Themes That Rocked! Cool Speculative Fiction Book Covers from Bob Miline

Please welcome book reviewer Bob Miline!

Your theme was speculative fiction book covers – what made you chose that theme?

Well, I knew my theme was going to be book related (that was a given), but I wanted to do find a way to do something different. In hindsight, my little literary alliteration of the year before really used up 2 themes at once, matching authors and titles, so I was stumped. For a while I actually considered skipping this year’s challenge, until a review copy of Words of Radiance landed on my doorstep. I review so many digital titles, a hardcover was something of a novelty, so I really spent some time admiring the wrap-around dust jacket – and that’s when the idea for the theme clicked.


What type of artwork draws you in? What do you look for in cover art?

Something bold and vivid is what usually draws me in – I like a book cover that calls to me from across the room, demanding that I give it a closer look. It’s not so much a style or even the lines, but the colours, the interplay of light and shadow, and the illusion of movement. I prefer a cover that captures a scene, as opposed to one with characters posing for the artist’s eye.

Which artist was your favorite?

I’d have to go with Michael Whelan as my favourite. He has such an identifiable sense of style, with covers that are vibrant and real, and which just have that ‘epic’ sort of feel to them.

Which cover was your favorite?

That’s hard to say. John Harris’s cover for Ancillary Justice definitely caught my eye, as did Daniel Dociu’s covers for The Expanse series. I think the cover I found most striking, though, was Richard Anderson’s cover for The Emperor’s Blades. The colours there are more subdued, and more background, but the layering of the three almost jagged silhouettes with the background imagery really worked for me.

Which letter was the most difficult?

Everything was sailing along nicely until I hit the letter ‘X’. I searched for days trying to find an artist or two, but kept coming up empty. In the end I had to bend my theme a bit and just look for an artist with an ‘X’ in their name – which, as it turned out, was fine since it allowed me to give Richard Hescox some page time.

Who was the oldest artist you featured?

That would have to be Eddie Jones (born 1935) and Frank Frazetta (born 1928), both of whom are sadly no longer with us.

How important is cover art? Does it influence your decision to read and review a book?

As a reader, cover art still has significant appeal to me when physically browsing a bookstore, and has led me into giving more than one a new author a read. I’d never choose (or not choose) a book based solely upon the cover, but that cover can tempt me into reading the back cover.

As a reviewer, however, cover art has almost no impact. Most of my review requests are either based on a pre-publication ARC that doesn’t have a cover, or a text-based sales pitch that comes in via webform or email, so it’s really all down to whether the cover blurb catches my attention.

If you do the Challenge next year, what theme(s) are you considering?

I’ll probably be scratching my head over that again until the end of March, but I’m toying with something revolving around names (characters or places) that have been memorable for me.

That would be a cool theme – thanks Bob and see you next year!


Co-host Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh is the author of Amazon Best-sellers CassaStar, CassaFire, and CassaStorm, and his blog can be found HERE

How to Blog Better by the Day

Having fallen behind on blogging activities myself, coupled with several social media hiatuses, I know what technology burnout looks like and I understand that overwhelming anxiety of feeling like you'll never get up to speed...at least not as soon as you hoped. The solution to this recurring issue is designating each day of the week for one specific blogging activity or other online task. It is an effective way to get a handle on your internet presence so that it doesn't drive you bonkers. 

A fun way to get in the habit of sticking to an online routine that goes day by day is naming days of the week in a manner that coincides with the task -- Wordless Wednesdays style -- and then listing this schedule on your calendar, in a notebook or some other place where you'll have them handy:

• Return-Commenting Monday
• Blog Promotion Tuesday
• Visiting/Reading Wednesday
• Email Inbox cleaning Thursday
• Blogging Friday
• Social Media Saturday
• Blog Planning Sunday

Using the above sample schedule, I've been able to complete more tasks with this method than when I try to squeeze several important online activities into one single day. My experiences with doing this has led me to realized that the days on our blogging calendars are not set in stone. Sometimes I miss a day (or two) and end up playing catch-up by either doubling up on the task of the day or moving the next scheduled tasks to a later day. Sometimes I even skip a day (or more) depending on how well my week is going. In any case, naming one day each for a different blogging activity makes it easier for me to not worry about having to be everywhere, all of the time.

