Here are some shiny things that caught my eye recently:
♦ The Horns of Elfland.
Does anyone else remember and love “Downtown” by Petula Clark as much as I do? Well, you’re in for a treat because, even if you have no idea who the 80-year-old Petula Clark is, her new single “Cut Copy Me” is fantastic. And, yes, I’m currently obsessed with it.
“The Bed Song,” the latest single from Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra, is a wonderfully sad song with a pretty amazing video:
I bring you down and then bring you back up. Prepare to be entertained, folks: the new single from RuPaul (love. her.), “Peanut Butter,” featuring Big Freedia, is super-fun, wild, wacky, addictive stuff. Warning: the jelly-shaking in this video is serious. Please note the italics. Do not watch if you’re not ready for this jelly.
♦ Someone’s in the Kitchen.
I would totally eat Kafka’s lemon drizzle cake. Just because.
Learning how to make vegan red velvet cupcakes has never been more cute. I’d watch Petey Rojas make anything. As my friend Emily would say, I just want to squeeze his cheeks, he’s so ridiculously adorable. Via.
Trend alert! Spider-Man hiding on wedding cakes has apparently become a thing.
The Mary Sue shared this great Star Wars-themed wedding cake. Each tier is significant:
Each tier of depicts a different scene: The bottom is Luke on Tatooine in a A New Hope (the groom’s been to that filming location), the middle is Leia meeting Wicket in Return of the Jedi(the bride’s been to that filming location), and the top is the wedding of Anakin and Padme in Attack of the Clones (they want to visit that filming location together). Visit That’s Nerdalicious for detail shots.
♦ The Writing Desk.
Over at Cathy Day’s Literary Citizenship blog, check out The English Major’s Dream Job: Book Reviewing Advice from David Walton. A pie graph is included!
Decluttering for Writers (and Other Writerly Chores)—good advice from Elizabeth Spann Craig.
Joe Hill has two thoughts about writing a novel, and they’re good ones. Via.
Storyville: Breaking Hearts: “Chuck Palahniuk once said about fiction, ‘Teach me something, make me laugh, and then break my heart.’ It’s good advice. While I don’t always make my readers laugh, you could probably insert ‘scare me to death’ and get a similar result. How do you get your audience to have a visceral reaction to your stories, how do you get them to feel the power of the thoughts, emotions and histories of your characters on the page? It’s not easy, but here are a few tips, some ways to engage your readers.” Conversely, here are six ways to fall in love with writing.
From Mary Robinette Kowal’s My Favorite Bit series: Myke Cole talks about Fortress Frontier and Marie Brennan talks about A Natural History of Dragons.
Paperless Writer: Five Steps to a Successful Digital Rewrite. If you want to cut down on your paper usage when you revise, this article’s for you.
Pablo Neruda’s body to be exhumed in Chile.
Rachelle Gardner has 8 ways to be a happy author. Excellent advice, though sometimes easier said than done. Still worth taping over your writing desk and referring to often. Gardner also gives some practical answers to the question, Who should read your unpublished work?
This helpful guide from Scribner Books made me laugh. Via.
Chuck Wendig has 25 things you should know about narrative point-of-view. He also reveals the hardest writerly truth of them all.
Barbara Hurd on The Mind in Winter.
My friend Michaela Roessner wrote a great piece about Misdirection: The Breadcrumbs that Lead Us Fortuitously Away on the WSCU MFA Fiction blog.
Ari Marmell on things they don’t tell you when you’re learning to write.
Karen Lord, a Barbadian author, on being a Writer from an Other Culture.
Write, Write, Write: The Pressure to be Productive, a great essay by my friend Zachary Jernigan.
If you love Lisa Simpson, GIFs, and being a writer, do check out this post on The Lisa Simpson Book Club.
♦ The Ninth Art.
I love the thorough rationalization here.
Pretty great news, as I’ve been wanting to see Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines, a documentary by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, for quite a while now. PBS will air the documentary on April 15 during the Independent Lens series. Here’s a brief description and the trailer:
Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines traces the fascinating evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman. From the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s to the blockbusters of today, popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation. Go behind the scenes with Lynda Carter, Lindsay Wagner, comic writers and artists, and feminist figures such as Gloria Steinem, Kathleen Hanna and others, who offer a counterpoint to the male-dominated superhero genre.
I really love Cliff Chiang’s art, but never more so than this image of the DC power couple Wonder Woman and Superman he posted on his tumblr for Valentine’s Day. Via.
And here’s the image Chiang’s poking fun at (or one of the images):
Continuing The Sandman Reread, Tim Callahan talks about A Game of You, which made me love cuckoos and Thessalian witches.
These cover images for two upcoming Marvel comics really make me happy! Via.
