The Great Ordeal–penultimate volume of the Aspect Emperor No-Longer-A-Trilogy, the conclusion of which, The Unholy Consult, was released yesterday–is not only a compelling novel but also very useful as a physical object. A nine-inch by six-inch by three-inch rectangle with the words THE GREAT ORDEAL across the front in an emphatic font is basically the world’s best…
Tag: apocalypses
“The Astrologer’s Telling” up at Daily Science Fiction
…charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low.Ever since I first encountered that nightmare image, from H.P. Lovecraft’s prose-poem “Nyarlathotep,” I have wanted to write a story about the stars going out. A morbid urge? Absolutely. But there’s a certain virtue in morbidity; it makes me thoughtful and perhaps compassionate, if that’s…
List: Everything That Can Go Wrong (a Mix-n-Match Adventure)
Storytelling is problem solving–to have a plot, you need a problem for your characters to confront. Then the plot needs a reason behind it, and you have to make clear what’s at stake if the problem isn’t solved, while having some idea how your characters are going to solve it. Over the weekend I started…
On why I’m dressed as The Doctor in my Facebook profile photo
That’s my personal Facebook profile photo, not the one on my new author’s page–which I’ve recently created upon realizing that, if my only Facebook presence is my goofy personal profile, of course my goofy personal profile will start showing up anywhere Facebook touches. Which is exactly what’s happened. Oh, don’t fret (for that matter, I’m…