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Artist Profile: Bethy Williams

By Angela Roberts

June 13, 2011

Bethy Williams is a self-taught artist from Wilton, New Hampshire. Her artwork evokes a surreal and magical universe, taking inspiration from dark fantasy and science fiction both. When she approached The Gloaming with her work, we were at once fascinated by the esoteric nature of her style.

Angela: How did you get started as an artist?

Bethy Williams: I got started as an artist about the time I developed motor skills. My dad used to give me pads of paper from his office and I would fill them up with drawings. I used to make my own storybooks, my own maps of places that never existed, imitations of ancient scrolls hinting at a vast mythology. For a little kid, I was very intense and very serious about my artistic endeavors; there was never any question for me what I wanted to do with my life.

The Dark Side of Summer

By Ludmila Rishkova

June 8, 2011

It’s full of good stuff. Ice cream, motorcycles, beautiful cars, skin, flowery dresses, sultry nights, the pleasant smell of greenery, terraces, summer sports, chance encounters, you name it. And yet summer has a dark side. Up in Canada, where winters are illuminated with snow, summer means that darkness descends in a thick curtain, the air is heavy with humidity, the warm nights are dense, palpable. Opportunities open up. The air is so fragrant one gets enchanted, carried away, sometimes forever. The heat and the exposed skin wake something animal within each and every one of us. No wonder some of the best horror stories are set in summertime. Heat and darkness are the crucial elements.

Genre Weekend 7: Superheroes

By Angela Roberts

June 6, 2011

Warning: Lots of Spoilers

On Friday, there was no Sanctuary on the tube, and not much else of interest, so I finally watched my recording of the Smallville series finale. I’ve never been a huge fan of Smallville; like quite a few people, I watched a few episodes in the beginning and quickly got bored with its “monster-of-the-week” sort of format. I’ve gotten the impression that it’s actually improved over the years, and occasionally, if I flipped the channels and found an episode, I’d watch it. And when they did the whole Justice Society stunt a while ago, I watched. But I’m quite the comics snob, and never more so than with DC comics, so I’m not generally a fan of adaptations. I thought the whole ‘Blur’ thing was kind of dumb, and just an excuse to drag things out. I never watched enough to get the whole Chloe thing. I don’t understand how Green Arrow became a regular cast member, or why he ends up with Chloe and not Black Canary. (Other than the actor’s hot.) So, I watched the series finale more because it was the series finale rather than because I was some kind of huge fan. After all, I hadn’t seen any of the episodes leading up to it, and I didn’t really know everything that was going on. But some of it did impress me, and it got me thinking about DC’s superheroes in general.

The Resident: Like in the Good Ole Times

By Ludmila Rishkova

June 1, 2011

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a horror movie that scared me to the point where I wouldn’t want to go to bed with the lights off, and yet this is so elementary a function of horror movies that it makes me wonder how and why so many productions cannot reach and touch the fear button of their viewers. Are we a jaded audience? Perhaps, as the only thing that scares me on TV these days are the reality shows. We are jaded. Full on gore is not enough, and so called Suspense movies are no longer what they used to be as they hardly involve any attachment whatsoever to the characters. Directed by Antti Jokinen, The Resident somehow avoided all of the blunders above, and took the simple story out into the light of true horror.

Genre Weekend 6: The God of Thunder

By Angela Roberts

May 30, 2011

This weekend, I finally got out to see a movie I’ve wanted to see since it came out, Thor. The film is directed by none other than Kenneth Branagh, and stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, and Tom Hiddleston. It’s the latest in a string of movies that Marvel and Paramount have been releasing leading up to the big Avengers movie coming out in 2012 (directed by Joss Whedon!), and brings to life the origin story of one of the most iconic Marvel superheroes, Thor the Norse God of Thunder. It is, in a word, awesome.

Author Interview: Jeff Pearce

By Angela Roberts

May 25, 2011

Award-winning author Jeff Pearce has worked in both journalism and fiction. He’s also the owner of new small press publisher, Gallivant Books. Some of his most recent books are alternate history SF Reich TV, paranormal fantasy Bianca: The Silver Age, and the horror novel, The Karma Booth. We met Jeff when he was our neighbor at Ad Astra in Toronto, and he sat down with editor, Angela Roberts, for a witty conversation about writing, Can Lit, and writing professionally.

