joshuapalmatier

So, the first ever short story written by Joshua Palmatier has finally been published in the anthology Close Encounters of the Urban Kind. The story is called Mastihooba and is based (like all of the stories in the anthology) on a local urban myth. Mine is about a man named Masty Huba who is the equivalent of a boogeyman. The thing about this anthology is that all of the urban myths have some kind of alien twist to them. So Mastihooba is more than just a boogeyman. Bwahahahaha!





In any case, the anthology is NOW AVAILABLE! So head on over here and order it directly from the publisher, Apex, or you can get it from Amazon.com if you'd like. I still haven't gotten a copy of this yet, although I'm expecting it any day now since I preordered some. I'll be interested to see what everyone else came up with for their own stories.

And since I'm pushing my books, I may as well push the Throne of Amenkor series as well. I have copies on hand here and getting them into someone else's hands would be a plus. So, here are the deals:

Hardcovers: Individually, the books are $15 each (including shipping in the US). If you'd like the entire series in hardcover, then they're at the discounted rate of $30 (including shipping in the US). I can sign and personalize them however you'd like.

Paperbacks: Individually, the books are $8 each (including shipping in the US). If you'd like the entire series in paperback, then they're at the discounted rate of $20 (including shipping in the US). I can sign and personalize them however you'd like.

Email me at jpalmatier@sff.net if you're interested in the Throne of Amenkor books and we can discuss payment and signatures. I do have Paypal, so that's an option as well. If you're from outside the US, I can find out how much the shipping would be to see if you're still interested.

But in the meantime, watch out for Close Encounters of the Urban Kind!

So this Thursday I will be getting up, teaching, then climbing on a plane an flying to Seattle to attend NORWESCON!!! I've attended this con for the last five years . . . I think. At least four. I started going the year before The Skewed Throne came out, because DAW was the guest publisher. And I have friends and relatives in Seattle I could visit while there. I loved the con--which contains a literary track, costume track, and game track, everyone getting along with everyone else--and so have returned again and again. For those in the area (or not), I highly recommend it!

And for those attending, here's my schedule:

Friday, April 2nd:

10:00 a.m.: Don't Say It, Have the Characters Say It

How can you avoid big blocks of narrative data-dump? By having characters
dump the data! Come join our panelists as we discuss different ways to have
the characters do the telling, while the author just does the writing.
Joshua Palmatier (M, hmm I should probably prepare for this), Alma Alexander, A.M. Dellamonica, Jean Johnson, Kevin Radthorne

9:00 p.m.: Hey, Check out the Sex Scene in My Fantasy

Writers discuss the challenges and rewards of writing sex scenes. What do
you need to construct believable sex scenes? How can you tell when they are
a necessary addition to the plot? Is it O.K. to just be hot? How explicit do you need to be to best serve your story? Examples may be read aloud, so use your judgment if you are easily embarrassed. Greg Cox (M), Mark Henry, Joshua Palmatier, Eden Robins

Saturday, April 3rd:

9:00 a.m.: Building a Balanced Mythos

When building a religion for your world, how do you make it balanced and
plausible without riffing off of existing religions? How will myth and
religion impact your plot and motivate your characters? Why should there be several types of belief systems on a world? Mary Robinette Kowal (M), Jason Henninger, Joshua Palmatier, Mary Rodgers

6:00 - 6:30 p.m.: Reading: Joshua Palmatier

"Mastihooba," SF Horror short story, Rated: PG; Joshua Palmatier

***************

The "Mastihooba" short story I'll be reading from comes from the anthology Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, edited by Jennifer Brozek, and is being released on April 4th. I've been told that there will be copies of the anthology for sale at the con. You can preorder the anthology here if you're interested. Or pick it up at the con!

I haven't heard anything about an autographing session, but if you find me at the con at some point, I'm more than happy to autograph books or anthologies for you. They don't even have to be mine! *grin*

Hope to see you all there!

I finished this a little while ago actually and haven't had a chance to write up a review until now. So here goes:

I liked this second edition of the LEAGUE universe much better than the first, possibly because it had a much more coherent plotline to follow and it focused alot more on the characters of the LEAGUE. While the first volume was mostly about gathering the group together, followed by a short plot involving the cadamite (or whatever), this one started with the main plot thread and kept that thread throughout, weaving the character development into that.

