carrie vaughn

Book Clubs Are Back, Baby!

~ Shara ~ Leave a comment

I know, I know. I’m the worst about updating (says almost every blogger ever). But quite a few of you followed me to WordPress from my LJ, and back in the heyday at LJ, when I was still posting book reviews, there was a little thing we created together called a book club, and that became quite the popular hang-out every month.

After I closed the book blog down, many of you expressed how much you missed the book club, and while time and circumstances have moved all of us into different stages of our lives, it occurs to me that some of you might jump for joy if that book club came back.

Well, it’s not back, not like it used to be (and not here). But over at Speculative Chic, which has been up and running for over a year now, we started a book club back in August. To date, we’ve read Seanan McGuire’s Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Carrie Vaughn’s Bannerless, and Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It. Currently, we’re reading Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, which we’ll start discussing starting on Black Friday, and in December, our handful of readers have selected Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather.

Right now, we’re voting on January’s read, which is built around the theme of First Contact. The selections are fantastic, and we’re stuck in a tie: Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, Elizabeth Moon’s Remnant Population, and Octavia Butler’s Dawn.

The book club is starting to find its groove, but it really needs to find more readers. As with we did over at Calico Reaction, participating didn’t mean you had to read every month, or that you had to have the book read by the date the discussion post goes live. It’s all very flexible, but we’d love to expand to include more readers, more opinions, and more interpretations of the books that are chosen. And you get to have a say in what we read!

So if you miss the old book club over at LJ’s Calico Reaction, would you please consider hopping over to Speculative Chic and participating as much as you can (even if it’s just for the polls; even if you’re just spreading the word)? Or if you never got to participate at the book club here, but are curious, please, come check us out. Let’s all create something amazing together!

Calico in Conversation: Monsters Are People with J.L. Gribble

~ Shara ~ 3 Comments

Steel Victory Launch 1Welcome to Part Two of Calico In Conversation with J.L. Gribble. If you missed Part One: Boosting Confidence, feel free to click here to catch up!

Editor’s Note: this interview was originally conducted in March through June of 2016.

***

Let’s move on to influences: as writers, we all have them. What do you think influences your writing the most?

There’s never a simple answer to that question! I draw my inspiration from the other media I consume (books, television, movies, graphic novels, role-playing games, etc.), courses I’ve taken in school, and the people I meet around me. But that’s a pretty cliche answer in and of itself, so instead I’ll talk more about the challenges I’ve set for myself in my writing.

My favorite take on the concept of immortality is that presented in the television show Highlander: The Series, where even people who live forever are still people. I wanted to write about paranormal monsters who are also still people first. In addition, my debut novel, the thesis I wrote for graduate school, started out as a reaction to the Twilight craze. I wanted to write about a vampire who can be a romantic creature, but whose story wasn’t necessarily a romance. Thus, the character of Victory, a vampire in a mature, adult relationship, was born. But characters don’t exist in a vacuum, so I gave her a family, friends, and a career. The conflict of the novel was born from taking all of those things away, one by one.

The rest of the Steel Empires series continues along the vein, with other challenges that I decided to set for myself. Steel Magic could be considered a coming of age story for Victory’s daughter, inspired by a class I took in college on the female coming-of-age novel. Book 3, Steel Blood, was deliberately structured around the scenes set by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. And book 4 is going to be a time travel book…because I freaking love time travel stories.

Interesting…. It’s funny, because you’re reminding me of a Tor.com post written by Alex Bledsoe regarding his Eddie LaCrosse series, wherein each book of the series was written in response to a particular THING the author was inspired by or wanted to explore. I can’t begin to explain HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS APPROACH. While I haven’t read Bledsoe’s series (and I’ve only read your first book), I imagine it gives each book a unique approach, despite the characters and the world tying it together into one series. Thoughts?

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Culture Consumption: March 2016

~ Shara ~ 2 Comments

Yes, yes, I know I’m hideously late, but April is a busy month, and my brain didn’t want to compose a blog entry. So it’s well past time, once again, to look at all of the culture I’ve been consuming from the month before. Quite a fun month, I must say, so feel free to join me to look at all the books, comics, movies, and television I finally got under my belt in March!

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A Few of My Favorite Things: Books 2015

~ Shara ~ 4 Comments

I think there’s always a part of me that will miss having a book blog. After putting together December’s Culture Consumption, I started wondering… what WERE my favorite books of 2015? To figure that out, I pulled up my Library Thing account and started sorting by date finished, and then I started looking at the ratings. Anything four stars or higher got written down on the appropriate list: a full five stars are listed as favorites, and four and four-and-a-half stars were honorable mentions.

Why Library Thing instead of Goodreads? Because LT allows for half stars, which means when I’m rating on Goodreads, I might round up or down depending on how I want the rating to look on that site. LT is a more accurate reflection of my thoughts.

