Writer and Podcaster
April 11, 2015
Hello, readers! I hope you enjoyed our presentation of “The City: A Story in 140 Characters. Here’s some not quite final cover art for the ebook! If all goes well, the ebook will launch on gumroad, smashwords and amazon next weekend! It will include an introduction as well as a preview of the next entry in the “140 Characters” series, “The Voyage!” So stay tuned, let me know what you think of the cover, and above all, thanks for reading!
March 25, 2015
Uncategorized books Leave a comment
So you say you don’t judge a book by it’s author, that you don’t ‘notice’ race, gender, or national identity. Fine. I’m calling your bluff. Below are ten excellent genre books, listed only by their descriptions. Each one is a link to amazon. Some are bestsellers. Some are classics. Some are even *gasp* self-published. But they’re all stories of the highest quality. I challenge you to pick out the one you find most interesting, and read it. If you aren’t afraid to read something that without checking the cover first, that is.
A retelling of the Hades/Persephone myth with Zeus as the villain.
A falsely imprisoned man is consumed by his quest for revenge.
The Son of a Spanish nobleman and a Shoshone woman fights injustice in 18th Century California.
March 23, 2015
Uncategorized 140 Characters, Marcus, The Cat Lady, The City, The Daytrippers, Zombies Leave a comment
Marcus was the first sentry to fall. The roads to the Bay were clogged with abandoned cars, and the zombies were lurking everywhere. They wandered around earlier in the day, but now they hid. They lurked in backseats and under bridges, waiting.
The Cat Lady summoned a small army of her artificial intellegences to scout ahead, but the zombies left them alone. They weren’t alive. Marcus wondered if they were the only living people left in The City.
The one that picked him off had wedged itself underneath a storm grate. When it burst out, he stepped in its path.
December 31, 2014
Earlier this year, I made a pledge to increase my productivity this year, and set some pretty lofty goals. I called this project ‘The Page of Awesome’ and kept track of it in my primary notebook. You can find the original post HERE. I also kept sporadic track of my progress in a little box on the sidebar of this site.
So now that it’s December 31st, it’s time to look over my goals and see how I measured up.
Writing Submissions:
This year I wanted to increase my number of story submissions. I made a goal of one hundred submissions for the year, but end up with only fifty. Of these submissions, I had two published short stories released. “The Montressor Method” to Over My Dead Body Online Magazine, and “The Duke’s Fountain,” to Wicked Words Quarterly. Additionally, I have a third forthcoming sale which I hope to share with you in 2015. While I didn’t meet my goal for this year, I still feel alright with this one. My failure to reach the goal had more to do with a reluctance to perform necessary butt-in-chair editing rather than cold feet at the submission stage, so that is where I need to improve to increase this stat in 2015.
Podcasts:
In 2014, I made a goal to podcast more frequently and more consistently. I made a goal of 50 podcasts, and released 35. So again, this was short of my goal, but I am mostly satisfied with the podcasting work I did this year. I still have a lot of work to do for 2015, including some promised voice work for friends and the completion of “The Dark Wife.” I hope to have a few more surprises as well.
Blog Posts:
I also wanted to release more blog posts. I made a goal of one-hundred posts, and published about 130, including this one. My math might be a bit off. I think the primary reason I was able to meet this goal is the steady release of “The City: A story in 140 Characters,” which began at the end of September and is ongoing.
2014 has been a year of ups and downs, great triumphs and deep tragedies. I’m ending the year with a deep sense of personal gratitude to those who have believed in me and encouraged me throughout the year. I’d particularly like to thank my husband Jeremy for his constant support, and the occasional prod when I needed it. I want to thank everyone in Smoky Writers for welcoming me into the group, and encouraging my twisted sense of humor. I’d like to say thank you to Skinner Co and everybody in The Mob for all of their support and friendship, too. I am, and ever shall be, your bro. And thanks to you for reading.
Tomorrow is the first day of 2015. It’s almost time to make a whole new set of goals. But for now, the snow is white and fresh (where it’s falling) and the sun is setting on 2014. Tonight, pour a drink, think of the good that came out of this year, and toast auld lang sine.
