Category Archives: Crossposted

Announcements, Crossposted

Find Me at Phoenix Comic Con

I’ll be at Phoenix Comic Con this weekend. My schedule is pretty light, and I don’t have a permanent seat in the exhibition hall, so I may be difficult to catch up with.

Difficult, but not impossible:

Thursday

  • Writing Excuses Signing: 4:00-6:00pm, Booth 1378

Friday

  • Writing Excuses Podcast, 12:30-2:30pm, West 301a
  • The Lighter Side of Sci-Fi, 6:00-7:00 pm, North 128a
  • Booth 1378 (Brandon Sanderson/Writing Excuses): See table for schedule

Saturday

  • Where are My Aliens? 1:30-2:30 pm, North 128b
  • Official Signing, 3:00-4:00pm, in the author autographs area
  • Booth 1378 (Brandon Sanderson/Writing Excuses): See table for schedule

Like I said, it’s pretty light. My merchandise can be found at the Brandon Sanderson/Writing Excuses booth, #1378, through Saturday evening, and I will be there from time to time to sketch in your stuff. My schedule will be posted there, and will include the times when I’ve promised to brave the madding crowd and return to the table with my sharpies.

I need to get a lot of work done this weekend, including penciling and inking strips for late June. It’s possible I’ll be doing some of that in places where I can be seen. If I’m in public, I’ll tweet my location. Follow @HowardTayler on Twitter for that information, as well as for random noise, some of which might be pretty entertaining.

Crossposted, Reviews

X-Men: Apocalypse

XMenApocalypseAs much as I enjoyed this movie, I am very much ready for a superhero movie in which the story is not about how we react to the existence of superheroes. Apotheosis makes for a good story, and that’s why we have gotten so very many films that deal with it, and quite a few of them have been excellent, including this one.

X-Men: Apocalypse clears my Threshold of Awesome (no shaky cam! Not even during the scene where all but the pure in heart would have said it’s okay to shake the camera) and as far as I’m concerned it is a worthy successor to X-Men: Days of Future Past in pretty much every way.

Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, and James McAvoy all turn in stirring performances, and the newcomers (new to me, anyway) held up their end of the stick with the sort of heroic aplomb that is required when a story about actual absolute power is being told.

Crossposted, Reviews

The Angry Birds Movie

TABMThe Angry Birds Movie is better than it has any reason to be. Lots of movies pull this off, but this movie manages to turn a mobile puzzle game into delightful cinema. That divide is huge, the chasm that must be cleared is—no, I’m not going to use that metaphor. The slingshot joke is low-hanging fruit. You can all see it coming, and the film deserves better than a metaphor pulled from the bottom branches of the tree.

That principle, “don’t settle for the low-hanging fruit,” is what makes The Angry Birds Movie so delightful. The story follows a predictable form, and there are tropes that simply must be present for the story to flow, but the filmmakers were not willing to settle for simply filling out the forms and making it pretty. And I’m not talking about “exceeding low expectations.” No, this film is what happens when a storyteller who takes pride in their work seeks to exceed their own expectations.

For me, The Angry Birds Movie is the second surprisingly enjoyable video game adaptation this year. It gives me hope—actual hope, complete with giddy anticipation—that the Warcraft movie can clear the “better than it has any reason to be” bar with the same amount of air.¹

The Angry Birds Movie clears my Threshold of Awesome, and yes, if you look at my list, I did, in point of actual fact, have more fun during that film than I did during Captain America: Civil War.

 

¹If there are pigs in the Warcraft movie, I want that movie to clear the bar, then sail across the screen and knock down their houses­².

²THERE I got it out of my system.

Announcements, Crossposted

Pre-Orders Open on Monday

Pre-orders for Force Multiplication, Schlock Mercenary Book 12, will open on Monday, May 23rd at 8am Mountain time. 

FMCover-w-spine

We’re quite pleased with how this book turned out. The stone circuit cover design defines the style we’ll be using for books 12 through 17, and the stuff inside the cover is at least as cool as all that. I love the bonus story that Sandra wrote, and Natalie Barahona’s art is perfect for it. I’m also pleased with the way the Force Multiplication story reads when reading it in one sitting. It’s pretty tight, if I do say so myself.

Force Multiplication is $20.00 + shipping.

Numbered sketch editions are $10 more, and only about 600 of those will be available. If you want one, you need to place your order quickly.

Monday, May 23rd, 8am Mountain time. Maybe mark your calendar?

Other Announcements

As long as you’ve got your calendar open, there are a couple more things to maybe pencil into it.

June 3rd: Planet Mercenary Backerkit Lockdown

PM-LockDown1If you backed Planet Mercenary, on June 3rd you will no longer be able to change your order. Credit card processing will begin then, so now might  be a good time to make sure the card (especially the expiration date) is still valid.

You WILL still be able to change your shipping address after June 3rd.  Details are over here on the Kickstarter Page.

Note: We cannot combine Planet Mercenary Kickstarter shipping and Force Multiplication pre-order shipping. Sorry!

July 1st: Registration closes for the Out of Excuses 2016 Writing Workshop and Retreat.

WX-Logo-2016BluesIn a nutshell, this event is a Caribbean cruise for writers and students of writing. It’s hosted by the Writing Excuses team, and it will the second time we’ve held the event in the Caribbean.

If you’re interested, don’t delay registering because you might not have until July 1st. We’re limited to 150 attendees, and when we reach the attendance cap, registration closes.