Meanwhile…

Lest you think I was murdered at the horror festival last weekend, I do indeed still function!

I finished reading Mainspring, by Jay Lake. It’s pretty okay. It’s a fast read, and I enjoyed it well enough, but I felt like there wasn’t quite enough there for me to really sink my teeth into. The setting holds a lot of promise but the story didn’t end up exploring the parts of it that I was most intrigued to see. The villain, insofar as there was one, wasn’t particularly developed, either.

Anyway, if I can find it I’ve got a list of books I’ve been meaning to read. Onward!

Work should be returning more or less to normalcy next week, so I’m hoping to get back to writing. I have several stories that have been bugging me to be written, including one that is an expansion of the universe I created in “With the Band.”

In other news, my wife has fallen victim to the Twilight craze. I let her know that was like punching Shakespeare in the balls, but my anguish has gone ignored.

And just because it’s been a bright spot in my otherwise dreary week, I present the latest issue of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s Phonogram.

My day job has gone into crazy overtime busy season, so I’m getting pretty much nothing done (other than my twitter stories, of course). I am, however, finding time to read and what not. A little, anyway.

Reading

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young. This is the recent comic book adaptation of the classic Baum book, and it is absolutely gorgeous. I’ve never read the originals, but I understand this is pretty faithful to the novels. It’s a lot of fun, and I recommend nabbing the hardcover so you have a version to read to your kids. Work is already under way on Marvelous Land of Oz, the next book in the series.

Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville. I mentioned some time back that I read Iron Council, which is actually the third book in the series that begins with Perdido Street Station. As much as I loved Iron Council, I think this may have been a tiny bit better. So good. I can’t recommend Mieville’s books enough. If you enjoy fantasy or steampunk, you will certainly enjoy these books.

I just started in on the behemoth Illuminatus! Trilogy, by the Roberts Shea and Anton Wilson. At the rate I read, I will report back sometime in 2013.

Watching

I finished up the last season of Veronica Mars this past weekend, sort of on accident. I didn’t realize I’d reached the end until popping the last disc to discover it contained only speacial features. There are only twenty episodes in the third season, so I must surmise the network didn’t let them finish properly. Two episodes would have easily been enough to let them wrap up a few hanging plot threads. While it’s a shame it ended on such a whimper, I enjoyed the show immensely. The first season is easily one of the best seasons of television ever made, and the second is nearly as strong. The last season was decent, certainly better than most of what gets put on the air. Any fan of mystery and noir will find a lot to like.

Paris, Texas, which is quite good. Moving character drama with powerful performances all around, and some great visuals. At first when I saw the bleak, desert landscape, I immediately thought, “Paris is in northeast Texas, and this is clearly west Texas!” But the film didn’t fall into that usual Hollywood fumble. You can kind of tell that the script wasn’t actually finished when they started filming, but the way the main character develops smooths out the rougher edges of the story and the viewer can fill in the gaps pretty easily. The asshole in me wonders why you would ever turn a camera on anyone other than Nastassja Kinski.

I’ve always wanted to watch director Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire as well, so maybe that’ll go on the queue sometime soon.

From Hell. I probably should have seen this years ago, being both a comic book geek and Alan Moore fan. I’d never really heard much good about it, though, so it just kind of slipped my mind. I’ve also never read the book, so I have no attachment to the source material. It was better than I expected, even if it didn’t blow me away. It looked great, and the story is a fun and interesting alternate history murder mystery procedural conspiracy tale. It fell short in the actually making me scared or suspenseful department, though, which is unfortunate.

That’s about it for now. Anyone reading or watching anything interesting?