Warning: Occasional swearing.

Angela: How did you get started as a writer?

Jeff Pearce: Depends on what age you want to go by. I was eight years old, and I had to read a story in front of other kids, and I went, “I’m hooked. I like this.” Then I had to wait another eleven years before I got the chance to do that. I got started in journalism because, at the time, the myth was perpetuated that journalism was a good place to learn writing fiction. That’s bulls**t, you can’t really learn writing fiction from journalism; you can learn basic composition. I sold a few short stories, but I really wanted to do novels, and it took me a healthy long time to get there. So I took a long way around.

Genre Weekend 5: Two-Parters

By Angela Roberts

May 23, 2011

Two-parters are something that seems quite prevalent in genre television these days. Many series have at least one or two per season, if not more. It’s not something you see in other types of shows all that often; you won’t really see it in comedy or mainstream drama, except perhaps as a cliffhanger to a season finale (which if it does its work properly will usually cause a cry of anguish from the viewer when they realize they’ll have to wait months for the conclusion). But cliffhangers on the end of a season aren’t really what I’m talking about; I’m talking about the two-or-multi-part story, a story that intentionally takes more than one episode to complete. It seems like this mode of storytelling is pretty confined to genre television, and often the writers of these shows flirt with or flout this convention. The three shows I usually review for this feature; Sanctuary, Doctor Who, and Game of Thrones, all brought this subject to mind for me this weekend, and it begged an interesting line of inquiry about the genre in general.

Editor Interview: Gabrielle Harbowy

By Angela Roberts

May 18, 2011

Gabrielle Harbowy is the associate publisher at independent SF and Fantasy publisher, Dragon Moon Press, and also a freelance editor who has edited for authors like Philippa Ballantine and publishers like Pyr Books. She’s also the writer of award-nominated short fiction. The Gloaming’s editor, Angela Roberts, met with Gabrielle at Ad Astra in Toronto, and she sat down with us to discuss her work, editing, writing, and Dragon Moon Press.

Angela: You’re the associate publisher at Dragon Moon Press. Can you tell us about how you got started there?

Gabrielle Harbowy: I was doing sales analysis at Scholastic in New York for about six years. That was my entry into professional publishing. I was proofreading kind of corporate spreadsheets and things like that, and it was a job; it was interesting, looking at trends in publishing data, and what sells and what doesn’t sell and why it sells. And I discovered that I was sitting diagonally across from the person who was proofreading Harry Potter. That was really exciting. And I thought, “I would love to be doing that.” And then I thought, “Why aren’t I doing that? I could do that,” and I set about figuring out how to make myself that kind of editor, and do that kind of work, instead of the work that I was doing.

I had a friend at the time who had a manuscript coming out with a small press – Dragon Moon Press – and I looked it over for him and did some editing, just as a friend, but after that, when I decided that I could go freelance and give this a shot, I contacted Dragon Moon Press and I said, “Hi. I’ve already kind of done work for you. Will you hire me?” And they did. They said, “OK. We have a couple manuscripts that need editing. Here are three synopses; choose one.” And I started getting editing work from them on a fairly regular basis.

Genre Weekend 4: Going Medieval

By Angela Roberts

May 16, 2011

This weekend, I purchased a game that I’ve wanted to try for awhile; The Sims Medieval. I’ve been a devoted Sims fan since The Sims came out years ago (hard to believe the first game came out eleven years ago). I’ve been playing The Sims 3 avidly since it came out a couple years ago as well; generally, I have five or six families in play at a time. One thing about this game series; it has wide appeal for creative souls. (Also, it can be a massive source of procrastination for creative souls. Always keep yourself on a strict schedule if you’re going to indulge in The Sims. Otherwise, you spend a lot of time feeling like you’re doing something useful when you’re not.) So, The Sims Medieval definitely intrigued me. And after an entire weekend of trying the game out, I thought it might be interesting to review the game and look at it from the perspective of a Sims gamer and a writer. (I swear this really isn’t just a way to justify all my gaming this weekend. Read above: procrastination. ;-) ) In addition to that, I’ll have my usual TV reviews, in capsule form, and a few geek recs for the week.

