Fran Wilde's Blog, page 31

“If You’re Not Using Your Decor As a Weapon, You’re Doing it Wrong”

Blackout – part of Mira Grant’s Newsflesh Series

Author Mira Grant (a.k.a. Seanan McGuire)’s Newsflesh series examines life [cough] on the other side of a zombie apocalypse. Who better to join Apex Publications in their first-ever (and possibly last) attempt at a DIY Home Design Blog?

Over at Apex, you will find handy tips for choosing a zombie-apocalypse home site, stain removal, and ill-advised color palettes for the apocalypse, along with a succinct rule-of-thumb for the ongoing weapons-as-d...

Sensory Overload: Cooking the Books with Walter Jon Williams

Picture, if you will, Walter Jon Williams standing at a stove, stirring a pot. He catches sight of you and waves you closer. The smells coming from the pot are amazing. You are somewhat surprised; what you know of Walter Jon Williams is that he is a ninja-writer, capable of navigating between the worlds of his twenty seven novels and three story collections with flair.

To find him in the Cooking the Books kitchen, wearing a bold Hawaiian shirt and offering you a taste of gazpacho, is a touch b...

A New Sciffy Playlist

I was in need of a new, future-filled playlist (because if I play the old one in the car any longer, the natives will make me walk home), so I consulted the Twitter.

Behold, brilliant co-conspirators Liz Bourke, Rachel Hartman, W.E. Larson, Sara Goslee, Natalie Luhrs, and Anne Chathamto the rescue! (The order is still being hacked with.)

Have something to add? Please do! Comments are open and we are waiting to take your requests!

Intergalactic – Beastie Boys
Still Alive – GLaDOS
Magic Carpet Ride...

Agent News!

Earlier this year, I began querying my second novel, Bone Arrow.

I love this book. I worked my tail off on this book.

Even so.

Querying felt like this:

I tried to be compelling:

I waited a bunch.

My friends kept me going, sometimes by sending funny links, sometimes by threatening me with poetry. There’s no way to properly express how thankful I am for you all. Nicole, Kelly, Sara, Chris, Jim, Debra, Greg, Oz, Jon, Alex, Natalie, Ben, Amy, Amy, Beth, Raq, A.C., Eugene, Doug, Wayne, Lou, Cath, Sandra...

Algorithms Love You and Want You to Be Better!

Baxter, from Rethink Robots

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a seminar on disruptive technology given by the director of Singularity University, Salim Ismail, his colleague David Roberts, and Banning Garrett, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Heads up — this post is going to be higher-geek-octane than usual. Specifically: robots, 3D printers, gene-hacks, exponential technology growth, pristine-algorithm-theory, self-replication, and godmodding. If those words make you clutch your...

March – May Reading & TBR

Some recent reads, from novels and anthologies to short stories, opinion, and nonfiction. Plus reads I’ve already placed on my TBR book stack. What about you? What have you read lately and loved?

Novels :

- Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny (reissued! Shiny cover!)

- The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (So. Very. Good.)

- Excerpts: The Lives of Tao, Wes Chu & Sister Mine, Nalo Hopkinson (yep, I ordered both.)

Anthologies

- The Other Half of the Sky,Athena Andreadis editor (Have begun reading a st...

My Little Shoggoth: Evolution of an Eldritch Horror

“At The Mountains of Madness” Astounding Stories (serialization), 1936.

Say you want to put a little Lovecraftian horror into your life. Let’s take a moment to consider the shoggoth, and how it has evolved in cultural perception.

The shoggoth, in all its glory, is described in Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”:

… a plastic column of fetid black iridescence… a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as p...

Some Funny News:

Over the weekend, when I wasn’t slipping on banana peels at the local coffee shop, I learned that the UFO2 anthology has accepted my story, “How to Feed Your Pyrokinetic Toddler”.

So, despite all of my best attempts at becoming a stodgy stuffed shirt, someone thinks I’m funny. Or at least they think one of my stories is. I’m delighted because this story is completely inappropriate, highly pear-shaped, and was a lot of fun to write.

UFO2 is, like its predecessor, Unidentified Funny Objects, a co...

Sheer Awesome: The Impossible Futures Anthology Cover

It’s been spotted in the wild! The incredible Impossible Futures cover for the anthology edited by Tom Easton and Judith K. Dial. ArtistDuncan Eagleson is a genius.

I’m ridiculously excited to be a part of this anthology – the TOC is amazing.The anthology includes stories by Rev DiCerto, Paul Di Filippo, Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald, Duncan Eagleson, Jeff Hecht, Edward M. Lerner, Shariann Lewitt, Jack McDevitt, James Morrow, Mike Resnick, Sarah Smith & Justus Perry, Allen M. Steele, and yo...

The Sneaky Lathe of Poetry

Lathe: n. A machine in which work is rotated about a horizontal axis and shaped by a fixed tool.

Reblogged from my monthly column at Apex Publishing.

If you are not the sort who enjoys poetry, you might think April (being National Poetry Month) is the season for eye-rolling over enforced rhyme schemes and cringing at public displays of meter.

But even if you skip town for the month, poetic voice still shapes your experience in sneaky ways. The results will catch you unawares.

Take some of your fa...