I have some ideas to finally spruce this place up with some art. If I can find the time to actually do it, keep an eye out for that. I’m hoping to do it without destroying the site. Anyway…

Thought I’d share a few things I’m reading (or just read):

Iron Council, by China Mieville - Jens raved about Mieville not too long ago, and I’m forced to agree. This is a fantasy steampunk with absolutely stunning prose. Apparently it’s book three in a series about this setting (which is not our earth), but I didn’t even realize that until it was pointed out to me, as the books aren’t really connected. There are all sorts of remarkable facets of the book and its take on fantasy – I may try to organize my thoughts for a few separate blog posts. But let me highly recommend this novel. It will change the way you think of fantasy. I’ve just started in on Perdido Street Station, which is the first book of the series.

The Nightly News, by Jonathan Hickman – I mentioned Hickman’s Pax Romana in this space a while back, an effort that I thought was laudable but ultimately a failure (simply because there wasn’t enough of it). This doesn’t suffer from that so much – in fact, I’d say this story about a home-grown cult of anti-media terrorists fits the comic book medium perfectly. It packs quite a bit of punch, and Hickman’s annotations at the end of the book are as interesting as the story. As an artist, Hickman’s style isn’t easy to describe. He’s a lot more of a graphic artist than a traditional penciler, and for better or worse he leaves behind the old style layouts of most comics.

Queen and Country, Definitive Edition volume 1, by Greg Rucka and various artists - Who doesn’t like a good spy story? And this one is great. It’s not super spy business, so don’t look for battles between skiers down the side of a mountain or invisible cars. It’s gritty, realistic spy drama and action. It makes me want to write my own spy stories. I like the Steve Rolston art on the early material best, at least in this collection.

Update! On a somewhat related note that not-so-coincidentally comes roughly 3 hours after this post, I finally saw Inglourious Basterds and it rocked. It was a lot more of a spy movie that I thought, and a great one.

That is all.

I have a new short story up over at The Future Fire, “The Overdue Protocols.” Check it out!

This one was inspired by the Beverly Cleary book mentioned in the story (though if I recall correctly it was initially launched from a writing exercise). I hope I captured at least a little of the spirit of Cleary’s novel. Let me know what you think!

This is also my first illustrated story, which is fun.

I just noticed that my steampunkish story “Four Liars” is live over at the premier issue of 10Flash. Check it out and let me know what you think, over there or here.

There are some other awesome writers featured there as well, including Jordan, Gay, and Erin, so you should find something you like. I need to check them all out myself.

I just wanted to drop a recommendation to head over to Kris Straub’s Ichor Falls. If you are a fan of horror he’s doing some pretty interesting writing over there (albeit all too infrequently). I actually wrote an Ichor Falls-inspired exercise here some time ago, back when Ichor Falls was just a webcomic experiment that Kris was playing around with.

In particular I like this piece, which is very possibly one of the creepiest stories I’ve ever read. It’s also a good example of incorporating contemporary internet culture into fiction without it coming off as patronizing or insulting.

Crazy! I’m still trying to catch up. Sometimes it seems like a vacation just means doing twice as much work and being twice as stressed the week after you get back.

Star Trek rocked. I had the pleasure of seeing it in the Arclight Dome in Hollywood, surely one of the best theaters on the planet. I thought it was a pretty pretty movie full of pretty pretty people, and a blast to experience. Then I saw it again a few days later on my birthday and enjoyed it even more. I could go on about it, but I feel like all the discussion probably happened while I was away. Suffice to say I loved it.

(Oh, yes, I aged a year in a mere day on the 14th. Talk about time dilation. Birthdays ceased to have much meaning for me after they allowed me to start drinking legally, so I don’t really think about it anymore.)

My chosen traveling reading material was solid. Torso was quite good (though my copy kind of fell apart while I was reading it, which is irritating). Loyola Chin and the San Pelligran Order was also quite enjoyable, though I liked American Born Chinese more. Strangers in Paradise I only got through some of, and I’m still on the fence about. If I have any recommendations there, it’s to skip the first volume (the first three issues). They’re a little more, I dunno, cartoony than I was expecting, and not really to my taste. But between those initial issues and the next volume, Moore really refined his style and the mood of the book. I’m digging it so far. We’ll see if it interests me enough to continue past the third trade.