The Fearless Defenders #4 cover by Mark Brooks
Thunderbolts #9 cover by Julian Totino Tedesco
Some great previews of upcoming comic books or graphic novels for your pleasure: Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers, Constantine #1 by Jeff Lemire, Ray Fawkes, and Renato Guedes (given how much I love Hellblazer, I’m not sure how much I’m going to like Constantine, but I trust Lemire, so…), and Supergirl #17 (’cause Wonder Woman’s in it, yo).
♦ Jim Kazanjian‘s landscapes appeal to my love of assembled art (he digitally assembles his photographs from a variety of sources) as well as my natural inclination towards the “wild and gloomy.” Via.
Untitled (Chateau) 2011 by Jim Kazanjian
Untitled (Exterior) 2010 by Jim Kazanjian
♦ Sad news, Laura: Regretsy closed down, and Wired.Co.UK interviewed April Winchell about it (she also wraps it up on the website). At least we’ll have the archives.
♦ She Blinded Me … with Science!
Astronomy: Why are black holes so bright?
Entomology: True Facts about the Mantis
Neuroscience/Psychology: I’m Elyn Saks and this is what it’s like to live with schizophrenia (it’s fascinating).
Nutrition: The worst lies that mainstream nutrition has told you (ymmv, of course).
Psychology: How do you get someone to lose interest in their hobby? Pay them to do it.
♦ The Book Nook.
I really like this bookshelf and its nooks & crannies a lot. I might even be in love with it. Via.
The biggest news in book covers last week was the reveal of new cover art for the paperback versions of the Harry Potter books to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Kazu Kibuishi is the illustrator, and I must say I do like the new cover (click to embiggen):
Of related interest: Flavorwire asks, Are these fan-made Harry Potter covers better than the new redesign? (there are some fun designs here).
Peter Damien sings A Love Song for Dead Tree Books.
Notes from a Bookshop: February, or the Folly of Love by Kelly McMasters at The Paris Review Daily. Via.
Neil Gaiman revealed two new covers for upcoming books that make this reader very happy: first is the cover of the U.S. edition of Fortunately, the Milk by Skottie Young:
Second is the cover for the U.K. edition of The Ocean at the End of the Lane:
From Book Mania!: “Interior designer Matthew White’s library gallery, located in the upper level of his living room. (Photo by Art Gray)” I particularly like the arches and the book stand.
Thomas Wightman is a graphic designer from Edinburgh, and his book sculpture Plagued by Doubt is really amazing. Here’s his description of it:
This is the second of my book sculptures for my final-year project. It uses a visual metaphor to convey the emotions of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and embodies my research by visualising an expression used by a sufferer of OCD. The expression was ‘plagued by doubt’, because the person repetitively sought reassurance and kept checking things.
I wanted to convey this idea by making a plague of insects. I decided on moths because I wanted to suggest that the book has been hidden and left, and the moths have eaten away at the pages of the book. This shows that if you don’t see treatment for OCD, it can become both physically and mentally damaging.
Also, typography was used to show the idea that these moths have made a nest within the book—representative of the fact that OCD is usually with a person for life. It lives within and is not noticed until the book is opened, releasing the moths and solving the problem to demonstrate that with proper help, OCD can be treated.
Plagued by Doubt by Thomas Wightman
Plagued by Doubt (detail) by Thomas Wightman
Check out the link at his name for more of his work. Via.
♦ Turn the Page.
Prepare to have your visual-intake orbs satisfied in a way you never had the guts to satisfy them before:
Hungry by yours truly (in case you missed my post about it last week) at Daily Science Fiction
Unremembered (excerpt) by Jessica Brody at Tor.com
Edward & Amelia vs. The Vampire King, Chapter Twelve: Network by Russell Hinson
The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (excerpt) by Charles de Lint and Charles Vess at Tor.com.
Wildness and Wet by Lee Hallison at Daily Science Fiction
Flax-golden tales: On the Beach in Purgatory by Erin Morgenstern
Mirror Image by Peter M. Wood at Daily Science Fiction
The Different Girl (excerpt) by Gordon Dahlquist at Tor.com
The Winter 2013 issue of Goblin Fruit is now live—go savor some wonderful poems
The Time Travel Device by James Van Pelt at Daily Science Fiction
The Alphabet of Harry Potter by zombie Paul Kirsch
A Phone, My Heart, and Maybe My Last Shred of Dignity by Luc Reid at Daily Science Fiction
Cabinet des Fées: A Journal of Fairy Tales has a new issue out, featuring some great work on fairy tales (reviews, analyses, and an original fairy tale).
Will Ludwigsen in search of … the story that made him weird.
I had a good laugh at this Wondermark cartoon, “In which the Past is conformed”:
