Just a quick heads up, while dinner is being prepared, and I read a wonderful book called Why we love pirates, by Rebecca Simon, PhD – which is a story of piracy on the high seas, and matters related. The perfect Christmas read.
And in case you are interested, you can get this book – and a ton of other fun titles you’d probably missed (including a great book about anime, one about recycling old tech and one about… hamburgers), in the latest Humble Bundle. Little more than ten bucks will keep you in quirky reads for months, and part of the proceeds go for a charity. It’s Christmas, after all.
Today three stories of mine were rejected. Rejection is part of the game, of course, and as the end of the year is drawing close, a lot of editors are clearing their desks – as a consequence, a lot of rejection slips are mailed at the same time.
Anyway, I decided to give myself a little gift as a pick-me-up – a way to keep the disappointment at bay. And while I was browsing Amazon, the Almighty Algorithm informed me of the availability of the digital edition of Mark Schultz’s complete Xenozoic Tales, for the price of a cappuccino. And I have the Paperback of the Tales here on my shelf but, well, why not? After all, Mark Schultz is one of my favorite artists, and the Xenozoic Tales are part of my life growing up. Cadillacs and dinosaurs, and all that. I also thought I’d check out this digital edition, and then maybe give away a few copies as last-minute gifts to my friends.
Imagine my disappointment when, when finally my reader managed to open the ebook, I found out this is a pirate copy, patched together with very low quality scans. An ugly rip-off. So, I had to return the ebook, and ask for a refund, and then I sent a note to Amazon, informing them they are selling a pirate ebook, ripping-off the artist and the reader.
And this is not the first time it happens – in the last ten days I had to ask for refunds for two other ebooks, because they were not what the Amazon page was advertising.
It’s funny, in a very sad way: self-publishing should have freed us of the tyranny of the gatekeepers, and should have turned the whole process into a Darwinian selection that would award quality and contents; it turns out scammers and thieves are taking advantage of it instead.
A pity – especially for my friends, that will not get a copy of Schultz’ cadillacs and dinosaurs adventures anytime soon.
Sometimes we chance on a book we wish we had been smart enough to write ourselves. It’s the case of this weekend’s fun read, Gary Gibson’s Devil’s Road, a fast and entertaining science fiction novella that’s well worth the 3 bucks price tag. A class act from the cover on, Gibson’s story was just what I needed to take my brain off the recent worries.
In a plot that we could describe as a crossover between Fast & Furious and Pacific Rim, we Follow Dutch McGuire, a tough, no-nonsense race driver that’s freed from the Russian prison in which she’s serving time, to drive in a Death Race-like tournament. Years ago, a rift opened on an island in the South China Sea (Taiwan with the number plates changed) and a horde of kaijus descended on the land. Now the place is cordoned off by warships and is the seat of a yearly race, the prize five million dollars for the winner, plus all the revenue they can make from filming what they encountered along the track.
But Dutch, whose family were refugees from the island, is not here to win the race – the people that freed her from prison, are using the race as a way to get on the island, and retrieve a mysterious mcguffin.
The writing is crisp, the dialogue crackles with energy, and the setting is intriguing. Dutch is a great character, and the action harks back to the sort of anime I used to watch as a kid – and I mean this as a compliment. All in all, a highly recommended little book.
One week ago I posted about Devin Matson’s In Shadows We Fall, a fantasy novella that acts as a prequel to the author’s other works. And I said it’s very good. How good, you ask? Good enough for me to go and buy Madson’s We Ride the Storm.
Well, actually I had been keeping an eye on this book because of the cover, filled with horses and sabres, that reminded me of certain old works by Harold Lamb. The novella (that, incidentally, you can read for free if you subscribe to Madson’s seasonal mailing list on her blog) was for me a way to try the waters, so to speak, before diving in. But now I’m quite happy to jump in.
We’re snowbound – this morning my brother walked through the snow to the post office only to be told that all the systems were down because, you know, snow. Snow equals no internet services. No post office, no bank. So we inventoried our supplies, decided we can hold on, and set out to see how we’ll spend the next weeks. Cold. Snow. Soft lockdown. The village looking like a ghost-town.
It was on the first of December 1887, in Beaton’s Christmas Annual, that Sherlock Holmes made his debut with A Study in Scarlet, changing the history of popular literature forever.
I will refrain from talking about how Holmes was a central character in the building of my growth as a reader, as you can probably find other Holmes-related posts linked below through WordPress’ handy algorithm. To celebrate the birthday, anyway, and to start the Christmas season in the right mood, here’s the BBC 1968 adaptation of A Study in Scarlet, featuring Peter Cushing as Holmes. Enjoy!
After too many weeks during which writing had felt like a lost art to me, writing a 3000-words historical article in one afternoon was a great way to clean the rust off the engines, and show I can still do it, and it’s fun. So while new projects shift and move around, I decided to celebrate my renewed energies, and bought myself an ebook.
One of the best things of the last few years is the increasing number of fantasies being published that break away from the standard European model, roughly Tolkienesque or Howardian, and choose an Eastern setting.
And I will not be the one that complains – first, because as an Orientalist Anonymous, I have always loved Eastern fantasies and have written some myself (and I hope to write more), but also, variety is always a sign of good health – and if the field is in good health, we have all reason to be happy.
Karavansara 