And the plot was interesting and engaging, starting with the first chapter--a montage to everything Mars from literature. Very nice artwork throughout this entire chapter, even if there were a few questions brought up by said artwork (such as what's the rule about breathing martian air, anyways; sometimes it seems they can, other times they wear masks). Very nice chapter, which leads directly into chapter 2 with the introduction of the League into the plot. Once again, we have numerous different literary figures making appearances, which is one of the cool aspects of the League world. I don't want to spoil any of that, so I won't say any more there.

Instead, I'll focus on what I felt was the best part of the entire novel: the characters. We get much more with the relationship between Mina and Quartermain. Perhaps too much, in some chapters. But the relationship that stands out and that held my attention throughout was that of Hyde and Griffin. We get to see exactly how nasty these two can get, and reading about it was what kept me riveted to the book. To the point where I felt that this was really what the novel was all about. I felt that Chapter 5, where all of this comes to a head, was really the high point of the novel, even though Chapter 6 is the one in which the main plot thread finally gets resolved.

And that's where the book was a little bit of a let down: the final chapter. The confrontation between Hyde and the monsters was great, but it still felt anticlimactic to what happened in Chapter 5 between Hyde and Griffin. And the rest of the resolution (I'm not saying much here because it would spoil the novel) certainly didn't measure up to Chapter 5. The final few pages dealing with Mina and Quartermain's relationship felt rushed as well.

So in the end, I loved the graphic novel overall. There was some really good artwork (and some really bad, to be honest, but mostly good) and the characterization was spectacular, to the detriment of the main plot unfortunately. I've already gone ahead and bought the rest of the LEAGUE universe books (1910 and the Black Dossier) and will definitely read them as well.

Extras: At the end of the book there are a bunch of extras, including a rather dense "atlas" of the world. I started reading this and almost put it down because it was TOO dense and didn't seem to be adding much to the novel except for some satisfaction when a particular literary reference was one that I knew. However I persevered and was rewarded when instead of doing place after place after place (as in the first few chapters), the authors began weaving in accounts of the places from the League characters' journals. In fact, a small story began to develop. That story is really the only reason to read this extra--aside from those few moments of recognition. The additional cover art and such is always interesting as well.

The Dwarves of Whiskey Island is the second book in the Cleveland Portal series from S. Andrew Swann. I've read and reviewed the first book as well (The Dragons of the Cuyahoga) but the series is set up so that each book can be read individually. You don't need anything from the first book to follow or understand this second one.





And the second one is better than the first in my opinion. The first has it's interesting points, because the world he created--one in which Cleveland is suddenly inundated by dragons, elves, dwarves, etc because a portal to their world opens up in the middle of the city--was new and unique. Part of the problem with a series like this is that the second book can't rely on that "trick" to keep the readers reading. There has to be something new.

And there is in this. We still have the main character, Kline Maxwell, working for the newspaper and getting involved in the "fuzzy gnome" stories he hates when all he wants to cover is politics. In the first book, he gets assigned a "fuzzy gnome" story and the politics come in afterwards. In this one, he starts with politics and the "fuzzy gnome" gets interwoven into that. This time, it's dwarves. When they first came through the portal, no one knew what to do with them, so they were sent to the salt mines (where the magic was so high that no humans could live) and with the help of Mazurich, a politician, they became essential to the survival of the city after the portal by taking over construction projects and such.

And then Mazurich kills himself . . . and no one knows why. Kline receives a phone call that sends him search of the answers and leads him to the dwarves . . . and something much, much worse that threatens not only Cleveland, but his family as well.

I liked this book better because the writing felt . . . smoother. It was easier to read and the case itself flowed more naturally out of Kline's real job as a reporter on politics. Another reason I liked both this book and the previous one was become S. Andrew Swann is adept at giving you more and more information about the story without actually giving the real point/plot away. He sets all the cards on the table for Kline (and essentially us) and yet they still don't quite make sense until he reveals what's REALLY going on at the end. And then it makes perfect sense and you wonder why you didn't see it earlier. I also liked how this story got more personal for Kline. In the first book, it was just him against everything else. In this one, it gets personal, threatening his family, so in the end he's not doing this to save himself or to get the story for the paper. This personal stake in the outcome makes the book much more tense and dramatic.

I had some issues with the ultimate bad guys in the book, but I think my issues are more personal than anything else. I can't really say anything more about this without ruining part of the plot of the book. Suffice it to say that I wish S. Andrew Swann had chosen something a little new and different for the Big Evil. Don't get me wrong, he does do something different things with this Big Evil, but the Evil itself . . . he had an entire portal full of anything he wanted, so I wished he'd come up with something different.

