James Marquis is a Seattle writer and author of science fiction novels, a memoir, and a collection of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror stories titled Dark Day Dreams, written under the pen name of James Hawthorne. He enjoys writing as a way to explore and expose the ways pop culture, politics, music and literature shape our … More Five Questions: James Marquis and his Dark Day Dreams
Seattle’s reputation as a literary town includes an enormous presence in the science fiction and fantasy universe. The great Octavia Butler, author of the Parable of the Sower, penned her works in the shadow of the Space Needle, the city’s iconic landmark. Other authors include Don McQuinn, Cat Rambo, and Shawn Speakman. Lesser known and … More Two-Hour Transport: A journey into Seattle’s sci-fi and fantasy community
My wife and I drove from Seattle to Powell’s Books in Portland a couple of weeks ago to satisfy an itch. At this point, I’ve written three novels and eight shorts in the world of Carbon Run, but the project has run its course. Is there another way to explore the idea of a post-global … More How would King Arthur’s knights cope with a climate-changed world?
I’d like to introduce Kevin D. Aslan, a debut author who is self-publishing his fantasy novel Encore as a serial. Encore follows Leo Melikian, a smart but naïve 25-year old in the south of France who discovers he’s suddenly living each day twice: Monday followed by Monday, Tuesday by Tuesday, and so on. Kevin agreed … More Five Questions: Kevin D. Aslan, author of Encore
I’m starting a new occasional feature on my blog called Five Questions. I’ll ask an author five interesting questions and post their answers. Check out the answer for the bonus question! My inaugural guest is Elizabeth Guizzetti, a personal friend whom I met through a sci-fi and fantasy writers group in Seattle. Elizabeth loves to … More Five Questions: Elizabeth Guizzetti, author of The Grove
I’ve been doing some rethinking about content for my blog, especially in light of the chance that it might become the main platform for promoting my upcoming Carbon Run books. Frankly, I need to make the blog more, um, sexy, and what’s better than an attractive woman that suggests one of the characters in my … More Criminy! What do you think of the header image on my blog?
As I mentioned in a previous post, I wrote two Carbon Run short stories, Zillah Harmonia, and Living in Infamy. I’ve recorded the second story and posted it on SoundCloud. In a future when fossil fuels are banned, the captain of a US Navy destroyer, plagued by guilt over a friendly-fire incident, hunts a dangerous … More Reading: Living In Infamy, a Carbon Run story
I’ve been inspired by fellow writers, particularly my friend Ramona Ridgewell, to experiment with making my short stories available online as audio readings. It’s sort of a no-brainer, given my background in radio and skills in audio production, and I’ve been thinking about it for a long time as a way to promote myself and … More Reading: A War Beyond War, And I Am the Only Soldier
Good artists copy. Great artists steal. — attributed to Pablo Picasso, among others Discussion of cultural appropriation has surged in the last few years in the context of race relations. White culture has borrowed and stolen from black culture for decades, particularly in entertainment, usually without enough credit to the origins of a style of … More Review: The appropriated world of The Guild of Saint Cooper
An unfinished version of this post appeared earlier by mistake. Apologies for my fat fingers. A couple of days after Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened, Washington Post contributor Matthew Bowman pointed out a long fascination by the Mormon community for science fiction and fantasy. Some of the most well-known and best-selling writers in the … More What Catholic sci-fi writers can learn from Mormon writers.
Cosmologists are embracing the idea of parallel universes or the multiverse, which writers of science fiction and fantasy have portrayed as mirrors or different versions of our own universe, with passageways between them. Other sciences have noticed that the laws of nature often lead to repeat, parallel performances, such as adaptations in unrelated creatures to … More Review: The Adjacent Is Confusing, Maybe Unfinished
Love in the Time of Global Warming, a short novel by Francesa Lia Block, author of the controversial Dangerous Angels (Weetzie Bat) series for teens, has almost nothing to do with global warming. But it has everything to do with a teenage girl whose world has lost its shape and whose idea of love has … More Review: Homer’s Odyssey As An LGBT Road Trip
Some novels demonstrate how a writer evolves over time and practice. His or her style changes over the years it takes to write a novel. Some themes are important early, and they’re supplanted by others later on. That’s the case with Zachary Bonelli’s first science-fiction novel, Voyage: Embarkation, published in 2013 by Fuzzy Hedgehog Press. … More Review of Voyage: Embarkation
I visited the first annual Seattle Indie Book Fair today at the A/NT Gallery on Westlake in Seattle. At least two dozen independent authors and small press proprietors packed the gallery with science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, and poetry. The gallery is a great space for showcasing some fabulous work by people taking DIY publishing to … More Photos from Seattle Indie Book Fair
