Archive for August, 2005
The Smooth Level and Beyond
THE SMOOTH LEVEL – AND BEYOND
David Niall Wilson
This isn’t my day (yet) but we don’t have a special guest for the 31st of this month, and rather than let the site remain untouched another complete day, I’m posting this now – a bit ahead of time. Before I begin, let me say our hearts [...]
"Blunders I Have Known and Loved" by Captain Klutz
Just for kicks, I’m going to swallow whatever pride I might have and share a few things I’ve done in my time that sensible people ought to avoid when producing work for an intelligent public.
These mostly go back several years, but the memory of them reinforces the idea that it’s a good thing to laugh [...]
Stupid Game Writer Tricks
The craft of writing video games – I won’t dare call it an art, not until people in the industry finally get over their fixation with Floyd the Robot in the text-only adventure Planetfall – is a very young one, though it has already managed to acquire its own impressive list of techniques, clichés, [...]
The Biggest Little Job in Fiction
by Janet Berliner
An anonymous someone wrote to my website. He/she said that our blogs were fun, but could we please do more in the way of practical advice for those not yet published.
I don’t generally take much notice of people who don’t sign their emails, but this made sense, so I started to write a [...]
Festival of Fear (of babies!)
Next weekend I’m going to a horror convention in Toronto. Festival of Fear. What goes on at such an event? I have this vision of people walking around with rubber hatchets sticking out of their heads. From what I remember of the itinerary, Clive Barker and Linda Blair will be there signing autographs. Although I’m [...]
Of Mice and Meaning
This morning I finished reading John Steinbeck’s OF MICE AND MEN. Prior to this, I was familiar with its central characters of George and Lennie only through those cartoons we’ve all seen in which a big doofus mouse and a little smart-guy mouse get themselves into various troubles. A coworker taking a writing course began [...]
While You Were At Horrorfind
While many of you were attending Horrorfind weekend, the rest of us had to find something to do to battle the depression we felt being left out of the excitement. I ended up taking the kids to Coeur D’Alene, Idaho for a day at Silverwood. This is how it went.
Up at six-o’clock in the morning, [...]
THE COFFEE POT TO COMPUTER COMMUTER
by Brian Keene
Note: Brian Keene was supposed to post on Saturday, and Michael Laimo was supposed to post today. However, both are recovering from this past weekend’s convention, where they sold out of books and drank a beer for each book sold. After the beers, Laimo beat Keene at arm wrestling, and as the loser, [...]
Our friends, the editors
Last month, my turn came around as I was returning home from Comic-Con International: San Diego, an exhausting week spent in the presence of 104,000 people, sensory overload, long nights and early mornings. So I missed my deadline. Sorry, and I’ll try not to do it again.
Missing deadlines is something I’ve tried not [...]
ON ZOMBIES… AND HUNGER
Note: Due to a series of deadlines, family matters and other time-devouring circumstances, I was unable to get my column done this month. Rather than just let the day go by sans installment, however, I invited my friend and mentor, Norman Partridge, to donate one of the essays from his forthcoming collection/recollection/writer’s handbook Mr. Fox [...]
