Faster, Author! Kill, kill!
I’m pretty much totally over the Mutant Zombie Death Flu, aside from a really awesome-sounding hacking hobo cough that never fails to scare the cats off my lap.
What I still am is criminally busy, so forgive the somewhat staccato nature of this post.
-If you’re in Tuscon this weekend, you should definitely check out Wild Wild West Con, featuring my fellow steampunk lay-dee Cherie Priest.
-Likewise, if you’re in Seattle, my old stomping grounds, Emerald City ComicCon is going on RIGHT NOW. Lots of fantastic guests and comics folks, like Ed Brubaker, Wil Wheaton and my rad cover artist for Curse of Four, Ben Templesmith. I’ve been to ECCC three years running (until this year, because I moved) and it’s always a good time without the frenetic pace and insane crowds of cons like San Diego or New York.
My weekend, on the other hand, finds me making a pilgrimage to Ikea. Movement is finally happening on the home-improvement front, and I need furniture, a rug and probably some useless thing called a Skruuga that I haven’t discovered I need yet.
The Iron Thorn is still getting love, here and there and everywhere. I’m frankly overwhelmed by the response the book has gotten after only being officially out for a little over a week.
- Colleen Mondor writes a lovely list-type review on her blog Chasing Ray
- Scott Tracey, another YA author and member of The Bookanistas, reviews The Iron Thorn.
- Rambling Bookmarks calls The Iron Thorn “the next Hunger Games“, which is immensely flattering. (Also, a teen reader blog-my favorite!)
- Tynga’s Reviews is featuring The Iron Thorn as part of their Paranormal Spring Break, along with a giveaway.
I asked people on Twitter yesterday what they were working on, and the answers were inspiring (and shaming-so shaming, I ended up knocking out 25 pp of rewrites on Devil’s Business.)
Just for fun, here’s a picture of how my 2011 is shaping up:
- Revised draft of Devil’s Business - March 7
- Revised draft of Iron Codex II - April 1
- 50 pp. proposal of Running With the Devil - April 15 (arbitrary deadline is arbitrary)
- First draft of Iron Codex III - August 1
- Frist draft of Black London 5 - December 1
And lastly, since I know you’re gagging for it, here’s the latest reading:
4. Joe R. Lansdale (ed), Son of Retro Pulp Tales
Some standout short stories (“The Catastrophe Box”, “Quiet Bullets”, “The Crawling Sky”) some stinkers (“The Forgotten Kingdom”, “Lizard Men of Blood River”), but for the most part, exactly the sort of collection you’d expect from the guy responsible for Bubba Ho-Tep.
5. Martin Schenk and Todd Lincoln, The Road to Hell
I got this one at a severe discount from B&N.com and it’s a good thing I did. This was clearly a movie treatment that couldn’t get off the ground (Todd Lincoln’s bio indicates that he’s a filmmaker), and got reborn as a comic. The art is gorgeous, but the story is utterly predictable, nothing on the worldbuilding side is explained (in the grand tradition of slasher movies) and the main character is an asshole, in the unfun way.
DNF. Hack/Slash Omnibus, vol. 1
I tried. It beat me. I loved the premise of this (the “last girl standing” in a horror tale becomes a hunter of “slashers”, undead killers that populate places like Elm Street and Camp Crystal Lake.) I see what the creators were trying to do, but unfortunately it gets bogged down in cheap horror in-jokes, upskirt shots and unrelenting misogyny and homophobia. Good horror has to rise above genre tropes, or at least use them in inventive ways. Hack/Slash is more of a cannibalization of than a tribute to everything I love about horror movies and comics (and Cassie Hack, the heroine, who I’ve seen touted as a feminist character on several comics sites, is whiny, emotionally stunted and inconsistently characterized.) The book fails to rise above cliche, which is a shame, because we need more horror heroines who can kick ass without worrying if boys like them.
Originally published at Caitlin Kittredge.com