Richard Dansky's Blog, page 13

O NOES MORE UPDATES!

Books - Maelstrom is out, and for the measly price of $4.99, you should buy it. Why? Because it's for a good cause - hurricane relief. Because it's chock full of Lovecrafty goodness, introduced by the magisterial Ken Hite and edited by your tour guide to the Village By The Sea, Lillian Cohen-Moore. Because it's got stories in it from cool folks like Rabbit Seagraves and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Phil Brucato. And because it's got my story "Long Overdue" in it, which dares ask the one question that must never, ever be answered: Can you get the Necronomicon through Inter-Library Loan? Buy the book. Do a good deed. Find out.
In two weeks. Dark Faith: Invocations hits, the second in the series edited by the ineffable Jerry Gordon and Maurice Broaddus. I was pleased and honored to be in the first volume with my story "The Mad Eyes of the Heron King"; this time around I join folks like Jay Lake and Mike Resnick and Tom Piccirilli and, well, yeah. Lots of folks. My story's called "Coin Drop", and it concerns itself with a vending machine. A very special vending machine, mind you. More than that, I can't tell you - spoilers, as River Song might say.
And then there's another Kickstarter-related project: Madness on the Orient Express. It's all very complicated*, but suffice to say that if the folks doing the Kickstarter reach their stretch goal, then you'll be seeing an anthology set on that cursed, be-tentacled train with authors like Christopher Golden, Jonathan Maberry, my dear friend Lucien Soulban, and many, many more. It's a Murderers' Row of authors, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. So go. Back that Kickstarter. Make my dreams come true. 

Book Review - Here's one for a trio of Jack Vance mysteries crammed into one volume. Short version - if you watch Longmire or Justified, you'll like these. You'll also be seeing reviews of a Christopher Golden zombie antho, a couple of Bill Pronzini mysteries, a Robert Sheckley collection, a Liz Williams novel, a C. E. Murphy collection and many more. Because I read a lot. 

Other Writing - The generous folks at Booklife lent me their soapbox again for a piece on game writing. You can find it here. And of course, the damn vulture is still up there, too. Gotta watch out for that vulture...

Conference Type Thingies - Next week, join me at the inaugural Escapist Expo in lovely downtown Durham, NC, where I will be impaneled on things like writing for properties and the future of the FPS along with luminaries like Chris Pramas, Mur Lafferty, David Drake, Mark Van Name, old WW compadre Bill Bridges and more. They're all smart, interesting folks, so even if you're bored with me, it's worth coming to see them.
October brings the Game Narrative Summit in Austin, our seventh year of gathering the flock of game writers, narrative designers and suchlike. I'll once again be running my critique workshop, but if words like "Halo", "Guild Wars 2", "Chris Avellone", "Indiana Jones", "Sheri Granier Ray", "Linden Labs", and "Scalzi" mean something to you, you'll be there. 'cause it'll be awesome.

Life In General - It's pro forma for folks to apologize for not blogging a lot when they've been preoccupied, but, well, I've been preoccupied. Both of my folks have had some health issues, but I'm pleased to say that, kayn-ahora, they're both on the mend, and that a whole lot of you folks have sent along good wishes that meant an awful lot. So, thank you.

Speaking of Things I Can't Talk About...

Well, I can talk about this one now. The Maelstrom anthology, to benefit folks who lost their home to Hurricane Irene, is now live, with stories from a few folks you might have heard of. Check it out here.

Because there's something just perfect about tentacles in a good cause.

Stuff. Which Means "Things".

Book Reviews - So here's one on a beginners' guide to dim sum. The first time I ever went out for dim sum was at an Arisia when I was still living in Boston, and  r_  said to me "We're going for dim sum! You coming!" "Of course!" I said, followed by "What's dim sum?" We ended up at House of Toy and a lovely time was had by all. And now I know what dim sum is.

Conferences - I will be doing all sorts of paneling at the Escapist Expo in Durham next month. Then, come October, we have the Game Narrative Summit in Austin, which is one of my favorite weekends of the whole year. You can check out our programming schedule here - I confess, I'm on the advisory board for the show, and I'm kinda proud of what we've put together. But if you look closely at that schedule, you'll see words like "Halo" and "Chris Avellone" and "Indiana Jones" and "John Scalzi". So if you've ever had an interest in game writing, you might want to check us out. I can promise fascinating content, cool folks, great networking opportunities, and mighty hanging out at The Ginger Man post-sessions.

