Source Article from http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/2013/05/17/photos-from-may-15th-with-kit-reed-daniel-rabuzzi/

Source Article from http://www.matthewkressel.net/2013/05/17/photos-from-may-15th-with-kit-reed-daniel-rabuzzi/

I’m pretty excited about finally getting to see Star Trek Into Darkness tomorrow night. I’ve been dodging internet spoilers like it’s my job, and I’m one of the devout Star Trek fans who really digs J.J. Abrams’ take on the franchise. It doesn’t take a lot to please me: Give me time travel, alternate timelines, and Leonard Nimoy, and I’m a happy geek. (Props to Abrams and Fringe for also delivering on all three!)

I just re-watched the 2009 Abrams film, which (spoiler!) I did like a hell of a lot, and I’m happy to say I still enjoy it. In honor of the release of the new film, here’s my non-spoilery review of Star Trek from way back in 2009, which launched me on my Star Trek Re-Watches at Tor.com and The Viewscreen. In the comments, let me know what you think of the Abrams’ films, but no spoilers on Into Darkness until 10:00 p.m. EST tomorrow night, please.

Star Trek
Directed by J.J. Abrams
Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman

I have a long history with Star Trek. Not as long as some people can claim, and certainly not as long as the franchise’s own history, but I’ve spent roughly half of my relatively brief life on Earth as a con-going, trivia-quoting fan. I’ve seen the good and the bad, and while the series at its best can be mind-blowingly amazing, one can argue that after five television series and ten movies, there are more bad hours of Trek than good.

J.J. Abrams’ new movie definitively tips the balance back to the good side.

More »

Realizing Your Creative Life is having me back for a post on 7 Strategies to Keep Your Artistic Sanity. A lot of these I didn’t realize I did until brainstorming on the G – nothing like musing on “hmmm, what IS my creative process?” to brighten up a sloggy train ride. Which leads to Secret Bonus Strategy #8: wherever you go, particularly into the dark, soul-deadening depths of total boredom – ALWAYS bring a notebook!

Source Article from http://leopardmoon.com/2013/05/08/and-now-some-guest-blogging-on-how-to-not-lose-your-mind/

Small-town misfit Trisha Bell is awakened from her grave by mysterious forces, and there are only two people in the whole world she needs to see: her also-undead greaser boyfriend Sammy, and her still-alive derbygirl best friend Soraya. Sammy joins Trisha in gleefully turning the tables on the small-minded locals, but Soraya is all alone in a town that took its post-9/11 terrorist hysteria out on her family. With gun-toting bullies aiming for her head, Trisha has to be sure her friend is strong enough to handle the panic – while craving a bite of her brains herself.
Have a slice…

***

The first thing I saw was pink satin, bunches and bunches of pink satin, and I raised a fist covered in white lace and rotting flesh and, oh, damn you Mom, damn you, you always took advantage of me when I was at my most vulnerable and you knew the only time you could dress me up like a pretty little princess was when I was DEAD, at my FUNERAL, not the fuck-you blaze I wanted to go out in at all but I couldn’t stop you, could I…I’m really hungry.

I pushed against the coffin lid, shit, for a corpse, I’m pretty strong. Dirt tumbled in but I didn’t need to breathe anymore and I swam up through it, burst through cemetery grass. All around me, other heads twisted and turned in a morbid ocean. Some of them had climbed all the way out and were staggering around the graveyard in tuxedos, pissing formaldehyde through satin gowns. A few more pushes, and I was up there with them.

I looked at my tombstone. Trisha Bell, Beloved Daughter. Yeah, right. Whip up the waterworks, Mom, center of attention, oh what a fucking tragedy.

First order of business: Find Sammy, who would be in here. Then Soraya, who would not. Not yet, anyway.

Sammy. My man. Perpetual cigarette in his heart-shaped mouth, slicking back his hair like a direct descendant of the T-Birds, the world’s most beautiful snarl. Mine all mine.

It happened on Soraya’s first night skating with the Rochdale Rollergirls. Our newest recruit, Number 33, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for DURGAAAAA DESTRUCTIOOOOOON! Soraya in the limelight, making fists and gliding around the rink to Slayer. Cheers from the home side, howls from the Danfield DevilDolls. I was three weeks away from turning eighteen and joining her, after a summer scraping our knees in her driveway, laughing and falling down, gradually streamlining our bodies into fierce, clean speed down her street. She was all business that night, gritting her teeth among her fellow blockers, crowding up the other team’s jammer while ours flew ahead, racking up lap after lap of points and delirious applause. Sammy and I were cruising to the victory afterparty in his Mustang. The top was down, the Black Widows were howling from the stereo as we recounted all the brawls. Life was good. Ahead of us, an SUV full of yahooing fratboys lost control and jerked all over the road. Ka-POW! That’s the last thing I remembered.

