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The Okal Rel Universe
Lynda Williams Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing Sumptuosity The Alien Next Door
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Monday, November 28, 2005
Okal Rel Universe Anthology 1, published by Windstorm Creative, with editors Virginia O'Dine and myself, launches Dec 7 at 7 p.m. in Prince George, at Books & Company, 1685 3rd Ave. Authors Elizabeth Woods, Sarah Trick and Amanda da Silva will be on hand to do five minute readings from their stories. We will also have refreshments and a few door prizes (other ORU publications naturally!) and I will discuss the next anthology briefly. So far we have 3 of the five stories spoken for. :-) The theme of the next anthology will be "Personal Combat in the Okal Rel Universe" in honor of Horth's tendancy to get into that sort of thing in "Righteous Anger", the next mainline series book coming out from Edge. Sunday, November 27, 2005
Righteous Anger Submitted to Edge
The Saga Marches OnBook #2 of the Okal Rel Universe saga is complete and in to Brian at Edge, as of last night. Any Horth Nersal fans will be glad to know the story is all about Horth: the "marriage between enemies" that defined his childhood; his quirky combination of combat genius and linguistic limitations; fertility manners for a young Vrellish male; and how he became Liege of Nersal over a critical military and moral decision brought to a crisis by the nefarious info blit of Amel's memories that perturbs relations between Rire and Sevildom. Graphic credit for Nesak shield, Virginia O'Dine Friday, November 25, 2005
Thought of the Day
You haven't arrived until someone tries to send you back. quote by Paula Johanson, lifted from encouraging advice to a fellow author on the SFCanada mailing list. Thursday, November 24, 2005
Hi, it's Brianna sorry i haven't been on for so long! I forgot my password to my email and I haven't been able to get the link i had to this site for awhile. :S Anyways, I finally figured out how to post a review at Amazon.com, so it should be coming up soon! :) Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Came across "Potter Series Casts a Spell Over Entire Genre" story via SFCanada list, where S.W. Mayse, author of Merlin's Web and Awen (Welsh historical novel), posted the link. The article reports a 10-15% increase in book sales for heroic fantasy type fiction (Martin and Jordan in particular) and attributes it to the popularity of the Harry Potter books. I have two thoughts about this. First, that writing and reading is a community affair not a commodity market, which means that the success of one author can spill over into success for others because the market grows. I seriously like that concept. It feels right to me. My second reaction is that finally people are showing signs of being fed up with doom, gloom and darkness and enjoying heroes again: heroes that sometimes fail, and stories with darker streaks than my generation encountered as young adults, but at the very least stories that do not frigging glorify "the dark side". That trend has always disturbed me. It reminds me of the syndrome in which victims identify with the abuser because they desire the powerful role not the weaker one, and thereby trumpets the morally discredited cry of "Might Makes Right". Which is bullshit. Might is just might. Right is something that history, and each and every one of us with the brains to tackle situational ethics from a wholistic point of view, still have the job of figuring out long after the bombs have dropped and the swords rusted. As far as realism goes, and idea often touted as justification for the triumph of evil over good, I would like to register another "bullshit", for the record. That may be true in the short term but usually depends upon a betrayal of trust, for success. Like stealing, it works only so long as the victims have some trust left to be violated. In the long term, a society without shared values and trust-worthy operating assumptions, is nothing more than a society at the end of its rope. Plenty of injustice can cloak itself in those laws, justifying criticim, and power gets abused in the best of worlds, but productivity in a setting where no one can trust anyone else is pretty much nil. Unless, I suppose, the sort of labor to be performed is so unskilled that people can perform it out of sheer fear for their lives and in a chronic state of either terror or depression. Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Another fun webthingy
I have of late been playing around with Tiddlywiki, which is a Javascripted-to-the-max, standalone (no server), OS independent wiki - it's written purely in HTML, Javascript and CSS, and saves the entries in the file itself. It has a considerable aesthetic advantage over the one big text file (it was in one of the comments to this network of posts that I saw TiddlyWiki mentioned). Here's a particularly classy example of its use by a philosophy lecturer. TiddyWiki and a copy of Cross-platform Portable Firefox on a USB drive gives me a micro database that can be moved from Macs to Windows boxes at will. It works fairly well, if you don't try to challenge it as I did by going cross-platform and throwing in Citrix. Initially I wondered how people could put them out on public servers without them being vandalized, since it's possible to hide the edit function, but not from someone who knows where to look to turn it on again. But it dawned on me that on a properly configured webserver, sure someone can get into the edit box but they can't SAVE their edits - they don't have the permissions to write to the server. So the webpage can be edited locally by the author and uploaded to the server.
Encouragement for Writers
The above posted by Steve Stanton on SFCanada mailing list, (11/21/05) Sunday, November 20, 2005
The evil overlord list
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Anthology Launch
ORU ANTHOLOGY BOOK LAUNCH Books & Co, 7pm, Wednesday, December 7th. Hear readings from the ORU Anthology by authors & editors. There will be goodies and door prizes, such as Throne Price and Neo-opsis Magazine. Sunday, November 13, 2005
Thrilled to be notified of the Review of Courtesan Prince by Bobbie DuFault on amazon.com. I've copied the text below.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
One more rant
From a post by myself to the RFF (Readers for the Future) mailing listThe topic here was the lack of innovation in modern Science Fiction as one possible answer to the question "What is Wrong with Sci Fi Publishing?" My response is reproduced below. Since I have all these rants in me, I figure I had better get them out! Better out than in. :-) Bottled up rants are not good for the soul. No heart and soul, I'd say, is a big part of the problem. Maybe that's
Monday, November 07, 2005
Rant (written as post to RFF list)
Speaking of rants, Virginia, here's my latest -- posted to an RFF list in connection with a conversation about why SciFi isn't as popular as fantasy these days. ********** I believe -- and tackle in my own writing -- that the important things for SF to address are no longer techie ones. I purposefully create a universe in which there exists a technology so destructive that those human cultures that survived are the ones in which culture has adapted to restrict human excesses in the area of all-out power struggles. (For better or for worse, in terms of other good things, naturally.) See http://okalrel.org/contest/themes.htm My feeling about "dark" sci fi and its nano-dismal relatives is that we are like junkies looking for another "wow" hit of cool tech or mass destruction. Writers are afraid to be meaningful. To say something as unpopular as "gee, maybe it isn't cool to have an arms race". Or to make human relationships more than a flickering gesture that detracts from the ACTION-ACTION-ACTION. Writers are supposed to be original. But there are rules Sci Fi writers seem to be locked into. Rules like. "break every rule and destroy more of civilization for the kick of it." Maybe we shouldn't just break every rule. We live in a world that is far more permissive than the one in which "rule breakers" became cult heros. We should cultivate more sense of mutual responsibility and common sense survival of the species. And we should let people come away feeling a bit better about being humans beings, despite our limitations and stupidities. The SF Canada site managed by Edward Willett has up a rash of new interviews by and about Canadian science fiction writers. Thursday, November 03, 2005
A blog post that echoes some of Lynda's sentiments - well, her rants - concerning money issues and being a professional author. I love the sentiments Scott has expressed on what being a professional means to him. I wholeheartedly agree. Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Book Two: Righteous Anger - Draft 1
A quick and weary "hurrah!" -- finished first draft of Righteous Anger, the second book in the Okal Rel Universe, last weekend. Some excerpts to whet appetites. (ETA for publication is Summer or Fall of 2006) From the prologue
A Family Outing on Fountain Court
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