September 23, 2014
Starting next week, I’m going to tray a bit of a literary experiment here on the Blog. Introducing, “The City, A Story in 140 Characters!”
I’ve always liked comic strips, and particularly webcomics as form of short serialized storytelling. I’ve wanted to do one, but I can’t draw worth sour apples. I was blown away by Jake Bible’s novel Dead Mech, and ever since I first listened to the podcast version, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a longer story broken up into 100 word parts. This is my first attempt.
Here’s the twist: Each Drabble is going to focus on a different character, for a total of one-hundred and forty. Can I tell a coherent story broken up into so many viewpoints, in so short a wordcount? Even I don’t know yet, but I can’t wait to find out!
Come back every weekday for a new drabble, a new character, and a new look at the mysterious world of The City!
September 14, 2014
Uncategorized HLP, Hugh Likes Podcasts, Norm Sherman, podcasting, The Drabblecast Leave a comment
Staff: Norm Sherman (Editor in Chief) Nicky Drayden (Managing Editor) Nathan Lee (Submissions Editor) Matthey Bey (Editor at Large) Bo Kaier (Art Director) Tom Baker (Archivist)
The Drabblecast is one of the first fiction podcasts I listened to, and it is still my favorite. Hosted by musician and madman Norm Sherman, The Drabblecast is strange fiction, by strange authors, for strange listeners, such as yourself. They present ‘weird’ stories: horror, science-fiction, and fantasy that you wouldn’t hear anywhere else. While genre fiction is a staple of fiction podcasts, The Drabblecast is instantly recognizable and distinct. This is the place to go to hear stories about reformed zombies and Lovecraftian mythos tales related through passive-aggressive post-it notes. These stories are never what you expect, and they’re always executed with a high degree of artistry and technical skill.
The Drabblecast is named after the drabble, a kind of flash fiction that is exactly one hundred words long. Norm usually opens the show with one sent in by a listener. Drabbles are tricky because a hundred words is just about too long for a joke and too short for a short story. Writing a good one is a balancing act, and so is writing the sort of odd stories that are The Drabblecast’s style.
The show is also notable for its high production values. They produce a variety of narratives, from solo reads to full-cast productions, but Norm and his crew’s distinctive voice and excellent ear for music elevates the work. His skewed sense of humor is icing on the cake.
If you’re looking for a fiction podcast that is a step away from the ordinary, The Drabblecast has a huge archive of stories for your listening pleasure. They recently began a curated best-of feed as well. Check them out at drabblecast.org.
August 25, 2014
Hugh Likes Comics, Review, Uncategorized Akira Toriyama, anime, DBZ, Dragon Ball, Goku, HLC, Hugh Likes Comics, Japan Leave a comment
Hugh Likes Comics: Dragon Ball
Written and Drawn by Akira Toriyama
Published by Viz/Shonen Jump
Although it is a big part of my own path through comics, I haven’t talked about manga in this space. Manga, broadly speaking, refers to Japanese comics, or occasionally comics drawn in a Japanese style. These comics have a visual language all their own, enjoy vast popularity the world over, and one of the best loved of these is “Dragon Ball.”
Spanning over forty volumes, spawning four long-running animated TV shows, a vast collection of movies, and enough merchandize to sink a container ship, Akira Toriyama’s “Dragon Ball” is a full-fledged cultural phenomenon. Originally a goofy, cartoonish Sci-Fi retelling of the Monkey King legend, this is the story of Son Goku, an incredibly strong, perfectly innocent child as he travels with teenage prodigy Bulma to gather the Dragon Balls, seven mystical stones which, when brought together, will grant any one wish. Along the way, he becomes the greatest martial artist in the universe, and saves the world a few times, to boot.
With its beyond epic length, the thing I find really interesting about Dragon Ball is that it so completely documents the evolution of Toriyama as an artist. His style is very round and iconic, and at the beginning of the comic, much more rooted in sophomoric humor. It certainly isn’t what you’d expect from the martial-arts action story it becomes. While Toriyama never completely lets go of his comedic side, the series becomes more and more of an action comic as the tale unfolds, until we reach halfway through and it becomes “Dragon Ball Z.”
