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Genres

What the Frak?

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Today’s topic comes from QSFer Jim Comer: “Profanity from books and conworlds – The swearwords in my made-up worlds tend to be very odd, such as “Puyurh baVasola”, which means “By the Flames of Paradise!”, or “Chochvort ve’amet!”, or “Go fuck a house-ape!” (um, those are in two different made-up languages, but I think you see what I mean).” So I thought it would be fun to take a look at swearing in theoretical worlds. I loved when Anne McCaffrey used “shards’ (form the idea of dragon’s eggs) as one of her curse words in the Dragonriders of Pern books. … Read more

Announcement: Rarely Pure and Never Simple, by Angel Martinez

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QSFer Angel Martinez has a great sci fi book out: A search for missing children throws a misanthropic human GPS and an obnoxious human torch together in a struggle to survive dangerous conpiracies and each other. Damien just wants to be left alone. Too bad his variant talent as a locator makes him the go-to contractor for the government’s missing person cases. He can refuse, but it’s not so easy when the missing are variant kids. Blaze Emerson is a sparker. People fear him as much for his ability to call fire as his obnoxious, violent temperament. He’s good at … Read more

Announcement: Death Gets a Boyfriend, by Sophie Bonaste

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Dreamspinner has a new paranormal romance out from Sophie Bonaste: Death is in a lonely business. Since the beginning of time he’s been reaping souls then returning home to his little condo in the sky. It’s not a bad job. There are perks. But Death would kill to meet his soul mate, no pun intended. Tommy Neilson is the next human slated for death. But when he can see Death, Tommy turns his whole world upside down. Curious, Death seeks Tommy out. The chemistry between the two is immediate and soon an unlikely romance starts to form. While Death may … Read more

The Bestiary

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Yesterday, we had a couple fairly heavy topics on our Facebook discussion page – one on branching out into characters beyond the traditional male male couple and into mainstream sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal, and the other, posted by a Queer Sci Fi member, about the ongoing argument about who should write gay male-male romance. I was very proud of the group for keeping the conversation civil on both topics. But now I’d like to do something a little lighter. Since we haven’t done a paranormal topic for a while, I thought it would be fun to compile a Bestiary together … Read more

Moving Beyond MM in Fantasy, Sci Fi and Paranormal

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I know I came to the party a little late. I’ve been writing since I was in my early years, and really made a go of it in my early twenties. But then after a string of rejections, I put things on the back burner, and didn’t really pull it off again until about a year ago. I’m now in my mid-forties. I always kind of figured that I would do some of my best writing at this point in my life, when I had more life experience under my belt. So anyhow, the party. As I’ve gotten more and … Read more

Announcement: Hercules, by Cree Storm

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Today we have a historic fantasy / shifter paranormal from QSFer Cree Storm: Erotic Alternative Fantasy Romance, M/M, shape-shifters, gods, public exhibition, HEA] Hera and Aries have taken over Olympus. The other Gods have one chance to free Zeus, however in order to do so the other Gods must be willing to sacrifice their freedom for his. Twelve keys will release Zeus from Icarus and those keys are each a mate to the chosen ones, and the stones will lead the way. Each obstacle is a labor Hercules is all too familiar with. Can they succeed before their time runs … Read more

Announcement: Creature Feature 2, by Poppy Dennison and Rhys Ford

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Dreamspinner has a new paranormal romance out by two QSFers: Two Men. One Apocalypse. Rise of the Revenants by Poppy Dennison Vampyres are on the loose in Detroit, and novice hunter Taz Cohen is on the job. The mission seems simple: stop the vamps. But Taz knows nothing about the mythical creatures, so he’s in for the fight of his life. Then he meets insanely attractive construction worker Darren Foster, who jumps into the battle with both feet. Sparks and bullets fly as they struggle against the vampyre horde and their attraction to each other. Avoiding gruesome death from the … Read more

What is Urban Fantasy?

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We had a question the other day on the Facebook discussion group about urban fantasies, so I thought that would be a good topic for discussion by the whole group. But what exactly is an urban fantasy? Does it have to include elves or dwarves? Does it need to have a magical element? Is magical realism the same thing as urban fantasy? I’ve read a few of these, and the ones that immediately come to mind are Terry Brooks’ A Man of His Word series – in which demons haunt our present-day society. Now you might think this is paranormal, … Read more

Announcement: Time for Destiny, Michelle Rae

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QSFer Michelle Rae has a new book out – a historic fantasy: When Daniel Wilson, oldest of five children in a troubled family, joined the military, he expected to see combat in Iraq. But it comes as quite a shock when a Rupee minted a century and a half ago transports him to that dangerous time in war-torn colonial India. After he meets and falls in love with Vir during his visit to 1857, he faces the greatest challenge of his life. He knows he may ultimately lose Vir because he belongs in a different time. Still, he wants desperately … Read more

Will Our AI’s Be Autistic?

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Andrew Sullivan at The Dish flagged this interesting tidbit: Most of the commercial work completed by AI will be done by special-purpose, narrowly focused software brains that can, for example, translate any language into any other language, but do little else. Drive a car, but not converse. Or recall every pixel of every video on YouTube but not anticipate your work routines. In the next 10 years, 99 percent of the artificial intelligence that you will interact with, directly or indirectly, will be nerdily autistic, supersmart specialists. In fact, this won’t really be intelligence, at least not as we’ve come … Read more