I snagged me some books for the New Year as Winterfest gifts. Should keep me busy for a bit:
A) Angles of Attack by Marko Kloos — The third in Kloos’ noted military SF Frontline series has the main characters trying to put their new knowledge about the powerful alien invaders to use in last ditch efforts to save the Earth and its colonies. One thing I like about Kloos’ series is that his aliens are really alien, which makes the attempts dealing with them interesting beyond the usual military hardware and barking soldiers. The second book in the series was a much stronger entry than the first one, so I’m looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here.
B) Wanderers by Chuck Wendig— I’m attempting to finish off Wendig’s contemporary fantasy Miriam Black series of which I am fond, but in the meantime my mom got me his latest hefty and acclaimed post-apocalypse novel. Earth society is collapsing from a strange epidemic in which many people are sleepwalking towards some destination, with their desperate, unaffected relatives accompanying them and trying to figure out how to save them. Wendig is one of those authors who builds stories around the truly weird and this is his most ambitious work to date.
C) No Country for Old Gnomes by Delilah S. Dawson & Kevin Hearne— This is the second in Dawson and Hearne’s comic fantasy series The Tales of Pell that started with Kill the Farm Boy, which both I and my husband much enjoyed. Satirizing fairy tales and fantasy fiction requires sharp dialogue and whacky action, something both authors excel at, along with an unexpectedly high body count and a love of cheese. This next novel tackles a long standing conflict between gnomes and halflings and offers a whole new crew of characters.
D) Murderbot: All Systems Red by Martha Wells— Wells has been making great waves with her novella/short novel SF series featuring Murderbot, a corporate-owned security android that has hacked its controlling governor’s module. In this first entry of the series, which won the Nebula Award for Best Novella, an otherwise boring contract assignment escorting a group of scientists turns dangerous and complicated for Murderbot when unexpected fauna is discovered on the planet and another survey group is mysteriously slaughtered.
E) Terminal Uprising by Jim C. Hines— This is the second book in Hines’ comic SF Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse series. The first, Terminal Alliance, is one of my favorite things that Hines has done, so I am quite happy to have this one continuing the adventures and haphazard conspiracy solving skills of the hygiene and sanitary space crew who mop up after the galaxy’s crises. The backstory of humanity in this story universe is quite complicated and Hines mixes it expertly with satire, poignancy and pretty interesting space battles. (I also love the covers on these.)
F) Hollywood Homicide by Kellye Garrett— The non-SFF title of the bunch (I do have some,) is a personable amateur murder mystery story set in L.A. A down-on-her-luck former actress trying to save her parents’ house ends up investigating a hit and run death in an attempt to get the reward money for information on the case. She is aided by a small crew of interesting friends. The book is a first in the series, Detective By Day, and is a touch satiric. Garrett, a former t.v. writer, knows all the costuming and rituals of Tinseltown and puts them to sharp but affectionate use. The novel won the Anthony, Agatha and Lefty Awards for mystery.
When people want to know what I want as gifts, usually I say books, so this was my most recent haul. Most of these are continuations of series I’ve been reading, but I also got three new works, including two from authors I haven’t read before.
Going from left corner top clockwise, I got the final book in Linda Nagata‘s military technothriller SF trilogy — Red: Going Dark; the latest (Book #6) in Diana Rowland‘s zombie SF mystery thriller series White Trash Zombie: White Trash Zombie Unchained; Kat Howard‘s first novel in her new contemporary fantasy series An Unkindness of Magicians; Jim C. Hines‘ new venture in comic SF — Terminal Alliance; Karina Sumner-Smith‘s concluding volume in her post-apocalypse secondary world fantasy trilogy — The Towers Trilogy: Towers Fall; the second in N.K. Jemisin‘s acclaimed apocalyptic secondary world fantasy trilogy Broken Earth: The Obelisk Gate; Fonda Lee‘s new novel starting a secondary world, post-industrial fantasy crime series — Jade City; Ann Leckie continuing the world of her acclaimed SF Ancillary series in a spin-off Provenance; and Chuck Wendig continuing his contemporary fantasy series with Book #4 — Miriam Black: Thunderbird.
