Phil Giunta's Blog, page 115
August 9, 2011
August 4, 2011
Shore Leave is Changing Its Date!
After thirty-three years, Maryland's longest running SF media convention, Shore Leave , is moving to a month! Starting in 2012, the convention will be held in August.
Actually, to be technical, I believe Shore Leave 20 was held at the end of June back in 1998 but for the most part, the weekend following fourth of July has traditionally been the convention's time slot.
This should not come as a culture shock to fans. Both Farpoint and BaltiCon, two long running annual SF conventions also based in Maryland, have changed their times. Farpoint began in October and moved in February. BaltiCon , moving into its forty-sixth year, was held over Easter weekend for the longest time before shifting to Memorial Day weekend.
August 3, 2011
About this Writing Stuff and Benefit for L.A. Banks
On a sad note, today has seen the passing of bestselling author Leslie (L.A.) Banks from late stage adrenal cancer. There will be a benefit in her honor on Saturday, 6 August sponsored by the Philly Liars Club: Writer's Bash: Benefit Party for L.A. Banks .
The New World of Publising: Traditional or Indie? by Dean Wesley Smith
Literary Agents and Self Publishing by Laura Resnick
The 5 Essential Story Ingredients by Brian A. Klems
How to Take Your Short Stories to the Next Level by Brian A. Klems
How to Land Writing Gigs When Meeting Editors by Brian A. Klems
How to Build a Platform from Scratch by S. Jane Gari and Heidi R. Willis
Agent Advice: Kathleen Rushall of Marsal Lyons Literary Agency posted by Chuck Sambuchino
How I Got My Agent by Teresa Frohock
What I Told My Family About Publishing by Jennifer Hillier
July 30, 2011
Write it Dos Equis Style
Months ago, I emailed a Star Trek/Dos Equis Man spoof to a friend. I think it was for his birthday if memory serves. Either way, I thought I'd share the full version here and invite you to add your own from any universe you like. Feel free to change gender, too. There are plenty of interesting ladies out there!
He is the captain of starships he has never set foot on.
When he opens hailing frequencies, the entire sector listens.
If he stuns you with a phaser, you'll be tempted to thank him.
When he's on Vulcan, they follow HIS logic.
He is the most interesting man in the galaxy.
"I don't often drink ale, but when I do, I drink Romulan Ale. Stay thirsty, my fellow sentients."
Or check out these Star Wars versions that I came across last night online by Dave Styer, The Most Interesting Geek in the Galaxy.
July 29, 2011
Author Interview: Kelly Meding
Six months later, at Farpoint, I co-hosted a panel on the paranormal with Kelly and another veteran author, Ann C. Crispin. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the company of my fellow panelists and the energetic audience.
With just a few days before the debut of the third novel in Kelly's Dreg City Series, I'm honored to have her on my blog!
1. First, let us know where we can find you online such as blogs, websites, Facebook, etc.
My website is www.kellymeding.com, which links back to my blog Organized Chaos. I am also on Facebook and Twitter.
And I post on a group blog called The League of Reluctant Adults, along with a fun and eclectic group of fellow paranormal and fantasy authors.
2.
What inspired you to write fiction, specifically urban fantasy?
I don't know if I can still pinpoint why I started writing fiction. For a long while, as a child, I didn't realize that real people wrote the books I was reading. I don't remember where I thought books came from (no, I do, they came from the bookstore, duh!). Then it clicked for that there were these people called Authors who wrote Books and it was their Job. I thought it was awesome. I also thought that, because being an Author was a Job, that only grownups could do it.
Fortunately, by junior high, I figured out that anyone could write a story. I'd been making up stories in my head since I was a small child playing with my dolls (I used to organize very specific He-Man/She-Ra playground stories for me and my friends). I finally understood that even though I wasn't an Author, I could still write down some of my stories. So I did. I wasn't very good when I started out, and it took a lot of work and practice to find my own style and voice, but I'm very grateful to be able to do this.
Urban fantasy felt like the perfect fit. I grew up watching horror, science fiction and fantasy on television and in the movies, and I loved reading RL Stine and Christopher Pike. I've always loved monsters and mystery and fantastic settings. And just like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, urban fantasy gave me strong heroines that I could look up to and cheer for. It's an ever-expanding genre, and there are still so many mythologies and monsters ripe for the taking.
3. If you don’t mind, please tell us about the first story you completed, published or not.
Oh boy. Well, the first story I completed was at the end of the seventh grade. I wrote it long-hand in one of those black-and-white marbleized notebooks. It was pretty awful, even though I barely remember it. It was heavily inspired by the original "Beverly Hills, 90210" as well as years of reading Sweet Valley High. I gave it to my then-best friend to read. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we had a very serious fight (as serious as junior high fights can actually be) while she was still in possession of it, and in a fit of anger she ripped it up and flushed it. At the time, I was devastated. Now I just think about it and laugh.
4. Your debut UF novel, Three Days to Dead (Dell, November 2009), is the opening tale in your Dreg City series which continued in As Lie the Dead (July 2010). What inspired the story and characters?