One of the highlights of my trip was visiting the Echo Park Time Travel Mart in LA. The Time Travel Mart is part of a network of children’s writing centers. I nabbed one of the little chapbooks full of stories written by the kids there about how much they hate writing. It seemed appropriate.

There are various other such themed stores around the country, if there’s one nearby you should check it out (I’m aching to swing by the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. next time I’m in New York). If I’d known about the one in San Francisco I would have gone there and gotten some pirate booty while we were in town.

Greetings from the distant past (last Tuesday)!

My latest flash piece, “The Squeeze,” should be live on Every Day Fiction right about now. Check it out if you haven’t already! Comment! Vote! Tell your friends (and enemies – I have nothing against evil support).

It’s an odd story, one that you’ll probably either totally get and think is hilarious, or not get at all and think I’m insane. I’m not sure which demographic I envy more. So it’ll be interesting to see the reaction.

I doubt I’ll get a chance to post anything tomorrow, so I’ll just do it now. Tomorrow morning I’ll be hopping on a flight to California, and won’t be home until the 14th, over a week from now. Communication will be spotty, but I will especially try to check in next Monday, when I have a story go live over at Every Day Fiction. I’ll probably set up a post for that to appear automatically if I can figure that out.

My in-flight reading material:

Torso, by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko. A true crime novel about a serial killer case Elliot Ness investigated after all that Chicago business. Looking forward to this one. I met Andreyko a couple years ago and he seemed like a pretty cool guy, and I’ve enjoyed most everything Bendis has written.

Strangers in Paradise, volumes 1-3, by Terry Moore. I don’t really know what this is about, but all I hear is great things, and I’m greatly enjoying his current series, Echo.

Loyola Chin and the San Peligran Order, by Gene Yang. I’m a huge fan of his American Born Chinese, which I heartily recommend to anyone who is a fan of things that are good. You know who you are.

So I suppose that will be it for the next week or so. How will you all get by without me? I don’t know, but don’t tell me. All my illusions will be shattered!

I almost missed it, since it went up over the weekend, but Frank has an excellent new story up over at Every Day Fiction – check it out.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was about as disappointing as expected. They crammed a lot of unnecassary characters in, and to do so they condensed and butchered the portions of Logan’s origin story that are actually interesting.

Part of the problem is the taming of Wolverine for a mass audience, which is strange because the untamed Wolverine has about as mass an audience (in comic book terms) as you can get. The film completely passes over the years he spent feral and savage in the Yukon, living with wolves. His time with the Weapon X program is chopped down to like one mission. They don’t cover any of his time in Japan (though there is a hint at it after the credits). I’m not being fanboyish here – I certainly don’t expect the film to be slavishly devoted to the source material. It’s just frustrating when they ignore so much great material in favor of some 30-second fan wank appearance of Emma Frost or Gambit or other characters who have nothing to do with Wolverine’s origins.

Oddly enough, Wolverine is kind of a Mary Sue. For a character that has had tragedy after tragedy heaped upon his comic book incarnation, nothing bad really happens to him here. He has help at every turn. When he needs more power, someone comes along and gives it to him. When it looks like he meets someone who can defeat him, people who hated his guts five minutes before show up to save the day. This is motherfrakkin’ Wolverine, people. If anyone is custom made to have horror after horror perpetrated on him, just so that he can stand back up on his own and slice the shit out of whoever did it, it’s him.

There are other things to not recommend the movie as well – the last third of the film is fairly predictable and chock full of cliche. The filmmakers also underestimate the audience and feel like they have to explain things that are obvious.

It’s not all bad. There are some fun action scenes. There are some great performances from most of the cast (though I can’t imagine who thought it was a good idea to put Will.I.Am in there). If you want to completely shut off your brain and enjoy a fun action flick, you’ll find something there to enjoy.