21 Dec 2011, 9:34am
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Randomness for 12/21

1) How to make your own chocolate D&D dice.

2) The Invisible Mother in Victorian photographs.

3) Best Christmas Webcomic Ever: “Poop us some candy, poop man!”

4) I love light shows projected onto buildings, and this one is especially good. Video.

5) The Great Successor Is Right Over Here You Guys.

6) Worse than the bedmonster.

7) Scene from THERE WILL BE BLOOD with gaze locations: Video. Via Rod Ramsey.

13 Dec 2011, 12:08pm
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Randomness for 12/13

1) Children’s drawings painted realistically.

2) Sketchy bunnies. To each and every screaming child in those pictures I say: Kid, I am on your side.

3) The Ten Most-Watched YouTube Videos Of All Time. I’ve seen exactly one of them (the one about Charlie).

4) Rules of 50 Magical Systems In Convenient Chart Form

5) Robot Monsters With Breasts! Screenwriter and low budget film aficionado Bill Martell on two of the weirdest movies he’s ever seen.

6) 13 Punctuation marks you didn’t know existed. Actually, you know some of these, but probably not all.

7) One does not simply walk into Mordor.

8 Dec 2011, 9:36am
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A Chuck Jones Christmas Carol

It’s that time of year again, so here’s my favorite version of A Christmas Carol. Lots of ghosts, terrific art direction, and general spookiness

27 Nov 2011, 10:05am
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Randomness for 11/27

1) We Watch It For You: Rage of the Yeti. OMG, why didn’t anyone tell me this exists!

2) Walking through doors causes forgetting, study determines.

3) Ultra-serious Amazon.com reviewers take on pepper spray.

4) Reuters Best 100 Photos of 2011. Some of these are gorgeous. Some of these are difficult to look at.

5) Famous paintings with irreverent new titles.

6) “Twe-twe-2016!” A truly terrible trailer for a movie from Ghana. So awful and so compelling. Video.

7) The series bible for the old D&D cartoon.

12 Nov 2011, 9:30am
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Randomness for 11/12

1) A gorgeous piece of projection art. Video. Amazing. via @i09.

2) “Your walkie-talkie is not a psychiatrist.” Video. Walking Dead lol.

3) A Babbage Difference Engine made of Legos. Video.

4) Man punishes daughter by making her put on home-made “renaissance” armor and fighting her. At 2am. Until 4am.

5) Man rides 90-foot wave off the coast of Portugal. This might be the largest wave ever ridden by a human. Video.

6) Nine muppets booted off Sesame Street. I loved Don Music!

7) Awesomely Dangerous Pranks from Bygone Days.

25 Oct 2011, 8:49am
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Randomness for 10/25

1) A big list of fantastic stop motion movies. Whoa.

2) “FIGHT ME” Video. Pretty funny stuff.

3) Elementary school kids explain computers, from 1984. Video.

4) Halloween house lights that will amaze you. Video.

5) A vampire identification chart.

6) The site calls this list “The Ten Happiest Jobs” but it really shows ten jobs that make people happiest.

7) Rebranding Hell.

19 Oct 2011, 1:43pm
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Randomness for 10/19

1) We are the 1%, bitches.

2) The tragedy series.

3) Infographic political statements on your legal tender.

4) How taxing is it to run in heavy armor?

5) The world’s largest rooftop farm is in New York.

6) Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance.

7) The Dungeons and Dragons Coloring Book from 1979. These images are perfectly sized for printing. Just sayin’.

13 Oct 2011, 7:21pm
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Randomness for 10/13

1) What it’s like to work on a show in trouble.

2) Saveur magazine invites comix artists to write and draw their favorite recipes. Wonderful.

3) Cameos carved in Oreo cookies.

4) Cat vs. Hairdryer. Video.

5) Six big economic myths, debunked.

6) Super-rich superheroes (and villains) are the 1%!

7) TV/movie starships, to scale.

12 Oct 2011, 10:02am
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SFBC Omnibus Editions Have Arrived

IMG_4917

Just a few moments ago I received a box of my author copies of The Wooden Man, the omnibus edition of my three Twenty Palaces novels. You can see the black satin ribbon bookmark that marks it as that month’s “Sliver of Night” selection (aka the featured urban fantasy for the catalog) for the Science Fiction Book Club.