I’m looking forward to reading through them over the next few months. The cover art on all of them is really good and quite varied in approach. There wasn’t really a theme to this year’s haul selection, other than a “let’s kill off some of the trilogies” approach and some “oh look, a new book in the series” selections. But I did end up with a fair amount of SF and contemporary-styled fantasy titles as a result. There is a whole other queue of titles that will be the gift selections for later and that are a fairly wide range. For the two new authors, Kat Howard and Fonda Lee, both of these novels have been much talked about in fandom and both sounded interesting to me. Once I’ve read them all, I’ll let you know what I think of them. Feel free to share any works you got for the winter solstice/new year.
If you want to check out these authors and their works further, links to their official websites are provided below:
So I was going to write about some books, really I was, and I will soon, but in the meantime (not counting all the really nasty horrors going about the planet,) we had another one of those incidents. The one where the people running a SFF convention turn out to be bigoted asshats who retaliate against women, POC, queer authors, etc. and fans because they think a crimp is being put in their old-fashioned party. This time, it’s the Odyssey Convention in Madison, Wisconsin, which not only put two known, notorious harassers on their convention committee, but when one of their GOH authors who had been a victim of one of the harassers complained about being forced to deal with the man at their convention, twice, they proceeded to accuse her of lying, lied to her in turn, scolded her for having no legitimate complaint, and when she withdrew as GOH, doxxed her private email address on their public Facebook page while ranting at her with a level of sexism that was high even for the usual rhetoric in these things.
While some of them are attempting to make amends at the moment, that any of them thought they had the right to behave this way in the first place is a shining example of the problems SFF fandom has been tackling head-on the last 5-10 years as the people who routinely get told to suck up abuse say no and are sometimes forced to go public about it to try and help others out. The enough is enough line started getting drawn in the 1980’s and people have been pushing conventions to become safe, inclusionary fun places for everybody, which is a message that should have really sunk in by now, even with convention volunteer organizers who are still trapped in the 1970’s.
The Odyssey Convention hasn’t been doing that well apparently, and it’s not very surprising, given that some of the people waving their harassment policy around as proof of their virtue are the very people the harassment policy was written for. The GOH isn’t the only person who has turned away from this convention — quite a few authors and people were reportedly already not going because of the harassers’ presence, and others have now joined in the exodus in support, because of the concom’s behavior.
I vented a bit on Jim C. Hines’ blog on this one as he is doing a decent round-up of links with the details of this mess, which you can check out if you want: http://www.jimchines.com/2017/04/odyssey-con-frenkel-and-harassment/ A number of other authors have been talking about it on Twitter or their blogs, with great sadness.
But in short, if you are a con-runner, here are things you don’t get to do:
Tell guests and panelists who have a problem with the convention that they don’t have a problem.
Tell women and marginalized authors what they should and should not have as safety concerns about the convention workplace.
Accuse those making reports of harassment of being liars and mentally unstable whiners who will be ignored.
Publicly expose authors’ private contact information and personal information without their consent.
Claim that somebody might be abusive to others, but everybody at the event, who are paying money and time to be there, has to put up with that person because reasons.
This is a lesson that many con-runners have been slow to absorb. And the sad thing is, not simply what that’s going to do to their conventions over the long term, but that whenever one of these incidents occur, we have so many people — mainly women and POC — saying that they’ve never been to a convention and now don’t see how they can try attending any SFF convention, as it seems like they are run by horrible people and aren’t safe to visit. And that is not because of the people who have brought up the issues of abuse and tried to get changes. It’s because of the people running the conventions who announce that they are okay with the situation and who go after those who bring the issue up. Many conventions are not run by such people and can be great experiences. Some of them have had problems in the past, but have learned and often gotten new people in to run them. But when the people running a convention embrace a con culture that ignores and enables abusive behavior — and engage in it themselves — then it ends up reflecting poorly on the entire SFF network of fandom events and opportunities are lost.
Quite simply, authors — and their fans — aren’t going to go to conventions where they are abused and further abused by the con-runners. They have plenty of choices and it’s not worth their time or their careers to deal with such behavior. If you behave in this manner, surprise — people don’t want to work with you or hang out with you. And if you put people who behave in this manner in charge of your convention and let them speak for you, again, you are going to lose customers and authors who can draw in customers. Far more than the abusers themselves — who are a minority — it’s the people who help abusers and abuse their authority to do it who cause a systemic problem. This one might sink the Odyssey Convention or not, but it would sure be nice to have fewer problems in this vein.
*Up-date: I’m going to add this link to Brianna Wu’s guest column on Hines’ blog because it does speak to the wider systemic problem that created this situation.
