krad's blog
Submitted by krad on July 1, 2011 - 11:28pm
Super City Police Department: The Case of the Claw by Keith R.A. DeCandido (yeah, that's me) is now on sale! The good folks at Crossroad Press have made my newest novel available in every possible eBook format -- MOBI (Kindle) EPUB (Sony / Nook / iPad / Kobo) PDF (Adobe) and PRC (Mobipocket) -- so you can read it on your eReader or your computer. Here's the cover for the book (art by Mike Collins, design by Glenn Hauman).
And here's the blurb:
The great metropolis of Super City is the home of dozens of costumed heroes: Spectacular Man, the Terrific Trio, the Bruiser, the Superior Six, and more.
This isn't their story...
When the heroes are done punching out the villains, it's left to the stalwart men and women of the Super City Police Department to restrain them, arrest them, and hope that this time there's enough evidence to actually convict them.
SUPER CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT
THE CASE OF THE CLAW
The mutated spree killer known as the Claw has returned, leaving bloody victims all over Super City. While Homicide detectives try to find out who the Claw really is, uniformed officers must deal with the Bolt's escape from the drunk tank, and the bumblings of aspiring hero Knight Dude. Meanwhile, the Superior Six claim they'll cooperate with the police and stop the Claw—but they're busy fighting the Brute Squad and stonewalling the cops. The SCPD must find out the Claw's deadly secret, before he claims another victim!
I've put up an excerpt if you want to sample the book first. If you like what you see, head on over to Crossroad and pick it up!
Submitted by krad on June 20, 2011 - 8:07pm
Here's where I'll be over the next few months:
8-10 July 2011: Shore Leave 33, Hunt Valley Inn, Hunt Valley, MD. I'll be one of the many author guests, doing panels and readings and autographings and stuff, and I'll also be there as the percussionist for the Boogie Knights, performing a Saturday morning concert and at the masquerade halftime. And don't miss the Roast of Robert Greenberger Friday night....
15-17 July 2011: Polaris 25, Sheraton Parkway Toronto North Hotel, Toronto, ON. I'll be one of the author guests, doing readings and panels and autographings.
20/21 July 2011: Hour of the Wolf radio show, WBAI 99.5 FM in NYC, also streaming on the web for you non-New Yorkers. Live interview from 1.30-3am.
2 August 2011: New York Review of Science Fiction Reading, SoHo Gallery for Digital Art, New York, NY. Laura Anne Gilman and I will be the August featured readers.
(tentative) 20-21 August 2011: Baltimore Comic-Con, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD. I might be at this show at the BOOM! Studios booth. Still waiting for final confirmation.
17 September 2011: Star Trek 45th Anniversary celebration with the U.S.S. Justice, Morris County Library, Whippany, NJ. I will be doing a Q&A at 11am, and will have a table set up for selling books and autographing all throughout this day-long event.
13-16 October 2011: New York Comic-Con, Javits Convention Center, New York, NY. I will be attending this con as a professional guest. Not sure if I'll be doing any programming or signings, but I'll be there....
21-23 October 2011: Albacon 2011, Best Western Sovereign Hotel, Albany, NY. I will be the Media Guest of Honor at this SF/F convention.
Conventions I will not be attending:
InConJunction XXXI -- can only do it if we drive, and two 14-hour drives on the weekend preceding two more convention weekends (Shore Leave and Polaris) is just not on.
Dragon*Con 2011 -- don't have the money for travel, hotel, etc.
Renovation, the 69th Annual World Science Fiction Convention -- see Dragon*Con.
World Fantasy Convention -- see Renovation.
Submitted by krad on October 28, 2010 - 7:26pm
On Wednesday 3 November 2010 at 9pm EST, the Biography Channel will air a special called "The Captains of the Final Frontier" -- basically, a biography of the five Star Trek captains.
Among those interviewed for the special: actors Vaughn Armstrong, Denise Crosby, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery, Kate Mulgrew, Tim Russ, and Nana Visitor; production people Ira Steven Behr, Rick Berman, Manny Coto, René Echevarria, Nicholas Meyer, Michael & Denise Okuda, and Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens; authors Kirsten Beyer, Keith R.A. DeCandido, David R. George III, David Mack, Larry Nemecek, and Geoffrey Thorne; comics creator Ken Penders; and Rod Roddenberry, the son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.
Check it out!
Submitted by krad on September 29, 2010 - 7:14pm
I'm doing an experiment this month. There are so many new shows this year, and I only do one "Couch Potato Salad" a month, so I decided to do a quick bullet-point-style overview on our latest in-review episode.
But I couldn't go into any kind of detail on the new shows, which was frustrating to me, since I like to provide a bit more depth. (Or, to put it another way, I don't know when to shut the hell up...) In order to do that, though, the segment would've gone into double-digits in time, and John would've had a heart attack and then had me killed.
So I kept the reviews short and sweet on the podcast, but also mentioned that there are more detailed reviews here on the web site. Those lengthier reviews are now in the forum topic for Episode #102, partly so I could babble a bit more (always a dangerous thing), partly in the hopes that it would drive more of our listeners to this here site.
