Centipede Press's collected R A Lafferty titles

The Man Who Made Models

The Man with the Aura

A critical component of Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy passed away.

This is nerdism cubed. Leonard Nimoy, actor of Star Trek, sings of Bilbo Baggins. The ladies have matching Sweatshirts, Spock ears and a little dance to go along with the lyrics. It has the feel of something dreamed up in an afternoon after smoking an illegal substance.

Here, Leonard Nimoy reads classic Ray Bradbury.

To MFA or not to MFA

Things I Can Say About MFA Writing Programs Now That I No Longer Teach in One by Ryan Boudinot

Chuck Windig responds.

I sense some bitterness in Boudinot.

Review: How to Succeed in Hollywood without really Acting: Practical inspirational insider secrets to achieving your potential

How to Succeed in Hollywood without really Acting
Inspirational Insider Secrets to Achieving your Potential
Peter Skagen
Poubelle Publishing

When I grabbed this book, it was titled "Story and Craft" and promised to talk about writing as well as acting. The new title is catchier if potentially more controversial, no doubt. But it lives up to most of its promises. It promises "insider secrets" that are both inspirational and practical. It delivers with the kind of advice I prefer: no-nonsense, straight talk.

One example was to be who you are, who you look like. It would seem terrible to be typecast, but Skagen celebrates it. That's your look, what you're good at. Just develop it. My instinct would mirror the actor who says, "I'm an actor. I should be able to do any role." He suggests to revel in the roles that look right. It got me to pondering the writer's role, the typecasting that goes on when a writer writes one kind of material yet finds roadblocks when he tries to write another. Maybe we don't have to be trapped in one type of writing yet celebrate what people love about our work. I'm thinking of, say, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle trying to get out of writing about Sherlock Holmes, for instance.

What I wanted to see in this volume was writing from an actor's perspective. While his thoughts on scriptwriting shed no new light, his analysis of a brief segment of a script should enlighten writers. Actors have to gather character emotions, subtext, and background even from an excerpt. An actor (or reader) should ferret out motives, making it easier for actors to memorize lines. How many writers can claim that ability? It was a fascinating process, worth studying in depth.

Most of the advice, though, is for the actor. Once he laid out the reasoning, it seemed common sense. One would do well to apply his advice on jobs and in interviews. The acting world has developed its own culture with its own customs that outsiders wanting to take part in will have to learn. Should you shake hands with people you meet? How do you react to your competitors? How do you react if the person you're reading with shows no emotion at all? Skagen sketches out specific scenarios that can throw off your acting game and how to avoid them.

Although it is a book bent on guiding the actor through auditions and behavior on the set, writers will have much to glean from here. If you're looking to write about actors and/or Hollywood, one could do worse than to start here, with good and bad examples of actor types. Actors, though, will want to study this book, reading and rereading.

Free, video series, sales, and bundles

SF Black History Month (not all are on sale)

Subterranean Press book bundle

***

The Man in the High Castle 
by Philip K. Dick 
$2.99

Also a new video series coming out of Amazon.

***

FREE

Neuro Linguistic Programming: Improve Communication, Personal Development and Psychotherapy [NLP, Emotional Intelligence, IQ] (positive intelligence, positive affirmation, personal transformation) 
by Thomas Abreu
I cannot vouch for info

Cake 
by Kevin G. Bufton

***

The Best Horror of the Year Volume 1 
Datlow, Ellen 
$1.99

Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living 
by Paul Collins 
$1.99 
One of the better Poe biographies I've read

Oz Reimagined: 
New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond 
edited by John Joseph Adams 
$1.99 

Mistborn: The Final Empire 
Brandon Sanderson 
$2.99

"The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family" by Usman T. Malik

First appeared in Qualia Nous. I believe it will be reprinted by Rich Horton. Online.

Summary:

Tara Khan loses her brother, Sohail, to revenge himself on those who took his love.  Meanwhile, Tara loses the last of her family, her mother, so that she is seen as a seductress and troublemaker to the villagers. She leaves to educate herself. When terrorists attack the City, she goes off to find the Monster: Annunaki.

Discussion:

The story's successes are its title, metaphors, turns of phrases, prose, and a beautiful structure, mirroring a family's dissolution to both the states of matter and the state of the nation. Some phrases, though, need work: Mostly abstractions trying to be concrete and metaphors that don't quite work:

"She shuddered at the thought," 

"leprous grins" 

"Kites and vultures unzipped the darkness above in circles" 

"It impaled her with its familiarity and a dreadful suspicion grew in her that the beast was rage and wore a face she knew well."

Primarily, though, Tara outside much of the action, outside the heart of the story. If we don't experience critical events, it's harder to feel what we're meant to feel at the tale's climax.

No doubt these habits will disappear as Malik grows as a writer.  We do see much skill in rendering a culture uncommon to the genre and a loving care for his prose and characters. One looks forward to Malik's bright future as a writer.

A discussion of his earlier story, "Resurrection Points", can be found here. Both stories admirably treat the problematic issue of violence within a culture.

Free e-mags from Penumbra

Second-year issues are free,
as are the first-year.