My Superpower: Beth Cato (The Clockwork Crown)
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 Beth Cato to talk about how the power of wielding cookies like shurikens relates to The Clockwork Crown. My superpower: I wield cookies like shurikens. Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I’m nowhere near as subtle as a ninja. The thing is, I love baking. I love to feed people the stuff I bake. The kitchen is my dojo. I do the full stay-at-home-mom-and-writer gig. I can only sit at the computer for so long. I need to stand up, move around, let my mind find free space to wander over plot problems.
“Writing Toward Acceptance” by Sarah Remy
Non-Binary Genders are gender identities that don’t fit within the accepted binary of male and female. People can feel they are both, neither, or some mixture thereof. It might be easier to view gender as a 1-dimensional spectrum with male on one end, female on the other, and androgyne in the middle, but the reality is that gender is more complex, and 3-dimensional models with axes for male, female, and how strongly you feel attached to that gender identity have been suggested. Recently I’ve begun a little experiment: I’ve started asking various friends of various ages if they know what ‘non-binary’ means. Granted, I’m not kind enough to give them a hint with a qualifier: do you know what non-binary means in regards to gender? Hints are not part of the experimental parameters. Hints might be cheating.
271. On Science Fiction and Romance w/ Andrea Phillips
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode271RomanceWAndreaPhillips/SandF%20–%20Episode%20271%20–%20Romance%20w%20Andrea%20Phillips.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSSubplots, comedies, and scifi relationships, oh my! Andrea Phillips joins us for a discussion about science fiction, romance, and her new novel, Revision. We talk about why romance gets a bad rap, some excellent starting points for the interested reader, and much more! We hope you enjoy the episode! Note: If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 271 — Download (MP3) Show Notes:
My Superpower: Heather Rose Jones (The Mystic Marriage)
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 Heather Rose Jones to talk about how the power of root cause analysis relates to The Mystic Marriage. You might not think that the same superpower would come in handy both as a fantasy novelist and as an industrial root cause investigator. But I have a preternatural ability to maintain multiple competing unfinished causal structures in my mind, feeding facts into them bit by bit until a pattern emerges from the swirling chaos, the contradictions fall away, and what remains is—if not the only truth—then at least one possible truth that is consistent with the facts.
“On Game of Thrones and Gritty Fantasy: Why does it sell?” by Clifton Hill (Veil of a Warrior)
Visceral, terrible, gut wrenching, laden with death and loss. Why does it sell? And why in the genre of luminescent fairy wings, immortal wizards, and chivalrous knights that cannot die? Why do we want to bring in the grime, the stink of malice and the cut of despair? In an industry dominated by the One Ring and a boy wizard — where there was death and violence, but only to an extent — it seemed that Fantasy was a soft genre. There was the thrill of discovery, strange wondrous new lands…and magic! So what made The Game of Thrones rise so high? Perhaps because it was more real. The setting is not one of wonder; it is one terrible and dirty — where people die. A world where a single man rules with the authority to kill on a word, where political factions scheme for power and survival: the landscape of influence can change in a heartbeat.
My Superpower: Peter Newman (The Vagrant)
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 Peter Newman to talk about how the power of escaping reality relates to The Vagrant. As it happens, I have a few superpowers. I instinctively know where to stand in order to get in other people’s way (this is doubly true in Forbidden Planet and other people’s kitchens), I can relate most things to He-Man in three steps or less, and when the universe needs me, I can summon the appetite of ten tigers. However, none of these things were any use in writing The Vagrant.
