Dan Braum

Puttin on the Pimp Hat

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption , , , , , ,

1) Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet has announced the Table of Contents of its next issue due, which will contain work by two of my favourite peeps, Ben Francisco (a man oft-mentioned in this blog for his general awesomeness) and Dan Braum (a man of equal in awesomeness, although somewhat quieter on the internets and thus name-checked around these parts far less than he should be). If I didn’t already adore LCRW and subscribe, this would be the kind of one-two punch that’d convince me I need to pick up an issue.

2) Ellen Datlow’s released the honorable mention’s lists for her Best Horror of the Year anthologies and it includes Horn and the work of a bunch of folks such as Jason Fischer, Angela Slatter, Lee Battersby, Lyn Battersby, Chris Green, Paul Haines, and presumably a couple of other friends whose names I’ve missed in the quick skim I just did. This allows me to tick off yet another thing on my list-of-writer-goals-that-I-shouldn’t-really-keep-because-I-have-no-real-control-over-whether-they-happen-or-not (an unwieldy title, I know, but it’s still far less unwieldy that the list it accompanies; I’ll be chasing entries on said list when I’m eighty).

3) Speaking of Jason Fischer, he’s just put up a sneak preview of a comic he scripted. And speaking of Angela Slatter, she’s holding forth on the subject of her favourite cross-genre works over as part of SF Signal’s Mind-Meld. The peeps are going crazy with the cool stuff this week, so make with the checking-out and such.

Thursday Linkfest

PETERMBALL Smart Advice from Smart People , , , , , , , , , ,

Over-tired, very busy, and generally lazy this week. This is not so much a weeks worth of interesting links (which I’ve started doing as I go along) as stuff I remembered with half-hearted accuracy sometime this morning.

  • Via the ever-entertaining villainous_mog – photographs of Japanese Factories at night (as VM puts it: they look straight out of Final Fantasy 7.)
  • Tansy Raynor Roberts on writing time, with much on the notion of draft-speed.
  • Clarion peep Ben Francisco has posted his latest article at Fantasy, grading last years big comic-book company crossovers. (In the interest of self-confession, I must admit that my primary response was “thank god I don’t read comics” anymore, even though that’s something of a misnomer – it was big crossovers that drove me towards the discreet stories of the graphic-novel format).
  • Speaking of Clarion Peeps, both Lyn Battersby and Daniel Braum have posted their thoughts on the 2007 experience at tutor Lee Battersby’s blog.
  • Kate Eltham has two posts full of notes about Building Online Communities from the Tools of Change for Publishing conference in New York. If you’re a writer and you’re not reading Kate’s blog, you really should – it’s chock-full of stuff about the relationship between writers, the internet, and emerging technologies.
  • This week’s mind-meld over at SF Signal talks about the Hardest Part of Being a Writer
  • A few weeks back I loaned my friend Kathleen a copy of Space Train (aka the actual worst SF novel, rather than the so-bad-it’s-amusing worst SF novel ever). Like many people who have heard me hold forth on the horrors of Terence Haile’s story of sabotage, misogyny and class warfare (with bonus space crabs) she remained unconvinced that it was as bad as I claimed – behold her capitulation, in which she shares the pain (with bonus snark)… For those of you intrigued by all this, bear in mind that I’ve already made this book sound better than it is.
  • Clarion peep (and owner of the most awesome boots in existence) Chris Green shares his own list of links and bookmarks. I’ll just send you to his blog rather than posting them all here.