Kyell Gold's Blog, page 24

But First I’m Going To Seattle Like This Weekend

It’s Emerald City Comic-Con time! Tomorrow I’m heading to Seattle to camp out in the Washington State Convention Center with the Sofawolf booth in the dealer’s room of Emerald City Comic-Con for the sixth? straight year. We’re #2715, down in the level 3 annex of the dealer’s room–make a U-turn at the bottom of the escalator and go back to the back wall and then the far corner and you should see us. We will have illustrious furry artists and the Room Party game and a small selection of my books and a bunch of comics, including the award-winning Digger and the brand-new Peachy Keen 2 and of course, Red Lantern and Nordguard (only volume 1 of each, unfortunately).

Come by and say hi! I will sign things if you bring them or if you buy them!

I’m headed to Berlin!

I’m really excited to point you to the announcement that I’ll be a GOH at this year’s Eurofurence in Berlin: http://www.eurofurence.org/EF20/goh

I’ve attended Eurofurence once before, when it was at the lovely hotel in Suhl, and I can’t wait to see how they do in the big city of Berlin. Even more exciting is that I’ll be able to join Ursula Vernon and the Sofawolf Press guys as co-GOHs. This is a huge honor for me, and I can’t wait to get back to Germany and all the wonderful people there. Eurofurence is one of those cons I would attend every year if it didn’t cost an arm and a leg to go, so it’s really flattering to know that they want me there as well! It is the longest-running active furry con, as you can tell by this year’s number (20), and I believe the longest-running furry con ever.

I’m looking forward to meeting all my European fans–you guys will be there, right?–and seeing what the convention organizers have in store for us. I’ll offer to do panels and a story for the conbook and whatever else they need me to do, so if you want to hear me talk about writing, or get some of your books signed, or pick up the NEW Dev and Lee book, or any of the other things you’re missing, or just come say hi to me in person, book your ticket for Berlin and EF 20!

 

David Mitchell Interview

It’s from four years ago, but if you want some writing tips AND examples of how to be a terrific interview, take the time and read it. His interviews are as good as his books.

http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...

“If your work is to be true, and not a vapid parlor game, and if your work is trying to shine light in the human psyche’s deepest, darkest, illest places, then you have to go there, and be it, and that’s no casual undertaking.”

Red Devil Q & A

If you missed it yesterday, I’m answering questions about Red Devil over on my FA page–trying to keep it all in one place. There are spoilers so only look if you’ve finished!

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/55...

 

Red Devil Audiobook is for sale!

On Audible: http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Red...

Coming soon on iTunes and Amazon.

In case you were waiting. ^^ Divisions is hopefully going back to ACX soon to be reviewed and released soonish.

Fourth Dev and Lee book title

Since I am working on finalish edits to the OOP4 manuscript this week and next, it seems like an appropriate time to reveal the title. At this stage it is still a working title; that is, it hasn’t gone to the printer yet and so there is still the possibility that it will change if I get stunned with a better title. But for the moment it has withstood all other challengers.

So here you go. Book four in Dev and Lee’s story will be titled, “Uncovered.”

Obligatory repeated information: “Uncovered” will be out at Anthrocon on July 4 weekend and probably for sale electronically at baddogbooks.com in August and on Amazon/NOOK/Google/iTunes in September. There will be a fifth book that concludes this story arc for the two characters, tentatively due out in January 2016 (probably at Further Confusion that year). Hardcover/pricing/preorder stuff are all up to Sofawolf, but I have no reason to expect anything different from previous books.

I had a great time during the stream on Friday, apart from the technical issues, and Blotch and I will probably do it again this week sometime. Keep your eyes on our Twitter feeds for specific times. We may not do it with Skype this time because Skype sucks, but I’ll at least be in the chat.

OOP4 Image Streaming

Hey, just letting y’all know that tomorrow I am hoping to get on a stream with Blotch as they work on painting one of the illos from OOP4 so I can chat with fans and answer questions and whatnot. Watch their FA/Twitter or mine for details, but it’ll probably be afternoon Pacific time.

Red Devil and Giles e-book update; upcoming projects

Hey, the new mailing list just went out. I talk about my India trip a bit there and about the ever-ongoing Calatians project.

Things that are available and announced: Red Devil is now on a bunch of e-book sites like Amazon and Apple and Google and Kobo and B&N. “The Mysterious Affair of Giles” is for sale both at FurPlanet’s site and at the e-book site baddogbooks.com, exclusively for the month of March.