Dream in Vegas

By Ludmila Rishkova

May 11, 2011

Vegas is overwhelming, a mirage in the desert and a literal getaway from everyday life. It caters to the old and the young and can quickly take your breath, and money, away. Before spending your pennies at Black Jack tables, however, one must invest in a few musts. Entertainment is one of them. And while the capital of Sin and Leisure is home to our local Quebec performers like Cirque du Soleil and Céline, this time around, I invested in Franco Dragone, a close collaborator of the Cirque du Soleil who created his own company, the Franco Dragone Entertainment Group.

Well versed in his art, Dragone created a show so perfect for the dreamlike Vegas. Literally translated from French, Le Rêve means The Dream, not just A Dream, and carries well its name. Featured exclusively at Wynn Las Vegas, at the aqua theatre-in-the-round, Le Rêve is dreamy, strange, and magic.

Genre Weekend 3: More Awesome

By Angela Roberts

May 9, 2011

So, I’ve been thinking this article series will get a bit tiresome if all I ever do is rave about how great Sanctuary, Doctor Who, and Game of Thrones are every week. It’s difficult not to, of course. I can’t just make stuff up. No series is ever perfect, but these three have been getting pretty close. Thus, we’ll do the short reviews as usual, but I’m also going to give you my recommendations of the week for your geek enjoyment. There is, after all, so much out there, and so little time to take it all in. Which has never been better.

Sanctuary: The most recent episode, “Metamorphosis,” was another great character piece for Will. Seriously, everything bad happens to Will. ;-) This is why I said last week that he’s the series focalizer, and at no time is this more apparent in this episode. Sanctuary has always bent the rules of visual presentation in television with its use of completely CGI sets and split screen. This episode was done almost entirely from first person point of view, literally looking through Will’s eyes. It was an interesting gimmick in the opening act, sort of a way to conceal the surprise of Will’s transformation. But they kept on going with it, and it created this interesting intimacy with the character. It allowed the writers and director to control the flow of information and the level of suspense. This is important in a story where it’s very insulated, very internal, and doesn’t necessarily contain much action. The only real action sequence occurs off camera. ...

Author Interview: Tamora Pierce

By Ludmila Rishkova and Angela Roberts

May 4, 2011

Tamora Pierce is the acclaimed author of more than two dozen novels, among them such famed fantasy series as the Song of the Lioness Quartet, the Circle of Magic series, and the Immortals Quartet. She is well known in YA lit as a creator of strong powerful girl heroes who can kick ass. We met the author at Ad Astra, and our editor Ludmila Rishkova sat down with her to discuss YA fiction, writer’s block, writing, and the writing life.

Ludmila: My first question would have to do with writer’s block. I read in your biography that you went quite a few years without writing. And I wanted to know, what did you do to overcome it? How did it come about?

Tamora Pierce: My mother didn’t like my writing. I sent a story to a magazine, and when they wrote me back and she found out what I’d done, we had a terrible fight. I didn’t write original fiction for five years. I wrote very bad poetry. I wrote comic articles for the school newspaper, I did homework, obviously. But I don’t know that I did anything. I wrote stuff in other people’s universes. But I wasn’t able to write a drop of my own fiction for years.

I thought that I would go to college for writing, and since I couldn’t write, as I saw it, I went for psychology with an eye towards working with teenagers at some point. And then somewhere before my junior year, the block broke, I wrote my first short story, and a year later, I sold my first short story, and I sort of forgot about the degree. At least, I didn’t work too hard on the statistics requirement.

Genre Weekend 2: The Awesomeness Continues

By Angela Roberts

May 2, 2011

So, for the next few months, The Gloaming will be continuing a new feature on Mondays, our reviews of genre TV shows that have played over the weekend. Since you can’t really evaluate a series based on one episode, and the three series I reviewed last week and will review below just keep getting more interesting and better, it seemed like a pretty good idea to keep on looking at them. I might change it up for variety, but for now, we’ll keep following these. But it’s still fair to say that you ought to jump on now, if you’re going to jump on at all.

