Raven Oak's Blog, page 56
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!...
Anglicon Panelist
If any of you in the PNW are heading to Anglicon, the Doctor Who convention on June 12-14, I’ll be a panelist at the following panels:
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
Sunday 6/14
NW2 10-11 AM Send in the Clones!
NW2 12-1 PM Scriptwriting vs. Novels vs. Fanfic
NW2 3-4 PM British Humor: The Wry & the Dry
I’ll also be at a booth in the dealer’s room with Janine Southard s...
June 1, 2015
Class-M Exile Book Launch Party
UW Bookstore in Bellevue, WA has invited me to do a book launch party for Class-M Exile. It’s going to be quite the hootenanny, I promise. Details below:
WHO:Science fiction & fantasy author Raven Oak
WHAT:Book launch party forClass-M Exile. There will be wine, humorous Texas trivia by way of a Texas Headline or The Onion game (with prizes), and Raven will read from Class-M Exile with her best Texas drawl. Books available for purchase and signing fromUW Bookstore in Bellevue.
WHEN: Friday, June...
Monday Night Gaming: 7 Wonders
Publisher:
Asmodee
# of Players: 2-7 players
Best with: 4 players
Playing Time: 1st time through, maybe 45-60 minutes. After that, 30-45 minutes.
# of Expansions: Five, plus lots of promo cards
# of Parts: 157 cards + 46 conflict tokens, 7 wonder boards, score booklet, and rule book.
Before now, we’d only played 7 Wonders in two-player mode, so I held off on reviewing it until we could play it with at least three players. (In two-player mode, you play wit...