Fantasy author Jim C. Hines took a break from working on his new series to do one of his famous here’s the ridiculous sexist poses they put women figures in on SFF covers for no reason cover poses. Although Jim has mainly retired from doing such photo shoots, in order to save his back, he came out of retirement for a good cause — to raise money for the Pixel Project, which works to end violence against women. A donor paid $500 and they selected imitating the cover for the YA novel The Selection by Kiera Cass. Here’s the photo here, and you can check out Jim’s blog for info about donating to the Pixel Project.
So I had a lot of stuff pile up in the first part of the year that was like, “that’s interesting, I’ll look at it more closely later in the blog maybe,” and of course, that didn’t happen. Now that it’s finally spring in my part of the world, I’m just going to present the things I collected in blocks, and you all can see if there’s anything that interests you enough to click on.
Publishing & Writing Stuff:
Kathleen Sharp gives a full and factual accounting in Salon.com of what actually happened with Apple, Amazon and the development of the e-book market.
Jim C. Hines explains why chasing trends in writing fiction is a fool’s errand. (Authors do these pieces from time to time; many new authors are just absolutely sure it can’t be true. But it’s true; this is how fiction publishing works.)
Charlie Stross expands with more facts and thoughts on Jim’s article.
At Tor.com, Emily Asher-Perrindoes an interesting analysis of how Ron Weasley’s character in the Harry Potter series is changed and negated in the film adaptations.
Kameron Hurley guest-blogged at Chuck Wendig’s blog, Terrible Minds, earlier in the year about “On Persistence and the Long Con of Being a Successful Writer”.
I’m still dealing with the fallout of this last part of the year, but here are the book goodies I got (not that I necessarily need an excuse to get them, but you know, it looks better when you have a handy gift giving seasonal cover.)
The third novel in Rowland’s contemporary fantasy series about Louisiana morgue attendant and zombie Angel. I read the first one of this series, My Life as a White Trash Zombie, and liked it, though I thought the ending seemed a little rushed and overly heightened. But then I got the second book, Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues, where Angel starts to find out a lot of info about being a zombie and the ending of the first novel made more sense from that. This third installment ups the action even more than the first two as Angel has to deal with a zombie film shoot, mysterious deaths, the local zombie syndicate, the return of various antagonists, rain and flood, taking the GED, etc. Rowland is great at combining her small town frame with Angel getting her life together, with essentially a spy thriller. This novel has a bit less humor than the first two, but also an increasingly confident Angel. My only complaint is that the heavier spy thriller aspects meant less cop and morgue time this go round. Rowland is a former cop and morgue worker, so she does that stuff very well, as well as a really interesting take on zombism and the strange mix of pathos and advantage therein.
Moving on to the new titles I haven’t read yet, is the second novel in Hines’ new contemporary fantasy Magic Ex Libris series about a libromancer, Isaac, who can pull things from books and helps guard the world from magical threats. The second book focuses more on Lena, the dryad dragged from the pages of an old pulp fantasy novel, who is Isaac’s bodyguard and sometime lover. New enemies are after Lena’s powers, and that can mean some very bad things for everyone. The first novel, Libromancer, made quite a big splash, has a lot of humor and interesting stuff, and also let Hines bring in his fire spider from his Jig the Goblin novels, so I’m looking forward to this one.
Continuing with the sequels is book two of Australian author Lucas Thorn’s Nysta series, a secondary world western, D&D epic, satirical dark fantasy revenge quest mash-up of awesome cussing proportions. I featured the cover art for the first volume, Nysta: Revenge of the Elf, on my blog, by artist Amir Zand, then got the first book and featured the next two covers. The Nysta books read exactly like westerns, except they are about elves, wizards, gods and magical forces in really interesting landscapes. The first book was violent, rough, slyly funny and quite moving all at the same time. Nysta, the central character, is an elven destroyer out to get the gang of elves who killed her husband. In the second book, she is closing in on the Bloody Nine but dealing with strong magical forces and monsters in the Deadlands. (I’m hoping that Thorn and Zand can get some sort of comic book spin-off going on this world sometime — great fun.)
Not a sequel, but a continuing world novel, and a western to boot, in this novel Abercrombie expands his First Law world by traveling to a new frontier land in which presumed dead Northern barbarian king, the legendary Logan Ninefingers, has been hiding out on a farm under the name Lamb. The central character is Shy, his stepdaughter, who sets off after her kidnapped brother and sister with Lamb/Logan in tow. Other characters from Abercrombie’s previous novels make appearances and probably there are clues to the mysterious past of wizard battles that seems to subtly affect everything in Abercrombie’s secondary world. You probably don’t have to read the First Law trilogy and standalones Best Served Cold and The Heroes first, but it would help to get the full effect. Abercrombie’s mix of brutal war, black humor, and fascinating mythology is a hoot but it’s his characters who sing — each has a distinct voice that lets him try out one type of story after another. Interesting to see what he will do with the western one.