Let's see if it worked.....
Submitted by krad on March 28, 2010 - 12:27pm
I had the pleasure of meeting Ronald D. Moore (Star Trek: TNG, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica) at I-Con 29 this weekend. We were both guests on Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction, a radio show out of WUSB in Stony Brook. (Click on the show title for an archive of the episode.)
Okay, some background. Waaaaaaaaaaaaay back when we were doing The Chronic Rift as a public access TV show in New York, we also had the Roundtable Awards, and Ron won one for his work on Star Trek: The Next Generation, for which he had only recently joined the staff (this was 1991).
Fast forward to this past Friday night. Ron, myself, and a bunch of other people (including Sarah Douglas and Glenn Hauman, among others) were sitting in the WUSB studio, and I mention the Rift. "Oh my God," Ron says, "you're from The Chronic Rift?" Not only did he remember getting the award, but he still has it. He remembers getting the phone call from either me or John (John, do you remember which of us called?) saying he won the award, and that we'd be sending it to him, and he remembered being excited about getting it.
Then it showed up in the mail. Keep in mind that we were a public access show, so we had no budget. The awards were a round styrofoam base, painted black, and a gold-painted plastic round table (actually the things used to hold up the center of a pizza). Ron was at once flattered and slightly disappointed...
He still has the award. He's had it with him at every office he's worked in since then, including in his current office for Caprica. It was the first award he ever won.
(PS: the last time Sarah Douglas was at I-Con was in 1992, and I interviewed her for the Rift. She of course didn't remember -- it was 18 years ago -- but I reminded her that she ran rings around me during the interview. She really did, too, it was hilarious.)
Submitted by krad on March 9, 2010 - 12:16am
I saw The Secret of Kells at the IFC Center last night with a cast of thousands -- the thing has lines that rival the Star Wars re-releases, as it's only playing there, and only until the end of this week.
This magnificent hand-animated feature is about imagination, it's about exploration, it's about the joys of creating art, it's about letting concern for security overwhelm the need to maintain your culture and who you are as a people, it's about growing up, it's about legends and stories, it's about fear, it's about the joys of nature, it's about unlocking potential, it's about love and friendship. The animation is beautiful, very stylized (like a medieval illuminated manuscript, which is the point), and the voice work is fantastic, with special props to Christen Mooney as the Aisling, the fae girl in the forest.
It's only notionally about the Book of Kells. Someone described it on Facebook as a flight of fancy that only bears a passing connection to the actual Book, but it's a darned good flight of fancy as flights of fancy goes, and it's worth tracking down. If you're in NYC, it's playing at the IFC Center on 6th Avenue and W. 3rd Street to the end of this week, and I understand the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art is looking at being able to do screenings after that. And it should be on DVD soon....
Submitted by krad on March 5, 2010 - 11:00pm
Based on all the bad things people had said about it, when I got The Spirit from Netflix, I watched it with low expectations.
Sadly, the movie couldn't even meet those...
There are several problems here: the disjointed pacing, the too-dark lighting, the incoherent scripting, the mediocre acting... It's just really poor, and not even poor in a good or fun way, just a sort-of stare-at-the-screen-and-go-"buh???" way.
This isn't the worst use of Samuel L. Jackson -- George Lucas's utter inability to make Mace Windu interesting will always have that place of honor -- but it's right down there. Jackson's at his best in two modes: utter, frightening calm or manic insanity. Sometimes he does both, viz. Jules in Pulp Fiction. Miller managed to find a weird middle ground that was too manic for Jackson's calm mode but too calm for his manic mode.
The dark palette was especially unfortunate. What worked for Sin City doesn't really work for The Spirit. For all the noir trappings of the comics, Eisner's art was always fairly bright. Muting the colors didn't do the movie any favors. Neither did covering the protagonist and antagonist in mud for most of the first half-hour....
But the biggest problem is that The Spirit always had a sense of whimsy. Yes, it was about a guy who fought crime and cheated death and had lots of violence, but it was always fun. Fun has never been Miller's strong suit, and he wouldn't know whimsy if it bit him on his ass. As a result, we have something that's too silly to work as gritty violence (or, to put it another way, as the Sin City clone this feels like), but too gritty to work as a Will Eisner piece.
Submitted by krad on January 21, 2010 - 9:48am
Reposting this from my blog, since it relates back to a discussion that ensued after my Couch Potato Salad segment during the 12 Days of Riftmas's review episode:
Be advised that there are SPOILERS GALORE for White Collar in this post....
Submitted by krad on August 19, 2009 - 12:03pm
Just so everyone knows, I've had to cancel my apperance as a guest at 4Pi-Con this coming weekend. Not happy at all about it, as the decision is purely a financial one, to wit, I can't afford to go.
I will still be at the Fan Expo in Toronto next weekend, at Dragon*Con in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend, and at FenCon in Dallas in September.
The good news -- if you can call it that *chuckle* -- is that I will be able to co-host the in-review episode that's scheduled for next week. *grin*
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