Last night I was tossing and turning because I was worried about my new novel. It’s a first draft, it should be written badly, but that doesn’t stop me: it’s boring, the characters are flat, there’s not enough action, I’m wasting my time on scenes that don’t advance the plot. Stuff like that. And the biggest problem that I’m glossing over is that, while I’ve done a lot of world-building, I haven’t done a lot of terminology obscuring. What that means is changing those certain words that pull you out of the fantasy setting. For example, I had one character say “the heavens”, referring to up there. Well, this is…
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The Worst Movies I’ve Ever Seen
The other day, my wife was talking about the worst movies that her parents had ever seen (the winner was something called Zardoz). But then she said their worst movie probably wouldn’t hold a candle to what I’ve seen. She tells the truth — The Evil Dead, Night of the Creeps, and Dragon Half are just some of the staples in my DVD library. And those are the ones I like. Even though it’s easy to make a bad movie, no one’s really sure how. Some involved people whose head was up their own ass, making “films” with a “message”. Some knew they were making trash and didn’t care. Some…
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The Books I Read: January – March 2011
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins The final book of the Hunger Games trilogy (see Hunger Games first & second and Catching Fire reviews). There are things I liked about the book and things I didn’t. I liked Katniss’s role as figurehead of propaganda — how she both embraces and rejects the role. I like that the ending is like another Hunger Games, but where Catching Fire just repeated it, Collins did it a little different with the infiltration. My biggest problem were the parts in-between all these exciting bits. The constant question of Peeta hangs over everyone’s head. I’m sure some readers liked that, but I got sick of it. It stopped the…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2010
Ariel by Steven R. Boyett This is the kind of book I want to write. They say if you can come up with one truly original idea, you’ve accomplished a great deal. I know I’m no good at that, but I love genre-mixing, both writing it and reading it. Ariel is one of those books that is actually urban fantasy. Not oppressed vampires, bare-chested werewolves, and leather-bound bounty hunters. A unicorn and a boy journey from Atlanta to New York, surviving the apocalypse. There are dragons and gryphons, and there are skyscrapers and cans of beef ravioli. It’s a got a street-smart unicorn and a samurai swordsman. I can tell…
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The Renaissance Fair Write-Up, Part 2
So I did eventually find some mead, and they were nice enough to give me some samples, since I was a first-timer. Now my friend Chris had told me it’s all about the Egyptian Mead. But they also had classic, cherry, and raspberry, so of course, I tried all those. I got about a free half-glass out of that. But it is all about the Egyptian mead. What I wanted was those cool glazed mugs people are carrying around. I was wondering how does that work? Do they fill it all the way to the top if you buy a tankard? Can I get a really big one? I should…
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The Renaissance Fair Write-Up, Part 1
Last weekend, I went to the Minnesota Renaissance festival. You’d think I would have gone to this a long time ago–I love fantasy. But the opportunity never presented itself. First there was no one to go with, then a wife who wasn’t really into fantasy, then children. But now I’m instituting my policy of being more aggressive, and I said, “this year we’re going”. I had a list of things I wanted to do, as recommended by friends, and we set out. One thing I didn’t count on was the people being so assertive. They really throw themselves into their role, and they’re not shy about it. I, however, am…
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Top Five Movies That Need to Be Remade
These days you can’t get ten feet out of your driveway with running into a movie remake, either one in progress or one that’s already released. On the day that every single movie in a cineplex is an original film, not based on anything, not a sequel or a remake, I will futterwacken… vigorously. But while people talk about the influx of remakes and crap films based on movies or TV series that were popular in the 1980’s (I know there’s a Munsters movie someone’s thinking about somewhere), fewer people remember the movies that deserve to be remade. Movies that had great, original concepts, but fizzled due to ignorant directors,…
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Eric’s Top Ten Fantasy Movies
A while ago I said that fantasy’s becoming this catch-all category for science-fiction that can’t be clearly defined. If it’s not horror or spacey-tech stuff, it goes into the fantasy category. Unfortunately, when people think of fantasy, the first thing they think of is Lord of the Rings. Swords and sorcery. Dwarves and elves. Rugged heroes and dark villains. And that’s as it should be. But instead, I’ve got superheroes, talking toys, vampire goth romance, and steampunk being shoved into the same genre. So I’ve got Big Fish and Groundhog Day in the same lists as the movies with dragons and swords. That ain’t right. So here’s my top ten list…
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The Books I Read: October – December 2009
Wicked by Gregory Maguire I borrowed this one from my mom, along with the rest of the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. It is a long read, and it reminds me of those early modern literatures that expound a lot of philosophy along with the story (i.e., students go to a coffee shop and wax poetical about the nature of something while nursing the drunken one-night stand they had ). Not that I’m saying the story is pretentious. It’s not. But it is long-winded. The storyline is good and the writing style is quite palatable. It made me feel smart to read this book, even though I was reading it for…
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White Mage Story Update & “You Got Your Reality in my Fantasy!”
I have two questions for the audience today. I find myself in conflict with White Mage Story. The first is the ending – I’m finding it difficult to reconcile the message that I wanted to send, with the message that everyone received. It’s like playing telephone. I was trying to say something about “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it to the best of your ability”. Instead, people got “learn the value of what you do, rather than trying to change it”. I think a lot of people misinterpreted White Mage Story, which is my own fault. The trick now is whether to go with…
