Reaction Chamber – Page 6 – Critical Press Media

Minor Heroes part 1

In this episode of Minor Heroes, Agatha, Zeetha, and Krosp awaken in the Fortress of Blue Mice to find their problems are a little … larger … than they were yesterday. Not to be confused with Agatha’s official history, these are stories that people tell about Agatha.

The Girl Genius Radio Theatre material has been floating around fandom for some years, but has become increasingly difficult to find. Under the terms of the Studio Foglio fansite guidelines and using a Creative Commons license, I am excited to provide a mirror site for this material. I plan to post a new episode into the feed every week, to create an RSS feed just for this title and avoid a huge download dump. If you can’t wait, go get the entire thing from the fan page I set up! read more

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Recorded Live!

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Sunstones and Shadowguard

Every so often, I come across a book series that really intrigues me with elements of the setting. Because I really enjoyed his “Keys to the Kingdom” series, I put some faith in Garth Nix and picked up “The Seventh Tower” series.

The six books of the series describe a world in perpetual darkness, where a magical Veil surrounds the planet, forever blocking the sun from the earth below. Above the Veil, the world continues as it has always been. Below the Veil, the planet is shrouded in perpetual ice, cut off from the heat and light of the sun. Bridging the two worlds is the ancient Castle, home of the Chosen, and the foundation of the seven Towers. read more

A Defense of Superman

I understand that some people think Superman is creepy and he makes them a little uncomfortable – he does wear his underwear on the outside of his pants after all. But I want to address this idea of Superman as the Nietzchean ubermensch, when in fact, the character hasn’t ever really represented that ideal.

The identification of Superman with Nietzsche’s ubermensch started in the 50s with the famous book Seduction of the Innocent by Frederic Wertham. Wertham in fact disregarded the notion of ubermensch as “Superman” specifically because the character was not the epitome of the ideal. There are a few important differences in both origin and application of the Superman character. read more

The Sniff Test

Writers love their work, or they wouldn’t be writers. The problem is that writers also tend to love their characters and plot devices, even when those things don’t stand up to close (sometimes even casual) scrutiny. Reviewing a manuscript provides with the invaluable opportunity to put every aspect of your work to the sniff test, using common sense to check the believability of a plot device or a character’s behavior.

Believability is really the key to this test. A common horror movie trope has the victims exploring the boarded up house in the middle of the night, even though they are fully aware there is a killer loose and their flashlight has just run out of batteries. This seems so unlikely as to be ludicrous in any story that attempts to take itself seriously. While it’s true that panicked people can and consistently do make exceptionally foolish choices, this one just isn’t within the range of possibilities. It’s not believable. It doesn’t pass the sniff test. read more

Action Hero Apocalypse

Author Phil Elmore joins me in the Reaction Chamber to talk about current projects from The League Entertainment. Duke Manfist now has a novella for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. All of them available for free at the moment. The season one collection, Bullets Babes and Bacon is coming soon, and more information is on the way. Of course, with Duke Manfist making an appearance during our season of Doomsday Prepping, I have to get Phil’s insights on how to prep for the action hero apocalypse: what to do if you suddenly find yourself playing sidekick to a bona fide action hero! We also talk a bit about Phil Elmore’s works of self-defense education, including Flashlight Fighting and Street Sword. Find works by Phil Elmore and the other League Entertainment authors at the following locations: read more

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Red Herrings

Welcome to the first weekly installment of The Writer’s Block blog. Every weekly entry will feature tips, encouragement, advice, best practices, and red flags for new, aspiring, and established writers. Wait … why target established writers? Don’t they already know what they’re doing? Well sure, but every one of those guys will tell you that every well of creativity needs a little rainfall to top it off, in this case, I assume they’re looking for affirmation and encouragement. And maybe, if I’m lucky, someone more experienced than I will take the time to agree or disagree with what I have to say. Enough marketing talk, on to the good stuff! read more

Extra-Terrestrial Apocalypse

It’s a full-blown war of the worlds here in the reaction chamber. Curt and I get our prep on for the coming day when the aliens invade our shores. We know its coming. You know its coming. It’s up to us to convince all the poor saps who just won’t see the light that the visitors are not our friends! It’s a short prep, but we put some basic things in our prep kit and review a smattering of historical documents. The Martians are coming!

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Finish Line Fever

Nanowrimo is over. You’ve won, or maybe you’ve almost won. There are no losers here. Everyone gets a trophy. Or you know, the idea of a trophy. You have a novel, that’s trophy enough.

But wait, there’s more.

After the writing comes two or three rounds of editing, spaced around more writing. You have to make sure all of your scenes work, make sure all of your characters are consistent. You have to cross all of your t’s and dot your lower case j’s.

After the editing comes the proofing, checking your story for style and grammar. Reading into, around, between, and through the lines to make sure you’re actually saying what you think you meant to write. read more

Robopacalypse

A short, unexpected break over the holidays for the podcast, but at least we got the shopping apocalypse preps done in time for Black Friday! This time around we are prepping for the rise of the machines, the steel reign, the coming of the berserkers. This is the Robopacalypse! Curt and I take a look at the historical documentation providing evidence that the machines will rise, and examine some of the commonalities they all have in, er, common. This lets us get our preps together, anticipate the ways in which the machines will rise, and put some gear into our toolkits. The machines will rise, they may already have taken over our world. We’re prepped. Are you? read more

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