Page 28 of posts by: montsamu

Friday Quick Updates: Studio Ghibli, George Takei, ConTemporal, Jamil Nasir and Alex Wilson, and The Clockwork Ball

Posted on 2013-06-22 at 01:50 by montsamu

Friday, June 21: It's quite a week NEXT week, with George Takei leading a musical trip through science fiction at the North Carolina Symphony ahead of year two of the Steampunk convention ConTemporal, a joint event with Jamil Nasir and recent Writers of the Future winner Alex Wilson, and another Clockwork Ball at Davenport & Winkleperry. And, starting this weekend at Durham's Carolina Theatre, is Part 2 of The Studio Ghibli Collection film series, starting tonight with Kiki's Delivery Service and Pom Poko a

Posted in Uncategorized

Friday Quick Updates: Merrie Haskell at The Regulator, "Fierce Reads Tour" including Leigh Bardugo at Quail Ridge Books, Free RPG Day, and more

Posted on 2013-06-14 at 20:03 by montsamu

Friday, June 14: It's a packed weekend with two readings tonight and two all-day events on Saturday. Tonight's readings are: Merrie Haskell for her new middle-grade fantasy Handbook for Dragon Slayers at Durham's The Regulator Bookshop at 7pm; and (also at 7 pm) Quail Ridge Books hosts a stop on a 5-author YA sf/f tour, "Fierce Reads", including Shadow & Bone author Leigh Bardugo. Tomorrow, the all-day events include Free RPG Day at gaming stores throughout the area, as well as Ultimate Comics' "Best of the

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The Hardest Part: Richard Dansky on Vaporware

Posted on 2013-06-12 at 16:29 by montsamu

Durham author Richard Dansky has helped hawk Bull Spec to passers-by at the Bimbe Cultural Arts Festival while wearing a vintage Montreal Expos shirt; he let me excerpt his novel, Firefly Rain, in Bull Spec #2; he's been pressed to participate in several NC Speculative Fiction Night events, most recently in April, where he read from his new collection Snowbird Gothic; and he's written a long list of reviews, interviews, and articles for Bull Spec, most recently a tribute to the late Ray Bradbury in issue #8

Posted in The Hardest Part | Tagged richard dansky, vaporware

June Newsletter: Mur Lafferty, Walter Mosley, Merrie Haskell, Leigh Bardugo, Khaled Hosseini, Free RPG Day, George Takei, ConTemporal, and more

Posted on 2013-05-31 at 20:56 by montsamu

Vol 3. No 6. May 31, 2013:

Whew. May was quite a busy month, with: visits from (among others) Mary Robinette Kowal (recap here and Warren Schultz's video here) and John Scalzi (Calvin Powers posted a video of Scalzi's reading for those who missed it); Daniel Wallace launched his new book The Kings and Queens of Roam with multiple local events and an interview on WUNC's The State of Things; comics events with Kelly Sue DeConnick and Lucy Knisley; and the invasion of several hundred cosplayers into downtown

Posted in newsletter

The Hardest Part: Matthew Ross on The Secret of Ji

Posted on 2013-05-29 at 14:20 by montsamu

UNC/Duke professor Tyler Curtain has an avid interest in literary sf and fantasy translations, and introduced me to Duke ecology PhD student Matthew Ross, whose translation from the French of Pierre Grimbert's bestselling and award-winning The Secret of Ji: Six Heirs was about to be published by AmazonCrossing (Publishers Weekly review) and Brilliance Audio (SFFAudio review). Ross talked a bit about this process at the recent NC Speculative Fiction Night in April, where he also gave a reading from the book,

Posted in The Hardest Part | Tagged matthew ross

The Shambling Guide to New York City Listen-a-Long: Chapters 3 and 4 (and release day coverage!)

Posted on 2013-05-29 at 13:48 by montsamu

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Animazement 2013: Day 1

Posted on 2013-05-25 at 03:11 by montsamu

I stopped by Day 1 of Animazement at the Raleigh Convention Center on Friday early afternoon, and already the 3-day anime-centered convention was well underway.

Even before I made it inside the Convention Center doors, Fayetteville Street was awash in Avengers (for a scheduled mass photoshoot on an external stairway) and all manner of other cosplayers:

Inside, most pre-registered attendees had already long since made their way through registration, but there were still some crowds milling about

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged animazement

Friday Quick Updates: Richard Dansky's Vaporware; Animazement; and (this Wednesday) John Scalzi

Posted on 2013-05-24 at 15:06 by montsamu

Friday Quick Updates for Friday, May 24, 2013:

Durham author Richard Dansky's new novel Vaporware is now out from JournalStone! Congrats, Rich. I've been re-posting a few of the blurbs and guest posts and interviews about the book over on the Bull Spec Facebook and Twitter pages, so go check out this book about a video game project that refuses to be cancelled.

Locals Mark Van Name, Mur Lafferty, and Meagen Voss (among others) are heading up to Baltimore for Balticon this Memorial Day weekend, but here in

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged animazement, john scalzi, vaporware

Announcement: author Robert V.S. Redick joins the lineup for the Summer Speculative Fiction event

Posted on 2013-05-23 at 19:16 by montsamu

I've very excited to announce that we've added another author to the already amazing lineup for the 3rd annual Bull Spec Summer Speculative Fiction event. That author is Robert V.S. Redick, author of The Chathrand Voyage Quartet, recently completed with book 4, The Night of the Swarm, in February. Redick studied literature and Russian at the University of Virginia, tropical conservation and development at the University of Florida, and fiction writing in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in

Posted in announcements

The Hardest Part: Tonia Brown on Gnomageddon

Posted on 2013-05-22 at 13:15 by montsamu

Posted in The Hardest Part | Tagged tonia brown