Michael Offutt's Blog, page 133

Men of Foxwick by Cherie Reich is now available

This cover art is absolutely breathtaking. Brrrr it looks cold though! I hope that
knight has insulation under his plate mail armor!I'm so excited to be a part of Cherie Reich's cover reveal for her amazing Men of Foxwick short story collection. I read the first in this series called Women of Foxwick last year and absolutely loved it. Here is the review I wrote of it almost one year ago.

Men of Foxwick by Cherie Reich is now available! This fantasy short story collection features five men from the Kingdom of Foxwick.
A blind teen seeks a place in the kingdom. A dragon seer journeys to Wintermill to spy on the queen. A sword master’s worst fear comes true when he fails to protect the royal family. A king falls in love with an herb witch, but will she feel the same way? A hunter will rise to the challenge to hunt down a man-eating monster.  The lovely author/bookworm/arch editor extraordinaire,
Cherie Reich herself.  Seriously, buy this woman's books.
She is going places.
For more information about Men of Foxwick, please visit Cherie Reich’s blog. Also, Cherie has a special announcement for her email newsletter subscribers. Click here to sign up for her updates and receive a coupon for a free copy of Women of Foxwick.

A picture may be worth a thousand words but it pales in comparison to a diorama

As a writer myself (and speaking to all of you writers out there who read my blog) I'm sure you are familiar with the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words." I first heard it uttered by my father in reference to a Charles Russell print that he had framed and hung on the wall of our home. Called "When Shadows Hint Death," it shows two men struggling to quiet their horses because the shadow on the ridge behind them shows a contingent of native american warriors who would kill and scalp them if they knew they were there.
I used to stare at it every day whilst I toiled to complete my homework. And I definitely understood how a painting could capture an entire story. Charles Russell really did do just that, even though his artwork is a little too "folksy and western" for my taste. However, I can't deny that the man had incredible talent with a brush. But whereas a picture is worth a thousand words, I have to say it pales in comparison to a diorama. Here's one that's in the American Museum of Natural History. It depicts an epic encounter between a giant squid (which we now know definitively exist) and a sperm whale. The diorama is huge and brings to life a scene that scientists know probably occurs on a day-to day basis. In this dramatic diorama, a giant squid is caught in the sperm whale's mouth, its tentacles grasping at the whale's head. And if you think that's impressive, wait until you get a load of the diorama called Titanoboa, King of the Snakes. This thing was totally real. It's skeleton was found in a mining area in Columbia and this diorama faithfully constructed from foam by an artist using the scientific measurements provided by the many archaeologists studying this thing. It's freakishly huge...like bigger than that snake in the terrible Anaconda movies with Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube. It could squeeze its prey with 400 pounds of pressure per square inch.
Dioramas are everywhere if you bother to look for them. You see them in theme parks like the Jurassic Park ride or in Haunted Houses. And dioramas have the ability to bring other worlds to life. Take for example this incredibly detailed High Elf Sea Port from a Warhammer Fantasy golden demon competition. It seems so real, if I were a tiny human, I could live there. I suppose dioramas are a way we can bring something to life. All that's needed is a desire strong enough to want to go to the trouble to create something in the first place. Have you ever wanted to create a diorama? Perhaps a three-dimensional sculpture of your main protagonist with paint so lifelike they look alive? I'd be interested to hear your thought on whether or not you agree that a diorama is better than a picture when it comes to realizing one's imagination, or even if you're a fan of sculpture versus illustration.

This summary of the Desolation of Smaug has all you need to know about the Hobbit film

Peter Jackson released the first trailer for The Hobbit this week. If you haven't seen it, you should watch it below. In addition you'll see my specially prepared summary that gives you all you need to know of the movie in three simple panels. No need to thank me. You're welcome. And you get fifty extra nerd points if you know who Daenerys is and why that's significant in the caption I wrote on the first panel. *snicker. I'm so funny. Your moment of Legolas with eyeliner.
He's so pretty. Death of Smaug. Hey it's a kid's book. Akid should be the hero.
The End

A supercell thunderstorm that will leave you in awe of its majesty and power

Below is a video of the formation of a supercell thunderstorm that will leave you in awe of its majesty and power.
This time-lapse video by photographer Mike Olbinski is a work of art. He does a lot of these kind of videos and managed to capture this one near Booker, Texas on June 3rd, 2013 (it took him four years to find just the right one to record). I urge you to watch it, and I promise that you'll not regret what you see. I personally think the footage is spellbinding. Note the houses (they are little bumps on the horizon) to give the thing a truly awesome scale.
A supercell near Booker, Texas from Mike Olbinski on Vimeo.

