This Katamari Feels Ghostly, and Also Netflixish
(That’s probably because you rolled up nothing but spooky things on Netflix streaming!) This is my LAST chance this year to write about Halloween before the actual day arrives, and if you know me at all, you know I’m taking advantage of that! This week, I’ve been browsing Netflix instant viewing, and here is a selection of the top things in my instant queue. ParaNorman: This may be one of the best kids’ movies I’ve seen in recent years, and I watch way more kids’ movies than a grownup without kids might be expected to watch. Norman, like Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, can see dead people. Only, unlike in the The Sixth Sense, everyone else around him knows this, and thinks he’s a freak. When his town’s curse comes true, and some undead puritans rise from their graves, he’s gotta do something about it,
My Superpower: Betsy Dornbusch
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Betsy Dornbusch to talk about how Writing In Bits helped make her turn in a story for Neverland’s Library… I keep resisting thinking of any aspect of writing as a superpower. After all, there’s a bunch of us writer types around and a lot of what we do is the same: ass in chair, fingers on keyboard, words on page. I don’t think of it as glamorous or magical at all. It’s my job and a hell of a lot of time it’s a slog and I feel like a hack. But I realize other people (readers and maybe other writers) do think there is magic involved. Maybe there is. I got to thinking about life and writing and I
This Katamari Feels Sexy and Halloweenish and Also Wrong
(That’s probably because you rolled up Sexy Halloween Stories!) A couple of weeks ago, we looked at Halloween costumes. I just can’t get enough Halloween stuff, though, so this week, we’re going to take a sweet, spicy, terrifying, and hilarious tour through some Sexy Halloween Stories. It turns out Sexy Halloween Stuff is not just reserved for costumes! LaShawn Wanak’s House on the Rock Halloween Adventure: Okay, so I put out a call for recommendations of awesome (or terrible!) Sexy Halloween Stories, and while I meant fiction, I didn’t actually say it, so one of my responses was a real life event of geektacular AWESOMENESS! LaShawn has a fabulous, two part
My Superpower: Alisa Krasnostein
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Alisa Krasnostein to talk about how Talking People Into Things relates to Kaleidoscope… I’m not sure I should actually tell you this but my superpower is talking people into getting involved in projects. I guess creative energy at the inception of a project is contagious. It’s definitely one of the best bits about publishing — the rush of coming up with a new project that you think can work, that you want to spend a year or two developing into something great and bouncing ideas off co-collaborators. That’s how we’re here— Julia and I—working on Kaleidoscope, an anthology of diverse contemporary YA fantasy. You see, I heard Julia Rios on a podcast recording of a panel at WisCon talking about YA dystopian fiction and how so much of it featured white, able bodied characters. And thinking about all the books I’d recently been reading, I realised how true that was and how little that made sense, really, that in post-apocalyptic worlds, only the white, able-bodied amongst us would survive some major world catastrophe. And I realised that I wanted to publish some fiction that was the opposite of that, to at least start to right that balance and provide some choice of something else for young adults to read. So I took this idea to Julia because I really wanted to work with her to make this project happen, since she’d prompted the idea, and, ok, I admit it. I used my superpower on her. And she said yes! And so here we are – this month we launched a crowdfunding campaign through the Australian platform Pozible to raise the funds to bring this anthology project to reality. The main characters in Kaleidoscope stories will be part of the QUILTBAG, neuro-diverse, disabled, from non-Western cultures, people of color, or in some other way not the typical straight, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied characters we see all over the place. Our focus is contemporary fantasy with protagonists from all sorts of backgrounds being the heroes of their own journeys. We’ve already acquired some fantastic stories from Sofia Samatar, Ken Liu, Vylar Kaftan, and Jim Hines and we’ll be opening the anthology to submissions when we raise $7k towards our fundraising goal. I can’t wait to bring this project to fruition. And um, use my superpower for good. To learn more about the project, check out the Kaleidoscope Pozible page! __________________ Alisa Krasnostein is editor and publisher at independent Twelfth Planet Press, a freshly minted creative publishing PhD student and recently retired environmental engineer. She is also part of the twice Hugo nominated Galactic Suburbia Podcast team. In 2011, she won the World Fantasy Award for her work at Twelfth Planet Press. She was the Executive Editor and founder of the review website Aussie Specfic in Focus! from 2004 to 2012. In her spare time she is a critic, reader, reviewer, podcaster, runner, environmentalist, knitter, quilter and puppy lover.
This Katamari Feels Fundraisersish
(That’s probably because you rolled up nothing but interesting crowdsourced projects and fundraisers!) Crowdfunding and fundraising are two awesome things that I think the internet does really well. This week, I’m sharing some things I’ve supported lately. Kaleidoscope: Okay, so yes, I am starting with my own project! Kaleidoscope is an anthology of diverse contemporary YA fantasy stories that I am co-editing with Alisa Krasnostein of Twelfth Planet Press. We’re putting together an awesome collection of stories with teen protagonists by authors such as Ken Liu,
My Superpower: Zack Drisko
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Zack Drisko to talk about how Not Being Satisfied relates to Ava Snow Battles Death… My superpower is the ability to not be satisfied. If I do a good job at something, instead of being able to enjoy it, my superpower identifies every single flaw and says, “Try again, dick. Maybe you tricked other people into thinking that you have talent, but you didn’t fool me.” This power might seem uselessly damaging to my self-esteem, and it often makes me a pain in the ass to be around, but here’s the thing: it pushes me to be better.
