My wife has a flag in our yard during the warm months. It features the Peanuts gang, dancing their little, undersized legs off, and it’s emblazoned, “Dance like no one is watching.” Many of us are nervous about dancing in front of others. I know I am. I can’t. I have no rhythm. I have no grace. My best dance moves, I was once told by a dear friend, resemble those of a geriatric drag queen.
This is going to be a controversial review, I think. This film has already been noted to have divided comics fans. We seem to either love it or hate it. And, sadly, we also seem to be directing a good deal of hate at those who don’t agree with our opinions. That’s too bad.
And yet this movie represents some trends in modern entertainment and storytelling which I think need to be identified and discussed, so I’m going to share my opinion no matter how much it pisses off those who disagree. If you disagree with me, I’m sorry. But I’m not going to hide or deny my opinions simply because you don’t like them.
I Chat with Jonah Knight and Mikey Mason about Farpoint, Firebringer and Prometheus.
http://prosandconspodcast.blogspot.com/2013/06/ep-36-steven-h-wilson-of-firebringer.html
I was simply not prepared for Balticon this year. Well, to be fair to myself, I did get to Balticon with everything I needed to have, and I did everything I said I was going to do. I was exhausted throughout the weekend, though, and getting everything together was not easy. I really need to take another look at my time-management practices and learn when to tell people, “I just can’t fix your computer / write your program / talk you down off that ledge right now, because I had plans to do something else. So read a book / do it in a spreadsheet for now / call 911 and ask for help, because I’m gonna be busy.”
Come Aboard for the First Adventures of the Arbiters!
The Arbiter Logs novelize the adventures heard on the award-winning Arbiter Chronicles audio series. These stories are prequels to the novels Taken Liberty and Unfriendly Persuasion, already available wherever books are sold.
How to get a free eBook:
On June 5th, buy a copy of Episode One, Mutiny Springs Eternal, for just 99 cents from Amazon.com. (I’m happy any day you buy my books, but I’d like to see a June 5th spike on the Amazon charts. If we raise that number high enough, the series will get even more recognition in the retail market.)
Forward your receipt for the purchase to editor@firebringerpress.com, and I’ll send you your free copy of the next novella, A Man Walks Into a Bar, absolutely free! (It should be ready for release by June 30th.)
I respect your privacy! When you contact me, your email address will never be shared, sold or used for mass email purposes.
From the jacket copy for The Arbiter Logs: Mutiny Springs Eternal:
A century ago, the Faraday disappeared. The great ship dropped into the mysterious region known as L-space, never to be seen again. There are only legends left, legends of mutiny, of murder, and of the discovery of forbidden secrets. Today, the young midshipmen of the patrol ship Arbiter have found Faraday, a ghost ship orbiting a remote planet. And, somehow, someone… or something… has survived.
Mutiny Springs Eternal is the first adventure of the crew of the CNV Arbiter, adapted from the Mark Time and Parsec Award-winning audio drama series, The Arbiter Chronicles. Library Journal calls the Arbiters “a cast of compelling characters,” and Analog calls the Chronicles “a fun romp… like a cross between the funniest episodes of the original Star Trek and Monty Python.”
Unfriendly Persuasion is finished!
Well, of course, my third novel, the second novel in my Arbiter Chronicles series, was finished a long time ago, back in the Fall of 2011. But I’ve been sloooowwwly releasing an audio version of it. Every other week I’ve put a chapter up on my podcast feed.
Very shortly after I began podcasting, late in 2005, I did the same with my first novel, Taken Liberty. Releasing a free audio of the book I’d put so much time and energy into getting published seemed a little risky, but I think it paid off. Over 10,000 people have listened to Taken Liberty, it got me a lot of attention in the podcast community, and it really helped me establish myself as a New Media Author.
I’ve released all my fiction as free audio, as well as all the episodes of my Arbiters radio show. There are over a hundred episodes in my feed, and I’ve broken a million downloads. Recording, editing and releasing this one was nothing new for me.
