Hello everyone and a Happy Sunday to all! I’ve been ill the whole week with the Cold of Doom and it’s been awful but I am slowly recovering. Hope you are all well!
Let’s get down to business.
Giveaway winners:
The winners of Inside a Silver Box are
Robert Weisberg
Anita Yancey
Congrats! You know the drill – send us an email at: contact AT thebooksmugglers DOT com and we will get your book sent to you soon.
News and stuff:
If you missed it earlier this week, we launched a brand new publishing website with a snazzy and cool look (kudos to Thea for all her work!). Our ebooks are currently on sale too. *wink*
Speaking of publishing, we also announced our upcoming season for First Contact stories HERE. We can’t wait to share them with you.
And finally, on Wednesday, we had our first Old School Wednesdays Watchalong – if you have not watched The Middleman, we URGE YOU to. It is freaking great.
Around the Interwebs:
THE LOST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF JAVIER GRILLO-MARXUACH – Javier Grillo-Marxauch is a writer who worked on Lost for its first two seasons and he wrote some of our favourite episodes. 11 years on, he still gets asked a lot if the writers of Lost “knew what they were doing or did they make it up all up as they went along”. In an insightful and fascinating essay written last week, the author explores that question in the context of writing TV shows in general and in the context of writing Lost in particular. If you were ever a fan of the show, or if you ever wondered how writing for TV works, this is well worth your time. This bit here really resonated with me:
OK, dear reader, here it is…
First we built a world. Then we filled it with an ensemble of flawed but interesting characters — people who were real to us, people with enough depth in their respective psyches to withstand years of careful dramatic analysis. Then we created a thrilling and undeniable set of circumstances in which these characters had to bond together and solve problems in interesting ways.
Soon thereafter, we created a way for you to witness their pasts and compare the people they once were with the people they were in the process of becoming. While that was going on, we also created an entire 747s worth of ideas, notions, fragments, complications, and concepts that would — if properly and thoughtfully mined — yield enough narrative fiction to last as long as our corporate overlords would demand to feed their need for profit and prestige, and then, just to be sure, teams of exceptionally talented people worked nonstop to make sure the 747 never emptied out.
And then we made it all up as we went.
X-Files Reboot at Fox – Speaking of TV shows we Book Smugglers LOVE, the biggest news last week was the announcement that Fox will be airing six new episodes of The X-Files with the original cast. We don’t have a lot of coherent thoughts on this just yet apart from
Fangirl Happy Hour – Episodes 5 & 6!
Episodes 5 and 6 of Fangirl Happy Hour are live!
Episode 5 – Renay and Ana talked about Twelve Monkeys (the movie); the K.T. Bradford Reading Challenge; and One Piece. Download HERE.
Episode 6 – Covers that Andrew Smith thing; favourite media consumed so far this year; Rat Queens. Download HERE.
You can also follow them on itunes or add their feed fangirlhappyhour.com/feed/ to your preferred podcatcher.
In the meantime, you can find Fangirl Happy Hour on the interwebs at their website or:
Email – fangirlhappyhour@gmail.com
Twitter — @fangirlpodcast
Tumblr — fangirlhappyhour
Facebook — Fangirl Happy Hour
This Week on The Book Smugglers:
On Monday, we will be revealing the full list of contributors for Speculative Fiction 2014! The anthology collects the best of online discussions, reviews and more – this year’s editors are Renee Williams and Shaun Duke and they came up with an amazing ToC!
On Tuesday, we post a joint review of a highly anticipated read for both of us: A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
On Wednesday, we will be getting the Old School Wednesdays Poll up for you to help us choose our next OSW Readalong/Watchalong…
On Thursday, Thea reviews Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman.
On Friday, it’s time for Thea’s Sweet Tooth Friday, volume 5. Then, we close out the week with Thea over at Kirkus with a review of Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan.
And that’s it for today! As usual, we remain…
~Your friendly neighborhood Book Smugglers
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