Writing - My story "Justice in Five Cents" will be appearing in the upcoming Coins of Chaos anthology, edited by Jennifer Brozek. And then there's this thing I can't tell you about, and this other thing I can't tell you about, and this other thing I'm not allowed to mention yet, and - did I mention Dark Faith: Invocations ? Becuase I'm pretty sure I can talk about that. 

Games - Splinter Cell: Blacklist. 'nuff said. 

Small Technical Error

So a band mailing list that I'm on got derped this morning. It's not a high-traffic list; the band just uses it for the occasional announcement, but today all of a sudden everyone on the list got  posting privileges, and all the subscribe/unsub messages went out to all of us.

Which, to be fair, is kind of annoying, having a couple dozen or so unwanted emails pop up in your inbox, ones that might take a minute or two to delete. And some of the responses reflected that - lots of "hey, I think the list got hacked/borked", just letting you know. 

Except, of coures, the rest of the responses were all "BLEARGH YOU ARE TOTALLY SPAMMING ME NOW I DEMAND YOU REMOVE ME FROM THIS LIST IMMEDIATELY!" Which, of course, adds to the traffic, which totally spams other users, who, pushed over the edge by the irate poster's use of all caps, then respond with "YOU ARE COMPLETELY BLOWING UP MY INBOX! GET ME OFF THIS LIST NOW!" 

Which, of course, starts the whole vicious cycle all over again.

Now, I understand the inconvenience of getting some email you don't want, particularly if, say, you've got your phone set to vibrate every time a new email comes in. And I can certainly understand not wanting a mailbox full of messages you're not supposed to be getting, and the annoyance that comes with having to delete them if, say, you don't bother to set up a filter to do it for you. 

On the other hand, maybe I'm just old-fashioned here, but I'm not exactly seeing where this is on par with having someone toss your pet rabbit into a stewpot. If getting a few unwanted emails actually produces the level of emotional trauma you're claiming in your frenetic, all-capitalized emails demanding you be unsubbed, you have far, far bigger problems in life than what's in your email. 

Writing for Subfranchises

So this is what happens when I get access to Powerpoint and an audience, at least at the IGDA Summit last month in Seattle.

The Union Generals of Pilot Mountain

Friday night, Melinda and I were supposed to go to the beach. It's one of those things that you're supposed to do when you live in the Triangle - just up and take off for the coast some weekend - that we've never done, and it certainly seemed like a good idea, at least until we saw the weather report.

Not beach weather. We'll leave it at that.

So instead she found us one night at a bed and breakfast out by Pilot Mountain, which I had always wanted to traipse around because it's an interesting looking geological formation and I like rocks. (Note: if you go to the wikipedia page for "monadnock", which is to say "a freestanding mountain that generally has no business being there", you get a picture of Pilot Mountain.) And so we went out there, and got called "cute" by our waitress at a restaurant in the tiny town of Pilot Mountain (which Andy Griffith renamed Mt. Pilot on his show, doncha know), and watched one of her coworkers get a giant bouquet of flowers at the cash register from her grinning beau. The restaurant, incidentally, was a Greek/Southern fusion kind of place, which was to say it was a southern style restaurant apparently run by a Greek family who loved fried and feta in equal measure, and who cared not a whit that the establishment's name - "Soppers" - conjured up images of sloppy 'cue. And yes, it was quite good, in case you were wondering.

and then in the morning there was traipsing, and wandering, and lunching, and on the way to our second adventure of the day (Hanging Rock, because traipsing around just one giant monadnock isn't enough for me, damnit, and they had waterfalls that were eminently traipsable from the main parking lot, and, oh, the hell with it) we stopped at a flea market in the slightly larger town of Mt. Airy, which is so loaded with Andy Griffith stuff it might as well be wearing a white suit and calling itself Matlock. Seriously, we drove into town on the Andy Griffith Freeway, which, if you think about it, is kind of awesome, if a little fast-moving for its namesake. Matlock, as you may recall, did not hurry much.

The flea market was mostly wrapped up by the time we got there. Clouds were threatening rain, stalls were empty or being packed up, and many of the vendors had turned their backs on their wares to settle in with lunch. There were a few farm stands, a few shlock stands, a few "I'm cleaning out my attic" stands, and a few small businesses built into permanent sheds - slim pickings that would no doubt frustrate the guys from American Pickers into fits of drunken rage. Didn't matter to us, though - we were there just to wander around a bit, and if anything spoke to us, great. And if not, well, great.

