Comics writer Kieron Gillen sent out his latest newsletter yesterday, which featured a line-up of his top music tracks of 2019. Gillen’s got a background as a DJ, and writes some pretty awesome music-inspired works, and his newsletter has introduced me to a bunch of music I would have overlooked. He introduced The Comet Is […]
I’m reading Dreamsongs at the moment, George R.R. Martin’s big retrospective collection of short stories, and the introductions where Martin gets salty are among my favourite things. Particularly this one, from Doing the Wild Card Shuffle, where he talks about a failed attempt to get a job at Marvel and how his love of comics […]
We finished watching the third season of Riverdale last night, and my mouth dropped at the sheer and wondrous audacity of a twist in the penultimate episode where a secret was revealed. It was a moment that delivered what I’d loved in Riverdale’s first season–a well-honed twist that changed the direction of a story, and […]
It’s been twenty-five years since I first saw Hackers, and not a week goes by where I don’t find myself tempted to start an email with “Ola, Boys and Girls,” in an attempt to find my people. Filmmakers really should have done more with Matthew Lillard.
Yesterday, after uploading all the files for Exile, my partner and I ate fish & chips and settled in to binge watch two seasons of Shrill back-to-back. I loved the entire show, but owe it a particular thanks for ending season two with PJ Harvey’s 50 Ft. Queenie running over the end credits. A very […]
The most bewildering comment I’ve ever gotten on social media, from an old family friend: “Who knew you were carrying around so much anger?” To me, the answer seemed obvious: “Anyone who was paying attention.” But it wasn’t the anger that caught them off-guard, it was the decision to do something with it. To use […]
Well, folks. ‘Tis the season in the lands of the streaming services, and the yearly inundation of dodgy holiday films have landed. Netflix, in particular, seems to have doubled down on the genre. What started with an unexpected hit in The Christmas Prince—a franchise due to get its third film in three years come December—is […]
1. Here is a morning thought for a Friday: the glory of the internet is that there’s always someone who hasn’t seen Rob Cantor’s Shia LaBeouf. And there’s always someone who has forgotten the song and needs to see it again. Being the one to rectify either situation is a gift that keeps on giving. […]
I picked up a copy of William Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2001, a shiny trade paperback find in a second-hand bookstore. The latest in a long line of Gibson books that started with my long-since read-to-death paperback of Burning Chrome that I acquired in high-school after our IT teacher showed us a documentary on […]
I’ve been re-reading Secrets of the World’s Best-Selling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner this week, tracking down a quote I wanted to use for my thesis. It’s an incredibly intriguing book–Gardner is, after all, best known for creating Perry Mason, but was also known as the king of the pulps for a time, […]
One of the projects I’d like to work one, somewhere down the line, is essentially a deranged giant monster horror/thriller that should not exist. Since I’m primarily a fan of these in film form, rather than fiction, I set myself the task of reading a bunch of books that serve as an introduction to the […]
I am probably offline when you read this. Of late, I’ve been programming Freedom to block my internet access for eight or nine hours a day. No social media, no checking sales numbers, no logging into this blog to check stats. The net result is a lot of writing, and a whole lot of reading. […]