But as I said, a good story. It has me wondering if he's going to do any more stories in the Cleveland Portal series. I hope he does.

PS--The Dwarves of Whiskey Island can be found now in the omnibus Dragons and Dwarves.

I have not confessed this publicly yet, so I may as well do it now: I love putting together puzzles. This has actually become sort of a family Christmas tradition. Every Christmas, I bring down a new puzzle and my mom and I put it out and spend hours upon hours putting the puzzle together, the goal being to get it completed in the few days that I'm visiting. In 2008, I brought down a 2000 piece puzzle and we didn't get it finished. This past year, I ended up buying a 1000 piece puzzle at B&N while I was down there and we managed to get it finished. Here's what it looked like after we'd gotten it out on the coffee table and had been playing with it for a day or so:





Any idea what it's a picture off? Well, the small little part we have finished there in white is a gigantic clue. So after about three or four days of working together, we got it done:





So, while I was down there, my mom informed me that the 2000 piece puzzle we'd been working on in 2008 had been put back in its box, but with the parts we had done more or less intact. I decided I'd take it home and see if I could get it finished. I got the box home and carefully removed all of the pieces we'd managed to get together and reassembled them:





The puzzle in the picture is actually upside down because I couldn't get a good enough "right-side-up" picture with the lighting in that room. Anyway, I got working. This puzzle turned out to be much more difficult than it looked, not just because it had twice as many pieces, but there was no obvious place to tackle first and enough different parts of the puzzle were similar in color that you couldn't start separating little sections out (like we did with the white horse in the 1000 piece puzzle).

In any case, I've managed to finish it. Here's the final puzzle (upside down still). I chose this puzzle because I have this thing for old maps like this. (My mom is the horse lover, which is why I got the first puzzle I showed you.)





So, I feel fulfilled. The nagging feeling something had been left undone is gone, now that the 2008 puzzle is finished. And so I move on. In a random act of splurging and insanity, I bought a 9000 piece puzzle of a ship battle AND an 18,000 piece puzzle that's really four different 4500 piece map puzzles that they've put borders on to make it one large picture. The 4500 piece puzzles are bagged separately, thank god. My plan is to do the 45000 piece puzzles individually first, then put them all together to get the giant puzzle.

And after that I'll tackle the 9000 piece puzzle. I'm not sure where I'm going to put that one up. I don't think it will fit on my table.

(Now that I have photographic evidence of finishing the 2000 piece puzzle, I need to rip it apart and box it. I never glue my puzzles when I'm done.)

I read The Surrogates because of the movie with Bruce Willis. The graphic novel and the movie were two completely different stories in the end and I enjoyed both. One of my main complaints about the original graphic novel, though, was that the story didn't feel as deep as it could have been. The idea of the world, of people using surrogates to live their lives, to keep them safe and to give them the freedom to live out some of their fantasies, is just too good and too perfect. It opens up a HUGE amount of possibilities, and I thought that the original book could have used this world to explore so much more.

Which meant, of course, that I needed to read the prequel graphic novel The Surrogates: Flesh and Bone to see if they did indeed play around with some of those possibilities.

Flesh and Bone takes us back to something mentioned in the original graphic novel: the attack on a homeless person by three rich teens illegally using their fathers' surrogates. The homeless man dies and suddenly the case becomes international news, bringing up the serious question of whether children should be able to use surrogates, a theme that was also addressed in the original graphic novel and was the main motivating factor behind Steeplejack (the main "bad guy" in the original). And this type of question is what I was hoping that the authors/artists would explore more about this world, what makes the world they've set up so intriguing.

Here, the graphic novel once again centers around Harvey Greer--now a beat cop--and the investigation surrounding the death of the homeless man. There's also a seedy lawyer for the father of the main kid on trial. (The father's no picnic either.) We see the origins of the Prophet, and the state of the surrogate corporation at this time period. The more interesting aspects of this graphic novel are how the corporation handles the situation, and how the law is going to be affected by not just this one situation, but by surrogates and their general use by the population. Those were the parts that intrigued me the most and held my interest. And the authors do explore these facets of the new world to some degree. The investigation gives the story a strong structure that's easy to follow, but isn't as interesting overall, especially since the first graphic novel was centered around an investigation.