Da Vinci's Demons and Hannibal are perfect examples of source material that has yet to exhaust itself

Whoever said that all the plots have been written may have been right in the strictest sense of the word, however, the statement does a gross injustice to the inventiveness of writers. A decade or so ago, we saw fairy tale fiction get re-opened and re-examined in a new way with reboots like Wicked and Pretty Woman taking their cues from time-honored stories like The Wizard of Oz and Cinderella. That tradition is alive and well today with the many sequels, prequels, and re-tellings (myself included in that crowd with a sci-fi series that explores the Arthurian mythos through allegory ).
Leonardo DaVinci on the left and Count Riario on the right. They are
enemies in the story played out in Starz' DaVinci's Demons.Recently though, I've been impressed with how writers are exploring "holes" in tales that we previously thought were done. For example, Da Vinci's Demons just ended it's first season on Starz. At first, I was turned off by the immediate killing of a molested boy in the Vatican because he had overheard plans between the Pope (the one molesting him) and Count Riario (who is the Pope's most trusted agent). But I talked with my friend Dezmond at the Hollywood Spy , and he convinced me to give it another go. So I did, and thank you Dezmond.
At the center of Da Vinci's Demons is the tale of Leonardo Da Vinci, a man that many believe could possibly be the smartest man to have ever lived. I for one have seen the traveling exhibition that has turned many if not all of Leonardo Da Vinci's art pieces into actual working models through a grant from IBM. I was impressed to learn that he created things like a spyglass, an odometer, an aqualung, and various weapons that the city state of Florence (in the television series) uses to great effect to defend itself and warn off enemies. So how could a fictionalized dramatic series be made of Da Vinci's life when we already know all about him? I'll tell you how. There's a five year gap in what people know of Da Vinci as a young man, and the series is taking liberties to explore that five-year gap with an incredible search for a thing called The Book of Leaves.
This is the title sequence from Da Vinci's Demons. I love the music, and ifyou watch it, you'll see how many of his inventions are brought to life withspecial effects that pay homage to the sketches from that time period. 
The first season took us through the Vatican to the mysterious archives where we saw the Spear of Longinus and a sword in the stone among many other wonders. It's absolutely captivating to see Leonardo's inventions brought to life in a speculative fiction way as the young Leonardo is forced to create and use these devices to get him out of some very sticky situations. In the backdrop of course is all the political maneuvering of the era (Florence and the Medici family versus the Catholic Church) and it has all the machinations and plot hooks of a Dan Brown novel. The tree of political influence, or "Da Vinci's demons." All of these characters
play a part in the Starz series in manipulating, controlling, and steering
young Leonardo's destiny. Will he ever find The Book of Leaves? I hope so.
Click to EMBIGGEN and examine in more detail.Additionally, there's another series on television that also explores holes in stories that I previously didn't think existed. Hannibal on NBC is based on the Thomas Harris novels, of which I've read all three. Red Dragon shall always be my favorite, but Silence of the Lambs comes in a close second. The actual book, Hannibal, was "meh." I could tell Thomas Harris didn't have his heart in it, but gave us a book anyway to try and "tie up" some things that some thought needed "tying up" I suppose.
So where could they possibly go with Hannibal? Well, in Red Dragon he's already in prison and it's through him that we get to know Will Graham who is the person that caught Hannibal and put him into Dr. Chilton's institute. If you'd have asked me, I would have said "that story is done." But I'm wrong and have been very impressed with how NBC is bringing this story to light. Below, I've embedded the title sequence because I think it's brilliant. It sums up everything about the character using wine (Hannibal is quite cultured) that looks like blood.We all know that Hannibal is eventually captured. That of course will play out in the series finale at some point in the future bringing us full circle and back to the first book, Red Dragon. The series explores Hannibal's life as a successful psychiatrist and boy, it does not hold back on the gore. In the first season we've seen skin torn from limbs like a rubber glove, human body parts arranged on a totem pole stuck in the sand of a beach, and Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame as a guest star as Hannibal's own psychiatrist. It's an homage I suppose since her character in Dana Sculley was created after the character of Clarice Starling. Mads Mikkelson is a great Hannibal. He has no problem filling shoes
previously donned by Anthony Hopkins.I also like that we are seeing the evolution of the character in Will Graham. He's equally as fascinating as Clarice, yet kind of took a backseat to the character played by Jodi Foster in the film adaptation when it struck such commercial gold in 1990 via Jonathan Demme's production that crushed every Oscar category of note.
So a question to my readers: did you watch Da Vinci's Demons, and if so, what did you think of the liberties they take of the historical real-life character? Are you watching Hannibal?
Anyway, I want to end by saying Da Vinci's Demons and Hannibal are perfect examples of source material that has yet to exhaust itself. It kind of begs the question: is any story truly over? What do you think?
I look forward to reading your comments.