And you can see my Halloween table cloth, too. I think that’s appropriate.

Anyway, if you want the omnibus, you’ll have to get it from SFBC or buy it second hand from one of their members. There’s a special introduction I wrote for it that you won’t find anywhere else.

10 Oct 2011, 8:08am
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Randomness for 10/10

1) Evangelicals try to rebrand Halloween into “Jesusween” because what’s more important that Jesus’s ween?

2) Photos of people scared shitless at a haunted house. This is so freaking amazing I don’t even know.

3) Ten stubborn food myths that just won’t die.

4) Want to see part of a mountain fall into the sea? Video.

5) I include this because it looks great and is technically well done, even if the “story” isn’t: Stop-Motion Ninja duel. Video.

6) This is why I’m not nostalgic about Steve Jobs, even though my home is full of stuff he sold.

7) This post by Ezra Klein is pretty good chronicling of the errors made when the Obama administration designed their stimulus.

Bonus link: There’s a site re-posting old Usenet articles exactly 30 years after they were originally posted. Use your newsreader: nntp.olduse.net.

6 Oct 2011, 7:06am
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Randomness for 10/6

1) This is the guy who should be redesigning DC’s rebooted heroes.

2) Artwork created in rice fields.

3) The 20 Biggest Idiots on Facebook. via Marisol

4) Spooky Victorian Mansions made of Legos.

5) Who Killed Videogames, A Ghost Story

6) Microphotography contest winners.

7) “We are the 1%.”

29 Sep 2011, 11:23am
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Randomness for 9/29

1) The Dead Sea Scrolls are available online.

2) A flowchart guide to NPR’s top 100 sf/f books. “Enjoy stories about orphaned farm boys?” “No.” “Tough.”

3) M&Ms viewed through water drops.

4) How not to impress a publisher. And it’s all true, which won’t surprise anyone.

5) How to peel a whole head of garlic in ten seconds.

6) Photos of supers in their off moments. Of course Wonder Woman is the only one in a sexual activity and, um, considering the history of the character… Never mind. Love the Spider-man, though. Via Bill Martell.

7) Edible super-hero logos. Hellboy in chili is perfect, but I doubt the Punisher has ever gone near soy yogurt in his life.

26 Sep 2011, 7:33am
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Randomness for 9/26

1) A die to cure writer’s block. It jingles when you roll it, so that has to be worth $45.

2) How many continents are there? Video.

3) Joe Lansdale beats the hell out of his son-in-law (in a martial arts exhibition). Video. As always, I’m a little dubious about this stuff, but it’s still cool to watch.

4) This is odd. via @mizkit on Twitter

5) Beautiful, anonymous paper sculptures being left at Scottish Museums.

6) Soon-to-be Father of the Year photoshops Ewoks into family photos to convince kids they are real.

7) A fantastic new webcomic.

4 Sep 2011, 9:50am
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Randomness for 9/4

1) A visual compendium of notable haircuts in popular music.

2) The origins of Superman’s villains, done in the style of Little Nemo In Slumberland>.

3) Amazing manhole covers in Japan.

4) Lord of the Rings in Lego (via Rose Fox)

5) The Silmarillion, bound and illustrated by hand.

6) The many difficult decisions around crossing a street in Los Angeles.

7) “There is widespread belief in a warm and comforting story which states the horse is a gentle herbivore.” From the description of Deadly Equines: The Shocking True Story of Meat-Eating and Murderous Horses by CuChullaine O’Reilly (seen via Ray Radlein)

2 Sep 2011, 12:01pm
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Quick Friday post

1. I have promised a thread for spoilery discussions of the Twenty Palaces books. I have not forgotten this promise.

2. Today is the day I travel around Seattle (by bus!) signing book stock in stores. Fun! Okay, not. Actually, it’ll be a good time to do some reading and thinking about item 3.

3. My agent got back to me with some notes about A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark. They seem very straightforward but will require a bit of fixing to address. Must turn on brain.

4. My agent has also shamed me into replacing my phone. Let us not speak of this further.

5. The Livestrong calorie counter is making me rethink my devotion to kielbasa and peanut butter.

6. Booster Gold is a terrific character.

7. My email inbox has been exploding for weeks. I’m not sure what to do about it, but I have to do something.

8. Last night was date night for my wife and me. Unfortunately, our sitter never showed (don’t know why) so we ended up cooking some quick, sorta-crappy food and then rushing out to Elliott Bay Marina to see “Cirque du Sail” a couple who travel around the world on their sailboat, with their kids, and pay their way by doing acrobatic shows in the rigging for donations. Last night was the final Seattle show but they’ll be in San Francisco in a few days. They’re very good. Check it out if you can.