The last table we stopped at was being dismantled as we got there. The proprietor, an older guy in long hair and biker leathers, told us he was just going to compact and cover up; the flea market management had said they'd watch out for his stuff because he wasn't going to be able to make it on Sunday. Church was priority. We nodded, and poked at his stuff, which he kindly offered to move for us to make things easier. He told us a bit more about the flea market, too - that most folks took off around noon, and that it was a slow day, on account of the weather. And as we talked, I spotted a deck of playing cards on his table, replicas of a deck issued in 1863 featuring portraits of Union generals on the cards. 

"That's got the Federal officers on it, don't it?" he asked. I nodded. He looked me over. "Fifty cents." I handed him a buck, and with great ceremony, he handed me my change. I thanked him, he thanked me, and then returned to closing up shop. 

I haven't opened the cards yet. I'm not sure I ever will - if General Hazen doesn't have a card, I'm going to be terribly disappointed, and I'd rather live in anticipation than know the truth and be made sad. Instead, I just tucked the cards into the glove compartment, and we drove off in direction of blue sky and sun, and interesting rock formations.  

Nice notes

The second-nicest thing that can happen to you as a book reviewer, non-payment-related division, is to read a good book, review it, and get a note from the author that you actually got what they were going for. Usually, you get silence; occasionally you get rants, raves, and weirdly off-kilter ad hominems for the crime of giving your honest opinion.  
I mean, you don't review books to get pats on the head or attaboys. Sure, you can review in that style, just handing out endless platitudes in order to make authors feel good so they can maybe make you feel good, but kind of defeats the purpose of reviewing. I mean, if you want your ego stroked, there's easier ways to do it than trying to come up with nice things to say about the literary equivalent of Gigli - and believe me, there are a lot of literary equivalents of Gigli out there. 
But it is nice, once in a while, to get a good book, to read a good book, to write extensively on a good book, and to get a nice note on all the effort you put into writing about that good book. I've gotten that three times, and it's a pleasant surprise each time. I won't say which books or which authors; that's not the point. It's just nice to know that, once in a while, it goes both ways.

Driving Home in the Rain

So.

You walk out of the restaurant where you've just had dinner with your folks, a last minute kind of deal, and you look up at the sky. You look west, cause that's where you're going, and you see the storm clouds. They're ugly, lumpy and grey like they've been floating downstream a week, and they're puking orange sheets of lightning off in the distance. It's dark over there under those clouds, a couple hours' lost daylight worth of dark, and you tell yourself that's where you going. You think about waiting, but really, there's no point. The storm's coming, and besides, you like driving in that stuff anyway.

You get on the road. Nothing for the first half of the trip, over to the highway and putting the hammer down. Same fat, ugly clouds, same lightning that hides behind it, same dull lazy thunder. And then you cross a line, and it all comes down. Rain in lumps that hit the road so hard they bounce six inches in the air, and fall back again. Visibility drops; you can't see more than twenty feet, except for the red eyes of taillights desperately slowing in front of you. The thunder's loud now, but you still can't see the lightning. It's all around you and it's up in the clouds, and you keep rolling past the minivans parked on the side of the highway to wait it out and the convertibles under overpasses whose drivers don't want to risk it. And you turn the music up as a Camaro in the right lane loses its grip on the road and hydroplanes, wheels spinning up big sheets of water as it wallows back and forth like a drunk on the dance floor. The driver gets control back after a long, scary second, and pulls over. Too much rain, too much water on the road for him, and he's getting out while the getting's good. It's a smart thing to do. But now the guitars are roaring up and Patterson Hood's roaring like a beast about beer and hate and murder, and the thunder's crashing in every couple of seconds from all sides, and for a tenth of a second, you get it. You're in it, you're with it, you want to make some of that massive, angry, joyful noise and all you have to do is take your hands off the wheel and-

And you go under an overpass, and the rain cuts off, and the song ends. You pop out the other side, maybe a second later, and there's clean white lightning above you, a couple of forks zig-zagging across the sky where you and all God's creatures can see them. The rain slows, and the thump of the wipers slows too, and whatever had you for that instant, it's gone. You drive on, because that's what you do, and home is waiting. You try to forget that tenth of a second. And you pray it's not going to rain tomorrow.






*Author's Note - This is a mood piece. It should not be taken in any way, shape or form as a statement of intent, a cry for help, or a plea for attention. Thank you.

Oh. Wait. More Book Reviews.

One for Rio Youers' Westlake Soul , and one for a mighty anthology of Sword and Sorcery goodness.

I do still write my own stuff in between reviews, I promise. More news on that, coming soon.

This Is What I Do In Toronto

Namely, write book reviews.

Here's one on a history of Superman.
And here's one on a literary introduction to The Hobbit. Note that I did not split the review into three parts.