Posts Tagged "Revolution World"

• Member News: December 24, 2011

  Member News

  Courtney Schafer‘s novel The Whitefire Crossing got three great reviews this week (nothing like reading a book with snow on the cover right before Christmas! ).  First, Bastard of Bastard Books reviewed Whitefire on Only the Best Scifi, calling it a “very promising debut which I highly recommend.”  Seak of Only the Best Scifi reviewed the novel on Bastard Books, saying “I really enjoyed myself with this one.”  The third review is from Chris Hawks of SMZb, who says, “This is a really good book.”

  Courtney was interviewed by Greg Wilson and Brad Beaulieu on Speculate! The Podcast for Readers, Writers, and Fans – click here to listen .

  Katy Stauber‘s novel Revolution World is #6 on B&N Book Club’s Best SciFi Releases of 2011 – congrats, Katy!

  Stina Leicht‘s forthcoming novel And Blue Skies From Pain was featured over on A Dribble of Ink – go check out the gorgeous cover!

  Martha Wells‘s new novel The Serpent Sea is now shipping from Amazon, and has started showing up in bookstores – run go get your copy!

  Only one more week left of the Night Bazaar in its current form!  But fear not, the blog’s not going anywhere – coming in 2012, a new slate of Night Shade authors will be taking the stage.

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• Member News: November 5, 2011

  Member News

  The Night Bazaar gang had a fantastic time at the World Fantasy Convention!  Attending were Bradley P. Beaulieu, Stina Leicht, John Hornor Jacobs, Courtney Schafer, and Katy Stauber.  Night Shade Books also attended in force, throwing an awesome party complete with special beer and mixed drinks based on the books of their authors.  For more pics of the fun (including the excellent Whitefire Pale Ale), see Courtney’s WFC 2011 photo album on flickr.

  

  Brad Beaulieu and Greg Wilson, for their podcast, Speculate!, interviewed Laird Barron and our very own John Hornor Jacobs on writing cosmic horror and their stories in The Book of Cthulhu from Night Shade Books.

  Martha Wells‘s novel The Cloud Roads is now available as an audiobook narrated by Christopher Kipiniak (released Nov 4).  Martha is running a giveaway on Goodreads for The Cloud Roads‘s sequel The Serpent Sea – click here to enter!

  Courtney Schafer will be signing her novel The Whitefire Crossing at the Boulder Barnes & Noble from 6-8pm on Saturday Nov 12, as part of a bookfair fundraiser for the Pikes Peak Writers.  For more information (including how to participate in the bookfair if you’re not in Colorado), see the Bookfair flyer.

  Thomas S. Roche is interviewed at length in the 10ZenMonkeys.com piece Why Thomas Roche Dreams of a Zombie Apocalypse, in which he talks about the writing of The Panama Laugh and his background in zombie fiction.

  In the lead-up to the BBC’s audio adaptation of Thomas‘s crime-noir short story “Hell on Wheels” as part of their Pulp Fiction Series (airing Saturday November 12 at 11:30pm UK time), Thomas was interviewed about vintage pulp fiction and crime novels, in an interview to air in soundbites as part of promotional segments for the Pulp Fiction 2 series.

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• Rocket shoes and martinis that shake themselves

  Cool SF Technologies

  Science fiction technology is practically what gets me up in the morning.  I really hope the future is going to be as awesome as I think it is.  It would be a total bummer if the world just turned into one big suburb or the pollution really did kill us all.   Even alien attack or zombie plague would be better than that.  Sitting through yet another 111 degree day in Texas, I am not the biggest fan of climate change either.

  I apologize if this post is a bit rambly.   I am coming down off a hard core literary high after back-to-back conventions – Worldcon in Reno and Armadillocon in Austin, respectively.  Had my mind blown about every hour with great ideas, solid advice and interesting people.   Go to the conventions, folks.  It will remind you why you obsessively love science fiction/fantasy.   These are the people who love what we love and who understand what the heck we are talking about.  They watch the same shows, read the same kinds of books, and share that weird urge to wear outrageous costumes while drinking Pangalactic Gargleblasters and discussing Regency-era dance maneuvers and the nothingness of being.  (more…)

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• Member News: August 27, 2011

  Member News

  Courtney Schafer‘s novel The Whitefire Crossing got a great review from Paul Weimer at SF Signal, who gave it 4.5 of 5 stars and said, “This book is in the running for favorite book of the year I’ve read.”

  The release date for the Polish edition of Brad Beaulieu‘s novel The Winds of Khalakovo has been set: September 20th. You can read more at Brad’s blog.

  The Night Bazaar party at WorldCon was a rousing success! Brad, Courtney, Katy, and Martha gave away a host of books & Night Shade t-shirts, and a terrific time was had by all, thanks to Katy & her awesome husband Chet providing a veritable smorgasbord of food & drink.  Free books were handed out to anyone willing to eat the more exotic items on the menu: bacon-n-cheddar crickets, sour cream-n-onion larvae, and scorpion lollipops (yes, all real bugs!).  Turns out SF fans are quite adventurous in their culinary tastes (or maybe just really, really excited at the idea of free books).  Further party entertainment was provided by Patrick Tracy, who showed Brad how to rip phone books and bend 60-penny nails.  Here’s a shot of the party gang (click for more pics):

  

  Katy, Brad, Courtney, & Martha at the Night Bazaar WorldConParty

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• Member News: August 20, 2011

  Member News

  The Night Bazaar party at WorldCon was reportedly “AWESOME” (Courtney’s word.) In attendance were Courtney Schafer, Katy Stauber, Martha Wells, and Bradley P. Beaulieu. Sadly, while according to Brad, “The party was a rousing success, including the consumption of many bacon & cheddar crickets…also, many phone books were ripped and many 60-penny nails were bent…We even have pics somewhere,” technological difficulties prevent the exhibition of said pix. Courtney will post the pictures next week.