Falling Skies is back and the effects are cooler than ever

There are not any real spoilers in this post.
This is the poster that's been online for a month. At right is the Volm. At left is the
new mech/robot that's super destructive and looks rather awesome. The Volm
look cool, don't you think?Last night one of my favorite series aired its two hour season premiere. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If you like science fiction, you really should be watching Falling Skies. That being said, I've got one bone to pick, and it's that I don't like the nine month gap in time from last season to this season. At the end of last season, a new alien showed up and none of us who were watching the show could tell if they were friend or foe. Well for now, they seem to be a friend, and that's a good thing because the resistance had its hands full in dealing with the aliens that originally attacked them.
Noah Wyle on a horse makes everything else irrelevant.The new ones (called the Volm) are really cool looking. They kind of remind me of Guillermo del Toro's Abe Sapien in the Hellboy movies (for the record, I liked Abe Sapien). So that being said, is Falling Skies on your watch list? Is Noah Wyle not enough to lure you to the screen? Is a dystopian post-apocalyptic world where three alien races are currently at war with each other on the surface of the Earth not cool enough to warrant one hour of your time every Sunday?

I hope some of you out there will start watching this show so that we can have discussions about the episodes in the comments!

BBC America's 'In the Flesh' gives us the warm fuzzy zombies we want to hug instead of shoot in the head

Kieran has PDS. He's a Partially Deceased Syndrome Sufferer. He gets
medicated with a drug that regenerates living brain tissue. However,
what he really needs is a hug from the humans he used to think of as food.Last night I watched the first of three episodes in the BBC America mini-series "In the Flesh." First a disclaimer: those of you who follow my blog know that I'm absolutely in love with zombie apocalypse stuff. After all, I talk about "The Walking Dead" all the time (at least when it's in season). So this review of the show may just be a little biased.

I LOVED "In the Flesh." The main character is Kieran, a Brit and he's a "Partially Deceased Syndrome Sufferer," and the BBC couldn't pick a more adorable protagonist (well maybe "R" from "Warm Bodies" would be a good substitute). I could feel his emotional pain, his longing to just be embraced by other humans, and it tore at my heart strings. "In the Flesh" took my emotions, grabbed them by the jugular, and body slammed them. I can't wait for part two tonight. Yes, I'm begging to be body-slammed yet again.

And I just want to say, that when his parents picked Kieran up at the PDS facility, they didn't hug him. I kept waiting for the hug to happen, and it never did. Why for crying out loud won't anyone hug him? He's just come back from the dead...he's got memories of eating people and is really broken up about it, and no one in Britain has the compassion to give him a hug? Embedded below is a three minute sneak peak of this series. I totally dare you to watch it. Oh and if you missed the first episode, don't worry. They're airing them again on Sunday.
BBC America has been knocking it out of the park for years now. We've got the reboot of Sherlock Holmes, we have the new Dr. Who Series, we had Merlin, Torchwood, and now I have "In the Flesh." PLEASE BBC, you need to make "In the Flesh" a full blown series. IT IS AWESOME! Thank you for giving us the warm fuzzy zombies that we really wanted to just hug instead of shoot in the head. How absolutely brilliant of you.

