Christopher Farnsworth's Blog, page 22
August 25, 2010
"A Mouth Full of Gold and Blood…"
The Vampire Nation brings in $7 billion, the equivalent of a small country's GDP.
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My former colleague John Dougherty dodged a bullet; he ran in a crowded primary with almost no money, and he still nearly became John McCain's opponent for Arizona's Senate race in November. If he keeps this up, he's going to be in office before he knows it…
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On the shelf:
METHLAND by Nick Reding: A gripping chronicle of the sad decline of small-town America, and how it's inextricably tied to meth. Reding...
August 23, 2010
The Vampire Queen of the USA
I was lucky enough to meet Charlaine Harris at Comic-Con in San Diego this year. We sat on a panel of vampire lit authors together, where I was the token male. Everyone, with maybe five exceptions, was there to see Ms. Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse books that inspired HBO's "True Blood." (If you're a fan of the show — like me — you should read the books, and vice-versa. Harris's Sookie is a real delight, and smarter and tougher than she's portrayed on TV. Her vamps, for the record, ...
August 20, 2010
"Even death can die…" Happy Birthday, H.P.!
Today in 1890, Howard Philips Lovecraft, the creator of an amazing, rich, and thoroughly American literature and mythos of horror , was born.
By all accounts, H.P. was neither a pleasant nor particularly happy man. His work did not find a wide audience when he was alive, and he was relegated mainly to the pulps. But in the years since his death, his ability to tap into primal and atavistic fears, along with the detailed and imaginative framework he built for his stories, have inspired...
August 19, 2010
Full of fun and family spies…
Stephen Colbert on Dr. Laura. Man, people are so uptight about the use of a horrible racist slur. Eleven times.
David Holthouse is one of the best writers I also count as a friend. He's also freaking insane, as evidenced by this piece where he camps for 60 hours on the open deck of a ferry traveling in Alaskan waters: "You're going to need more duct tape." said the fisherman, "A lot more."
Today is the 104th birthday of Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television. Think of him as you...
August 6, 2010
Doctor Whoooo – HEY! Doctor Who!
This is a pretty fantastic version of the "Doctor Who" theme. (Via Topless Robot.)
August 4, 2010
Field Notes on Literary Predators, and more.
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I admit, I am skeeved out by Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs in just the same way as Choire Sicha describes in this post from The Awl.
Those guys were all the worst. Setting aside the drugs and alcohol and their sons claiming to have been molested, at the age of 14, by friends of their father's, and, yes, the wife-shooting, it's also true that Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg (a NAMBLA member, lest we forget) and their gang—some of whom are somehow still living, so, let's not name...
July 25, 2010
Comic-Con: The Postmortem
July 22, 2010
Non-Comic Books
I'm writing this post… FROM THE PAST. Moo hoo ha ha.
Right now, I'm in San Diego getting my geek on. But the serious author part of me recognizes there are books that don't include drawings of people with massive breasts/biceps in spandex, so I'm emailing this to you from several days ago to tell you all about the other stuff you should be reading.
THE PASSAGE by Justin Cronin. I can hear you now. "Oh, really, Chris? The book that's been praised by Stephen King and every magazine, Web site and...July 20, 2010
The Comic Book Menace!
July 19, 2010
News of the Weird
Today in history:
1692: Five women hanged as witches in Salem, Mass.
1912: Meteorite explodes over the town of Holbrook, Ariz.
1947: UFO seen diving into lake in Norway.
2010: Forget the UFOs. The next big mystery? Chinese Sasquatch.
