My lovely and delightful author friend Melissa McTernan was one of my early readers for Ballad for Jasmine Town, and said recently that she found herself still occasionally thinking about the book, months later. Which to me is such a high compliment! And it has led me to ponder: what is it that makes a story, be it book or show or film, stick in ( Read more... )

If you're reading this, congratulations! For seriously, getting through every last day of 2021 calls for a triumphant toast, even it it feels like all you have to show for surviving the year is a heap of empty cheese puff bags. (I honestly ordered my family a case of twelve bags of Barbara's Cheese Puffs as part of our Christmas celebrations, so, ( Read more... )

Ordinarily I’m not one of those people who leaves really long Amazon reviews. But for The Untamed there’s not really anywhere else notable to leave one, and it deserves one! So here is what I posted. Let’s hope Amazon approves it. If not, it's here, anyway.

Short review:

YES, WATCH THIS SHOW! I’m picky about shows. I don’t enter into obsessive ( Read more... )

Magic systems in fantasy! They are not all alike, as you know, but here's one of the ways to categorize them: a spectrum between "soft" and "hard" magic. Hard magic systems have defined rules on how they work, and the reader is told what they are-e.g., the four element types of bending in Avatar: the Last Airbender have certain basic limits, which ( Read more... )

Inspired by this episode of the Writing Excuses podcast, in which a legal expert discussed what writers get wrong about the law, I recently asked on my e-newsletter: "Those of you with legal know-how: what bugs you that fiction (books, TV, etc.) keeps getting wrong when it comes to law? Or do you let it all slide in the name of entertainment?"

My ( Read more... )

Netflixing and enjoying lately: Versailles. I don't know my Louis XIV era history well enough, but I'm suspecting this is rather more historical fanfic than actual history. Even so, it's got all the intrigue and gorgeous costuming and insane sex and dreadful slaughtering you'd expect. So, it's a good time. Kind of like a slightly lighter Game of ( Read more... )

It’s been easy for everyone to bemoan how much 2016 sucked. I don’t need to rehash the more traumatizing parts of the news for you.

Instead I’m going to write a post of things that were good in 2016. For me, at least.

Of my novel-writing projects:
Immortal’s Spring was released in June, and wrapped up my Persephone-myth-based trilogy. By that ( Read more... )

I have finally caught up to the rest of the Netflixing world and watched “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.” I give it a B on the whole. It rarely hit the perfection of the best Gilmore Girls episodes of the past, and often felt aimless (much like its characters’ lives right now), but it had its thoroughly charming moments and ended strong. Well, ( Read more... )

I see that the small class size of Hogwarts is a trending topic lately. The "Voldemort-era anti-baby-boom" explanation as shown there on Buzzfeed may actually make some sense. But on the whole I'd attribute the small-ish cast to a trope you see a lot in fantasy, sci-fi, and other works involving extensive world-building. As far as I can tell, TV ( Read more... )

"On a scale of 1 to Once Upon a Time, how much does your retelling deviate from the original story/myth/legend?”
- a thing I often think when watching OUAT.

I've just started season 3, and actually I really enjoy it, but man do they mash up everything with zany, no-holds-barred glee. Red IS the wolf!, and Rumplestiltskin is the Beast!, and by the ( Read more... )