Lynch broke on the scene with the first book in this series, The Lies of Locke Lamora, to much acclaim. The satirical dark crime thriller fantasy about con artists in a remarkable city had a few minor plot issues for me, but the writing was lovely with its dual chronologies and the scenery sublime. The sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies, had some plot issues too, but expanded the world of the story in interesting ways, plus pirates! Lynch ran into some personal issues that delayed this third book in the series, and it may be the last, but I think it may also be the most interesting. A poisoned Locke has to become a pawn in a battle of mages that pits him against the long gone con-woman he loves — Sabetha, whom we finally get to see. So fun and I had to get.
Wendig’s first book in this Miriam Black series, Blackbirds, was another book whose cover art first drew my attention to it. It’s a contemporary fantasy series about a sarcastic and desperate young woman who, when she touches someone, knows when and how they will die. In this sequel, Miriam is trying to do the settling down thing with her truck driver boyfriend and has achieved more control over her powers, but then she sees a death that may change everything. Wendig has a deft hand, a sensibility with looney and weird characters, and a central character with a great voice. It also has some genuine mystery to the suspense and interesting supernatural elements.
I read Grant’s contemporary fantasy novel, Rosemary and Rue, written under her main name Seanan McGuire, and liked the writing (she’s a Campbell award winner,) but wasn’t quite as blown away by the world and focus of that story. So I decided to try her horror science fiction with this first book in her Newsflesh trilogy. Feed got a ton of attention and a Hugo nomination. It’s a near future zombie thriller that takes the mutated virus approach to zombies, with a dark satire of political campaigns and conspiracies, news media and blogging, horror films, medical research, etc. Grant has a very sharp eye, so I suspect I will like it.
I am a huge Atkinson fan. She has occasionally dipped into fantasy, magic realism style, and her standalone bestselling novel Life After Life is a full out fantasy novel that has been nominated for the Orange Prize and probably will pick up quite a few of the major nominations for the year. The novel is about Ursula, who continually dies but in alternate overlapping universes lives as the world marches towards World War II and a fate that Ursula’s unique repeating life may affect. That’s going to be rich toffee, the way Atkinson writes, so I shall probably save it for a bit later when chaos declines a little, but I am looking forward to it, even though WWII is not my favorite era.
Technically this wasn’t a new goodie for the holidays, but it was a book temporarily misplaced in our move last year, so now I’ve got it recovered finally and can tackle it. It’s Sprunk’s debut secondary world fantasy novel, with divine cover art, about an assassin named Caim, who finds himself, as assassins frequently do, a pawn in a complicated and high stakes plot. But this particular assassin has some unusual aspects to his life — ever since he was a child damaged by tragedy, Caim can call shadows to cloak him, a magic that haunts him and he distrusts, and he has been visited by a ghostly, mercurial and mysterious spirit named Kit who sometimes helps him out. The writing style has a traditional, grand feel to it, but with bickering, a combination I think I’m going to like. It reminds me a bit of some of Glen Cook. Sprunk has started a new series, The Book of the Black Earth, which sounds interesting, so I will have to catch up over time. But I think I will enjoy Caim’s tale first.
My mother was astonished that my husband and daughter were watching the end of How to Train Your Dragon, a favorite animated film of ours. I was astonished that she hadn’t seen the movie, as it’s tailor-made to be the sort of movie my mom would like. So we sat down and watched the film and she did indeed love it. There is also a cartoon spin off; if you’ve got young kids you might as well try it out. And the sequel film, How to Train Your Dragon 2, comes out next year; we’re looking forward to it. Here’s the trailer:
Just when I was planning to move on from “lady” stuff, apparently a bomb of controversy exploded at Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) concerning the organization’s newsletter, the Bulletin. It had been a slow brew of exasperation that bubbled over just before SFWA President John Scalzi was safely able to exit and pass his post over to in-coming President Steven Gould. A fairly good summary of events with commentary that I think is fairly apt is offered by Trisha Lynn.
