Five Up

A sorta weekly feature of things I co-sign: (1) Evaluating a Traditional Publisher. Kristine Kathryn Rusch takes you through some question you could ask. I generally just say "Sign where? Here? OK!" But maybe you're more discerning. (2) Neesha Meminger on From Margin to Center: Writing Characters of Color (2009) (3) The Art of Leviathan. Part one with Scott Westerfeld, part two with artist Keith Thompson. (2009) (4) Book-o-nomics: An insider look at Greenlight Bookstores ledgers and a video (2010) (5) Portlandia:...

Brand New

When procrastinating I generally turn to redesigning blogs. Ameer and I just finished redoing our music blog, The End Starts Today, and now I turn my attention to this thing here. Sure I just redid it ten months ago but sometimes you just get sick of a look right? I'm gonna miss that fun photo slider thing from the old template but 2012 is about cutting things out and paring everything back to the basics. And compartmentalizing. To...

A Reading Nightcap

BOOKS READ: Beijing Welcomes You, Tom Scocca Scalzi on Writing, John Scalzi The Search for WondLa, Tony DiTerlizzi Cross My Heart, Katie Klein Huntress, Malinda Lo The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Gothgirl, Barry Lyga The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E.Lockhart Boy Meets Boy, David Levithan Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery, Edward Winkleman Fury of the Phoenix, Cindy Pon School of Fear, Gitty Daneshvari Dragon Rider, Cornelia Funke Super...

50 Things I Love About You

It's been a bad year of reading for me. Not because I read bad books -- quite the contrary actually -- but because I didn't read enough of them. My total for the year, including a library fueled blitz last month, was twenty books. That's less than two a month. Pathetic. For a guy with a lot of time on his hands, I fell completely off the reading wagon this year. Well no more. Lilly and I are starting up fiftyfifty.me, a books and movies challenge....

Five For Fighting

A weekly feature of things I co-sign:  (1) Bark: A Blog of Literature, Culture, and Art. Everything is just good on this. (2) Forces of Nature, Acts of God, and Other Reasons a Book Can Flop. Oh, good to know. Actually, Rachel Stark's entire Trac Changes blog is quite follow worthy. (3) Days of Yore. Interviews with artists before they made it.  The one with Daniel Chun initially caught my eye. Other ones with Jennifer Egan and James Franco will catch yours. (4) Saundra Mitchell's...

Consider the Seating Chart

Have you ever had this problem? A big group of people go out to dinner, you all sit down and conversation just dies. Maybe not right away, maybe not even obviously, but the fun spirit of eating out with people is totally gone. This wasn't a problem until a few years ago. In college, you can roll to dinners with twenty plus people and spirits remain high for hours. But that's college. Who has the energy nowadays? For years, my friend and I...

High Five

A new weekly feature of things I co-sign (actually "feature" is a bit grandiose): (1) The Other Side of the Story. Most writing advice blogs lose my interest pretty quickly but Janice Hardy's is great because it's organized well and filled with tons of content. Also, Super Hero Nation, a blog specifically geared toward writing the super powered. (2) Nova Ren Suma's "What Inspires You?" blog series. I found myself coming back over and over the past month.  Also, I can't wait to read Fade Out, formerly known as Dani Noir. (3) Kirkus...

It's time now to sing out, though the story never ends

If only NaNoWriMo's winning requirement was for 525,600 words, then I could make up NaNo lyrics to Seasons of Love more accurately. "Fifty one thousand one hundred eighty one wo-rds / Fifty one thousand one hundred eighty one moments so dear" just does not have the same ring as the original. Of course, writing five hundred thousand words in a month would probably explode my mind and leave my fingers crippled. I'm still in recovery from doing 51,181...

Marie Lu

You've probably seen Legend everywhere already, since it's about to blow up. I was a bit surprised it was coming out just now actually, as I thought it had been released awhile ago because I've been reading interviews and reviews for months. But no, Legend releases today and that's awesome news because it means nobody is late to the party!I actually found out about Marie's work first on the art side. I'm always digging around for irresponsibly...

Show Me the Money

For some reason I completely missed out on Work of Art: The Next Great Artist last season. Well, there's probably a great reason, as I try to avoid TV when possible. However, I remain intrigued by a competitive reality show about producing art so I caught a few episodes of season two the other day. Whatever you think about the role of an artist and their relationship to their work and the public, Work of Art doesn't capture it. Produced by the...

