Madeline Turnipseed - Author

Oh, hey.  Is it June? Howdy friends.  Today I'm fawning over a new favorite world, the world of the Craft Sequence created by Max Gladstone . maxgladstone.com No I'm not asking you to read 5 books.  There are two more stories within the world that you can explore as interactive novels , plus Gladstone is contracted to release a sixth novel with Tor.com, then future novellas within the world until his contract is up .  I'm asking you to read so much more! So with that stellar pitch out of the way, what are these stories about? Imagine a world where power is money is influence is law is utilities is faith is forces of nature is magic.  Welcome to the world of the Craft Sequence. Humans learned how to use magic, called Craft, and used that to kill off most of the gods in the God Wars.  Now craftspeople are the CEOs and lawyers and stock brokers in a world they blasphemed for. *again with the crap pitches* Okay, we'll try it this way. ...

     What follows will sound like a backhanded compliment, and I want to clarify that it is not intended that way.  Rather, it is stated in this way to highlight the skill of Jeff VanderMeer .      The Southern Reach Trilogy is the best work I have read where basically nothing happens.      Now, those of you that have read the series might be objecting quite loudly at this point.  A lot happens in the story.  There's an expedition to gather information about an unknown environmental occurrence.  There's shadowy government agencies.  There's mind-bending multi-dimensional/monster/alien/God-knows-what things happening.  There's verbal sparring.  There's guns.  Sometimes they even get fired.      But you know what happens most of all?      Navel gazing.      Deep, deep, POV for these books.  First person for the first book, Third person for the se...

Howdy girls and boys!  I do have a review post for you today, but it's not of any of the books I mentioned last week.  I started reading a manga earlier this week at work and I couldn't put it down, so here's my review of Ajin: Demi-Human .  I'll alert you for spoilers. Crunchyroll Right before finals  Crunchyroll updated our subscription so we could read manga as well as watch anime through their site/app.  I was good and waited until this week :)  Their mobile app doesn't have the library available that their site does, but that's okay because it supports this series. The Manga Niche Premise is that a few years back, demi-humans were discovered.  They can't be killed; when they die, they come back to life in a matter of seconds, whole.  Demi-humans are rare and usually hunted down by the media and their friends and family because of a rumor that there's a large reward from the government associated with turning in a demi-human for...

Hello people!  Only one week and I'm done with my first semester of nursing school!  Finals week is next week and I'm not going to promise that I'll have a post for you next week, but I'd like to.  I'm going to try to get a post up every week in May since I have off of class for the whole month.  (Gasp!) I haven't done any writing, but I've been (mostly) keeping up with listening to writing podcasts.  A couple of weeks ago the author Libbie Hawker was a guest on a Self-Publishing Podcast episode  talking about her book Gotta Read It!   It's an how-to book geared toward writing a book blurb or pitch.  I managed to finish it last week when the transformer in front of my house was struck by lightning and we lost power.  It's amazing what you find time for when there's no internet. The book is structured in a build-as-you-go style.  Readers (writers?) are prompted to answer some basic questions about their story, kind of a who/what/...

Howdy, Folks! (Shut up, I'm going to the State Fair of Texas tomorrow and I'm excited.)   I'm gonna eat this much  fried food! ( State Fair of Texas ) This week I'm reviewing a book I actually found on Pinterest of all places. They've been recommending things similar to what I pin as part of their whole metadata setup, and this one actually was useful. (Marketing. Sometimes, it does what it's supposed to!) This is the site it led me to. I was intrigued more by the title of the book than by what the blogger had to say. This is not to say anything bad about her post, but rather that I realized that all of the novels I had written (count 'em, three) had this one part in the middle where I kind of felt like I waved my hands and the plot moved on because I had no idea how to get the characters from half #1 to half #2. Things fell apart a little bit. So I looked up the book. Amazon It was only a few bucks, and short to boot, so I bought it an...