Also, the fourth OOP book will be released July 4 at AC, with e-book versions coming to baddogbooks in August and everywhere else in September. And the second Cupcake I’m putting out this year will likely be out at RainFurrest. Titles for both those two will be revealed sometime this month, unless you’re on the mailing list in which case you already know one.

Best Picture 2014

I’ve now seen all nine Best Picture nominees and a few other highly-rated films, and so here are a few thoughts on the best films of 2014:

The snubbed:

All Is Lost: I loved this movie exactly as much as I thought I would when I saw the trailer. I watched it on a crappy airplane screen and I was enthralled the whole time. Part of it is that Redford is easy on the eyes, but I don’t have a thing for boats or sailing (the ocean, though, yeah), so I wasn’t sure why this film appealed to me so much. Upon some reflection, I think it’s a couple things. First of all, I love the theme of the individual fighting the world to survive, getting beaten down, and not giving up. That’s clearly what the filmmakers were going for, and it works really well. But second, I think I loved this film because it is so quiet and meditative, because apart from a short soliloquy to start, everything we know about the main character is revealed through action and expression. You see Redford decide to turn the boat around and go back to the object that punched a hole in his side and you have to think, Why is he doing that? What does that tell us about him? We learn that he’s a loner, probably trying to sail around the world (he’s hit off the coast of Madagascar, a long way for a boat called the Virginia). We see in big and little ways throughout the movie the relationship he has with the rest of the world, and the film tells us his story with nearly no words. Simply because of this achievement of filmmaking, I think it’s a crime that this film was left off the Best Picture slate.

August: Osage County: And you thought your family was bad. A:OC suffers slightly from being a stagey adaptation of a play, but the acting infuses the film with so much energy that after the first half of the first scene, you don’t care. Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep go toe to toe, with a stellar supporting cast, and if you want to see the best actresses of our generation, you could do a double feature of this movie with American Hustle and get four of the top ten. This is a movie I want to watch again because there’s so much going on, I’m sure I missed something the first time, and I just want to watch Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts and Chris Cooper and all the others again because the performances are so wonderful.

The Underrated:

Nebraska: A sweet, quirky movie that I did not at first want to see. But Alexander Payne has, with this movie, put himself into the category of “directors I will go see based on name alone.” Bruce Dern and June Squibb earned their acting nominations with terrific complex performances, and it was fun to see Bob Odenkirk nail his role as well. I’m not sure I would have nominated this film over the two above–I feel like this is the “light movie that has no chance”–but I have no quarrel with the acting noms.

Philomena: Possibly the most underrated of the nominees in that I haven’t seen anyone talking about it as much as they should. Judi Dench is fabulous–I cannot for the life of me tell you which of the Best Actress nominees I would pick this year–and the story is surprising, affecting, and thoughtful. I think it stumbles slightly in the very last scene, but it navigates the tricky waters of true story versus good movie better than Wolf of Wall Street and Dallas Buyer’s Club, on a par with Captain Philips, not quite as well as 12 Years a Slave or American Hustle (wow, there were a lot of movies based on true stories in the nominees this year). Of all the nominees, I think this is my pick for “the one most people probably haven’t seen and should.”

The Overrated:

The Wolf of Wall Street and Dallas Buyer’s Club: Lumping these together because I want to say the same thing about both: Stunning acting performances from Leo, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey, and Jared Leto. This was a great year for movies, in which great acting performances came in great movies, which I think shows in how the acting nominations have come from these nine nominees plus August: Osage County and Blue Jasmine. But in both of these cases, the true story aspect of the movie sort of overwhelmed the good movie aspect. They were both entertaining, but I was left at the end feeling that both of them lacked a decent ending.

The Solid Picks:

Captain Philips: I did not want to see this movie based on the trailer. It turns out that the trailer is possibly one of the worst trailers of the last decade. From the second scene of the movie, I understood that it was going to be much more than the action thriller the trailers were promoting, and I was on board. Tom Hanks does a great job, though he really shines most in the final scenes of the film, but it’s Barkhad Abdi who makes the movie more than just a well-written retelling of the famous hijacking. He plays off Tom Hanks with all the confidence of a much more experienced actor, and lends the Somali pirates a humanity that gives the film complexity and depth worthy of a Best Picture nominee.

