Dirk Flinthart's Blog, page 6

Review: The Witch

I’m not a huge aficionado of horror. I’ve read it, written it, watched it… but all too often I find myself disappointed. I’m willing to allow that it’s probably because my take on ‘horrifying’ is different to most, but on the whole I find that horror as a genre falls all too easily into tired […]

Review: Hardcore Henry

  This movie is ridiculous, awesome, hilarious, stupidly violent, graphic as hell, brutal, ugly, and genuinely brilliant. Like Crank (the Jason Statham vehicle from a few years back) it hits the screen with the kind of pace that directors like Michael Bay just wish they could create, let alone sustain, and it barely lets up […]

Hey! Check it out!

Nifty stuff. Short works from a bunch of Oz writers of speculative fiction, set to music by contemporary Australian composers, and performed live!    

Review: Ancillary Justice

Okay, yeah, I’m late to the party. Late to a lot of things. Wouldn’t worry about it. So: Ancillary Justice, from Ann Leckie Published in 2013, this is Leckie’s debut novel and it picked up a hailstorm of awards including just about everything on offer from SF and fandom. Thus, in picking up the book […]

Review: “He Never Died”

Hmm. Okay, this one is interesting. Some movies function as a whole. Some excel in certain areas, but fall down in others. As ever, the golden rule holds: it’s the characters that really count. He Never Died lies somewhere between dark fantasy and horror, with a strong streak of remarkably dry and mordant humour running through […]

Review: Dark Matter

You know, I really love Firefly.  And who doesn’t? Show’s been dead more than a decade now (if you don’t count the big old movie adaptation) but it still represents the high-water mark for a certain kind of TV science fiction. And likely always will. Lightning in a bottle there: the right writers, the right […]

In Your Face

There are editors, and there are editors. I’m not too picky about who I write for. (I do have limits, though.) But there are editors who have earned my trust and respect and more, and Tehani of Fablecroft is high on that list. A while back, she tagged me and asked for a story which […]

The City Man And The Cat

(Many moons ago, two very dear friends of mine moved to the country. I won’t tell you where from, or where to… but I will say this: they were named Garth and Bonita, and that’s as much as you need to know. Except, maybe, that this is a true story told to me in person […]

Building Character

(…continuing a simple walkthrough on the most basic elements of the short story)     What exactly is a character, anyway? How do they fit into the art of short story writing, and what do we need to know about them? The short answer is this: characters are the elements of a story which have […]

The Unicorn (A Simple Story For Study)

(This story is posted as part of the ongoing introductory walkthrough to basic short story writing. It has no particularly outstanding merits except that it is 1) short, 2) easily amenable to analysis and 3) belongs to me so I don’t have to worry about copyright. Have fun, folks!)   The Unicorn It cost a […]