Happy 80th to Harlan Ellison, who has a knock-knock joke for you

Harlan Ellison, that irascible love-him or hate-him genius of speculative fiction, lawsuits and storytelling, turns 80 today. While covering the South by Southwest Festival in 2008, I got a chance to talk with him in person (there's a video I'll turn up one of these days), and before that, on the phone. Here's just the…

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Serving up lamb in a rare, delightfully nasty way

One of these days I'll write a longer post about the joys of discovering the fiction Roald Dahl wrote for adults, rather than children (most of us only know him by his "Matilda" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" books). It's twisty, detailed, tightly-written and often delightfully nasty. But for now, I'll send you to…

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Pacing 101: The Walking Dead, and how not to end a season

UPDATE: Long term fans of "How I Met Your Mother" may also be experiencing bouts of pacing whiplash. I didn't watch the series except hither and thither and liked the ending, but I'm not invested in it. Either way, this article makes points I'm also making here: Too much, too late, ruins things. (Hey, spoilers…

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Putting that dream into action, you st★r f**ker

Speaking of mining dreams for content. My pal Tamara over here has a call out for talented playwrights interested in a prompt based on a real-actual-honest-to-spaghetti-monster-dream someone had. She writes on Facebook: I am lucky enough to be a producer and actor of new short plays once a year, every summer. It is one of…

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You can’t go home to Arrakis again

Recently, a link popped up all over my Facebook thread, informing me how I could begin breezing through books at a much more rapid rate than I do. If I don't know anything more about that particular link, it's because, f that noise. I see no need to read faster. I probably need to read…

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Kick your own can, jump in your own tub of marshmallows

This morning, I watched Veronica Roth jump into a bathtub full of marshmallows. I'm a bit behind the times — she did this in 2010 and posted it on her blog, a promise fulfilled to her readers about what she'd do if she landed a book deal. And when "Divergent" got her that deal, she…

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Does good writing depend on looking under a story’s hood?

You'd think writing was just about putting words on a page, in a coherent and potentially attractive and compelling order. And you'd be right. But as with any interest/specialty/art what have you thing that people focus their lives around, apparently there's a hell of a lot of technical jargon, too. Stuff I grew up just…

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Going, going “Gone Girl”: Read it now

I'm a little late to the party, but I can't recommend highly enough Gillian Flynn's terrific "Gone Girl." I ran through it in about ten days (which considering my schedule is pretty swift) and though it'll sound like a cliche, hadn't felt a book emotionally yo-yo me like that in, well, almost forever. If you…

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