Friday Five: What Fortune Love May Bring Edition

Wotcha all. There’s something about this time of year that makes you think about where all the time has gone. Maybe it’s all the darkness, or listening to too much Dead Can Dance. Maybe it’s the considering whether to buy a gift for a kid as old as your marriage. And all that. Or maybe it’s anticipation of the future. Speaking of such things, I’ve got a lot of things for you to look forward to, so let’s get cracking.

1. Blog of the week is Fantasy Book Nerd, who’s not just been a tireless champion of authors (check reviews for Mark De Jager’s Firesky or Ben Galley’s Forever King), but is now a tireless champion of bloggers and reviewers with his outstandingly comprehensive Sunday Round Up. In fact, it’s so comprehensive, who even needs this?

Thanks all, it’s been a blast, I’ll now put me feet up and dedicate Fridays to pictures of the cat.

2. Yeah, alright, I do have other things to share.

A happy book birthday to Thomas Howard Riley and We Break Immortals. There’s a wonderful piece by him on his author’s journey on Before We Go and for those curious about the book, here’s reviews from Jodie at Witty & Sarcastic Bookclub and Rowena at Beneath A Thousand Skies.

Also in happy news is the cover reveal of Tessa Hastjarjanto’s Devil’s Deal, and there’s also a scavenger hunt if you want a free copy.

Stephen Palmer’s Monica Hatherley has also just had its birthday – watch here for some words from Stephen soon.

Other recent book birthdays include MA Carrick’s The Liar’s Knot and Genevieve Cogman’s The Untold Story. For reviews of the former, check out Rebecca at Powder & Page or Katie at Cup of Cyanide; for the latter, The Hobbleit.

3. Now for some author interviews, thoughts and stories

Grimdark Magazine has an interview with Ken Liu

Black Dragon Books has an interview with Thomas Howard Riley (yup, him again)

Terri Windling has a great post sharing excerpts from Le Guin, L’Engel and Barry Lopez about ageing

And if anyone’s looking for some Sci-Fi Romance, here’s a cool story called Kingdom of Lethe from Tonya Moore

4. Reviews, book lists, and what not

Want some crime writing? Maybe try this article on crime writing in Tokyo or Santa Womble’s list of thrillers

Calmgrove’s got a piece of great vintage Sci-Fi with CL Moore’s Doomsday Morning

There was pretty much no way I wasn’t clicking on a title like Nine Lovers for Emily Spankhammer. No way. And Berthold at Ruined Chapel makes it sound pretty good.

I’ve been hearing non-stop good things about MJ Kuhn’s Among Thieves, so it was educational to see a more mixed review from Andrew at The Quill To Live

5. Finally, bits and pieces.

I enjoyed Eleni’s take on Mood Reading at Before We Go, that being a subject dear to my heart

This twitter thread on Chinese names is a fascinating one, and useful for would-be authors too

And last but not least, Ursula Vernon showing and talking comics is super cool.

So this weekend, armed with a couple of AI art programs, I started noodling around to see what I could do, and if I could put together one of my Weird Little Comic ideas using mostly retouched computer generated imagery.

These nine pages were the result. pic.twitter.com/POXoBN0Hbx

— Kingfisher & Wombat (@UrsulaV) December 6, 2021

From here we go to a program called Clip2Comic. It’s the best of the genre of make-your-selfie-a-cartoon programs on the market that I’ve played around with, and the paid version offers a lot to tweakability in terms of outlines and retouching. pic.twitter.com/7e9ckyaNPb

— Kingfisher & Wombat (@UrsulaV) December 7, 2021

That’s it for this week, have good weekends all