Books 2015

 in Blog  tagged the whole crew by (updated 3186 days ago)

Rereads: Open Season (Linda Howard) Anyone but You (Jennifer Crusie) Cover of Night (Linda Howard) Size 12 Is Not Fat (Meg Cabot) The Iron Duke (Meljean Brook) Dawn Song (Sharon Green) Magic Steps (Tamora Pierce) Street Magic (Tamora Pierce) Cold Fire (Tamora Pierce) Hammered (Elizabeth Bear) The Runelords (David Farland) Pawn of Prophecy (David Eddings) Queen of Sorcery(David Eddings) Magician’s Gambit (David Eddings) Castle of Wizardry (David Eddings)   New reads: Chaos (James Gleick) Clockwork Angel (Cassandra Clare) Rejections, Romance, and Royalties (Laura Resnick) Unsympathetic Magic (Laura Resnick) Vamparrazi (Laura Resnick) Polterheist (Laura Resnick) Abra Cadaver (Laura Resnick) Street of […]

Delirium (Lauren Oliver)

 in Blog  tagged dystopia / lauren oliver / reviews / ya by (updated 3186 days ago)

Delirium Lauren Oliver   I picked up this book based on what I’d read of Raven; one of the novellas in the Delirium universe. I was sucked in by the writing and decided to start at the beginning. Unfortunately, that proved to be somewhat of a slog, because Delirium has the traditional slow ramp-up of YA dystopia. I’d write that off as a occupational hazard (so to speak) of the genre, but counterexamples such as Susan Ee’s Angelfall come to mind.   Angelfall came to mind as a comparison often while reading Delirium, actually, perhaps due to the prominence of […]

Airborn (Kenneth Oppel)

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Airborn Kenneth Oppel I'm really glad I read this instead of just turning it back in to the library. Often books sit on my shelf and I renew them until I exceed the limit and have to turn them back in. But I discovered I had ONE more renewal to eke out. And once I started reading, I finished it in one sitting. The technology of the airship was fascinating and in-depth enough that I had to go Google to confirm that hydrium was a fictional invention. The book proceeds at a breathtaking pace, leaping from disaster to brilliant solution […]

Structural Elements, Abyss & Apex 2Q 2014

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Belated announcement… my short story "Structural Elements" is up as part of Abyss & Apex's 50th issue! A&A has always been pretty high up on my list for submissions, so I'm happy to finally have something that they found a good fit! And especially for so important a milestone as a 50th issue–they are a quality magazine and it's good to have them still alive and kicking, long past the average lifespan of other 'zines. Sam Tomaino reviews this issue at SFRevu, and calls "Structural Elements" a "luxurious, rich fantasy." Also, my current WIP is a YA fantasy novel set […]

Some Quiet Place (Kelsey Sutton)

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Some Quiet Place Kelsey Sutton In my opinion, personifying Emotions and Elements never gets old. Even I have a short ten-minute play in my past where a girl has to face her own Arrogance, Tedium, Morbidity, Fear, Desire, Malice, and finally Hope. Ran at a student playwriting festival back in 2004. One woman came up to me afterward and told me in heartfelt tones that I had described her life. After all, it's so much easier when you can condense Emotions from something tangled and abstract into a person. You can relate with a person, argue with a person, fall […]

Giving In to Gravity

 in Blog  tagged gravity is easy / me.me.me / research / the whole crew by

Man, I've been out of the SFF scene for over a year now. The last short fiction I submitted to a market was in May 2011. I don't regret my hiatus–among other things, I got a master's degree and an amazing job–but getting back into the flow is going to be work. I understand now why people give up writing seriously. At this point, it would be easier to just keep sliding, write a 300-word blip a month, and pretend that I've still got it, while never finishing anything, never submitting anything. Dreams and goals are exhausting. I already work […]