Back in the day, the Bulletin, the main newsletter of the organization, was basically a bulletin. It was published in plain print on 16-20 double-sided pages on thick, stiff paper usually colored vanilla or an office memo pastel shade. It had a few small ads of only print and graphics, and it was filled mostly with announcements — publication opportunities, the movement of editors, agents and imprints, member author book deals and publications, convention and conference schedules, SFWA news, services and legal campaigns. There might be a few brief articles on sales and other trends in SFFH, or a brief author interview. It looked like a dull brochure and you could subscribe to it if you weren’t a member of SFWA. It was something of little interest to most people, but had useful information if you were in the field or trying to break in.
Over time, SFWA tightened up its membership regs and the Bulletin itself morphed into a semi-glossy magazine with cover art and more articles. Somebody running it got the idea to have prominent SFF author Mike Resnick and writer/editor/former agent Barry Malzberg do a regular column in which they have a conversation about various topics. And with the Bulletin approaching 200 issues, Jean Rabe, the current editor, asked the two to talk about women writers and editors in the past for issues #199 and #200. Which they did, by talking about lady writers and lady editors, bathing suits, and how one editor’s main contribution was that she was a dish, and, well, you get the idea. Two older guys talking about the old days of the 1960’s and 1970’s when the “ladies” were around and working hard, but didn’t mind the comments and a slap on the rear — because it could tank their career if they didn’t put up with it. (This is not just an age thing, as plenty of younger people unfortunately also have these views.) What caused more than minor grumbling about this was that issue #200 with Part 2 of the guys’ dialogue was accompanied by a cover image that seems to be a Red Sonja reprint or tribute picture — Sonja in her traditional metal string bikini and cape in the snow standing over a dead giant. There are a lot of 1980’s or earlier art images they could have picked from SFF history, but in an issue that was supposed to be supporting women’s contributions in the field, that one was more than a bit out of place.
So there were a lot of complaints by men and women in the membership. And then the next issue, #201, came out and might have been unremarkable except that comics and horror writer C.J. Henderson, in an otherwise innocuous article about lasting in your career, decided to school the “lady” authors about how to behave if they wanted to keep their careers — like Barbie. An imaginary Barbie who was ladylike, neatly dressed, nice to people, had her career without demanding that Ken was blocking her from it, etc. Of course, the only reason that Barbie ended up having “careers” is because women got demanding and un-ladylike towards real-life Kens about not blocking them from the workplace and advancement with artificial sexist barriers. Mattel saw the change in society and what little girls wanted to emulate, and went with it. They also took rivals (Bratz) to court in a not very nice manner.
Issue #202 saw the Bulletin’s attempt to respond to the complaints about the cover of issue #200 with an article by Jim C. Hines about women in cover art, related to his previous, hilarious cover art flips and writing that won him a Hugo. But they also figured they’d let Resnick and Malzberg respond to their critics about the previous ladies in publishing articles. And their response was, well, chiefly to declare that long ago women used to keep quiet if they had a problem with anything — because they never heard a complaint — and women should keep being quiet or they were liberal fascists trying to censor the two gentlemen by disagreeing with them and not liking what they said. You can imagine how this went over with men and women author members. They were angry and took the anger to the Net, because Resnick and Malzberg are right — it’s no longer the past when the ladies “don’t say anything about it.”
Scalzi apologized for dropping the ball on really understanding what had happened with the Bulletin and appointed a committee to review procedures on SFWA publications and help Gould out for future policies. So yet another incident yields a bright spot for improved dialogue about discriminatory problems and diversity in the field. But we are left with the knowledge that these incidents will likely continue because both men and women (Rabe is a woman,) unthinkingly say women are and should behave like docile dolls, and then get confused and upset when others angrily point out that they aren’t.
Overall, SFWA has been a smart organization run by sturdy volunteers and has changed and adapted to the needs of its membership in shifting market conditions, and it will probably do so again. And voices like Resnick, Malzberg and Henderson are not ignored, nor evil, nor do they have nothing to contribute as members and authors to the field. But because their viewpoints on women are so exclusionary, they can’t be the main voices speaking for the Bulletin or SFWA, nor can images of Red Sonja, groundbreaking though she was in her time. And neither can Barbie. Instead, SFWA and the field itself will have to put up with loud-mouthed, unladylike female authors and their allies, because in a conversation about women, women are going to keep talking.
You leave something for a few weeks and look at it! Anyway, many weird, not all bad things have been going on, limiting my Internet activities to occasional spews at my usual hangouts, if at all. I got to swim with sea turtles, which was something I’d always wanted to do, did not expect to be doing and am very aware that most people will never get to do (although that is probably a good thing for the sea turtles overall.) I had to do a lot of work stuff, and say goodbye to things and people, I got sick, yada, yada. The New Year turned, as artificially created new years do, and I got to have mine with fireworks.
While I was dealing with all that, the world of people who like SFFH and talk to each other about it hummed along. One of the things it hummed with was a return by fantasy author Jim C. Hines to recreating ridiculous SFF book covers of women, only this time in a very huge way. Jim decided, after people kept pestering him to do more of them, to make a fundraiser out of it for the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation. Aicardi Syndrome is a rare, very nasty and deadly childhood condition and so Jim set a number of financial goalposts and as each one was met, he would do another cover pose (a couple of them were comic book covers cause people had specially asked.) The poses included two pose-off contests with fellow author John Scalzi (both of which Jim won,) and a group photo staged at ConFusion of Jim, Scalzi, Patrick Rothfuss, Charles Stross and Mary Robinette Kowal recreating a truly horrendous Baen Books cover. Jim, I think, seriously underestimated the interest in this endeavor — he raised just over $15,000 for the Foundation and had to risk his back in many cover poses. You can see the whole thing here (warning: it’s not for the faint of heart,) including the pose-offs and the group shot which is one of the most coolest, horriblest things I’ve ever seen. Jim is still arranging some of the poses promised and there will be a 2014 calendar that you can buy down the road, raising further funds for the Foundation.
Another fundraiser that’s still going on for another week or so is the medical fundraiser for SFF author Jay Lake, who has been fighting cancer for some time. The fundraiser was to raise money so Lake could have a gene sequencing procedure to give him a better chance and to help pay for all the wonderful medical expenses incurred in the U.S. medical system. The gene sequencing goal was reached and right quickly, but the family is hurting and further contributions are most welcome.
And one more now on-going, and this is a fun one because you simply can use some of your charitable giving that you might have been planning to do anyway. John Scalzi has been having gnat-irritation visits from pals of a fellow SFWA member to whom he’d once given a promotional break, long ago, without knowing the person was troubled, shall we say. This author and his friends are white male power enthusiasts, I guess you could call it, and they come over to troll the comment threads in Scalzi’s Whatever blog. Scalzi has developed various clean-up methods for this intrusion into his lair, including recently kittening, a method he borrowed from his friend The Bloggess, which is spreading out virally. This author is a bit obsessed with Scalzi and talks about him a lot on his blog, whereupon his pals then descend on Whatever to thump their chests and misunderstand wolf biology. (We only get to see the “polite” ones, which are sad enough.) So Scalzi decided to make a fundraiser out of it. Every time this author mentions Scalzi on his blog, Scalzi will be giving money to charities that help people who this author hates, $5 a mention, up to a max of $1,000. Scalzi is going with four organizations, and you can also chime in and give directly to those groups or ones of your own choosing, preferably groups helping women, non-whites, educational funding and scholarship, religious tolerance, etc. You can do it on the mention scale up to a set amount or just go ahead and give a set amount if you want. I’m going to be doing a .25 a mention up to $50 donation to Kiva.org, which is a non-profit group that, as I’ve mentioned here before, funds micro-loans to entrepreneurs trying to feed their families all over the world. You can pick who you loan the money to through Kiva and then when that person pays it back, you can loan it out again to another person. The organization basically stands for everything these people hate. So that’s a good one that some people are doing. Already the pledge count is pretty high, but the higher it gets, the better the fun of turning one of the most negative things about the Internet into a positive that helps people. If you can’t afford to give any money — and many cannot — you can still help out if you like by volunteering for charity groups like homeless shelters, women’s groups and the like. It’s a really nice way to start the year.
Stuff on books and movies and whatnot to come. Hope the shortest month finds you all happy.
Oh that Jim C. Hines! He’s been amusing me a lot lately. First, the fantasy author showed how women are tortured on SFF book covers by trying to capture their poses himself:
In this blog, Jig, the main character from Jim’s terrific Jig the Goblintrilogy: Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero and Goblin War, (and the short story collection Goblin Tales,) and his fellow goblin friends attempt to answer your requests for help. If you haven’t tried the Jig books, about a goblin press-ganged into a quest and his subsequent trials and tribulations, you really are missing out. At least go try to get some good advice from Jig for your own trials and tribulations. You’ll be glad you did.
The Open Window 