With its focus on space adventure and over the top martial arts, DBZ is what got translated first. It appeared in incomplete forms on American and Canadian TV in the 90’s. And I fell in love with it. But now I think I prefer the original stories about Goku’s childhood. The adventures are more fun, more playful, and less reliant on gimmicks and ‘power levels’ to keep the tension high. “Dragon Ball,” by contrast, remains delightful and ridiculous throughout, including a cameo crossover with his earlier work “Dr. Slump,” in which just about every character tries to squeeze into a panel for a fourth-wall breaking cameo.
“Dragon Ball” comic is particularly a comic of its time and place, but like its protagonist, it mixes goofball humor, iconic visual style, and thrilling action in perfect amounts with a perfect garnish of child-like whimsy. Go pick up a copy, and be a kid again for a few hours.
Dragon Ball on Amazon.com (Affiliate Link)
August 23, 2014
Uncategorized movies Leave a comment
The other day I rewatched “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and finally feel comfortable discussing it, even if at this point I’m shouting ‘and another thing’ into the void two weeks after everyone else is on to something else. While I shall do my best to avoid spoilage, there will be some minor spoilers for Guardians, and some major spoilers from earlier summer blockbusters, particularly “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.”
Let me start off by saying I really liked “Guardians.” It’s a well-paced, solidly acted space opera with plenty of witty dialog and gorgeous design work. Let me also say that my opinions are my own, and that if yours differs, that’s totally cool. The things that cause offense are deeply personal and based on life experience, and the things I find troublesome are different than yours. We all have our own buttons.
That being stated, I’m gong to dive right in and examine the state of women in Guardians of the Galaxy. And to that end I took another look at the film with a particular eye towards how the film treated the three female characters with the largest presence: Gamora, Nebula, and Nova Prime. Aside from these three, the Galaxy is still mostly populated by dudes. Nearly all of the Nova Corps dudes. Likewise the Ravagers are mostly dudes. The scene with the Collector and his ‘attendant’ is super gross. The language in this movie is a little sketchy. But it isn’t overtly gendered or sexualized.
Gamora and Nebula are straight up bad-asses. And no one ever calls on them to be more feminine or pats them on the back. There’s never a sense that they need to prove it. There is never a scene where they are portrayed as emotional or irrational, or trying to keep up with the menfolk. In fact, it is quite the opposite, as the irrationally emotional scenes end up getting chewed by Drax and Rocket, respectively.
And while the gravity of the plot seems to pull Gamora towards Quill as a romantic partner, and he does put his goofy, space-pirate bro moves on her, It is telling that they are friends, rather than lovers, at the end of the movie. It is visually implied that they could form a romantic relationship, but they don’t end up kissing, or banging. There is no high-five from the director of the hero getting his ‘reward’ from the princess. Much could be made from the scene at the beginning, where Peter Quill’s one night stand is still aboard his ship because he ‘forgot she was there.’ But that is his starting point, and Gamora’s starting point is being the bagman for Ronan, and looking for the way out. They end with both of them nodding their heads to 70’s pop music. As a sequel to their scene on Knowhere, it signals that both of them have grown, at least a little.
The other major scene for Gamora is the assault of The Dark Aster. As their inside man, it is Gamora who plans the assault, Gamora who fights with her cyborg sister Nebula, and Gamora who shuts down the device preventing the rest of the heroes from saving the day. She’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, not Princess Leia.
But the best context for Gamora as a Female Lead in an action movie is to look at the background radiation of the blockbusters around it. And here, Gamora is leaps and bounds ahead of her colleagues. In “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” Black Widow is a full on bad-ass spy, but she spends most of the film following in Cap’s heels, trying to set him up on dates and listening to him lecture her about how untrustworthy she is.
In “Amazing Spider-Man 2” Gwen Stacy is a brilliant science student with a bright future and a prestigious opportunity to study overseas. This is exactly the kind of role model young women should be getting, but the movie focuses solely on how bad this is for Peter, her on again/off again boyfriend who is obsessed with protecting her from harm. And then (spoiler alert,) she dies at the end of the film so that Spider-Man can have his contractually obligated ‘sobbing in a graveyard’ scene that is in every one of those films.