Dreg City came from a lot of different places. It mostly spawned from my desire to write something that was purely Urban Fantasy (I'd written other speculative work at the time, but no UF) in every sense—the ass-kicking female protagonist, first-person POV, original world-building full of fantastical creatures. I knew I wanted to have a melting pot of paranormal creatures by putting the familiar (vampires, shape-shifters) alongside the less common (gremlins, gargoyles, goblins). I then decided to have it be a closed-world, which meant the general population wasn't aware of the supernatural creatures living in the city with them, but those creatures still needed to be kept in check. Hence, the Triads were born.
My heroine, Evangeline Stone, developed as I developed the Triads. I needed to understand what kind of person would, at eighteen, be recruited into an organization that trained them to police, hunt, and kill paranormal creatures. What kind of person would be okay with going into that kind of lifestyle? Several of the other Triad Hunter characters developed in a similar way.
Another thing I wanted to do with the series was to write it on the cusp of going from closed-world to open-world. So many UF series are already established as one or the other, but I was curious as to how things might progress as it became impossible to hide the truth. And over the course of the four books I've written so far, we're getting closer and closer to an eventual "coming out." I don't know for certain how or if things will shift, but I like having that possible avenue open to explore.
Can you give us a blurb on the third installment, Another Kind of Dead,
premiering August 2, 2011?
Evy Stone is a former Dreg Bounty Hunter who died and came back to life with some extraordinary powers. Now, all but five people in the world think she is dead again, this time for good: immolated in a factory fire set specifically for her. Evy and her partner Wyatt can no longer trust their former allies, or even the highest echelons of the Triads—the army of fighters holding back a tide of quarreling, other-worldly creatures from an unsuspecting public.
Teammates, friends and lovers, Evy and Wyatt can only trust each other. Because when the Triads raided a macabre, monster-filled lab of science experiments and hauled away the remnants, they failed to capture their creator. He is a brilliant, vampire-obsessed scientist with a wealth of powerful, anti-Dreg weaponry to trade for what he desires most of all-- Evy Stone: alive and well, and the key to his ultimate experiment in mad science.
Will the series continue beyond book three?
Yes. Book four, Wrong Side of Dead, is scheduled to release March 2012. As of writing this, I'm not contracted for more, but that could change at any time, and I already have a partial outline of book five. Ideally, I'd like to write a few more to bring Evy's story to a proper close, as well as tie up the major world-related arcs.
5. Along with NYT Bestselling author Lara Adrian, you contributed to the novella, A Glimpse of Darkness (Del Rey, December 2010). Other contributors included Harry Connolly, Stacia Kane, and Lucy A. Snyder. The book is available in Kindle format on Amazon.
Can you give us a story synopsis?
Munira bint Azhar, the half-human daughter of a djinn, is a skilled Retriever in the city of Port Nightfall. Now the powerful sorcerer Temesis has given Munira a dire ultimatum: steal a magical lantern—the Light of Ta’lab—from the horrific undead kingdom below the city, or watch her father die at Temesis’s hand. Will she be able to retrieve the lantern and save her father’s life, or will they both perish in the process?
How did the collaboration come about?
The collaboration was the brainchild of Del Rey/Spectra editors David Pomerico and Mike Braff. David presented the idea of a joint, choose-your-own-adventure story in email, and once we authors agreed to the project, he set up a private Google Group for us. We brainstormed ideas on setting, world-building, and the characters. Djinn mythology is relatively unexplored in much of UF, so it was something we all agreed to utilize. Once we had the characters, we set up a very basic story progression and assigned chapters. Each chapter ended with a cliffhanger and readers could vote on what the characters did next. It was great fun reading each person's chapter, then seeing which choice the reading audience vote on the polls. I really enjoyed myself, and it's definitely something I'd like to do again.
6. During the Writers Workshop at Shore Leave 32, you mentioned a few superhero projects on the horizon. Are you able to provide any details?
Yes! The first book in my new series with Pocket, TRANCE, releases 10/25/11. It's an original superhero concept, in which battling heroes and villains had brought the world to the brink of total disaster. Villains were in line to win, the heroes were all but wiped out, and then everyone lost their powers. The powerless villains were locked away, while the powerless heroes (all children between ages fifteen and ten) were shuffled off to various foster homes. Fifteen years later, everyone's powers mysteriously return, and the adult heroes must find each other and join forces before a vengeful villain murders them all.
The sequel, tentatively titled CHANGELING, will follow sometime in 2012.
7. What does Kelly Meding do when she isn’t writing?
When I'm not writing, I can be found with my nose in a book. I've been a big reader my entire life, and it's one of my favorite ways to unwind and relax. I also like to make jewelry when the mood hits. I love to book and bake, so I might spend an evening experimenting in the kitchen (so far, I have never poisoned someone). My family is also pretty close by, so I get to spend a lot of time with them, especially my adorable niece.
Farpoint convention: www.farpointcon.com
Shore Leave convention: www.shore-leave.com
About this Writing Stuff...