I looked down at myself. The first thing that had to go were the puffed sleeves at my shoulders, pure Cinderella, barf. Then, let’s shorten up that hem a bit, shall we? Clawed a hand inside a wad of fabric, ripped myself a nice tattered miniskirt, goth chic. Ran a hand through my hair. The clot that came away was dyed brown. So they’d taken away my skunk stripe, too. Damn them all.

***

Previously only available as a podcast from Well Told Tales, you can now read it all at Tales of the Zombie War.

Source Article from http://leopardmoon.com/2013/05/08/american-nightmare-over-on-tales-of-the-zombie-war/

I have a couple of appearances lined up this month:

May the 4th Be With You
First, if you’re anywhere near Rosemont, PA, come to the Rosemont Book Festival this Saturday, May 4. The first annual book festival at Rosemont College will be held at Connelly Green and in the library with workshops, readings, panels, and signings from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

I will be on a panel about young adult books with fabulous authors Beth Kephart, April Lindner, and Tiffany Schmidt from 11-12, with a signing afterward. Books will be available for purchase at the event courtesy of Children’s Book World. Hope to see you there!

Rare (First!) West Coast Signing
I will be attending the 48th Nebula Awards Weekend later this month, which includes a mass autograph session on Friday, May 17 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the San Jose Hilton, 300 Almaden Blvd, San Jose, CA.

The autograph session is open to the public and Borderland Books will be selling books by the authors in attendance. This will be my first signing on the West Coast!

Source Article from http://ecmyers.net/2013/05/upcoming-events/

Source Article from http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/2013/04/23/kit-reed-daniel-rabuzzi-may-15th/

Source Article from http://www.matthewkressel.net/2013/04/23/kit-reed-daniel-rabuzzi-may-15th/

Source Article from http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/2013/04/23/photos-from-april-17th-with-richard-bowes-alaya-dawn-johnson/

Source Article from http://www.matthewkressel.net/2013/04/23/photos-from-april-17th-with-richard-bowes-alaya-dawn-johnson/

So I have an upcoming guest post for Realizing Your Creative Life that talks about ways to preserve your artistic sanity. Consider today’s post a pre-addendum – watching B-movies.

It can be both creatively helpful and loads of fun to break the notorious block of Flawless Brilliant Craft, Always by watching lots and lots of screamingly entertaining things that…aren’t. Terrible dialogue, gigantic plotholes, tragic hairdos, the utter refusal to let talent or experience or pretty much anything stop these people from getting behind a camera – all of this can serve as a healthy reminder, while in the midst of a manuscript, that it’s OK to let a seam or two show.

There are loads of books roadmapping this dubiously cinematic terrain – Destroy All Movies not only focuses on the punk slice of schlock, but gives in to total compleatist zeal with a meticulous documenting of every punk on film ever, even if it’s just three seconds of a mohawk walking by in the background. Every flavor is covered, from the cynical commentary of Ian MacKaye to the partytime crazy of Lee Ving. Raw documentaries, grimy indie wonders, drive-in cheddarfests of postapocalyptic wastelands or terrorized highschools – all here. I first heard of it from writer Sherilyn Connelly, who, as one of the hosts of Bad Movie Night at San Francisco’s Dark Room Theater, knows a thing or two about godawful films. And does this book ever deliver. It was released a couple years ago and is now going for a pretty penny on Amazon, but if you can get your roommates to chip in, you have a lot of nights of quality MST3King in front of you.

Just like the repurposing of YouTube to share out-of-print vinyl tracks with the world at large, so it goes with movies that never made it past VHS. Here are a few new favorites that DAM has turned me on to – the DMCA Whack-a-Mole force means a short lifespan on full uploads, so I’m linking to just the trailers.

Dead End Drive In: When the show is over, there is no way out! An Australian twist on Mad Max dystopia, which now kind of looks like Burning Man if it were mean and wearing a lot more makeup.

Liquid Sky: A New Wave indie gem where the lead plays both male and female roles, and is stunning in both. High fashion and futuristic technologies are elements that one tends to associate with a high budget – the filmmakers didn’t, and their persistence has left us with a hypnotic mishmosh of aliens, gender, art, drugs, and beauty, set to the bleeps and bloops of primitive synths.