Friday was Sanctuary. This episode, entitled “One Night,” was a character-driven episode focusing on Will Zimmerman. Will goes out on a date and gets kidnapped, ending up forced to create a counter-toxin to cure the leader of a very bad gang. He manages it, albeit after several attempts by him and his date to escape, and a clever shopping trip that alerts the Sanctuary staff and leads them right to him. It’s a great character episode for Will, played by Robin Dunne, and who can argue with an episode that highlights this character? He is, in many ways, ultimately the main character of the series, even more than Magnus, since he has been set up as the focalizer. Still, we haven’t had a specifically Will ep since the whole Kali storyline, and it’s good to see him struggle and strive again. ...

Author Interview: Howard Tayler

By Angela Roberts

Apr. 27, 2011

Howard Tayler is the Hugo-nominated author and illustrator of the long-running science fiction web comic, Schlock Mercenary. Our discussions with this talented and friendly writer quickly became one of the highlights of our trip to Ad Astra. In this interview, Angela talks to Tayler about Schlock Mercenary, web comics, science fiction, and writing. He also joined us in our podcast interview with Larry Dixon, Mercedes Lackey, and Ed Greenwood which you will be able to hear next month.

Angela: How did you get started writing and illustrating Schlock Mercenary?

Howard Tayler: I’d long been interested in science fiction and fantasy. I devoured The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in fifth grade, and by junior high and high school, I’d picked up science fiction through Larry Niven’s Known Space and Asimov’s Robot novels and any number of things. I aspired to be a science fiction author. It wasn’t until I was about thirty years old, working in the software industry and moonlighting as a record producer, that I read a web comic. I read User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance, and with both of those, I read the complete archives, and thought, “This looks like a magnificent way to tell a story, and, oh, it doesn’t appear as if you need to know how to draw”. Now this is a horribly cocky and mean thing to say about my fellows, especially since my early artwork is so much worse than their artwork was. I just didn’t understand how much work it took to learn how to draw. That’s how I got away with it. I just thought, “Ah, I’ll just be able to do this”. And so I just started doing it and you do something every day, it’s hard to get worse at it (unless it’s golf).

That was my start. It looked like a fun way to tell a story; I’m going to try it. I had about a month or two of comics created, but I didn’t know how to go about hosting them. I stumbled across the Keenspace hosting service, put my stuff up on Keenspace, applied for membership in Keenspot, they liked what I was doing and apparently my sales pitch about how awesome I was going to be, they believed it, they admitted me to membership there. So within three months of putting my stuff on the internet, I had a regular audience of 2500 readers and the rest was I just kept doing it. I didn’t tell you the whole history of it. That’s the first eight months.

Genre Weekend: Triple Review – Sanctuary, Doctor Who and Game of Thrones

By Angela Roberts

Apr. 25, 2011

It’s a pretty good time for genre television. I can’t think of a single time when so many quality genre television shows were on the air at the same time. Cable channels like HBO, Showtime, Showcase, Syfy, and Space have brought out fascinating and well-written shows both domestic and foreign. And since they`re not bound by traditional network seasons, we can experience these delights all through the year. This past weekend, three shows all graced our airwaves; Sanctuary, Doctor Who, and Game of Thrones. All were quite impressive. And if you missed them, you really missed out. This Easter weekend gave us more than just chocolate to feast on; it gave us some great shows to feed our hunger for genre entertainment.

Author Interview: JM Frey

By Angela Roberts

Apr. 20, 2011

JM Frey is a woman of many talents. She’s an author, an actor, and an academic with her own domain – fanthropology. She launched her first novel, Triptych, at the Ad Astra science fiction convention in Toronto this month, and the novel has already risen highly on the Amazon sales charts. No surprise there; Frey’s novel is a tightly plotted, original character-driven work of science fiction that blends time travel, aliens, and issues of love, acceptance, family dynamics, gender performance, prejudice, and much more without ever sounding preachy. I had the opportunity to speak with this eloquent author at the convention and what follows is an awesome discussion about fandom, writing, and the artistic process. I had so much to ask her that I divided the interview into sections!