But I did spend a year doing it, following a year writing and publishing it. I feel like this particular work has been with me for a long time. And bringing it to a close reminds me how much has changed in the eight incredibly short years that have passed since I released my first podcast. Friends have drifted away, loved ones have died. The kid who provided the soprano voices of children in my early episodes is now six foot two and writing his own scripts. The other little guy who ran around my studio, wanting nothing more than to shout “hello!” into every mic because he couldn’t yet read a script, is now getting ready for High School and teaching martial arts.
A lot has changed. Don’t know what’s next, but I’m always up to something. If you were waiting until it was finished to listen to Unfriendly Persuasion, well, that excuse is gone. It’s all up there now and waiting for you. The chapters are in the feed here. If you’ve already listened to it, please let me know what you thought!
I believe now I shall sleep for a few minutes.
The words came at me suddenly, from over my shoulder…
“I hate Muslims!”
“Well, of course. And they’re all going to hell, because their religion is satanic. They worship a false god.”
“What about the Jews? And let’s not forget Mormons…”
So I was at dinner with my family, an evening out that was to be followed by a movie, and I heard this conversation going on behind me. I’d known that this was a group of Christian gentlemen, because they’d begun their dinner with prayer. I hadn’t heard most of their conversation at that point, except for the word “libertarian,” which always jumps out at me. Most people don’t use it. Those that do usually have very strong opinions about libertarians, one way or the other. Of those who both use it and have strong opinions, only a fraction probably know what it means. Continue reading
Star Trek “Dagger of the Mind’s” Dr. Helen Noel
Well first off, she’s a redhead, isn’t she? Redheads are special in science fiction. Nix that. Redheads are special, period. Science Fiction authors just get this basic, universal truth, carved as it was by God on the same stone tablets He used when he gave us the Declaration of Independence and the script for It Happened One Night. Ask Robert Heinlein or Alan Dean Foster. Redheads. Yeah.
I said in my brief Goodreads entry on this book that it is “beautiful and disturbing,” and I think that’s the best tagline I can give it.
Fantasy artist Brom has created a dark version of Peter Pan, or, perhaps more accurately, he has re-imagined Peter Pan, highlighting some pieces which are vaguely referenced in J.M. Barrie’s original: the fact that there’s a lot of killing in Neverland, that Peter is a barbarian, a savage, and that there’s a strong possibility that when his Lost Boys become too old, Peter kills them or has them killed. All of this Brom details in his afterward. He also describes how he returned to Barrie’s original source material (or at least material that influenced him strongly), that being the legends and folktales of the British Isles.
This morning I put the last 2300 words to the third novella I’ve written in 2013. And now at 75% of the way to the home stretch on this leg of my project, here’s what I’m up to: With eBooks taking off and moving, outstripping my paper book sales, I’ve decided that the sixteen or so Arbiters adventures that exist only as audio dramas should be available to readers as well. I’d always intended to novelize these scripts and print them, three of four to a book, as the adventures of young Horatio Hornblower are presented in Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, and as Alan Dean Foster did in the wonderful Star Trek Logs.
My eBook sales reports say the time is right to build up my inventory, so, by Summer, my plan is to release the first four Arbiter Chronicles adventures as novellas, for sale in eBook form at the reasonable price of 99 cents each. “Mutiny Springs Eternal,” the Mark-Time-Award-wining “A Man Walks Into a Bar,” and “Man of Letters” are drafted and ready for me to polish and send to the editor. I’ll embark on “The White Lady” next, and expect to have it finished in two to three weeks, in time to craft an outline for the third volume of ReDeus before Balticon. I’m really excited about this. It’s a chance to revisit my favorite characters in stories I told a dozen years ago. Along the way, I’m adding new insights and texture. I’m hoping this will bring the Arbiters to a whole new audience, and I hope all of you who’ve made this journey with me so far will come along for the ride.