Scribbled Bits…

Fantasy Magazine is amazing as a resource, and I really enjoy going back and rereading old issues for fun and to provoke thoughts. Most recently I was reading about how steampunk has overwritten fantasy tropes in the May issue. (Since I am once again attempting a fantasy/fairy tale kind of thing, and in our writing group we were recently discussing the Hero’s Journey, this trope-twisting struck a chord.) The piece on automatons was really, really cool.

I really enjoyed the reprint of Kelly Link’s Swans, which was excerpted from Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow & Terry Windling. Two other nonfiction essays were helpful, one on the princess thing – and how despite Disney and how the princess is still forming and informing a lot of fantasy fiction. (You may not agree), and the other on unicorns. Other than the people who write about them fighting zombies, they did, once upon a time, have literary significance.

And for you great writers of bad prose, the Bulwer-Lytton contest results are in. Oh, be so afraid. Winner: SciFi Category:

“Morgan ‘Bamboo’ Barnes, Star Pilot of the Galaxia (flagship of the Solar Brigade), accepted an hors d’oeuvre from the triangular-shaped platter offered to him from the Princess Qwillia—lavender-skinned she was and busty, with two of her four eyes what Barnes called ‘bedroom eyes’—and marveled at how on her planet, Chlamydia-5, these snacks were called ‘Hi-Dee-Hoes’ but on Earth they were simply called Ritz Crackers with Velveeta.”

Greg Homer
Placerville, CA

Happy Weekend to all of you scribblers and readers!