How to Avoid Sabotaging Your Online Marketing Efforts by Jane Friedman
When the Story You're Writing Isn't Working: An Interview with Donald Miller by Brian A. Klems
Are You Writing? by JA Konrath
Thinking Global by JA Konrath
Why Most of What You've Read About Characterization is Untrue by Harry Bingham
On ADD and Writing by Allie Larken
Turn it Off by Barbara O'Neal
Deal Breakers by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
July 28, 2011
Book Review: Ben Bova's Jupiter
Jupiter is the second book I've read in Ben Bova's Grand Tour series. I started, appropriately, with Mercury and enjoyed it. Jupiter was next on the list because I was curious as to its connection with an earlier Bova novel, As on a Darkling Plain, in which explorers dive into Jupiter’s violent, toxic oceans in a craft filled with breathable fluid. While there, they discover life in the form of large creatures reminiscent of Earth's whales yet far more massive.
In Jupiter, young astro-physicist Grant Archer is recruited, much to his chagrin, by religious order known as the New Morality to spy on "godless scientists" on a space station orbiting Jupiter. Archer is a Believer but with an open mind. He is also married and working on his doctoral thesis but despite his protests, New Morality official Ellis Beech invokes a public service clause that dictates all scientists must serve a minimum of four years wherever the government deems fit to send them, even if the assignment is unrelated to their discipline. The New Morality suspects that the scientists on the station are conducting unauthorized searches for intelligent life on Jupiter.
Once arriving at the space station, Archer assimilates into the team of scientists under the wrathful eye of crippled director, Dr. Wo (known as "Old Woeful" to the team). After working his way up the ranks from errand boy, Archer is given the opportunity to study Jupiter's tidal patterns (known as fluid dynamics) and eventually becomes part of a team that pilots a submersible space craft into Jupiter's oceans under the command of the cantankerous, and partially blind, Dr. Krebs.
The craft, christened the Zheng He, was specifically--and secretly--constructed for the purpose of withstanding the pressure of Jupiter's oceans to a depth of ten thousand kilometers. Again, the craft is filled with the breathable fluid and, as also described in As on a Darkling Plain, the crew is surgically altered with implants that allow them to connect directly to the ship's computers through a series of fiber optic cables.
However, when the New Morality receives no reports from Archer, they visit the station personally in an effort to shut down the project. For if intelligent life were discovered, it would be considered blasphemy and would undermine nearly all of Earth's religions. Ignoring a hail from the New Morality to return to the station immediately, Dr. Krebs orders the Zheng He deeper into Jupiter's treacherous oceans, even bringing the vessel close to the Great Red Spot in search of these Leviathans.
A veteran author of science fact and science fiction, Bova is a master at developing characters and stories and moves both along adeptly without need of fluff or filler. His scientific prowess is evident in the details and while it is fiction, that knowledge makes each moment entirely believable. Jupiter was a thoroughly engrossing adventure. Next up, Mars Life.
July 23, 2011
Write Long and Prosper!
In my mailbox today arrived the 2010 releases of the expanded soundtracks for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier . Each are 2-CD sets containing previously released music on disc one and the original soundtrack release from the 80s on disc two.
Interestingly, these sets were produced by two different companies. The Star Trek III set was produced by FilmScore in partnership with Retrograde Records. They also produced the expanded edition of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 2009 which was only one absolutely fantastic CD. The Star Trek V set was produced by La La Land Records and is billed as Limited Edition. As such, prices range from $29.99 to $125. I purchased both sets from from Screen Archive Entertainment .
James Horner and Jerry Goldsmith are among the greatest composers of our time, equal to John Williams in my humble opinion. I'm looking forward to the listening experience! I would like to see such treatment to the Star Trek IV and VI soundtracks. Star Trek: The Motion Picture had its expanded soundtrack released in 1998 which is a fantastic two disc set. The first disc is the expanded soundtrack while the second contains a series of commentaries and interviews with Gene Roddenberry and the cast.
July 22, 2011
About This Writing Stuff...
Be Deliberate by JA Konrath
8 Reasons Books Fail by Eric Gelb
3-Part Recipe for Agent Queries by Rachel Vater
When to Use Swear Words in Your Writing by Morgan Hunt
Why Take the Time to Read Your Work Out Loud? by Jane Friedman
Creativity Isn't Magic posted by Jane Friedman
5 Factors to Help You Evaluate Blogs & Online Authorities by Jane Friedman
New Agent Alert: Halli Melnitsky of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth posted by Chuck Sambuchino
7 Things I've Learned So Far by Sydney Salter posted by Chuck Sambuchino
The Story Behind the Story of Demon Circle by Bob Greenberger and Crazy 8 Press
July 17, 2011
Brain Movies: A new release of Harlan Ellison's TV work!
Babylon 5 creator and comic book writer, J. Michael Straczynski, has announced a new book from Publishing 180 called Brain Movies. Ths book will contain several TV scripts from my favorite author, Harlan Ellison, along with Harlan's guide to writing SF that he created for incoming writers on Babylon 5. I am very excited to procure a copy of this book!