In “Godzilla” the main character’s wife, both of whom are so bland that I’ve forgotten their names, tells her husband to come home, because she doesn’t know what to do without him. The frail, beautiful woman shatters under pressure without her man to protect her. In spite of the fact that she’s a doctor in a city emergency room, married to a bomb disposal tech who literally just got back from a year of duty the day before, raising a five year old. Somehow, that character should have known how to deal with stress.
And let’s not forget “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” where the terrible, emotional decisions of woman result in the downfall of civilization and require Hugh Jackman to travel back in time to fix. While Jennifer Lawrence gives a great performance, there is a lot of troubling things going on with Mystique in the X-Men movies. She is caught in the middle of the dualistic struggle between Magneto and Xavier, and any notion that she could, or should, have ideas of her own are disregarded. And of course, because of her shape-shifting powers, she is portrayed nude with blue body paint. This might seem as just a tiny bit of fan service, but consider the example of the old Disney cartoons. Pluto and Goofy are both dogs, but the difference between the ‘human’ characters and the dog is that Goofy wears clothes and Pluto wears a collar. Mystique is naked for the whole movie.
Marvel hasn’t done everything right with Guardians. Gamora hasn’t necessarily received her due in the marketing, and there have been issues with Director James Gunn downplaying the involvement of original screenwriter Nicole Pearlman. But Gamora, while not being a final step towards gender equality in action movies, is a hell of a sep in the right direction. She isn’t a woman in a refrigerator. She’s Bill “The Refrigerator” Perry. And that’s pretty heroic in a place as fearful of change as Hollywood.
August 19, 2014
So it’s been a bit of a rough week here at headquarters.
On Friday, my grandmother, Ann Kontos, passed away suddenly at the age of 90. She died suddenly, without pain, surrounded by family. You can read her obituary here. In 2012, she took a very bad fall on her driveway and we thought we would lose her then. But she pulled through, bounced back, and every day from then on was a gift from her. I hope I appreciated them enough. Nothing mattered more to my grandmother than family, particularly her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and nieces and nephews, of which there is a mighty profusion. This weekend, I’ve met a whole busload of relations that I’ve only heard of in her stories, and seen through pictures on her refrigerator. It has been a sorrowful experience letting Grandma go, but it has left me much to think on the nature of family, and love, which filled her long and remarkable life.
Which brings me to Sunday night, when messages began spreading around the podcasting community, very much a second family to me. If you have not heard elsewhere, PG Holyfield, the author of Murder at Avedon Hill and proprietor of Specficmedia.com is in the last stage of a sudden and brief fight with terminal cancer. His friends Chooch and Viv have set up a Go Fund Me drive to help his family defray costs and support his two young daughters. You can find it at gofundme.com/pgfund. PG is a pillar of the podcast fiction community, and an amazingly nice guy. He has been instrumental, more than he could possibly know, in my creative work, and probably the work of many others as well. Go give anything you can. I got to see PG very briefly at Balticon in May. I feel blessed that I got to see him again, even if it was just a brief exchange in a hotel hallway. The unfairness of it all just staggers me.
But like my grandmother, PG surrounded himself with astounding people. In his case, not flesh-and-blood relations, but friends and artists and fellow geeks. This morning at the funeral, my brother said this in his eulogy. “She was a woman who took her gifts, and multiplied them.” This would be just as apt a description for PG. He took his love and he shared it with the world. They were both beacons. The world was a brighter place for their being in it. It is going to be that much darker without them.
But the best we can do is follow their example. Please, give generously to the fund. And gather your family, both biological and non, tell them you love them. They know, but tell them anyway. And share with them. Share stories, share jokes, share joy. Their light is going out of the world, and we need to keep it shining.
July 8, 2014
Erato, the muse of lyric poetry, looked down from on high and furrowed her brow. Something was not right. She plucked at her kithara in agitation. She was dissatisfied. No, more than that, she was BORED. Pentameter was past its prime. Haiku were humdrum. Villanelles were so vaudeville. Limericks were completely lame. It was time for something new, something different. But what? With supernatural sight she peered from her perch on Mount Helicon and searched. Somewhere out there was the next big thing. It had to be challenging, and it had to be short. Drabbles? Now there was an idea.
Hugh J. O'Donnell 