Friday Fun: David Quammen

I want to be David Quammen when I grow up. He’s a professional writer who spent most of his life getting paid by magazines like National Geographic and Outside to go on adventures and write about them. He’s written about crows in Seattle, corpse fruit in the Pacific and hiking through the Congolese jungle.

More recently, he finished a fun and compelling biography of Charles Darwin.

Here we have him addressing Case Western University as part of the Darwin Year lecture series. It’s longer, but worth it. The man is as engaging a speaker as he is a writer.

Friday Fun: DM Of the Rings

I heard about Shamus Young during an interview with podcast Fear the Boot, and checked out his webcomic DM of the Rings the following morning. Six hours later, I had to bang out a few mission-critical tasks in a blind panic because I’d lost the day to his hilarious work.

The comic takes screen shots from the popular trilogy of movies, and adds dialog balloons to make it seem like a Dungeons and Dragons game in progress. Full of geek puns, gaming humor and light jabs at some of the goofiest parts of the classic story. Check out panel one:

If you love this, read the rest. If not, it’s likely somebody’ else’s style.  If you really love it, you can move on to Darths and Droids, the same thing…but with Star Wars.

Enjoy.

Friday Fun: Beat the Reaper

Published in 2009, Josh Bazell’s first novel is some of the most fun I’ve had with fiction this decade. It’s popcorn fiction — nothing deep or philosophically challenging, just a good adventure yarn.

It has a few things to teach budding writers. The structure builds and maintains suspense. The prose is engaging and distinctive. Better still from a professional standpoint, the website for the book is very, very clever.

Click here for the website, and click “Excerpt” for print and audio samples from the book.  Be sure to check out the games and video trailer. These are great ideas for promoting our own work in a memorable way.

Warning. Beat the Reaper is not for children, not work safe and not for the easily offended. By the end of the excerpt, you will have been exposed to grossly vulgar language, casual sex, explicit violence, drug use and “fact” about the medical profession that will make you cringe every time you see a hospital for the rest of your life.

Not for the faint of heart, but wow is it fun.

Thanks for listening

Friday Fun: Dialog Interview

I’ve mentioned Writing Excuses — a podcast hosted by successful professional fiction authors about the craft and profession of writing. If you’re not listening regularly, you should be. A few weeks back, they interviewed the epically talented John Scalzi  to talk about one of his best things: dialog.

Listen here: Writing_Excuses_5_38_Dialog.mp3

I especially like the notion that dialog isn’t written the way people talk. If it was it would be filled with “ums” and all the stuff we actually say, instead of what we wish we had said when we get home.  I’d love your thoughts as well.

Enjoy, and thanks for listening.

 

 

 

 

Friday Fun: Epic Win

You can find hundreds of products, workshops and books about setting and reaching your goals — but I thought I’d wrap up the week with one of my favorite concepts. I don’t use it myself, but I like how it turns our weaknesses and temptation into part of the solution.

Check it out

Friday Fun: Folsom’s 93

Alert readers might recognize April Moore’s name from the comments on this very blog. She’s another writer — and illustrator — and occasionally stops in to drop her two cents into our wishing well.

April has finished a novel, and you can find her short fiction and art here and there. One of her darker — and more fascinating — projects is her blog. Folsom’s 93 is an episodic history of the men executed at Folsom prison. Some of the stories are gratifying accounts of society doing what it must to punish unthinkable crimes. Others are sadder, tales of undereducated men caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. All of them are interesting, and told with a professional’s turn of phrase. Moore takes time along the way to tell us about other facets of life in Folsom, ranging from details of daily prison life to a discussion of a newly introduced parole system.

This is a well-done blog on a fascinating topic, and deserves a look. Find the front page here, then browse around. You’ll be glad you did.

Thanks for listening.

Friday Fun: Wings of Defeat — Another Journey

Some writers choose fiction. Others, nonfictions. Others do ad copy, scripts or humor. Another kind of writer does documentaries, working with words, sound and image to create compelling films. Risa Morimoto is one of these writers. Her award-winning Wings of Defeat chronicles the story of kamikaze pilots during WWII.

Filming this documentary, Risa interviewed several survivors of kamikaze attacks. This included Fred Mitchell and Gene Brick, two sailors on the USS Drexler — a destroyer sunk by kamikaze on picket duty between mainland Japan and Okinawa.

By an amazing set of circumstances, Fred and Gene were invited to Japan to take part in the events surrounding the release of Wings of Defeat. They met with survivors of the kamikaze corps, drank sake and visited several cities. It’s a story of forgiveness and peacemaking that can literally bring a tear to my eye. Here’s a snippet of Another Journey, Risa’s documentary of that part of the story.

If I’d written this story, it would have been rejected as too unrealistic. As a side note, Gene Brick is my grandfather. I’m rather proud of him for having the courage and kindness to do this.

Thanks for listening.