I’m going to be on Jennifer Walker’s show on Blog Talk Radio, A Cup of Coffee and a Good Book, tonight, talking about Brutal Light, writing in general, dark fantasy, where I get my ideas, and other such things. It’ll run from 6:30 pm to 7:00 pm EST, and will be streaming live during that time. If, for some implausible reason, you fail to gain the urge to rearrange your life so as to hang on my every erratic, meandering word, it will be archived there for you to listen to in your own good time.
Author Archives: Gary W. Olson
Are You Linksperienced?
The writing proceeds apace at Chez Olson, after some bumpy days where I was not sure what the hell I wanted to write–not because I didn’t like what I was writing, but because I had several ideas that all wanted to come out at once. For a while, I thought that Entering Cadence, my ‘science fiction noir’ novella, would be what occupied my winter, until it decided it wanted to be a novel instead. I knocked out the first draft of a short horror story, “Goldilocks Zone,” then had to decide whether to return to Entering Cadence or start in on one of these other ideas.
The idea that won was to revisit a very old short story of mine, The Morpheist, and rework it into a dark fantasy novella set in a biopunkish future (once again, showing no respect for genre boundaries–tsch!). For the first time in a long time, I’ve been meeting the (admittedly modest) daily writing goals I’ve set for myself, and expect to have a first draft done by mid-April (stopping only to revisit, revise, polish, and send out “Goldilocks Zone”). After that… it’s either back to Entering Cadence, on to an as-yet-untitled biopunk SF story targeted for an anthology, or over to True Places to see if I can take the salvagable first half of that and turn it into a decent standalone book.
(As far as Starless Midnight–the projected sequel to Brutal Light–goes, that’s also a possibility, but low in priority at this point. Maybe by fall I’ll be ready for it…)
In the meantime, here are links! Yay?
I’m going to be on Blog Talk Radio’s A Cup of Coffee and a Good Book, hosted by Jennifer Walker, on February 29th from 6:30pm to 7:00pm. Jennifer will be interviewing me on Brutal Light and other writerly things, and I’ll be doing my best to keep my brain from locking up due to the stress that comes to me from trying to keep my train of thought from leaving the station before all the words are done boarding. Drop in and listen! (It’s not really ‘radio,’ it’s streaming, so if you’ve got a good internet connection, you should be able to follow along. Also, it’ll be archived, just in case you decide not to rearrange your life so as to listen live.)
Lincoln Crisler recently released a free story on Smashwords (you’ll need to log in or create an account to see it) to promote his soon-to-be-released anthology, Corrupts, Absolutely?. (And yeah, that anthology is one of the new releases I just talked about above.) Check it out!
Here’s something that’s simultaneously both cool and worrisome: Google will be selling ‘heads-up display’ glasses by year’s end. Cool because… well, come on. Worrisome because you just know people are going to be wearing these while doing other things, such as walking and driving and who knows what else, and it’s only a matter of time until we hear someone caused a multi-car pileup because they saw that a store they were passing had several funny cat videos on their YouTube channel.
Speaking of biopunk, here’s an article on some of the real-life bio-hacking that some people are already doing. This has ‘beginning of a SyFy Channel movie’ all over it…
I used to like eating hot, hot foods. In college, I would snork up jalapeno peppers straight out of the jar, and afterward, for years, I’d grow my own chili peppers. I’ve mellowed somewhat on that (my orders of Indian food never go above ‘medium,’ which is ‘hot’ to most sane people), but this article on the world’s hottest pepper tempts me to the challenge…
Here’s Five leadership mistakes of the Galactic Empire that you’ll want to avoid, especially if ‘force choke’ isn’t an option on the table for keeping your employees in line…
Finally, here’s something (originally brought to my attention by Naomi Clark) that I just loved: the opening of Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus, retold as a heartwarming children’s story. It is made of awesome.
Short Reviews: Greg R. Fishbone’s The Penguins of Doom / Darren Frey’s The Blood Reapers
The Penguins of Doom by Greg R. Fishbone
Septina Nash’s sister, Sexta, is missing, and Septina is willing to face mad scientists, ninjas, the need to learn skateboarding, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, penguins, and much more in order to find her–if only her teachers would understand! Subtitled ‘from the Desk of Septina Nash,’ this epistolary book is a long series of letters that either describe a real, weird, zany adventure, or show just how far one grade-school girl will go to explain why her homework isn’t done and she had to skip certain classes.
That this works at all is a tribute to Greg Fishbone’s ability to write a central character at once relentlessly likeable and so committed to her way of seeing the world that nothing will stand in her way. It’s appeal isn’t quite so broad as that of his Galaxy Games–it’s bright, high-speed whimsy is more suited to tweens than teens or adults. (Though there were some bits that cracked this 42-year-old up, nonetheless.) That said, it’s a great fantasy book for that age group–I’m planning on getting a copy for my niece when she’s a bit older.
The Blood Reapers by Darren Frey
Julian Frost, whose life is already dark due to the murder of his parents and the loss of his sister, believes he has found his salvation in his new love, a vampire named Violet. But fate has more troubles in store for him, and he must decide if he is to let her make him into a vampire, so that he might face the vampire hunter that menaces her, and perhaps finally take revenge on his parents’ killer.
There is a lot going on in this book, and it’s to the author’s credit that it never becomes confusing and that none of the scenes are gratuitous. Julian is a compelling character, and his struggles were well presented. The one knock I have against this book is that it feels like it zips along too quickly–there are enough story developments along the way for a novel twice this length–and secondary characters and overall atmosphere take a few hits along the way. But what’s there is entertaining, and should be enjoyed by fans of non-sparkly vampires.
Clive Barker: An Appreciation
Not long ago, Clive Barker told us had had a terrifying brush with death, due to being put into a coma for seven days due to a spillage of poisonous bacteria into his blood during some dental work. It was a shocking thing to learn, and I along with many others was relieved to hear that he made it through and his health was improving. It also got me to thinking about something I’d planned for this blog that, with everything that’s been going on with me and my book in the last three-quarters of a year, I’d never made happen. I wanted to do a series of appreciations of writers, such as Clive Barker, that have had a strong impact on me.
Barker wasn’t one of my formative influences; I didn’t pick up one of his books until 2002, when I was 33. It was maybe two-and-a-half years after I’d finally dug into some Stephen King, whose works I’d once avoided, erroneously believing the negative opinions of some non-horror-fan friends. Clive Barker being one of the biggest names in the field after King’s, I figured he was worth a try. So I started with a cheap, dog-eared volume I’d snagged from a used book shop, figuring that if it didn’t suit me, I wouldn’t be out much money. That book was Imajica.
Once in a while, a book comes along that turns my head inside out, and this was definitely one such book. It was epic, intense, and effortlessly strange. It was violent, graphic, sensual, demanding, and surreal. Not only did it demand my time, my active involvement, my intelligence and my imagination, it drew upon these before I even realized what was happening. It changed my perceptions of what a book could do, how far writing could go, and what I wanted to do with my own writing. (For this reason, I listed it as one of the books that made me weird in one of my guest blogs.)
I followed these up with two more of what would become my favorite Barker works, The Great and Secret Show and Everville, both epic works set on Earth and the dream-sea world of Quiddity. They weren’t quite the shock to my system that Imajica was, but the feeling of immensity, depth, and danger was there, expertly spun into works that gave me the feeling that there was something more here than fiction; that there was a truth within that only fiction can reach, one I could sense but could not–perhaps still cannot–express.
I’ve enjoyed some of Barker’s other works, including Coldheart Canyon, The Thief of Always, The Books of Blood, Galilee, and Sacrament, though those did not have the same terrific impact. In fact, it may be because they didn’t have the same impact that I drifted away from reading Barker: on looking at the log of books I’ve kept for the past 14 years, I was surprised to discover I hadn’t read any by him in the last five.
Clive Barker’s power for me is that, in some ways, he’s the opposite of King. Where King is so very good at finding the horror in the everyday and the mundane, Barker excels at elevating the everyday and mundane into realms of terrifying, dreamlike horror. Many writers try to create worlds that are larger than the one we all inhabit; Barker is one of the few who succeeds, not only on a lofty imaginative level, but on a visceral level. He simultaneously evokes senses of wonder and terror, and for that I’ll always come back, no matter how long I’ve been away.
