Raven Oak's Blog, page 56
June 16, 2015
Anglicon Wrap-Up
It’s Tuesday, 6/16, and 6:29 PM PST as I write this.
My Anglicon 2015 badge.
I’ve now had sufficient sleep between now and Anglicon 2015 this past weekend to think straight and form complete, coherent sentences. Or mostly.
Seeing that many Doctors, Daleks, Cybermen, and Weeping Angels in one place was spectacular, but moderating seven panels with amazing folks like Janine Southard, John Lovett, Todd McCaffrey, Howard Carson,Melissa Slaughter,Rachel Tyrrel,Berlin Wohl, and many others was spectac...
June 15, 2015
Monday Night Gaming: Fluxx
Publisher:
Looney Labs
# of Players: 2-6 players
Best with: 3-4 players
Playing Time: 1st time through, maybe 30 minutes. Games can range from 10-30 minutes depending upon card draw.
# of Expansions: 10+
# of Parts: 100 cards
Fluxx is a card game with ever-changing rules. As odd as it sounds, it’s easy to learn and play. It’s an entertaining little card game with multiple varieties (themes: Oz, pirates, star (space), Monty Python, Martian, family, etc.).
Gener...
June 12, 2015
Flashback Friday: My First Doctor
This post is Doctor Who themed in honor of Anglicon 2015, which is where I currently am this weekend.
I’m way behind the curve here.
Growing up, we didn’t have TV until I was in 3rd grade, and we didn’t have cable until 4th or 5th grade. We certainly didn’t have any extended channel package, and PBS was what “liberals” watched, so my exposure to BBC was pretty much nil until friends in high school exposed me to the world of Monty Python.
I’d heard th...
June 11, 2015
Book Cover Throwback: Doctor Who
This week’s Book Cover Throwback: Doctor Who and the Daleks, intro written by the awesome Neil Gaiman. This is in honor of Seattle’s Doctor Who convention, Anglicon, taking place this weekend, of which I’m a panelist. (You can see my schedule here.)
What I Love about This Cover: The art style is pretty cool. Simplistic with thick lines, yet there is a lot going on. Also, it’s the Doctor. 
What I Don’t Love about This Cover: The TARDIS isn’t blue. I mean, really?
Click here to view other Book Cov...June 10, 2015
Anglicon Schedule
Anglicon‘s almost here!
If you’re heading to the Doctor Who convention this weekend in Seattle, come drop by my booth with Janine Southard in the dealer’s room and say hi! Buy a book or three while you’re there.
You can also find me at the following schedule:
Friday 6/12
NW2 4-5 PM Conversion TV: The British Invasion
NW2 7-8 PM QI: Are You Quite Interested?
Saturday 6/13
NW 1 10-11 AM Captain Jack: The Man Who Wouldn’t Die
NW1 6-7 PM Music in Fandom
Sunday 6/14
NW2 10-11 AM Send in the Clones!
NW2...
June 8, 2015
Monday Night Gaming: Don’t Starve Together
Publisher:
Klei Entertainment
Game Type: Multiplayer via Don’t Starve Together, or single player via Don’t Starve
As much as I hate to admit it, our Minecraft server is pretty much dead. No one plays it anymore in our social circle (they’ve moved on to other games and so have we) and six worlds later, it is a long past memory of fun times.
When our friend, Elise, mentioned Don’t Starve Together, I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. Sure it had the...
June 5, 2015
Taking Down a Wildebeest
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about how my cats are assholes. I love my cats, don’t get me wrong, but DiNozzo is a psychopath at times.
If we died in our home, he’d be the first kitty to pounce on our rotting corpses and eat them. Without guilt. And he’d lick his chops doing it.
Today, he proved this. (No, we’re not dead!)
Doesn’t he look like a killer?
The kitties have several wrestle pillows which smell faintly of catnip. Malley was wrestling with one of them when DiNozzo approached.
Se...
Sometimes, Color Matters
For this week’s Flashforward Friday post, I’m looking at the future of speculative fiction in terms of film, especially the use of color, because sometimes, color matters.
In film, color sets the mood of the scene. It transforms the plot and impacts our emotional ties to the both the events and the characters. All colors have meaning. Warm colors might make us feel energized whereas cool colors tend to have a calming or somber effect on the viewer. Directors and producers think about color(or...
June 4, 2015
Book Cover Throwback: Elvenbane
This week’s Book Cover Throwback: Elvenbane by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey.
What I Love about This Cover: I was pretty young when I read this, but I loved the idea of a young girl(like me at the time I read this)sitting with other creatures and having a conversation about boys, which is what my teen self thought she was doing when I got this book.
What I Don’t Love about This Cover: The title covers up some of the pretty artwork. I’ve always hated overly large titles on covers.
Click here t...June 2, 2015
The Eldest Silence
As I said in my recent issue of The Conspiracy, the cat is out of the bag.
Or as my husband put it, “The cat shredded the bag, ate the pieces, hurked it up, and played with it. For hours.”
I was planning to tease the cover, but since the cat is indeed out of the bag, I’m quite excited to share with you the cover for The Eldest Silence (formerly under the working title The Silent Frontier) by the fabulous artist, Jamie Noble.
Make sure to click the cover to view it full size. It’s worth the look!...
