Monthly Archives: November 2022
Whatever Holiday Gift Guide 2022, Day Three: Arts, Crafts, Music and More
Posted on November 30, 2022 80 Comments
The Whatever Holiday Gift Guide 2022 continues, and today we move away from books and focus on other gifts and crafts — which you can take to mean just about any other sort of thing a creative person might make: Music, art, knitting, jewelry, artisan foodstuffs and so on. These can be great, unique gifts for special folks […]
What’s the Ethical Use of AI-Generated Art?
Posted on November 29, 2022 53 Comments
First: The above bit of whimsy, generated by Midjourney from the prompt “A peppermint kaiju in a gingerbread city.” Second, some thoughts about AI-generated art I’ve had recently, which I posted on my personal Facebook account but am reposting here to open up the discussion a bit. I wrote: I have fun playing with AI-generated […]
The Big Idea: Kayleigh Nicol
Posted on November 29, 2022 2 Comments
It’s no surprise that today’s generation of authors might also be gamers… but the influence of gaming on their writing may be more substantial that you might suspect. Kayleigh Nicol, who co-wrote Crystal Awakening with Andrew Rowe, speaks to this integration of writing and gaming, and how the latter informed the former with this novel. […]
Whatever Holiday Gift Guide 2022, Day Two: Non-Traditionally Published Books
Posted on November 29, 2022 165 Comments
Today is Day Two of the Whatever Holiday Gift Guide 2022, and today the focus is on Non-Traditionally Published Books: Self-published works, electronically-exclusive books, books from micro presses, books released outside the usual environs of the publishing world, and so on. Hey, I put my first novel up on this very Web site years ago and told people to […]
Whatever Holiday Gift Guide 2022, Day One: Traditionally Published Books
Posted on November 28, 2022 95 Comments
Welcome to the first day of the Whatever Shopping Guide 2022 — Our way of helping you folks learn about cool creative gifts for the holidays, straight from the folks who have created them. Today’s featured products are traditionally published books (including graphic novels and audiobooks); that is, books put out by publishers who ship books to stores […]
New Books and ARCs, 11/25/22
Posted on November 25, 2022 14 Comments
We’re heading into the holiday season now, and what better way to go into it than with a fine selection of new books and ARCs! What here is making you feel merry? Share in the comments! — JS
How to Weave the Artisan Web
Posted on November 25, 2022 55 Comments
I wrote on Twitter yesterday: “But Scalzi,” I hear you say, “How do we bring back that artisan, hand-crafted Web?” Well, it’s simple, really, and if you’re a writer/artist/musician/other sort of creator, it’s actually kind of essential: 1. Create/reactivate your own site, owned by you, to hold your own work. 2. When you create that […]
The Great Escape
Posted on November 24, 2022 8 Comments
Fly, turkey, fly! For those who celebrate it, Happy Thanksgiving. For those who don’t celebrate it, happy Thursday. In both cases, I hope it’s a good day for you. — JS
Whatever 2022 Holiday Gift Guide Starts Monday!
Posted on November 23, 2022 7 Comments
Every year as the holiday season begins I run a gift guide for the holidays, and over the years it’s been quite successful: Lots of people have found out about excellent books and crafts and charities and what have you, making for excellent gift-giving opportunities during the holiday season. I’ve decided to do it again this […]
The Big Idea: David Sandner & Jacob Weisman
Posted on November 23, 2022
When two writers join forces… how does the work actually get done? David Sandner and Jacob Weisman get real on this topic, and how it was their collaboration on Hellhounds got done. DAVID SANDNER: “90% of the work, 50% of the profits.” I remember seeing that on t-shirts worn by two collaborating sf writers circulating […]
This is a Post to Set Up Verification on Mastodon, You Can Totally Ignore it
Posted on November 22, 2022 22 Comments
Seriously, that’s all it is. Ignore it! Ignore, I say! Mastodon WHY ARE YOU NOT IGNORING THIS — JS
The Big Idea: Sharon Shinn
Posted on November 22, 2022 5 Comments
Everyone wants to be authentically themselves, but sometimes it can be dangerous to show your true colors. In author Sharon Shinn’s newest novel, The Shuddering City, everyone can express themselves as they truly are. Read on to see how they go about doing so. SHARON SHINN: A few years ago, I was at REI buying […]
Whoops We Bought Another House
Posted on November 21, 2022 45 Comments
What?!? How could this have happened?!? Well, actually, because the house we bought is directly next door to The Old Church (see said church in the right of this photo), and when it came up on the market, we decided that it would be really useful to have that land for some things that would […]
RIP, Greg Bear
Posted on November 20, 2022 22 Comments
I think most people in the science fiction community know this, but in case the news has missed you, Greg Bear has passed away, after complications from surgery. File 770 has the details of that, as well as a general overview of his life, so I commend you to that site for the details. What […]
Universal Yums: November 2022 Review
Posted on November 19, 2022 19 Comments
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another Universal Yums review! Every month upon receiving the snack box, I open it and ask my dad to guess what country it is. This month, he actually got it first try! It’s Italy! I was pretty impressed, so I let him assist me in my review. As you can […]
The Scalzis Go Corporate
Posted on November 17, 2022 55 Comments
I have previously and briefly noted that we over here at the Scalzi Compound have had some business reorganization going on, but now that all the applicable business licenses have been filed, paperwork done and bank accounts opened, it’s time to expand on that news a bit. The short version is that Krissy and I […]
Experiment 111722
Posted on November 17, 2022 9 Comments
I got some new music software and played with it to see how it sounded; this is what came out. It is good? Meh. It’s more of a fragment than a whole composition, although I like the breakdown in the middle. Is it noisy? Oh my, yes. I think I’ve learned about myself that when […]
The Big Idea: Elijah Kinch Spector
Posted on November 17, 2022 4 Comments
One can imagine another time and place for a novel, but the when and where of one’s life will find a way into the telling of that story. Or so Elijah Kinch Spector discovered in writing Kalyna the Soothsayer. Today’s Big Idea delves into this phenomenon. ELIJAH KINCH SPECTOR: The United States is simply too […]
The Kaiju Preservation Society an Amazon “Best of 2022” in SF/F, and an Opening Round Nominee for the Goodreads Choice Awards
Posted on November 15, 2022 12 Comments
The headline pretty much sums it up. I’m pleased on both counts. It’s nice to be appreciated here in the bottom half of 2022. That said, if you would like to vote for Kaiju for in the Goodreads Choice Awards (or for any other nominee, if in fact you prefer them better, although if you […]
The Big Idea: Jim Ottaviani and Jerel Dye
Posted on November 15, 2022 2 Comments
We all know Albert Einstein — he’s the personification of “scientist” in the minds of most of us — but as always, there’s more to the icon (and the man!) than we expect. Jim Ottaviani explains what this means in this Big Idea for his (with artist Jerel Dye) graphic novel retelling of the life […]
Whatever Everyone Else is Saying