The Best of Pseudopod 2012
Not too much to say in preamble to this list. Pseudopod is awesome as ever. You should listen to the show. Here’s some of my favorites that you can check out.
Search Results for: "written by David Steffen"
The State of The Submissions Grinder (Week 3)
Almost three weeks have passed since Anthony Sullivan and I launched The Submissions Grinder, a web-based tool for writers to find markets, track submissions, and look at market response statistics. At the time of launch the site was very simple, with a limited set of features, and yes some stability issues.
The Best of Toasted Cake
Toasted Cake is a podcast launched in 2012 by writer Tina Connolly. She labels it as an “idiosyncratic flash fiction podcast”, and has managed to maintain a pace of a story a week for all of 2012. Her original aim was to do the podcast for all of 2012, but at the turn of 2013 she has decided to keep on with it, perhaps encouraged by her Parsec Award for “Best New Podcast”.
My Hugo/Nebula Picks 2012
I’m a bit of an odd duck in my reading habits, in that I ready only a small niche of the types of stuff out there, but I read that very deeply. Almost all of my fiction intake comes from fiction podcasts, which are all Short Story categories, but are often reprints from previous years which are not eligible. I do read novels, but have not read any written in 2012 yet, because I am a slow read and because I re-read the entire Wheel of Time series that pretty much took all year, in preparation for the 2013 release of the final book.
Our Hugo/Nebula Eligible Work 2012
The SF award nomination season is here. The Nebulas (the writer-voted award) have been open for a while and close in February. The Hugos (the fan-voted award) opened on January first. Both sets cover works published in the 2012 calendar year. About this time of year, every writer and their dog posts a list of their eligible works.
“Marley and Cratchit” published on Escape Pod
Just a brief note to share good news of a new published story–“Marley and Cratchit” at Escape Pod, a secret history of A Christmas Carol. I tried to write it in a Dickensian style and make it fit into the original while still going somewhere unexpected. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to leave a comment hear with feedback.
The Best of Journey Into…
Journey Into… is one of the newer fiction podcasts out there, its first episode running in June 2011. It is the brainchild of Marshal Latham, who I’d mostly known as one of the staff members over at Escape Pod (a forum moderator, among other things). But just because it’s new doesn’t mean that it isn’t quality. He’s had prior production experience as one of the volunteer episode producers for the Dunesteef podcast.
In Loving Memory of Aria Steffen
This is the story of my first dog. This is the story of the first dog that Heather was really responsible for. This is the story of Aria the papillon. She had the name Aria when we got her–we thought of renaming her Oreo but it didn’t stick. Over the years we had many nicknames for her–Ariana, Missy Lu, Missy Moo, Lu Lu Bell, many others.
X-Men: First Class
The X-Men movies have been somewhat hit-or-miss. X-Men, directed by Bryan Singer in 2000 was a really excellent first movie. It changed a lot of the character relationships, relative ages, and etc, but it did it in a way that was true to the heart of the original characters, and added enough novelty to make it all very interesting. The sequel, X2, directed by Bryan Singer in 2003 was a great followup. X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006 had a new director, and was a crappy story with a bajillion characters thrown in apparently for merchandising. X-Men Origins: Wolverine came out in 2009, and was almost completely worthless, other than an outstanding opening credits montage featuring Wolverine and Sabretooth fighting side by side as brothers in a couple centuries of wars.
Final Fantasy XIII Review
For those who aren’t familiar with the series, they are a series of menu-controlled turn-based RPG games. They are a series only in the sense of their naming. Except for one or two exceptions, the games do not have any continuing plotline between them. Each game starts afresh with a new world, new storyline, new game mechanics. The quality of the series is a bit uneven from game to game, but even the lows are pretty good, and the highs are really really good.