A Celebrity-Free Oscar Story from CNN

Leave it to CNN to cover all the angles of tonight's Oscar broadcast. Not only do they have a picture of the corset Sally Field will be wearing (TMI maybe?) but they have this neat little featurette on how the Oscar statuette is made.

And now for my personal pick for Best Actor:

I haven't seen a lot of this year's nominated films but I was an early fan of The Dallas Buyer's Club. Matthew McConaughey is having a hell of a year with DBC and True Detective, and I hope he wins Best Actor.

It's a Plane. It's an Airship. It's a story prompt!

The world's largest aircraft has been unveiled and the future looks kind of retro, don't you think? The idea that this thing can stay airborne for up to three weeks is extraordinary. Jules Verne...meet the future. Read about it here. I find myself wanting to write a story that's a fusion of steampunk and new weird.

Stylish chef's apron on sale!

In between writing gigs, I work with my friend Alex's catering company (Word of Mouth Catering). I have a couple of chef's aprons I've collected from various sources--including one awesome "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" apron that I picked up at San Diego Comic Con a few years ago. But I've been looking for something that would be nice and professional for both of us and I have run across this (thanks to Craig'sList).

The aprons(which are unisex) are on sale right now, so if you're interested, you can check them out here.

Books for Soldiers

You know how reading a good book has gotten you through some bad times?
Check out the Books for Soldiers program here. Because no matter what kind of day you're having, a soldier's probably having a worse one.
And you KNOW you have more books than you know what to do with.
It's a great way to say "thanks."

Fiction Friday: Thoughts on True Crime Books

I have friends who read a lot (a whole lot) of true crime. For them it's relaxing and entertaining and engaging. Certainly they'll never run out of titles to read, from lit fic (Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's Executioner's Song) to quickie books churned out in the wake of controversial court cases. (There were no less than 11 books published in the wake of Casey Anthony's trial for the murder of her daughter.)

I don't read that much true crime. Some cases are pretty fascinating--I read two different accounts of the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder investigation--but I realized that I mostly prefer fiction to fact. But there have been some books that So for #fictionfriday, I decided to list the true crime books that I found memorable. They were, in no particular order:

1.  Serpentine by Thomas Thompson--Thompson wrote great true crime books, many of them just crying out for the "miniseries" treatment. The killer here was a handsome, enigmatic man named Charles Sobhraj and the tale is a globe-hopping "odyssey of love and evil" that stretches from Paris to Hong Kong, with a stop at Mt. Everest along the way.
2. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson--I have a particular fondness for period murder mysteries that just happen to be true.
3.  The Napoleon of Crime by Ben Macintyre--see above. This is the bio of a fascinating master thief named Adam Worth.
4. Fire Lover by Joseph Wambaugh--This is an account of a decorated fire firefighter who was secretly an arsonist. I had a personal connection to the case in that one of the stores he burned up was a place I used to shop. It's pretty chilling. This case also attracted the attention of NOVA, which did an episode on it.

5, And the Sea Will Tell by Vincent Bugliosi. Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson, is probably more famous for Helter Skelter than this book, but I found And the Sea Will Tell a lot more interesting, probably because the Manson story has been told and retold and told to death. It's the story of a double murder of a yachting couple and was made into a television movie.

Another Cover Reveal: Unsanctified, a horror novella

This is the year I finally transcribe all the short stories and half-based novellas and bits of novel-writing and refine them into something I can actually publish. Joy Sillesen, of Indie Author Services, has been incredibly generous in supplying me with fantastic cover art, and I'm using those covers as inspirations.

This is the cover for Unsanctified, due out in October from Dark Valentine Press. It's an old school horror story, my version of a Stephen King kind of tale. The story takes place on Halloween (of course) and I hope it scares people.

When life imitates art

I have a friend who is writing a supernatural fantasy. I've been reading his chapters and it's really good, the kind of story that makes the little hairs on your neck stand up. But here's the weird part. The opening chapter is called "Birth of the Bear Star" and it features two characters witnessing a supernova...in Ursa Major. In case you're not up on your astronomical events, a star in the Ursa Major constellation went supernova this week. I've told him he'd better be VERY careful about the other events he writes into his tale. Here's an article about the event.
s a