Search Results for: book club

New Treasures: The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman

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Kim Newman is the author of the classic vampire novel Anno Dracula and its many sequels (including The Bloody Red Baron, Johnny Alucard, and Dracula Cha Cha Cha). His newest novel is a YA tale set in a boarding school for girls with supernatural abilities in the 1920s, a tale of daring adventure after lights out… and a sinister and deadly conspiracy. A week after Mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett is delivered to her new school,…

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World Building 101: The Village

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The heroes paraded back into the village, leading their mules laden with treasure liberated from a nearby dungeon. As they entered the small village in the middle of nowhere, they soon split up to take care of their spoils. Three of them met with the local jeweler, presenting him with the choicest gems and fine jewelry they’d acquired on their adventure. The others descended on the local merchants to sell off the more mundane treasures while the sorcerer carried the…

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New Treasures: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

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Nnedi Okorafor’s first novel for adults, Who Fears Death, won the 2011 World Fantasy Award, and was nominated for a Nebula. Her most recent releases include Lagoon and The Book of Phoenix. I know what you’re thinking. Damn, I need to read some Nnedi Okorafor. But I’ve got my marathon training coming up, and I have to help the kids with their homework, and schedule my liposuction before my high school reunion. No way I can fit in a 400-page…

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Fantasia Diary 2015, Day 17: Synchronicity, The Dark Below, Traders, and Méliès et magie

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Thursday, July 30, looked like one of the odder days I had lined up at the Fantasia Festival. I’d head down to the De Sève Theatre early on to catch a new American science-fiction film called Synchronicity, then go to the screening room to watch a dialogue-free horror film called The Dark Below. After that, I’d go back to the De Sève to catch the Irish black comedy Traders, and finally wrap up with an event called Méliès et magie,…

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Ken Burnside Tells the Hugo Story from the Inside

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Ken Burnside is a game designer and publisher, best known for Attack Vector: Tactical and Squadron Strike! He contributed an article to Vox Day’s anthology Riding the Red Horse, titled “The Hot Equations,” laying out in understandable terms what the laws of thermodynamics mean in terms of SF in general and space combat in particular. He was nominated for a Hugo for Best Related Work, and… well… He describes the experience in his own words: I signed up for the Sad…

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Peer-Pressure Writing: Offering Encouragement & Just a Little Shame

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Mama may have warned you as a child not to give into peer pressure, but that all depends on what the chanting crowd is pushing you to do. In more and more cases, in a variety of ways, writers are inviting other writers to pressure them to write, right? These can include formal educational writers’ retreats, but can be as simple as you and a buddy meeting at a coffee shop. The classic model is to attend a writers’ retreat….

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Pigeons From Hell From Lovecraft by Don Herron

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Before the Cumberbunnies took over and flooded the internet with “I heart Sherlock” memes, the term ‘Sherlockian’ referred to those who studied (and often wrote about) Arthur Conan Doyle’s sixty stories of Sherlock Holmes. Some  of it was dead serious, some was tongue in cheek and much was in between. Monsignor Ronald Knox’s 1921 “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” is the cornerstone of Holmes studies. With that, I tell you that that Don Herron is THE Ronald Knox…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Moriarty Chronicles

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Perhaps my favorite Sherlock Holmes pastiche is 1974’s The Return of Moriarty by John Gardner. In it, Professor Moriarty (who did not perish at the Reichenbach Falls) is a Victorian Era godfather, with a criminal organization the envy of the American mob in the Roaring Twenties. A sequel followed it the next year, The Revenge of Moriarty. The trilogy was completed with Moriarty, just a few weeks before Gardner passed away in 2008. Having completed one muddle of a screenplay…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Shovel’s Painful Predicament

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I wanted to have a little bit of fun this week. You, enlightened reader, have heard about William Gillette’s curtain raiser play, The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes, because you wouldn’t dare miss a PLoSH post, right? I am a serious fan of both Sherlock Holmes and the hard boiled genre of mystery fiction (which you also know because you’ve read the many columns I’ve written on both subjects…). Since Painful Predicament.. is a parody of Holmes, I decided to…

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Tricks for Writing in Public

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Last week, I talked about how to find the right space at home for writing. As a part of that, I touched on the fact that, sometimes, the primary purpose of a room can interfere subconsciously with your writing efforts. In our condo, I made the second, tiny, bedroom my office space. But since I spend a lot of time in there grading student papers, modifying my class curriculum, prepping for the next class, doing administrative and publicity work for…

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