Hello friends.  I had lots of reasons why I shouldn't write a blog post today, none of which were legitimate enough to give myself a pass.  I'm labeling this as a review even though I'm only halfway through the book (Reason #6 or 7), but I think you'll forgive me. My husband has been getting into blade smithing over the past year, which has put me in a position to learn new stuff without really trying.  I love it when that happens.  One of the main impressions I have gotten from catching the occasional snatches of a youtube tutorial or seeing him out in the garage working is:  making knives is hard work.  It takes lots of time.  It takes lots of practice.  Some mistakes can be corrected.  Some mistakes mean that you have to scrap your project and start completely over.  While it might save a lot of time to cut your knife blank out of your steel billet in the exact shape that you want the finished knife to be, its terribly impractical. ...

Hello friends! I'm behind on my word count goal and I have no idea where I am more specifically than that.  I've been writing on paper for the last few days because I got an adorable new dog who hates technology, or just loves to chew charging cables and headphones. So Amazon is sending me a new cable for my Chromebook and I'm writing by hand.  Also, since I've been writing by hand I don't have a selection of writing to copy-pasta right in to my blog for you guys, so today I'm talking about my favorite podcasts. (In alphabetical order) Helping Writers Become Authors by K. M. Weiland I haven't read anything Weiland has written, but her writing tips are really good and delivered in small bites. I particularly enjoyed her Crafting Stunning Character Arcs series. My only complaint is that she sometimes goes overboard with examples and tends to use examples from movies rather than books. The Lackadaisical Writer by Anma Natsu Anma is one of my personal writ...

Happy Friday!  Over the past ten weeks, I've been completing an introductory level Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing class online from Gotham Writers .  My husband gave it to me for my birthday back at the beginning of the year. If you are unfamiliar with the layout and format of an online Gotham class, they have an online tour  here .  Gotham has both online and brick-and-mortar classes in their physical location in NYC. This class is set up to help aspiring writers in the field of speculative fiction hone their craft.  In that respect, it focuses more on craft than it does the speculative fiction.  I've heard that "general" creative writing classes tend to be geared towards literary fiction and can be unfriendly towards genre writers, so it is good that there is a place where we are welcome.  Selections from spec-fic writing were used as examples, and the students are expected to be working on spec-fic projects, but the main focus of the class...

Hello friends, happy Friday!  Last week bumped the blog over the 2k view mark, which is awesome.  Thank you for reading and commenting!  (You should comment more!) Anyway, today I'm reviewing Shades of Milk and Honey  by Mary Robinette Kowal .  If you haven't read it, but her name is familiar, you may know her from the Writing Excuses podcast.  Yes, Shades  came out in 2010, and I am a bit behind the curve ball, but let me explain.  When I started listening to the Writing Excuses podcast a year ago, I started waaaaayyy back at the beginning of the series, and Kowal didn't come on to the podcast until about July of last year, by my progress.  (I believe she actually came on as a permanent member back in 2011, but I cannot confirm for certain in the five minutes I spent combing their website.)  I loved everything Kowal was bringing to the podcast and I knew her work would be just as wonderful.  But I had excuses, so I didn't pic...

Hello and Happy New Year!  This week I finished reading  How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card .  While some of the information he covers is a bit dated (it was published in 1990) the book still offers some great insight on writing speculative fiction from one of the greats himself. First, if you are not aware, speculative fiction is an umbrella that covers both sf and fantasy, as both types of stories "speculate" on what could happen in a reality that is not exactly like our own. The book is divided into five parts.  The first is a definition of sf and fantasy, with references going all the way back to the beginning of the genres, before works we now classify separately were thought of as anything but "fiction."  Card is very thorough and gives a reading list of "the basics" which he admits is still far less than complete. The second section of the book deals with world building.  This is not only a creation of the setti...

friedchicken365 KATNISS VS VIN Inkthinker Hello All!  I finishedthe  Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins  last year, and (with most of the rest of the country) went to see the film based on the first book in theaters.  And we are all eagerly anticipating the second film, which hopefully will be a little less shaky cam.  But (unlike the rest of the country) I won't be talking about the movie, I'd like to discuss the treatment of heroines in two different trilogies: The Hunger Games, and  The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson .  The more I thought about this idea, the more it seemed like some sort of English assignment, but I really thought it might be fun to compare and contrast.  The heroines both have a great number of things in common, but are very different women.  Also, these books are in two different genres and reading levels, so this is kind of an apples and oranges comparison.   ALERT! ALERT!...