NANP: Swords and Purposes

Today’s guest on Names: A New Perspective is Clint Lee Werner, better known as C. L. Werner to all fans of Warhammer Fantasy fiction, and also one of my favourite writers as well. Some of Clint’s early work, like Blood for the Blood God, was one of my earliest exposures to the world of Warhammer and he has stayed a staple of my reading ever since. His first Black Plague novel, Dead Winter (review), was one of my absolute favourite reads last year and I’m pretty excited for the upcoming sequel, Blighted Empire. I also have a copy of Writing Fantasy Heroes, an anthology of non-fiction work in which some of the top fantasy authors in the industry talk about, well, how to write fantasy heroes. Should be reading that one soon! Clint’s work is often very visceral and real, it gets you down in the trenches and always channels some pretty strong emotions. In terms of consistency, he is definitely one of the top writers out there. This is what he has to say on the subject of names and their purposes.

 

Names: A New Perspective Part 3

The last two weeks have been spent in a mad scramble to get people on board for the next phase of Names: A New Perspective. I really should have gotten this done a month ago, but I kept getting sidetracked by other things (Game of Thrones, finishing edits on Project Dharmayoddha, reading a ton of graphic novels, catching up on my monthly reading, etc), that it just didn’t happen on time.

But, I have the new schedule done and all worked out, and my thanks to everyone who has agreed to participate. The last few guest posts that have gone up have not been mentioned in any of the schedules, since I was mostly just winging it all, but now everything is set for the most part. This is the schedule that I will be referring to in the coming weeks, and I will also be expanding on this one as I contact yet more authors and bring them on board.

Here they are:

 

Middle East Film and Comic Con 2013

Image courtesy of the MEFCC FB page.

Year-long (at least) readers to the blog will remember that last year in April I attended my first ever major con, the inaugural Middle East Film and Comic Con. It was a fantastic event, and I’ve been waiting for the second installment ever since. I got the chance this past weekend, and it was absolutely amazing. I am told that where the attendance last year had been upwards of 13,000, this year it was predicted to be in the 23,000-26,000 range. That is unbelievable, an almost 100% increase over and above the first year. I will say that the show absolutely deserves it. The organisers put on a terrific show, and it was certainly a few notches above last year.

 

Best of the Best Part 2

I last did something like this in July for the six months from January 1st all the way to June 30th. This list is for July 1st and all the way through to December 30th (the last day doesn’t count!). As I mentioned at the end of that list, this isn’t going to be regurgitation of my “Reading Awards” page, but something more varied. The list takes into account everything I’ve read in the last six months.

Let’s see what makes the cut and which comes close then!

 

NANP: The Depths of Names

The final guest for Names: A New Perspective is David Annandale, author of the Jen Blaylock thrillers and the horror novel Gethsemane Hall. I’ve only read some of his tie-in short fiction for Black Library, and what I’ve read has really impressed me. He has a full novel coming out next year, The Death of Antagonis, which I’m really looking forward to. It also helps that David teaches film, video games, literature and creative writing at the university level. How cool is that? Which is why I was so keen to get David on this guest series, even though he isn’t a debut author from 2010-12 as the other writers so far have been, and here’s what he had to say:

 

Reviewing Milestones

Today I hit a huge milestone, mere days after I hit another big one.

On September 3rd, I posted my 100th review to day, the Dark Angels novella Dark Vengeance by C Z Dunn. The novella was written as a tie-in for the release of the 6th Edition ruleset the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game by Games Workshop, and is based upon one of the scenarios in the mini-rulebook contained within the starter set, and uses pretty much the full model range in it from what I can tell. I had a ton of fun reading the novella and I would definitely recommend it to everybody.

Today, I posted my 100th review of the year, the Young Adult novel Poltergeeks by Sean Cummings, published by Strange Chemistry which is Angry Robot Books’ new YA imprint. Just as with the novella, this was a really, really fun book, a great story that echoes all the popular magic-based TV shows like Charmed, Buffy etc. This is another highly recommended book from me.

On the reading side, this really has been an incredible year so far and the reviewing even more so, barring a few odd blimps here and there. Bring on the end of the year!!

 

Best of the Best Part 1

Twitter has been buzzing lately with “best of the year so far” and “most anticipated lists”. Looks like everybody and their fictional cat is on the bandwagon. So I thought I’d do one too, a “best of the half-year” list that is. I mean why not, I’ve read so much good stuff this year that it all deserves recognition anyway. I already do a top-of-the-month list anyway, as you can see on the Reading Awards page, so this should be good fun either way.

Let’s see what makes the cut and which comes close then!

 

Middle East Film and Comic Con

So this past weekend Dubai hosted the first ever Middle East Film and Comic Con, an event the likes of which is usually seen in the States in its various guises as the San Diego Comic Con or Dragon Con or what have you. I found out about the event quite incidentally, at my local gym like two days before the event kicked off. It was like a surprise right out of nowhere, a good one I assure you, and also exciting because if I could make it, then this would be my first major convention ever, Blizzcon 2009, Games Day Los Angeles 2008 and Games Day UK 2011 notwithstanding since they are quite focused.