Do YOU control the internet or does it control YOU?

A-to-Z Challenge Co-Hostess Nicole Ayers writes about movies and the people that make them, at The Madlab Post. She also tweets @MadlabPost.

Storyteller's Perspective: On tradition, selective memory, and #NotAllFolktales

Most of you are probably familiar with the #YesAllWomen hashtag that took Twitter by storm and created a flood of articles, analyses and arguments all over the Internet. It was a spontaneous, online social movement raising awareness of everyday sexism, misogyny, violence against women, gender bias, and some cultural roots associated with all of the above.
In the middle of all of that, following the real-time roll of tweets, blog posts and articles, there I was, as a professional storyteller, wondering what I had to contribute. Of course I have my own personal stories as a woman (#yesallwomen have those), but there was something else, something that has to do with the stories we tell...
... or, rather, WHICH stories we tell.

I once had a serious fight with a faceless man who claimed that I was "against tradition" when I expressed my opinion that folktales that end with "and the man beat his wife, and she learned her lesson, and they lived happily ever after" should not be told anymore. He said I was trying to destroy the culture of our ancestors. I told him that if domestic abuse was the "culture of our ancestors," I am willing to let go of it.
But it's not.

I started tweeting under #NotAllFolktales, posting excerpts and tidbits from traditional stories (myth, legend and folktale) that prove that not every traditional tale is biased against women, or holds the dangerous cultural values that lead to misogyny. I did it for two reasons:

1. A lot of the backlash against #YesAllWomen brought up excuses like "but it's natural" "but it's traditional" and "but it's always been like that." They threw out shards of fairy tales about princesses on both sides. Most people completely disregarded one simple fact: Fairy tales and folktales are not biased because "it's natural." They are biased because they are a product of culture. Four hundred years ago Sleeping Beauty was raped in her sleep, instead of kissed awake. Try telling it that way nowadays, see what happens.

2. People who cry #NotAllFolktales (just like people who cry #NotAllMen, or #NotAllWhitePeople, or any of those backlash hashtags) have the responsibility to change the group they want to set themselves apart from. Storytellers who know that there are stories out there that are not sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. have the responsibility to tell them, understand them, and make them available.

See, my point is: Stories that promote diversity, equality, freedom of expression and choice are all ALREADY OUT THERE. We don't even have to make them up. We don't even have to write "feminist fairy tales" (although if we want to, we can, and they are amazing). Stories have been out there for millennia. We just need to find them (often cleverly hidden or left out of collections and publications), revive them, and tell them, tell them, tell them.

Case in point: I did my second A to Z challenge run about Weird Princesses - folktales and legends that involve female heroes who are not only brave and clever, but also quirky and unique and lovable (or, in Internet speak: anything but Mary Sue). There are hundreds of them, and guess what, boys love them as much as girls. I also frequently tell the story of Dame Ragnell that teaches kids about respect for women, and works splendidly with all ages from kindergarten to high school.
I recently (after the backlash against the Bearded Diva winning the Eurovision) posted a collection of folktales and myths about trans heroes and heroines, as an answer to people railing "young people nowadays don't know what gender they want to be..." It was surprisingly easy to find a whole bunch of folktales from every corner or the world. Heck, I even found a Hungarian folktale about a princess going "men's clothes have always fit me better" (in the end she transforms into a man and marries another princess).

The world of folktales is endless, and stretches way beyond "young male hero saves beautiful princess." There is a story about everything. There are folktales about pregnant women saving the world. There are folktales about old people falling in love. There are folktales about kind stepmothers, loving fathers, homely princesses, divorce, same-sex love and marriage, culture clash and acceptance, and a million other things that are still important in our world.

Find them. Read them. Think about them. Tell them.

As usual, you can find Csenge at:
@TarkabarkaHolgy
The Multicolored Diary - Adventures in Storytelling
MopDog - The crazy thing about Hungarians...