Savage Streets: Linda Blair is the star of this teen-revenge flick, clad in 80′s black and total attitude, her performance a storm of GIF fodder. Trigger warning for the gang rape that dips the plot towards grindhouse – fortunately this is not Mother-of-God-when-will-this-END I Spit On Your Grave and most of the running time is devoted to Blair being a total badass.

Joysticks: The phalanx of punks on mini scooters – and Destroy‘s glowing review – convinced me to give what looks like a Porky’s ripoff a chance. It ended up quite unexpectedly hilarious in that zany 80′s save-the-orphanage way, except this time it’s an arcade that’s being saved, and carries on in a reality very similar to Rock’n’Roll High School. Major kudos to Jon Gries and Corinne Bohrer for getting me to enjoy two Hollywood stereotypes I usually can’t stand – punk thugs and Valley Girls.

Black Roses: I haven’t seen this yet, but this clip landed it in my Must-Watch queue. See, white dusters + ballads = Good, Safe Rock’Roll. Tight black monoleather pants (and really, what else) = Cheesy Yet Totally Evil Hair Metal. Note Carmine Appice on drums! Watch out, Sacrifyx!

Speaking of which: Mike McPadden has written the metal version of Destroy All Movies – it is called Heavy Metal Movies: From Anvil to Zardoz, the 666 Most Headbanging Movies of All Time and it is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

Source Article from http://leopardmoon.com/2013/04/21/navigating-the-punk-rock-underbelly-of-youtube/

I’m happy to announce that Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com have “Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War” up for preorder, which includes my story “Spectral Drums”.

The full table of contents, which includes many authors I proud to be published with, is below:

“Raw Recruits” by Will Ludwigsen
“The Swell of the Cicadas” by Tenea D. Johnson
“Bad Penny” by Carrie Laben
“Spectral Drums” by Devin Poore
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce
“Ten Thousand Miles” by Connie Wilkins
“No More Amongst the Cities of the Earth” by Christopher M. Cevasco
The Country House” by Jameson Currier
“An Unclean Thing” by Cindy Potts
“The Blank Flag of Arthur Kerry” by Kristopher Reisz
“Three Silent Things” by John F. D. Taff
“Across Hickman’s Bridge to Home” by Russell Davis
“Mistress” by Jennifer R. Povey
“Tommy Cleburne” by Jeff Mann
“The Overseer” by Albert E. Cowdrey
“Red Animal” by Ed Kurtz
“Proving Up” by Caren Gussoff
“Vermont Muster” by Nick Mamatas
“Like Quicksilver for Gold” by Chaz Brenchley
“The Beatification of Custer Poe” by Laird Barron
“The Arabella” by Melissa Scott
“The Third Nation” by Lee Hoffman

Source Article from http://www.devinjpoore.com/blog/?p=1175

As I mentioned in my post this week at the League of Extraordinary Writers, today is World Amateur Radio Day. I hope all you hammies are taking to the airwaves and celebrating in style! The Kim family’s old ham radio ended up being a much bigger plot point in Quantum Coin than I’d originally planned, and I think the novel was better for it.

April 18 also marks the 75th anniversary (observed) of Superman, my favorite superhero. He first appeared in Action Comics #1, which bears the date June 1938 on its iconic cover. All these years, I’d thought that was the month the magazine was published, but that’s actually the “sell by” date–when it was supposed to be taken off the newsstands. Find out more about the history of it at Bleeding Cool.

Superman was such an important, formative part of my childhood, it’s very likely that I wouldn’t be the person I am today if he didn’t exist. Growing up without a father, I think Superman sort of became a role model for me and helped provide some of the moral guidance that I needed to become a decent human being.

I wrote about what Superman means to me in a very personal letter that originally appeared in a collection called Talking Back: Epistolary Fantasies (ed. L. Timmel Duchamp, Aqueduct Press, 2006). Writer/Editor Cat Rambo was kind enough to reprint it in Fantasy Magazine three years later, and it’s still online, so if you have a couple of minutes, please feel free to check out “Dear Superman.”

And to bring it all together, I snuck a quote from one of my favorite films, Superman: The Movie (1978), into Quantum Coin. I didn’t expect anyone to notice, but if you’re a fan of the film, see if you can spot it on pages 265-66!

Source Article from http://ecmyers.net/2013/04/celebrating-two-great-things-today/