Yo, dumplings!
There were a few other plates that wouldn’t fit into the picture. It was an excellent dinner. Leftovers were ransacked this morning with delirious and reckless abandon.
Random Links O’Goodness:
Interviews with comic book gurus and Wonder!Pow! writers, Brian Vaughan and Stan Lee. Here’s what Stan the Man says about fantasy:
DRE: We spoke of a few years ago and you said that you weren�t a fan of pure fantasy, did you relax that a bit for Mosaic?
Lee: It depends on what you�re talking about pure fantasy. If your story has nothing but fairytale qualities then I�m not interested in it. Fantasy has to be tempered with reality. For example, one of the famous fairytales is Jack and the Beanstalk. The fantasy element is that he had magic beans and they grew a giant beanstalk that went up to the sky where a giant lived. That�s fantasy, but it was coupled with reality. Jack was a poor kid who lived with his mother. They didn�t have enough money and finally she told him to sell their cow. By making the character�s realistic and empathetic, you can go into fantasy but if everything is fantastic then it gets boring.
I’m not sure this is a problem limited to just fantasy novels. Readers need to relate, after all. Here, too, is an interview with Colman Dowell about writing: This element of mystery is there for me. I’m not very articulate about writing, as you can see. If I could sit here and tell you everything that happens and why I do it–aside from a compulsion and an absolute love for writing, I don’t think I’d write. I don’t think I’d do it all because it’s a lonesome thing. When I start a new book I feel as though I’m going into a cave that I can’t come out of until the book is finished.
One of my favorite writers, Charlie Huston, is going to have his book, Already Dead, turned into a movie! I just hope they do it justice. It’s the first of his vampire series, and is utterly fantastic. There are several authors I read when I need a jump start in my writing, and Charlie is one of them (along with Scott Lynch, Lee Child, Sara Donati, Borges, and others that aren’t at this moment on the tip of my tongue).