So, in the end, I wasn't as satisfied or as thrilled with this prequel as I was with the original. Even though the authors explored some of what I was looking for, I STILL finished the novel wanting more. I wanted more exploration of this world, and I thought there could have been more depth in the storyline itself, especially regarding Greer and his relationship with his wife and how the introduction of surrogates into the home was affecting relationships. But it was still a good read overall. There were some nice touches to the world, and a few strong snippets of humor throughout. One particular panel had me laughing so hard I had to put the book aside to recover. Strong artwork (although not as polished in my opinion as the original) throughout, and a decent storyline. A good book. If there were more graphic novels set in this world, I'd definitely read them, because there's still a TON of things to explore.

Happy NEW YEAR, everyone!

Well, I've returned from the family gathering for the holidays, a few pounds heavier. I'll do an update on the festivities (with pics) in the next few days. But for now, HELP OTHERS! Patrick Rothfuss is holding a fundraiser for a worth cause and has a bunch of DAW books up for grabs, signed by the author and such. Go check them out and then donate something to cause! I haven't researched how the bidding works or anything else yet, but I thought I'd pass the word along.

So, I won free tickets to see Avatar 3D, the midnight showing last night. Here's the obligatory review.

First, the good stuff: the special effects and cinematography. This was a spectacular movie in this respect. The special effects for the world--and when I say the world, I mean the world--were stunning. This had nothing to do with the 3D aspects at all. You can tell that the team that created this world spent a TON of time on it, going into every little detail and making all of those little details work together to create an actual, realistic-feeling other world. And I mean it: the world felt completely and utterly real to me, to the point where when something from out world came on set it felt like an intrusion (which was the point) and made it seem like anything related to us as humans was out of place (also the point). In fact, it made it seem as if anything related to us WASN'T REAL, that we were the special effect in the movie, not the world that served as the setting for the entire movie. It was literally stunning--beautiful and engaging and above all believable in nearly every respect. Sure there were a few "glossed over" explanations, such as how the mountains actually float (they just called it the "flux" or something), but that glossing could be ignored. And as I said, I don't believe this had anything to do with the 3D aspects of this.

One of the nice things about the creation of the world is that the special effects were NOT the central point of the movie. The world was there, and it served as a setting, but it was not the entirety of the movie. Same for the 3D aspects. There were no scenes where the entire "point" was the play with the 3D aspects to make the audience go "wow." Sure there were some "wow" scenes, but they weren't there JUST for that reason, except for when the newbies were seeing something spectacular for the first time, in which case the "wow" WAS the point, but for the character (not the audience). And these scenes were kept suitably short in my opinion. Same for the world in general: nothing was put into the movie for the sole purpose of the audience; it was there for the characters or for the plot. Too many SF and fantasy movie use the special effects just for the audience and don't let it serve exclusively for the plot or the characterization and the story. There were a few moments here and there where I thought a 3D effect went too far (such as one point where I wondered why we needed the ass shot and why it needed to be sticking out so far), but they were few and far between.

Of those characters, strangely enough, the one that I loved and followed and connected to the most was the main female alien (whose name I don't recall). I was not as drawn to the main character, Jake, much. Sigourney Weaver was great, but mostly served as a side character and in the end didn't have a huge role (a significant role, but not a huge one). The fact that I connected better with the aliens than the humans should make the creative team feel great, but shouldn't I be connecting to both, especially the hero of the story? I'm not sure if this was because Jake was just not a character that I could sympathize with, or if it was because the acting wasn't great, or simply that he just wasn't interesting, even though he was the character with the most significant character change from beginning to end. But in the end, I loved the female lead alien more, so kudos to that actress for her role.

So, some really good stuff going on in this movie: great worldbuilding, some good characterizations, especially of the aliens, and special effects used like they should be used in an SF movie.

Now some of the not so good things: the plot. It wasn't that the plot was bad--there were some really good emotionally jarring and gut-twisting moments in here--but the plot wasn't . . . new. This is the standard "humans find new land with indigenous species but with a resource we desperately need, so we try to take what we want and the locals fight back" story. The main thread is "human wins trust of locals, becomes one with them, betrays his own people and fights with them to take back the human-ravaged land." James Cameron could have used this theme to make some serious, heavy-duty commentary about some of the hideous things humans have done against humans in this vein in the past, pretty much all over the world, but he didn't need to. That point is hammered home without him needing to thrust it in our faces here. He sticks to the characters and how they are affected, and that is the most effective thing about this movie. It's what draws you in and makes your heart ache when the plot begins to take hold and get serious. But in the end, James Cameron didn't do anything really original with the plot. The only difference between this and movies with similar themes is that this is an SF movie. It's basically "Dances with Wolves" in space, as my movie companion said.

