

Stealing Martha Wells’ idea; I’m going to be posting the occasional deleted scene from my various works over the next few weeks. And since people have asked, I’m starting with the one I read at Comic Con, during my “Spotlight” panel. This would have been the second appendix of The Kingdom of Gods, if the short story “Not the End” hadn’t smacked me between the eyes after I wrote this. Enjoy! APPENDIX 2: Spider Speaks The following is a recorded and transcribed vision of the godling known as Spider (Litaria designation 3301-A, Nahadothan niwwah godling attached to Teman Protectorate, northern

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San Diego Comic Con

/ 6 Comments / Appearances, Conventions and Workshops / By

Le’ me ‘splain. No, no, no, there is too much; le’ me sum up. Last weekend I was at San Diego Comic Con as a Special Guest of the convention. I’ve been to New York Comic Con before, but… there’s really no comparison. NYCC has a different character — more corporate, somehow; less eclectic. And it doesn’t take over the whole damn city. SDCC is a city. Guesstimates (this is from one of the con staffers assigned to me as a “handler”) were that 140,000 people were at this one. The convention center’s capacity, note, is 130,000 — but I

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Dear Fandom: Grow the Fuck Up

/ 9 Comments / Controversies, Rantage, WTF World? / By

I’ve been in a state of apoplexy for the last 48 hours or so, because a) I’m still in recovery mode from Comic Con (short version: it was awesome and overwhelming, more later), and b) coming back from Comic Con has left me maybe hyperaware of all that’s both right and wrong about the entire media-consuming community. Comic Con itself is an example of what’s right. 100,000+ people took over downtown San Diego for 5 days and there were no riots, nobody got shot, and while there was one unfortunate incident, for the most part things went remarkably well. SDCC

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The end of an era

/ 2 Comments / Natter, Shorts, The Industry / By

Jed Hartman’s retiring from editorship at Strange Horizons. Jed talks about this himself, so go over and read his blog post, and say goodbye. It’s not a sad affair; it’s just time to move on for him, which I totally get. But I think it’s important to point out just how revolutionary SH has been — and no, I’m not heaping praise upon it because Jed & the gang have published two of my short stories, which gave me 2/3rds of the sales I needed to reach SFWA pro status. I’m heaping praise upon it because the folks who started

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More Fanart Awesome

/ 3 Comments / Fan Fun / By

I’ve been remiss — found this one weeks ago, and asked the artist for permission to repost… then forgot to check back and see if she’d given permission. (D’oh.) She did, so here is “Dayfather and Nightlord”: Click to biggify, because it’s beautiful and should be viewed in its true size and glory. Of drawing only two of the Three, artist ex-machina says, “I’d have drawn the Grey Lady too, but she wasn’t turning out the way I wanted… more sketches necessary.” I like what she’s got so far. Now go visit ex-m’s site and tell her how awesome she

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My Comic Con Schedule

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Next week I’ll be a Special Guest at San Diego Comic Con. Now, I’ve been to New York’s Comic Con several times, but SDCC is its bigger, meaner older brother, and I have to confess that I’ve been a little intimidated by the idea of the whole thing. Still, it’s hard not to get excited, ’cause holy crap see what I’ll be doing: Thursday, July 12: Racebending.com: Creating Diverse Spaces for Diverse Representations I was excited about this already, because I think the folks at Racebending are doing a hero’s work, poking Hollywood with a stick to get it to

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