I also did not include a few of the fun, children’s type books on the list. I’m a sucker for Jeffrey Brown’s Darth Vader series, and Simon Tofield’s Simon’s Cat books are adorable. So they didn’t get counted.

Before I review my favorites and honorable mentions, I did want to make a few points:

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Culture Consumption: November 2015

~ Shara ~ 2 Comments

December is here, and with it comes holiday madness and the end of the year. It’s hard to believe we’re at the end already, that Thanksgiving is over. I can’t say there’s anything exciting on the horizon for this month, after all: it’s the holiday season. That being said, it’s no excuse not to share what goodies have helped time fly by so quickly, so without further adieu, here is November!

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Culture Consumption: September 2015

~ Shara ~ 8 Comments

Happy October! The year may be flying by, but really, October is my favorite month. Fall arrives, Halloween, and my birthday, all in one month! But before I get too carried away with October, let’s look back and see what kind of goodies I consumed in September, which, for the record, wasn’t a bad month at all! So without further adieu, here is the Culture Consumption for September (spoiler alert: I read lots of books!).

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Culture Consumption: August 2015

~ Shara ~ 8 Comments

September is here. I’m in denial. Not just because the year is passing faster than my poor little human brain can comprehend, but because the end of August brought the end of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal, and I’m so full of FEELS that I can’t focus on much anything else. My brain is happily writing blog posts in honor of the show, to talk about it, the ending, what it means, what the show compares to, and SO MANY THINGS. Whether those posts find life outside of my brain is another story, so in the meantime, here is the Culture Consumption for August.

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New Plan of Attack: Writing Work Days and Beyond!

~ Shara ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t been posting about my writing work days of late. Namely because, in short, I haven’t been writing. I’m not going to list a litany of excuses: I know my mind, I know what’s valid and what isn’t, and I know that some of the time has been spent prepping for actual writing.

But I also have realized that writing one day a week isn’t going to cut it. I need some kind of momentum, even if I’m not writing every day. Today, I came up with a plan of attack:

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Culture Consumption: March 2015

~ Shara ~ 8 Comments

It’s that time again! A very accomplished March, if I do say so myself. 🙂

Books

6) Empire of Dust by Jacey Bedford
7) Pocket Apocalypse by Seanan McGuire
8) Shadow Study by Maria V. Snyder
9) Prudence by Gail Carriger
10) Burn For Me by Ilona Andrews

Short Fiction

1) No Sooner Met by Seanan McGuire
2) Broken Paper Hearts by Seanan McGuire
3) Sun, Stone, Spear by Carrie Vaughn

Comics

Graphic Novels: none

As for individual issues, I read 37 comics, and it would have been fewer had I not started Vertigo’s iZombie series.

Batgirl #40
Batgirl Endgame #1
Black Widow #16
Coffin Hill #16
Descender #1
iZombie #1
iZombie #2
iZombie #3
iZombie #4
iZombie #5
iZombie #6
iZombie #7
iZombie #8
iZombie #9
iZombie #10
iZombie #11
iZombie #12
iZombie #13
iZombie #14
Jem and The Holograms #1
Lazarus #15
Millennium #2
Ms. Marvel #13
Orphan Black #1
S.H.I.E.L.D. #3
Saga #26
Secret Origins #10
Shadow Show #4
Star Wars #3
Star Wars: Darth Vader #2
Star Wars: Darth Vader #3
Star Wars: Princess Leia #1
Star Wars: Princess Leia #2
Supreme Blue Rose #7
The Walking Dead #138
The Walking Dead #139
Wytches #5

Movies

* = repeat viewing

King Arthur *
The Fault in Our Stars
The Running Man
Video Games: The Movie
Young & Beautiful

Television Shows

A note with television: these are the shows I completed in the month of March, not a list of everything on-going that I’m still watching.

Archer Season 5
The Walking Dead Season 5

That’s it from me! Also, feel free to share whatever 2015 stats you’ve got! How many books? How many movies? What were your favorites? Lay them on me!

Cheers!

Con Nooga 2015

~ Shara ~ 4 Comments

This past weekend I attended what I consider my very first convention. If you wanted to me REALLY technical, Con Nooga wasn’t my first: I attended Wizard World Chicago back in 2003, but that was a comic con before comic cons got taken over by television and film. Then in 2006, I attended less than 12 hours of Context in Columbus, Ohio: I wanted to meet Gary Braunbeck and take his workshop, and I also got to meet Catherynne M. Valente and get an autographed copy of Labyrinth.

But in terms of attending a full con and going to panels? Con Nooga was my first. And it was a good, safe con to have as my first: not overwhelming, but more than enough to teach me what I need to do and/or pack for my next convention. I’m already eyeing DragonCon in Atlanta this year. Cherie Priest! Carrie Vaughn! YAY!

So what did I learn? How was Con Nooga? Did I get to meet the magical Seanan McGuire? Talk to the legendary Timothy Zahn? Read on to find out!

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