9. One the way to the Marina last night, my wife turned to me and said “Thanks for coming to see this thing with me.” I said: “Hey, it’s Date Night! We just had bad food and now we’re going to see some unlikely entertainment. The only difference is that we’re dragging the boy behind us in a little red wagon.” Date night, everybody.

10. Time to get out of here and start signing. Have a great holiday weekend, Holiday Weekend People.

20 Aug 2011, 10:18am
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Is this the French cover for Child of Fire?

I don’t know, because it popped up while I was looking at Goodreads.

What do you think?

20 Aug 2011, 9:07am
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Randomness for 8/20

1) Interview of a One-Year-Old Child. Video. Way funnier than it sounds.

2) Moebius did concept art for the movie WILLOW. Check out the art design that could have been.

3) Astonishing bike stunts in abandoned industrial facility. Video. Music’s nice, too.

4) Better Book Titles.

5) Everything you need to know about the video game industry in one graphic.

6) The 10 Most Brutal Moments in ‘The Savage Sword of Conan’!

7) A steampunk apartment.

11 Aug 2011, 8:33am
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The trailer script revealed

As promised, here is the actual script I wrote for the trailer. You can see the similarities and the differences.

What’s that? You missed my post last night with the full trailer embedded? You hate Vimeo? Well, here’s your chance to watch it on YouTube:

Anyway, you can see there are quite a few differences, to put it mildly. The guys at Wyrd told me straight out to write whatever I wanted–to not hold back at all–and they would figure out what they could or couldn’t do.

Well, dangling from the hole in the world wasn’t going to happen, and neither was the Molotov cocktail. There were some other things that were shot but didn’t make the final cut, like Catherine’s only line.

And there was other stuff that the guys at Wyrd just grabbed and ran with, like the floating storm, the confrontation with the guy drawing the sigil, and the final shot, which the director rightly changed from a punch to the ghost knife. Not to mention, thank god they changed the way Annalise is introduced. ::slaps forehead::

A note about formatting: This isn’t “correct” script formatting, because Christ this is a blog post and it’s 10:50 at night and I don’t want to go nuts making a fake screenplay. Also, I cheated the format for my own purposes by using two columns–why not, right? I didn’t have to follow any formatting rules! It was my money!

Plus, for those reading this on my main blog, my nifty WordPress theme puts a gray bg on part of it. Just pretend that didn’t happen and we’ll both be happier.

For folks who haven’t read a script before, character names are ALL CAPS the first time they’re introduced. The INT or EXT mark a new location in the script, and making the first few words in a line ALL CAPS also designates a new location or shot, esp in a montage like this.

Here’s the script behind the cut. more »

10 Aug 2011, 3:47pm
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The full Twenty Palaces trailer is now live

Previously, I’d posted a teaser trailer for my Twenty Palaces books, but we’re finally ready to share the whole thing. This version includes all the special effects, characters and short scenes from Circle of Enemies (not spoilery), Catherine Little, Charles Hammer, the ghost knife…

And of course, Annalise doing some damage.

Here you go:

Full Twenty Palaces Trailer from Harry Connolly on Vimeo.

Swear to god, the guys at Wyrd did a fantastic job on this. Above and beyond, really. If you follow that link to their site, you can find out more about their award-winning genre documentaries, including H.P. LOVECRAFT: FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN.

Hey, if you like the video, please do let other people know about it. Almost forgot: if I can work out the formatting, I’ll post the original trailer script tomorrow, so folks can see the differences and how things change.

30 Jul 2011, 9:55am
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Randomness for 7/30

1) The largest Hot Wheels track ever. Four years in the making and it’s already sold for millions.

2) The 50 most delicious foods in the world. Points off for “Texas Barbecue Pork.”

3) More on joke Amazon.com reviews.

4) Spock is not impressed.

5) The Wesley Crusher Pullover Collection.

6) Dr. Strange villains reimagined.

7) Six pieces of technology SF movies forget about.

 
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