What Does Revising Look Like?

  The photo above is a page from the in-progress Red Reaper novel I’m writing with Tara Cardinal. The print text* is the first draft. All the notes are corrections for the second draft (or first revision, if you prefer). This passage had some interesting challenges. Tara wrote it before she turned it over to me. Since this story is … Read More

Revealing a New Project: the Red Reaper

Back in November of 2009, I stumbled across a teaser trailer for the fantasy film, The Legend of the Red Reaper. It promised to be an action-adventure fantasy, and starred an actress I’d never heard of at the time, Tara Cardinal. As I watched the trailer, I realized that whatever the standard fantasy tropes on display, this was also something new and … Read More

Rant: the high cost of low quality

Last night, the wife and I saw Skyfall. I’ve seen every James Bond movie in a real movie theater since Live and Let Die, so my streak continues. I thought Skyfall was an adequate spy thriller and action film, but not much of a James Bond movie. Perhaps, given how this one ends, the next one will be more of … Read More

Who are the honorary Tufas?

How does one become an honorary Tufa, you may wonder? The criteria is really pretty simple. You must have a song that you’ve written quoted (with your permission, of course) in a Tufa story. So far, there are three honorary Tufas. The first was Jennifer Goree. You can find out more about Jennifer and her connection to the Tufa here, … Read More

Interview: Andrew Brasfield, songwriter of Cold Wind

When I began planning Time of the Season, my holiday-themed e-book chapbook, I already had two of the stories. Both the title story and “A Ghost, and a Chance” had been around for a while. But I wanted to write something new, and I’d gotten such a good response from my novel, The Hum and the Shiver, that I decided … Read More

George Lucas and Elvis: Echoes from 1977

Thirty-five years ago, two things that fundamental changed my life happened in the same summer. In May, Star Wars was released. In August, Elvis Presley died. The arrival of Star Wars turned the thing that everyone in my small town mocked, that had gotten me teased and beaten up, into the hippest thing in the world. Spaceships, aliens and robots … Read More

Io9, Battlestar Galactica, and the American Idol culture

“Born Originals, how comes it to pass that we die Copies?”–“Conjectures on Original Composition” by Edward Young, 1759 *** I’ll tell you up front, this is a rant. I try not to do them often, and usually delete them after I write them. If you’re reading this one, it means I’m still fuming even after an acceptable cooling-off period. Io9, … Read More