The Warbler Books

Writing Inclusive Fiction Five-Week Course

March 31, 2017 No Comments

Warbler’s Note: This marks the introduction of an ongoing series of posts aimed at providing the writing community with resources of all kinds, from conventions to software, podcasts to exercises, and much more. The first will be a shout-out for the upcoming Writing the Other course. I attended a class from the Writing the Other series last year, and not only was it supremely helpful in building my characters, it opened me up to a wonderful network of writers I now communicate with regularly. Tempest and Nisi are doing something spectacular for speculative fiction with these courses, and if you or anyone you know has interest in taking this course, I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you are genuinely interested, please contact me for a coupon code for a $100 discount on tuition. Directly from K. Tempest Bradford, here are the details: Writing Inclusive Fiction April 6 – May 14 (students

The Divine Comedy – Dante

March 23, 2017 2 Comments

This is another one of those cases where I feel that a book I aim to review is out of my league. The Divine Comedy is absolutely beyond the scope of my review blog. So I will attempt to not review it for its contents. But what I feel is within my purview is a discussion of the performance of the audiobook, since that was how I made it through the somewhat difficult text. The first time I tried to read Inferno, as a high-schooler, I wasn’t able to penetrate the form. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get past the second canto. It might have been because I was too focused on looking at it as an epic poem, a work of unparalleled religious zeal. But listening to Edoardo Ballerini’s performance of the book on Audible was a completely different experience. The form—the epic poem—took a back seat

Author Interview – William Schiele

March 20, 2017 No Comments

Wow! Here it is: the very first Warbler video. For the very first of the “produced” Warbler content, I had an excellent conversation with the author of Tears of the Assassin, William Schiele. **Note: evidently, none of the links I wanted to place in this video will work. That being the case, check out the links below.** For the very first of the “produced” Warbler content, I had an excellent conversation with the author of Tears of the Assassin, William Schiele. William Schiele on Twitter Tears of the Assassin on Amazon The Gray Man by Mark Greaney on Amazon Sync City by Peter Ryan on Amazon

My First Con! FOGcon 2017

March 16, 2017 No Comments

Last year, I made a decision to commit fully to the “being a writer” thing. So, toward the end of last year, I asked some Bay Area-based writers on Twitter about local conventions. A number got back to me and enthusiastically recommended FOGcon. The Friends Of Genre convention, which I attended this past weekend (March 10–12) in Walnut Creek, brands itself as a literary-themed Science Fiction and Fantasy convention which focuses on bringing together the speculative fiction community for the exchange of ideas and a mutual love for the literature of imagination. An inspiring and smile-inducing description, if you ask me. So here’s my summary of the con experience, day-by-day: Day 1: I took Friday off work and drove to Walnut Creek about an hour-and-a-half before the con started. It took fifteen minutes to get there. I was excited, but nervous about waltzing into the convention space too far in

Binti: Home – Nnedi Okorafor

March 8, 2017 No Comments

There seems to be no better day than today, International Women’s Day, to talk about an extraordinary piece of science fiction written by the brilliant Nnedi Okorafor, about belonging and identity from the perspective of a powerful young woman. You might recall that Binti was one of my two favorite works of science fiction of last year. It was evocative. Beautiful. Frightening. Most importantly, it was different. It managed to pack an incredible and vibrant world, a complex and compelling protagonist, and a spectacular plot into a fairly short piece of fiction. It told a story that could have easily fallen into the category of sci-fi tropes, but it avoided them by applying a unique voice and perspective through Binti, it’s main character. Binti: Home finds Binti after about a year at Oomza University. A year after she heroically (and accidentally, if I recall correctly) brokered peace between two warring

Snapshot – Brandon Sanderson

March 1, 2017 No Comments

I’m not sure about other writers in the world, but it seems to me unique that Brandon Sanderson considers writing a new novella to be a break from, well, writing. Granted, he did write Snapshot as a break from working on Oathbringer, the third volume in his mega-epic Stormlight Archive series, but, like, I mean…he wrote a novella as a breather from a bigger project. Maybe I’m crazy, though. All I know is that I hope to display such fortitude toward the craft in the future, once I strengthen those muscles a bit. On his blog, Sanderson said that Snapshot was a story idea that wouldn’t leave him alone; something he had to write furiously over the course of a week. I can see why the idea stuck in is mind. The premise of Snapshot is cool—Cool enough that MGM is already optioning the story—and though it is expansive in

The Geek Feminist Revolution – Kameron Hurley

February 21, 2017 No Comments

It’s difficult to know where to begin when discussing Kameron Hurley’s essay collection, The Geek Feminist Revolution. Heartfelt may be a good word. Expansive may be another. But what keeps coming to my mind, over and again, is important. Vital, even. Especially in today’s America, wherein the once-fringe Gamergate movement has become the de-facto governing philosophy of the country. It sickens me to complete that sentence, but it’s where we are. Hurley’s book explores nothing new, which is a remarkable enough thought on its own. The problems women and minorities face in the zeitgeist are nothing new, and though things are slowly changing—and we certainly live in a “better” time—we are still unbelievably far from where we need to be. And it feels like we may have just taken a major step backwards. Hurley’s essays are a no-nonsense, unvarnished look at the status quo, most often through the lens of

Tears of the Assassin – William Schiele

February 14, 2017 3 Comments

William Schiele packs a hefty amount of action and intrigue into Tears of the Assassin, his debut novel published by Inkshares last week. In Assassin, David Diegert, a half-Ojibwa half-white American, is passed from gauntlet to gauntlet, his situation growing worse and worse, until he’s forced to take work as a contract killer on the Dark Web. Abused by his father, brother, and high school classmates, Diegert decides to join the military, hoping that he cam earn college tuition through his service. He’s put into service with an unofficial group funneling heroin into the US from Afghanistan, and when he loses his temper at his superior officer, he’s dishonorably discharged and told to keep quiet about his actions in the military. He ends up bouncing at a bar stateside, where he gets caught up in Russian mafia intrigue, which ultimately forces his hand, turning him into a killer. Out of

White Sand – Brandon Sanderson

February 6, 2017 1 Comment

Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere—the greater universe in which the majority of his books takes place—was recently optioned for film and licensing rights for $270 million, which is nothing-to-sneeze-at success, if you ask me. I’m eager to see the visual adaptations of his books, but I worry that because I’ve got such a vivid picture of them in my mind, I’ll be disappointed by one or another quality of the films. It happens all the time. (Dune’s getting a third chance, too. I wonder where that’ll go off the rails.) But the excitement of seeing any of Sanderson’s worlds come to life, especially one as hauntingly beautiful as Scadrial (the planet on which the Mistborn series takes place), is too exciting to overlook. I mean, if this series is done right, the larger Cosmere universe will easily rival Marvel or Star Wars. Sanderson’s creations are that good. Better, even. Which brings me

Summerlong – Peter S. Beagle

January 27, 2017 1 Comment

Peter S. Beagle is best known for writing The Last Unicorn, which I haven’t read but heard of time and again as childhood-defining. For what it’s worth, I tried watching the animated feature but was vetoed by the other denizens of my household. I shall try another time, and crack open the copy of The Last Unicorn currently sitting on my shelf in due time. Knowing only about Unicorn was insufficient preparation for reading Beagle’s recent novel, Summerlong, published by Tachyon Publications in September of last year. I made assumptions about what Summerlong would be based on nothing, and that is a huge disservice to what is an extraordinary novel. Summerlong is on the outer fringes of fantasy, more a story of modern slipstream fiction like something by Haruki Murakami. It’s the kind of book where the boundaries of reality slowly erode and the characters’ realities unravel in consonance with

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