Another minor flaw is that the initial sequence--when we arrive on planet and the main character, Jake, is being introduced to the locals and slowly becoming an accepted part of their society--is a little too long. This section is extremely important to the movie: we get characterization, we get introduced to the world through Jake, we get a love interest, we get some very cool setup for events that happen later on in the plot. All of that was necessary and was there . . . but it still went on just a touch too long. At one point, the writer in me kicked in and said, "If he doesn't start the main plot sequence in the next 5 minutes, this movie is going to suck wind." I'd reached my limit of setup and worldbuilding and character building by that point. The fact that it pulled me out of the movie so much the writer kicked in DURING THE MOVIE is bad. So Cameron needed to find some small ways to cut that part of the movie back a little. I don't think it would have taken much--maybe cut 10 minutes overall from that section--and I wouldn't have had that writer moment. It would have made those scenes that much more effective in the end.

This is a minor quibble as well, but I wished Cameron has spent just a touch more time on Jake's character and how much he is emotionally affected by the fact that in his real life he can't use his legs, but through the avatar he can run, walk, jump, etc. Cameron spends some time on this, but not enough by far. I think this is why I ended up not connecting so much to Jake, and yet why I did connect so much with the main female lead. We get her side of the story and her emotions at nearly every stage in the movie. Cameron starts doing that with Jake at the beginning, but then Jake's own personal motivations and emotions get set aside. I wish they hadn't. Jake had great potential as a character of extreme interest and emotional turmoil. It just wasn't used.

So, in the end, what did I think? I loved the movie, even seeing it at midnight after a long day that started at 5:30am. I did not get sleepy at all during the showing (although my movie companion dozed out for a while *ahem*), so it completely engaged me. The worldbuilding was spectacular, but was not the point of the movie. Most of the characters were interesting and drew me in, although there were some lost opportunities with a few of the characters, namely Jake. There were some emotionally riveting and gut-wrenching parts. But the story fell a little flat simply because there wasn't anything new done with it. We've seen this type of story before (or read this type of story before) and it needed something else, some twist besides it being set on another planet, to take it up a level. That twist could have been drawing us in more to Jake's turmoil, driving home his desire to get his legs back and the choices he has--getting back his original legs by siding with the humans, or getting them back using the avatar--but Cameron didn't focus in on that enough. But it was still a good movie. In many aspects a spectacular movie.

I decided to buy and read "The Surrogates" because, of course, the movie was coming out soon and it had Bruce Willis in it, and I've lately been drawn into the graphic novel universe. So I said, why not? I've read a few other graphic novels and the concepts presented in this one were interesting.

First off, the graphic novel is significantly different from the movie, so you should probably read it even if you have already seen the movie. It starts off with the same initial setup--some surries get zapped and detectives are there to investigate--but pretty much from that moment on it diverges from the movie. Characters are the same, but they don't do what they did in the movie, tec. So read the novel, it's worth it.

The storyline is definitely interesting and pulls you along, weaving the actual detective work together with the life of the main detective, Greer. You find out about his relationship with his wife and how the introduction of the surrogates--androids that the user controls and that pretty much act out everyone's daily life for safety reasons--has altered society and interpersonal relationships to a huge extent. The main idea of the surrogates is what kept me interested in the novel, although the plotline about who's zapping surrogates and why also drew me in. The ramifications on every aspect of society if we did ever reach a point where the majority of the population lived their lives through surrogates is . . . astounding. And that's why this graphic novel rocks.

It's also why it's slightly disappointing. There are so many aspects of life that would change that what was presented in the novel seemed . . . limited. I loved the story and the novel, but when I was finished I felt that there was SO MUCH MORE to explore with this concept and I was disappointed that there wasn't more, a volume 2 or something. I know there's a prequel, and I will definitely read that, but I seriously hope that there will be more set in this world in the future because there is so much more left to explore.

Since this is a graphic novel, I must also comment on the artwork: spectacular. The artwork was subtle and appropriate and a perfect amalgamation of art and photoshopping, especially regarding some of the SF elements that were incorporated into the artwork, such as realistic digital screens and such. At the same time, the artwork was extremely simple. The level of detail was appropriate and minimalistic, as well as the color palette. Some panels were sketchy and blocky, others were more finely detailed, and the ability of the artist to convey complex emotions through facial expression and such was astounding.

So, overall a very good graphic novel, the only drawback being that the world created had SO MUCH potential that I felt there should have been much more done in this universe and with this plotline, so was disappointed when the novel ended. I'd love to see more from this pair, and even if you've seen the movie, I'd definitely suggest reading the novel.