Fun and Funny Fantasy Goodness! The Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett

My buddy Justin got me started reading Terry Pratchett's stuff. He let me borrow his copy of The Light Fantastic when we were in high school, and I've enjoyed quite a few Pratchett books since then.

Today's topic is The Thief of Time, a story written in that wonderful period when Pratchett had found a beautiful blend of fantasy and satire, writing stories that were highly creative, mostly standalone, and, above all else, fun.

Better than Expected! Into the Riverlands Review

I really need to remember to put reviews from YouTube up over here... managing multiple sites with different formats is surprisingly easy to screw up!

Setting that aside...

I kind of expected this book to be a demonstration of the unsatisfying path that modern fantasy and science fiction have taken over the last couple of decades. After all, this novella is part of a series that managed to win a Hugo Award, and that whole process has been going downhill for a long time now.

So, it was with a skeptical eye that I began to read Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo. I figured, hey, if it's bad, at least it's short, so why not give it a try?

Deceptively Fun Fantasy! John A. Douglas's "The Black Crown"

I was not impressed with the glossary at the beginning, nor the prologue of this story.

Then, when I got to the third chapter, there was a sudden POV shift and I was terrified!

Would this be another Dragon Wing disaster?

Nevil Shute's On the Beach is a strange story. It's horrifying, depressing, but also fascinating. Taking place a few months after a catastrophic nuclear war that spread a lethal quantity of radioactive cobalt dust through the atmosphere, the book follows the last year or so of five characters living in the south end of Australia, as the deadly cloud slowly makes its way to them.

Boldly Strange Pulp Sci-Fi! Review of "First Lensman"

Another dose of E.E. "Doc" Smith's fun (if a bit dated) pulp science fiction epic! First Lensman was published in 1950, after all of the other Lensman books, yet it sits as number two in chronological order of the story.

The book is about the first contact of mankind (and aliens allied with mankind) with the Arisians, and their receipt of the first Lenses.

Nerding Out over Book Dimensions!

Just some silliness for today. I've been trying to put up one video per day on YouTube, and only some of them are related to writing and fiction.

I'm a little bit behind, but I've got a couple of video book reviews that will soon be posted here. I've gone through First Lensman and On the Beach.

Anyway, today's video about "writing" is actually about the effect that (I think) Amazon print-on-demand is having on the book industry. The old-school 4" x 7" book size seems to be getting less popular, and newer, larger sizes are popping in.

I just did a paperback version of The Chasm of Color, and 5" x 8" was the smallest size they allowed!

At first, I thought maybe it was the market adjusting to people being more used to reading on screens, with their 9x16 aspect ratio (in portrait orientation), but maybe not, after looking at it more closely.

Also worth noting that this video was partly inspired by this episode of The Wordy Pair Podcast.

Okay, This Time It's Actually Released! (The Chasm of Color)

Stupid me, I made a post on Monday that said (New Release!) in the title but I ended up looking over my final draft one more time on Tuesday and found a couple more tiny things to change.

Now, finally, The Chasm of Color is out in e-book form!

I'm trying to figure out Amazon's print on demand stuff, so I'll add posts for the paperback and hardcover versions when they come out.

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