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More Crap Books Episodes

Some good news! Due to the popularity of the Crap Books episodes, Podside Picnic decided to have me on once a month to ramble some more about my genre mis-education. This will continue for as long as it's still something Pete and I are interested in doing. I'm currently racking my brains to list different novels I've not yet discussed for upcoming episodes. Full disclosure: we may reserve the right to circle back for a deeper dive of certain tie-in novels we've already discussed at any time. For the moment, we'll very likely discuss the Shadowrun novel, Burning Bright (which I'm currently reading in preparation), as well as the Vampire: the Eternal Struggle CCG (!) tie-in, House of Secrets sometime soon. We'll probably want to also explore what Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote after Dragonlance. There's plenty of material to draw from already, but we wanted to gauge interest. This is...

August 23, 2020
Public Appearance, Reading, Uncategorized
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Annotations to Crap Books II: Son of Crap Book

This post is a bit late, but I got invited back to Podside Picnic to continue my conversation with Pete on what we jokingly call "crap books". This time, we circled back to talk a little bit more about the influence of D&D and the Satanic Panic on what I'm calling my genre (mis)education. Again, the latest episode is free to listen here if you haven't yet, and I also had some follow-up posts with annotations that build upon that first episode. Because the crap books conversations tend to flow, I may misremember stuff, so of course I'd name the wrong title of Leiber's Lankhmar books. I mentioned Swords Against Wizardry or Swords Against Deviltry, when the one I meant is simply called The Swords of Lankhmar. My interest in Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser was spurred by my friend César lending me the books, but I don't remember if this was...

August 15, 2020
Horror, Memoir, Reading, Uncategorized
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Update: Clarion, Curious Fictions and Ghost of Tsushima

This is the last week of the Clarion Write-A-Thon and I'll be honest: I am happy that I have several stories ready to revise and polish, but glad that as with all good things, it is coming to an end. That's not a knock; simply that I'm not sure I can keep up with that same pace for a longer period of time. It was good to stretch, to get out of my comfort zone and see what I can accomplish, if pressed. In the end, I'll have five new stories to get ready for submission, plus one that I haven't started yet. I missed my mark only on Week Four because the prompt (which I'll paraphrase as, "imagine a recipe for an impossible dish and write a story about it") didn't spark an idea until far too late, and even then, it's a full-length story and not flash. I'll...

July 26, 2020
Memoir, Writing
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Updates

As I'd mentioned in a previous post, I've been participating in Clarion West's Write-A-Thon. As a part of that, I also joined their writing challenge to finish a flash fiction story every week based off writing prompts. I've now completed three flash fiction pieces, and hope to complete three more before the Write-A-Thon's complete. One of the last prompts was a list of words, where "axolotl" was included. This immediately brought to mind the supremely weird Julio Cortázar short story, Axolotl which I then used as an inspiration. I'm pleased with what I came up with and can't wait to revise it and get it ready to submit. After reading my story recently, a friend reminded me about the Blood Sea of Istar (from the Dragonlance Chronicles I'd talked about on Podside Picnic and on my follow-up post). It was a weird moment for me, realizing how this area of Krynn...

July 11, 2020
Fantasy, Narration, Writing
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