Links Con Queso
It’s been a pretty warm winter up here in Michigan. There’s been nothing I’d really call a major snowfall, let alone a blizzard, when by this point in most years we’ve been held down and snicker-snagged upon repeatedly by Old Man Winter, Jack Frost, and Cold Miser. Not that I’m complaining, mind you… it’s just… strange. Strange weather… weeeeiiiird weather…
I’ve been busy, as per usual. I put my latest project, Entering Cadence, briefly on hold in order to pound out the first draft of a horror short that, if done right, will be very, very wrong. Entering Cadence itself has been chugging along pretty well, though it keeps trying to change as I type. Then again, that’s true of most anything I write.
But enough about me. Release the kra–er, release the links!
Last Sunday I put up a page on this site excerpting the full prologue for my novel Brutal Light. If for some gobsmacking, logic-defying, plausibility-stretching, disbelief-suspending reason you haven’t bought and devoured (or at least licked) Brutal Light, check it out!
Get photos sent directly from Mars on your smartphone! Because that’s what smartphones are for, when you’ve run out of funny cat videos.
If you’re like me, and I know I am, you’re worried about robots, AIs, and othersuch sentient artificial life rising up and destroying us all. But it turns out that cyborgs and mutants are more likely to do that. (How they compare to zombies, though, I’m not sure.)
Here’s the 6 Most Counterproductive PSAs of All Time, according to Cracked.com. YMMV, of course, but I’m suddenly craving some Gofer Cakes for some reason…
…and then I’ll wash it down with some coffee. 10 Reasons Coffee is Both the Best and Worst Beverage Ever Invented.
The battle goes on: If you opposed SOPA and PIPA, you should oppose ACTA, too.
Some news that put a big, Gumby-like smile on my face: the Monty Python crew is reuniting to appear in ‘Absolutely Anything,’ a SF comedy. While it won’t be a ‘Monty Python’ movie, per se, it’s probably as close to one as we’ll ever get…
Finally, you may think that 2-Headed Shark Attack is the bad shark movie of the year to watch for, but I contend that Sand Sharks is going to be so much worse. And by ‘worse,’ I mean ‘more awesome.’
Short Reviews: Emmy Jackson’s Empty Cradle / Lincoln Crisler’s Wild
Empty Cradle: The Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson by Emmy Jackson
Civilization has fallen, ravaged by apocalyptic wars and an infertility epidemic caused by the Empty Cradle virus. Ivy Aniram, a trader who is also one of the few women untouched by Empty Cradle, makes a deal with Corey Sanderson, a farmboy who longs to escape the isolated rural town of his birth, in order to escape a trap set by that town’s elders. So begins a long and dangerous journey across what used to be America, aided by some and threatened by many. Along the way, Ivy and Corey learn to rely on one another and their new companions… but as the title implies, sometimes even that is not enough.
Emmy Jackson’s story is set against a world of considerable depth and detail, which somehow comes across without any obvious ‘infodumps’ (other than the quotes from the notes of one of the characters, a historian). Unlike many ‘post-apocalyptic’ novels, this is one that is largely persuasive in how it presents life going on and even thriving. It also helps that the pacing of the story is solid, the action when it comes is riveting, and the characters have depth and chemistry. I’m eagerly anticipating the next book in this series.
Wild by Lincoln Crisler
In 1886 El Paso, Matthias Jacoby–a mystery man with a reputation for solving impossible cases–is called upon to find a missing colonel and his son. The trail leads into the New Mexico desert, and Jacoby is accompanied on it by the deputy sheriff who recruited him, a doctor, and an outlaw with essential knowledge and ideas of his own. What they find is much more than they bargained for–black magic and the risen dead.
Lincoln Crisler’s novella is a smooth hybrid of western detective and zombie horror fiction, moving at a fast clip without sacrificing detail or atmosphere. Matthias Jacoby is an engaging character, though we learn very little of his backstory, and the supporting characters hold their own. Short enough to complete in a single sitting, with an accelerating plot that all but demanded I do so, I found Wild to be a lot of fun.