B. Morris Allen's Blog, page 18

Interview: Rebecca Bradley – Crazy chicken lady? (in Gil)

I loved Rebecca Bradley’s Gil trilogy when I read it back in 2001. Now that I’m (at least temporarily) reunited with my physical books, I picked it up again recently to find I liked it even better the second time around. That quickly led to discovery of her latest novel, a query to Ms. Bradley, and the following interview to catch up on what she’s been writing. (Hint – it includes more Gil!)

Rebecca Bradley published the very well-received Gil fantasy trilogy (Lady in Gil, Scion’s Lady and L...

Speculating beyond the patriarchy

Is it good or bad that most fantasy still takes place in patriarchal societies? Not just fantasy, actually, but a fair amount of science fiction as well. In a world where we’ve tried hard to grow beyond our roots in male-dominated and led societies, we still dream about worlds of oppression.

Of course, in the real world, we haven’t made as much progress as one might hope. Some countries have equal protection laws in place, but many don’t. Even the ones that do have difficulty in implementatio...

Sale! Sale! Sale! – on e-book pricing

Back before e-books, I bought paper books when I had the money to do it. Books were books, and paperbacks didn’t go on sale. You paid the price on the back of the book, and that was it. Airports charged outrageous prices (except in Portland), and you could pick up very lightly used copies cheap at Powell’s, but basically, the price was the price.

Then came Amazon, where I could often get books below cover price, even figuring in shipping. When shipping became largely free, that was even bette...

The Dirt from George R. R. Martin [clickbait]

The real George R. R. Martin

The other day, the author of Game of Thronesdelivered three yards of compost to my house. The man is a genius at providing a dark, rich, and complex substrate to fertilize the imagination.

It wasn’t really George R. R. Martin, of course. But it was a man who could win an impersonation contest hands down. Black cap, glasses, long white beard, generous physique – it looked just like him. I even asked him how many times a day people commented on the resemblance. This...

Shadow – graphic novel with Uwe Carow

As an author, I’m pretty text oriented. I’d love to be able to sketch or paint, but if I can’t do it with words, it’s just not going to happen. So I’m as surprised as anybody to say that I’ve just published a graphic novel. More accurately, I’ve written the text for a graphic novel, with the art thankfully provided by an actual artist – Uwe Carow.

Shadow started life as a concept. An online SFF magazine I was interested in said they’d be interested in hyperlinked stories, but didn’t receive...

The Savage Breasts

William Congreve

and his

Savage Breast
As Dave Barry might say, that would be a good name for a band. But I chose it simply because my last two posts happened to be about musicians, which caused me to reflect on the connection between music and writing.



A lot of my stories have a link to music. My first real story, as noted elsewhere, is closely based on the Deep Purple song, "Blind" (from their eponymous third album). It's been a long time - I can't recall what it is that drove me to wr...

Now What?!

I'm not generally a big fan of live
music. It's always seemed to me that you get half the quality at twice
the price. Of course, you also get a sense of energy and community, and
sometimes, a great performance (which you then wish you had as a
recording...).




Somehow, though, I've managed to see a decent number of live acts, including some of my favorites: Cat Stevens (back when he wasCat
Stevens), Gordon Lightfoot, Waylon Jennings, Carrie Newcomer*, Steve Forbert, John Gorka, Darden Smith,...

PS - the last protest singer

"I thought if you had an acoustic guitar then it meant that you were a protest singer." Stephen Morrissey
"Too many protest singers, not enough protest songs." Edwyn Collins





Pete Seeger didn't play much acoustic guitar, but he wrote a lot of protest songs. Seeger had the firm conviction that the purpose of music was to convey a message, and he stayed true to that convictionuntil his death last week at 94.



I came at Pete Seeger from the wrong end - I grew up listening not only to his frien...

Duotrope for Dollars

I wasoutragedlast year, when Duotrope announced that it was shifting to a paid model. Well, not actually outraged. In fact, I thought it was a very reasonable decision. Possibly even sensible, though it's hard to be sure without knowing the financial data.





In any case, I found Duotrope to be a valuable service, and I had already been donating $20-25 per year. I thought $50 was a bit steep, but I signed up anyway, since in my search a couple of years earlier, I hadn't found a good alterna...

Amazon reconsiders reviews?

One reason Amazon has been so successful is the product reviews that its customers generate for free. Lately, though, it seems like Amazon has focused more on preventing reviews than encouraging them.

I started using Amazon in 1998. Not exactly from its very inception, but only three years after they started selling books. I've been pretty happy with them as both a reader and a writer. I rated the (hundreds of) books I bought, but only occasionally posted reviews, mostly of albums by the bes...