Dirk Flinthart's Blog, page 11

H. P. Lovecraft — or how to appreciate his work without being a dick about it.

Look, I like Lovecraft as much as anybody. And in the world of speculative fiction — particularly horror — “anybody” is a long and illustrious list. Stephen King. Ramsey Campbell. Robert Bloch. Charles Stross… no, sod it. It would be easier to list writers who haven’t tried their hand at a Cthulhu Mythos story than […]

Review (DVD Release): Byzantium

I personally find director Neil Jordan (Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, Company of Wolves) a bit hit-or-miss as a storyteller, but the fine eye he brings to the director’s chair covers a myriad of sins for my money. I heard about this film on the grapevine, and decided to see it on strength of word-of-mouth […]

Coming Up From Marianne de Pierres: Peacemaker

Oh, man, I love a good cover.  And, no foolin’, that there is a very pretty cover indeed. Coming from Angry Robot in May 2014, Peacemaker is the first of a new series from Marianne de Pierres. I hear rumours of Cowpunk, megacities, demons, magic, and genderbending. On the other hand, I also hear thoughtful […]

Review: “Ink Black Magic” by Tansy Rayner Roberts

New from Fablecroft, Ink Black Magic is both an entertaining fantasy romp in the Pratchett mode, and an absolutely fascinating book for anyone who is interested in the art of writing and popular fiction. As a tale in its own right, Ink Black Magic is a light, quick-moving comedy which riffs off familiar territory and […]

Launching In A Small Town

Well, now. That was interesting.    (Signing a book for Mayor Barry Jarvis) I don’t know how many other writer-types live out in the boonies, but if this post helps anybody, so much the better.  I wasn’t wholly convinced that a small town without a book store (other than the newsagent) was a great place […]

Path Of Night Rolling Onward

Okay. So Path Of Night is the first book in a series, out through small press. My goal is to keep the series ticking over with a book every six months to a year (or thereabouts given a bit of time once the Masters degree is done) to raise a profile out there in author-land, […]

Learning From The Mistakes Of Other: “Battlefield Earth” Edition

As promised, I’m embarking on a project. I am demonstrating to anybody mad enough to read this blog that it is possible to learn valuable things about writing from some very popular works… just not the ones you might expect. No: I’m not waxing lyrical about Joyce or Dostoyevsky, or even Cordwainer Smith (whose books […]

Review: The Rook – Daniel O’Malley

The RookBy Daniel O’MalleyFrom Harper Collins Publishers The Rook is a debut novel from Australian writer Daniel O’Malley, and a remarkably assured and enjoyable debut it is. The back cover calls it a ‘supernatural detective thriller’, and mentions an ‘adept use of humour’, and for once the cover notes are actually pretty damned close to […]

Learning From The Mistakes Of Others

There seems to be some kind of time-honoured tradition which insists that those who would become writers (or artists, or musicians, I guess) have to learn their trade by studying The Great Predecessors. And so we read Shakespeare and Byron, Joyce and Hemingway and Woolf and so forth, and we sweat and we strain and […]

Review: Man Of Steel

  I rarely bother to attend the cinema any more. We have only one cinemaplex in Launceston, and it shows nothing but the shiniest and latest and crappiest and Hollywoodest movies. Of course, sometimes I wouldn’t mind seeing those — but since it costs me well over a hundred dollars to do so with my […]