Robb Stark lost the game of thrones because he didn't play by the rules

Poor, poor Robb Stark. SPOILER ALERT: I'M TALKING ABOUT THIS LAST WEEK'S EPISODE.
In the aftermath of the red wedding, do we really know what the game of thrones is? In season one, Cersei tells Ned Stark "When you play the game of thrones you win, or you die. There is no middle ground." I'm sure the ghost of Ned would disagree, but that's why he's a ghost. Cersei's been spouting the rules of the game since the beginning and no one has been listening to her.
If we can take anything away from these three seasons, it's that there are traits that are useful in the game of thrones, and there are traits that will downright get you killed. Robb was a great character. Noble, handsome, young, strong, and a brilliant military strategist. However, the game he was involved in was about none of those things. It was about how to acquire, retain, and use power. Robb failed at all three. Why? Because he lacked: timing, judgment, diplomacy, and discipline. What he had in spades were the traits of honor and conservative inflexibility.
Robb Stark lost the game of thrones because he didn't play by the rules. He needed to look the other way when the Lannister cousins got murdered. Sure they were kids, but in the game of thrones, you don't go and piss off an ally like the one he had in the Karstarks. But he put his foot down and declared the act monstrous. The inflexibility and honor did him credit, but that's an empty purse. He might as well have cut off his own head when he cut off Lord Karstark's.
Robb also lacked discipline. He shouldn't have married Talisa and instead taken one of the Frey girls as his bride. But he fell in love and that makes things all right in everything except the game of thrones. Robb made so many mistakes, and that's why his death is so powerful. It's the pinnacle moment in the tale where we see how the game of thrones is truly played and you're either in it to win it, or you're dead.
I think the best players at the table are the women. Margaery, Cersei, and Daenerys all seem to have the flexibility to embrace things that they despise for a chance to either finish them off later, or to find something positive about those things to further their own ambition. It's interesting that Cersei could have predicted Robb's death. She said, "Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same."

Facing Fear Head On

Today is the monthly blog fest run by Alex J. Cavanaugh called "The Insecure Writer's Support Group." You can sign up for it HERE.

My insecurity as of late deals with environmental depression plagued by feelings of fear. I think as humans, fear can become unmanageable. And it's also contagious, spreading from one person to another rather quickly. As a writer, there's lots to fear. We can fear reviews, we can fear crowds, we can fear rejection, we can fear  the industry itself.

There's lots to fear in life too. Who isn't afraid of what North Korea is doing or if the housing market may crash again or if the economy will tank? Who isn't afraid that the bump you never noticed might be cancer? Who isn't afraid that we could die at any time? I think I understand fear better than I've ever understood it before. And in a way, it is a choice you can make. Are you going to be afraid? Or are you going to choose to not be afraid.

For me, I need to choose option two much more often. It's the only way I can grow both professionally and privately. So yeah...I'm kind of making a resolution to shore up my insecurities and do some things I've never done in the hopes that they won't turn out all that bad. How about you? How do you deal with fear?

Is there real world science that could make Marvel's Banshee fly?

Caleb Landry Jones was the actor who played Banshee
in the Marvel comic movie X-Men: First Class.As some of you may know, Banshee is a Marvel Universe character that possesses a sonic scream capable of harming enemies, causing physical vibrations, and flying (as shown in the movie X-Men: First Class). I'm ambivalent in my feelings toward this character, however, I was wondering if sound really could make someone fly. It's one of those things that kind of hung in the back of my mind. I know the writers of comic books sometimes go to great efforts to explain superpowers as best as they can using scientific principles to lure the audience into a suspension of disbelief. The same thoughts also go into magic systems, which are all the rage these days in fantasy fiction. So here's the question of the day: is there real world science that could make Marvel's Banshee fly? It turns out that the answer is yes.
Sound by itself may not allow someone to fly around at incredible speed, but it can be used to defy gravity. I guess once you accomplish this perhaps all that's needed is a propulsion system, right? Allow me to introduce you to a phenomenon called acoustic levitation. Below is a video that demonstrates how sound waves can be used to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing different pharmaceuticals. The machine featured is called (simply enough) an acoustic levitator and was originally developed for NASA to simulate microgravity conditions. It uses two small speakers to generate sound waves at frequencies slightly above the audible range--roughly 22 kilohertz. When the top and bottom speakers are precisely aligned, they create two sets of sound waves that perfectly interfere with each other, setting up a phenomenon known as a standing wave. At certain points along a standing wave, known as nodes, there is no net transfer of energy. Because the acoustic pressure from the sound waves is sufficient to cancel the effect of gravity, light objects are able to levitate when placed at the nodes. Simple enough concept to grasp, right? I think this video is incredibly cool and you should watch it :) It's not magic, it's science. Have a great Tuesday and don't forget the IWSG tomorrow!