Dirk Flinthart's Blog, page 8

A Cover Reveal’d…

Bloodlines from Ticonderoga Publications has a cover now! Kathleen Jennings’ work is as lovely as ever. The book also has an official table of contents, and it appears I’m sharing space with some very talented folks. Old names and new… … but most important to me would be the name of the editor, the redoubtable Amanda […]

Telling Stories

Okay. I’ve got a collection of short stories coming out through Fablecroft. The cover looks beautiful. The scutwork is done. There’s a nifty range of tales in it, including a decent spread of new and unpublished material as well as some works that haven’t seen print in a while. I’d call it a decent representation […]

Story Upcoming: “In The Blood”, in Ticonderoga Press ‘Bloodlines’ Anthology

Blood. How could I resist such an absolutely cool theme? I mean – anyone who knows my writing will be aware that I love nothing more than tackling a widely used idea and spinning it in a different direction. Thus, when I saw that Ticonderoga were putting together an anthology of stories hung on the […]

Puppies, Trek, Hugos and More

Not too long ago, Leonard Nimoy died. I wrote a few words. So did everybody else. But there’s something in what I wrote that I’d like to revisit. It was about Nimoy and Spock, in the venerable original Star Trek series. I said that I first saw that stuff when I was about six years […]

Criticism: Why You Need It, How To Take It… and How To Fail At Taking It.

A good critical reader is a writer’s best buddy. Note that you cannot turn that sentence around and get sense out of it: your best buddy is not, and never will be, a good critical reader. (Caveat: I am on good and friendly terms with some highly professional people whose criticism I value tremendously. But […]

DVD Review: Under The Skin

With the plethora of Really Big Science Fiction Movies lately, it’s quite likely this little gem slipped below the radar for a lot of people. There are no giant starships, no armadas of aliens, no galactic panoramas: just what appears to be a woman (played with immense courage by Scarlett Johannson) driving a nondescript white […]

A Little Give-Away

Here’s a quick something for you to read at your leisure.  Not everything a writer creates sees print. Pieces that aren’t suitable for the initial market usually get re-constructed and submitted elsewhere. Sometimes that’s not an option, though. These days, that’s not always a disaster. What follows is an excerpt from a novella entitled Jerusalem […]

DVD Review: Chappie (Dir. Neil Blomkamp)

I’ll bet you that Neil Blomkamp seriously regrets just how excellent a film he created with District 9.  That being his first big feature, he’s been funded twice since then for high-concept SF movies — and the critics aren’t happy. I get it. Really. But I think it’s a little unfair, especially where this film […]

Speaking Freely

I’ve been offline for a while. I’ve had a lot to think about, not least being my Masters degree — which is very nearly done, thank the dark gods. There are other matters, though; matters which kept me from writing anything other than fiction for a while. Things I had to think through. I grew […]

The Inevitable Ice Bucket

It’s true. My grandmother suffered for a very long time with ALS. I still don’t have words to convey how it feels to watch that happen, and I can only imagine how it must have been for those of the family closest to her — those who looked after her for so very long.  As […]