Thanhha Lai

Since Lonely Comma is no more, I thought I'd continue the Asian American author spotlights here. I had Thanhha Lai's Inside Out & Back Again all queued up awhile ago because her cover was just so amazing. I mean, seriously, it's fantastic. Just look at it. It jumped out to me at the bookstore and I loved the title too. Well, the content inside is clearly just as great because Thanhha just won the National Book Award for her debut. I've never...

Friendship is Magic

Sometimes you just wake up on a Sunday morning and get caught up researching all the hoopla around men who obsesses over My Little Ponies. This article will shed some light on what I'm talking about, "Hey Bro, That's My Little Pony!" For starters, doesn't everyone already love My Little Pony? George and I were blessed in our youth to own the MLP Dream Castle. She probably got it in response to me receiving a Castle Grayskull. Since our toys...

What is it you do exactly?

I spent an hour or so earlier playing this video game about making a video game. So meta. In Game Dev Story, you manage a studio by hiring coders, designers, sound engineers, developers, and writers. Along with selecting the right staff, you're in charge of advertising and picking the genre of game to produce.My first attempt was to create a ninja puzzle. It pretty much got terrible reviews and bombed. Then I created a romantic action game that...

I Will Remember You

Hey, remember that 2009 Debs eBook anthology I was talking about a few months back? Well it's here! Thanks to the hard work of editors Rhonda Stapleton and Jessica Verday, The First Time is ready to be downloaded onto your favorite eReader. What's also thrilling is that I haven't read anybody else's stories so I'm excited to tear through them all in the next couple of days. Here's the book description and links to all the contributing authors!"In...

What's a Nubian?

Went out last week to the Diversity in YA Fiction tour stop in San Diego. Despite sorta living here, it's the very first book event I've ever been to in my area. Crazy right? This stop featured DIYA founders Malinda Lo and Cindy Pon, along with their special guests Holly Black, Cinda Williams Chima, Karen Healey, and Greg van Eekhout.All six are fantasy authors and that lent an interesting perspective to the topic of diversity. There were discussions...

Just Tell Me the Song and I'll Sing It

Currently pushing: Stephen Elliot's "An Oral History of Myself" series. I've been a loyal reader of Elliot's Daily Rumpus emails for about a year now and he's like a uni-directional BFF. I know more about his thoughts and life than I do about most of my friends, which is weird but also fascinating.I recently found out about his oral history series and have been going through them all. The project is this: "In 2005 I [Elliot] began interviewing...

I'll Show You

Since joining, I haven't been able to do any of Rachael Harrie's Campaign Challenges yet so I thought I better hop on the last one! The rules are over here and this one is about "show not tell." I'm running out the door for some basketball so had to whip this up and hopefully it'll work! And let's hope I don't break anything trying to recapture my youth."Write a blog post in 300 words or less, excluding the title. The post can be in any format, whether...

Music Makes Me High

It's been a year since my last mixtape, mass apologies. Last time my songs were to celebrate summer but this time I'd like to gear us up for the long winter ahead. While I tried to keep the number of songs manageable -- I already cut down from 80-plus -- there were just way too many good ones to trim any further. For the first time ever, I don't think I used the same artist twice. I know, you're so impressed.If you follow along to my "Listening...

Footloose (2011)

In what could prove to be my most important piece of work yet during my dance movie review series, I'm here to compare the old Footloose with the new Footloose, which I rushed to see opening weekend. Warning, many spoilers ahead. In short, if you didn't plan on watching the new Footloose, you should, because it's actually pretty good. Note: All category scores are for the remake because no number can reflect how fantastic the original is.Tagline:...

It's a Small Wonder

Here with another edition of games you hate but love, an update on my current mobile game obsessions -- just in time for your shiny new iPhone 4S's. Two years ago it was Papaya Farm, the gateway drug. Last spring it was We Rule for a few furious months. Then in July we started in on Bakery Story. I was ready to quit my pastry chef career weeks ago but waited until I converted all my ovens and coffee makers into ice cream machines for a grand...

Sun Was High

This gap in my blogging doesn't mean we didn't make it cross country. In fact we made it very safe and sound, without much muss or fuss at all. Not one flat tire, rude local, or disgusting rest stop to be found. Given the chance I'd do the drive again but I'd take much longer.For example, due to time constraints we were forced to pass up the Oz Museum and Larry Bird's hometown. Seeing as they are related to two of my top five obsessions, visiting...