Columns

Storyville: Publisher Interviews—ChiZine, Eraserhead, and PMMP

January 22nd, 2014

So this week we’re interviewing three publishers instead of three editors and we couldn’t have a more diverse mix of dark fiction presses. ChiZine has been doing this for a long time, and doing it very well. I’m a big fan of many of their authors (Craig Davidson, Brent Hayward, Paul Tremblay, Stephen Graham Jones, etc.) and even won a contest there a few years ago. They really are one of my favorite presses out there.

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Storykiller: Get Thee Back To Kickstarter!

January 21st, 2014

I’m headed back to Kickstarter (today, actually) with my new novel. The "why" is both incredibly simple and incredibly complex.

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Liars, Madmen, Demons and Children: 10 Unforgettable Unreliable Narrators

January 20th, 2014

You could argue that truly reliable first-person narrators don’t even exist. After all, every character views the story through the distortion of their own biases, experiences, perspectives and personality quirks, and tells the story through a series of omissions and carefully chosen facts.

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Footnotes: The Clues Poe Left Behind

January 20th, 2014

Footnotes examines the cultural impact of fiction and its creators. After leaving Richmond, Virginia, on September 27, 1849, a man, on his way home to New York, disappears. The next five days of his life are not accounted for. On October 3, the man is found wandering the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, in a state of delirium reserved only for the most serious of artists (think a Hemingway-, Belushi-, Cobain-like stupor).

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Her Breasts Were Too Small: Why A Dose of Feminism is Good for Writers

January 17th, 2014

Originally posted 1/20/2012 What is a female character? Serious question — and too easily misunderstood. Let's be naive for a minute: if my protagonist is meant to represent a male human being, and he meets another character meant to represent a female human being, what does it mean to "sexualize" these characters, and how do I show that they are masculine or feminine in their behaviors? Do I even need to? Have I thought this through?

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LURID: Lifetime (Movie) Achievements

January 17th, 2014

LURID: vivid in shocking detail; sensational, horrible in savagery or violence, or, a guide to the merits of the kind of Bad Books you never want your co-workers to know you're reading.

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12 New Comics To Try In 2014

January 17th, 2014

I tried this feature for the first time last year and I did pretty well. Of my ten picks, eight turned out to be wonderful books that I love so far (and really only one horribly disappointed me – Uncanny X-Force I’m looking at you, kid). One is also a book I am woefully behind on, but hope I will love when I finally catch up (Killjoys), and another is just not my cup of tea, but not a bad book all in all.

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Prose & Conversation: 'Perdido Street Station' by China Mieville

January 16th, 2014

It takes about an hour for Richard and I to discuss a book, and let me tell you, that hour flies by so fast I'm left wondering: what the hell happened? Did we really just talk about slake moths and the Weaver and interspecies sex with creatures that have bug parts for a head? Did we? To find out if we did really discuss all that, read on for our thoughts on the China Mieville contemporary classic, Perdido Street Station.

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Poetry Fun-0-1: Intro to Poetry

January 16th, 2014

I like poetry. A lot. Unfortunately, it's hard to find people who really share my love of this "art of uniting pleasure with truth," as Samuel Johnson once said. Time out. I'm already quoting Samuel Johnson? Ugh. See, that's the kind of thing that makes people hate poetry in the first place: the sense that there's always something the poet knows that the reader doesn't, something the poet is smugly holding back, an intolerable smartness.

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It's Made Of SCIENCE: Aliens

January 15th, 2014

From a scientific point of view, it's not difficult to come up with a monster. Monsters don't have to be realistic or believable. They just have to be frightening. They look frightening, they do frightening things, and there doesn't need to be any scientific thought behind the matter. Monsters don't need to make us believe in monsters. Monsters are designed to make us fear monsters. If you put most monsters to the test of evolutionary science, they fall apart.

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