  Speaking of Courtney Schafer, she’s interviewed by Matt Hilliard over at Hilliard’s blog Yet There Are Statues, talking about climbing, engineering, YA vs. adult, and her novel The Whitefire Crossing. Whitefire also received two more glowing reviews, at Bibliotropic and Think Banned Thoughts.

  Stina Leicht has an appearance at Geekfest tomorrow, August 20. She’s running the ArmadilloCon Writer’s Workshop on Friday, August 26th and will be at ArmadilloCon all weekend, the 26th through the 28th.

  Pre-orders of Thomas S. Roche‘s SF/horror zombie apocalypse The Panama Laugh have reportedly started showing up on peoples’ doorsteps, a few weeks early. Get the joke before it gets you!

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• A day late and a dollar short

  Villains

  Oh man, I’m late on my post!  And I was trying to go for perfect attendance.  Darn it.  I have many thoughts on villains and now I’m a bit rushed so I apologize if this is somewhat incoherent and obtuse. 

  The difficulty with villains is that if you make them believable and even thoroughly naughty then it’s hard to make them bad guys, right?   It’s hard to understand at what point a normal human being thinks, “Gee,  I think I’ll rape and beat to death someone today for kicks.”  I mean, do they not have cable TV?  What’s the deal? 

  I’ve long been fascinated by how easy it is for nice people to turn into pitiless torturers with very little coercion.  Here are three classic examples of social psychology experiments which show how easy it is to be evil.  What’s more interesting is that all of these experiments are now banned since so many of the participants suffered long term psychological trauma from discovering that they are exactly the kind of people who would line up Jews for the gas chamber.  Should we really stop that kind of research?  I always thought it would be smarter (if painful) to continue a modified version of these tests in the hopes of finding out how to train people to not be evil, but that’s just me. (more…)

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• There’s always Broadway. Or poetry. Or self-published Internet WoW spoofs.

  Writing in other media

  So the topic for the week is writing in other media? That works for me.

  I’m happiest writing novels. I take a long time to get to the point and the length of a novel allows me time to develop my characters and discuss some things I want to talk about. I also like writing children’s books but I haven’t really gotten serious about that. Sometimes I pull out this kid’s book I’m writing and spend an hour trying to fruitlessly write rhyming couplets about an escaped lab rat and his many adorably earth-scorching peccadilloes. Nothing rhymes with ‘lasers.’

  Right now I am actually writing a story for a smartphone app. (The website is not scheduled for development until December, I think.) Being a nerd who hangs out with other nerds in the silicon hills of Austin, I am frickin’ hip deep in computer programmers. You can’t throw a geek in this town without hitting another geek. Some of us came up with an idea for how to exploit smartphone technology to tell stories in a new and interesting way. So we’re trying it out.
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• Member News: April 30, 2011

  Member News
  • Brad’s novel The Winds of Khalakovo hit the Boswell Books bestseller list last week, and was chosen by the YetiStomper book blog as the Debut of the Month.
  • Martha’s novel The Cloud Roads got a four star review from SF Signal.
  • Martha, Katy, and Stina were featured in an article in the Austin American Statesman
  • The Cascadia Subduction Zone did an excellent literary critique of Stina’s novel Of Blood and Honey in their latest issue
  • Martha is doing a book signing for The Cloud Roads today, April 30, at Murder by the Book in Houston, Texas at 4:30pm. 
  • John and Stina are both at the World Horror Convention in Austin, Texas this weekend, so go say hi if you’re attending!

  Join us next week as we discuss writing in other media (screenplays, comics, games, etc), starting tomorrow with a post from our resident guest blogger Martha Wells on her experience writing tie-in novels.

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• Meeting the Neighbors

  Meeting Authors

  So far, meeting other authors has been totally awesome for me.  Until I started going to conventions in 2009, I don’t think I ever met a real live published author except for my Mom (She’s published some poetry.) and a few people who do cooking classes at Central Market.  I’d been out of the loop, rereading classic sci-fi and occasionally trying out whatever I found at Half Price Books. until I discovered that going to conventions like Armadillocon is a great way to find out about new authors. Plus, it was amazing to me to discover how many authors lived near me.

  That’s how I discovered Chris Roberson’s writing.  Also Matthew Sturges, Sharon Shinn, Patrice Sarath, and Kat Valente, to name a few.  In a way, I’m glad I hadn’t read their work beforehand.  It’s really interesting to read a book when you know how the author talks in real life and then compare the two.  Some people definitely write in a completely different voice.  Others practically echo their typical conversations.  I’m still trying to decide if I like it better when they do or don’t sound the same. (more…)

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• Completely rewriting a book as we speak

  Feedback and Revision

  Right now, I am avoiding working on a massive rewrite of the latest project I’ve got going,  a story for an iPhone app. The one I very confidently told the guys I’d have ready for them in July. And if I’d cranked out ten thousand words a week like my little spreadsheet tells me I could do, that would totally work. Except the spreadsheet does not understand getting fifteen thousand words into it before giving up because your main character is an annoying cow and you completely need to rework the character, rewrite the plot and, heck, let’s change from third-person past-tense to first-person present-tense while we’re at it. Stupid spreadsheet.

  Here’s my writing process: (more…)

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