Her: Maybe my favorite of the nominees–it’s hard to pick between this and Gravity and American Hustle and Philomena, which are all very different movies–because it’s such a sweet and personal movie and yet it addresses huge questions about humanity and our interaction with our technology. The future depicted in Her is lovingly detailed, with touches that are visible but not called out, and Joaquin Phoenix has a great argument for increasing the Best Actor slate to six this year. His performance against a disembodied voice is magical.

The Favorites:

Gravity: It is amusing that a film so steeped in space is not actually science fiction. The direction and cinematography are stunning; I heard a story that a critic, upon tweeting that he was going to watch Gravity on an airplane, was bombarded with replies telling him that he should not under any circumstances do that. This movie needs to be experienced as a movie, with the vastness of space and the frantic storm of debris and the disorientation of spinning and the views of the Earth all as big as you can get them. George Clooney is equal to the backdrop (and should have scored a Supporting nomination), and while Sandra Bullock almost gets lost in it, she recovers enough to carry the movie through the second act to the third. Ultimately her story is the weakest part of this amazing movie (her story, not her performance, which is excellent), but it’s a part that is more than solid enough to hold up the rest.

12 Years A Slave: Touted as the Best Picture favorite months ago when it came out, this film has not lost much momentum. It’s a harsh portrait of a terrible part of our history, and every bit of it works: the acting (three well-deserved nominations; only American Hustle has more), the writing, the cinematography, the storytelling that is getting adjectives like “unflinching” and “brutal” and “honest” (“unflinching” refers to the story, not the audience). It’s one of those amazing movies that I am glad I saw and I don’t want to ever see it again (seriously, who are the people who will buy the DVD? who thinks “yeah, I dunno, it’s a slow Saturday night, let’s watch a portrait of man’s inhumanity to man”?). It deserves the Oscar for being one of the best two movies released this year, when you look at all the things that go into a movie.

American Hustle: Maybe my favorite movie, maybe not (see above), and upon reflection, the storytelling is rather tangled, but I will say that this was probably my favorite moviegoing experience of the year. It kept startling laughs out of me, surprising me with honest personal moments and plot complications, and it wrapped everything up with a satisfying ending. Four acting nominations speak to the stellar cast; the writing is probably the second-best in terms of story (to Her) and the best in terms of dialogue; the movie nails the seventies, from the clothes to the music to the attitudes of the people involved (the idea that the American Dream is within reach but you have to bend a few rules to get at it but that’s okay because everyone is doing it is pervasive throughout); and it’s got the pedigree of an Oscar winner (two returning actors and the director from last year’s Silver Linings Playbook). If this one takes the Best Picture trophy, I won’t be upset.

The Lie of “Religious Freedom”

Arizona’s legislature has passed a law that would in effect legalize discrimination against gay people. Full disclosure: I’m gay and married, but on the other hand I have no particular wish to visit Arizona anytime soon, so maybe it balances out. Anyway, the people promoting this law claim that it is actually a law for tolerance, that when people want to discriminate against gay people, that is part of their religious freedom.

This is bullshit.

I am in an airport lounge watching a silent TV on which Anderson Cooper is posing the question: “License to discriminate or religious freedom?” and an Arizona legislator is quoted as saying, “I’m against all discrimination and I want maximum religious freedom.”

So okay, where is the lie in all this? It’s in the phrase “religious freedom.” The First Amendment to the constitution says that Congress shall not make “any law respecting an establishment of religion [or] impeding the free exercise of religion…” and this is where people are going when they talk about religious freedom.

But the problem is that serving gays and lesbians is not proscribed by any church that I know of. Refusing service to people is not an exercise of religion. Exercising religion means that Muslims must be allowed to pray five times a day, that Jewish people cannot be forced to work on the Sabbath, that Christians cannot be barred from saying Grace before meals (most of the Christians I know who do this do it silently to themselves anyway). The Church’s official position on gays and lesbians varies from “come on in, daughters and sons” to “get out of our church,” but in no case is a practicing Christian required by their faith to refuse service to someone who is not a member of their church–the sole exception being an actual official of the Church, who cannot be required to perform a marriage ceremony within the Church for people he does not believe can receive the sacrament of marriage. But churches are already protected BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT from having to perform marriages for gay people. So the only people this law will affect is bigoted service industry owners who want to blame their bigotry on their religion.

Guess what? Your church might be bigoted, but bigotry is not part of the practice of your faith. And it’s not part of your religious freedom. So until someone starts the Church of Assholes, shut up and try to actually behave like a human being to other people–which, guess what, IS part of the practice of the Christian faith.