Section 1: Favourites

Fave Book: Peter and Wendy by JM Barrie

Fave Writer: Neil Gaiman

Fave Manga and/or Anime: Either Inu Yasha or Hana Yori Dango.

Fave NA comics: Fables

Fave TV show: Still Forever Knight, after all these years. I still have a big stupid crush on Geraint Wyn Davies.

Fave movie: How to Train Your Dragon

Fave Doctor: Ten, he’s so adorable!

Review: HBO's Game of Thrones

By Angela Roberts

Apr. 18, 2011

I’ve never read George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. It’s on my to-read list, along with many other books that I should have read by now. But when I found out that HBO was adapting Martin’s epic fantasy series into a multi-part dramatic series, I thought it looked pretty cool. I was like, Woo! More fantasy on the small screen! And it was HBO, so I was fairly confident that it wouldn’t look cheap and would feature some talented actors. And really, I was excited to see Sean Bean in, well, anything. I saw the sneak preview of the first ten minutes that HBO released recently, and I thought it looked awesome! So, when the show debuted this Sunday evening, I was glued to the TV.

Con Report: Ad Astra 2011

By Angela Roberts

Apr. 13, 2011

This past weekend, April 8-10, Ludmila Rishkova and I travelled to Toronto for the 30th edition of the Ad Astra science fiction convention. In focus, Ad Astra is similar to Con-Cept in Montreal in that it is primarily a literary convention (although there are panels on all sorts of aspects of genre entertainment). Many established and up-and-coming authors attended the con, and we had the opportunity to speak with several of them and get some great interviews that will appear soon on the site. We also got to meet some very nice people and get the word out. We had a table in the dealer room, and were very appreciative of the people who took the time to listen to our pitch and even bought copies of the print edition. We even had the pleasure of hearing that some people had already heard of us. It’s always great to hear that our reach is longer than we thought! So, as promised, here is our more detailed account of our time at Ad Astra!

Sucker Punch: Power and Imagination

By Angela Roberts

Apr. 6, 2011

I’ve only ever seen parts of 300, but I loved Watchmen. So I was intrigued enough by the idea of a Zack Snyder film that was an original idea rather than an adaptation to finally see Sucker Punch in the cinema. Snyder has become well known in the past few years for his extreme, visually stunning, comic-book movies; like I said, I loved Watchmen, and I usually dislike comic book movies simply because I’m a continuity snob and hate when Hollywood butchers my favourite characters. (I’ve softened on this point in recent years as Marvel has been putting out quality films and I’ve learned to shut up the angry voice in my head that constantly points out continuity errors.) But Snyder’s Watchmen was lovingly faithful to its source material, and changes that were made were intelligent ones. Of course, Snyder had one of the most critically-acclaimed graphic novels of all time to rely on. However, it’s fair to say that his first big original effort has its ups and downs, and doesn’t quite achieve whatever purpose Snyder intended (or its dual purpose, in my opinion). In fact, what I have to say in this article will probably only scratch the surface of everything that is in Sucker Punch.

Artist Profile: Richard H. Fay

By Angela Roberts

Apr. 4, 2011

Richard H. Fay is a talented SF, Fantasy, and horror illustrator whose artwork first came to our attention when he sent us samples of his work. Much of his work has appeared in various magazines and in works published by Sam's Dot Publishing. Intrigued by his interesting style, we decided to profile him for the Gloaming.

Angela: How did you get started as an artist?

Richard H. Fay: This might sound a bit hokey, but I believe I was born an artist. Apparently, I showed an aptitude for art and an innate understanding of the principles of artistic composition from an early age, at least since grade school. That being said, I spent several years of my adult life doing other things, like earning a B.S. in Biology and working as a lab technician, before I finally began composing art for sale on a somewhat regular basis.

The Terracotta Army of Qin Shihuangdi

By Ludmila Rishkova

Mar.30, 2011

Genius is Madness. Madness is Genius. One does not necessarily imply the other, and as mentioned in my previous article, such things are rather relative in nature. Still, some mindsets always manage to blow us away. Ying Zheng was one of these people. His accomplishments began with his rising to the throne when he was but thirteen years old and continue to puzzle us up to this day.

I will not talk about the historical aspect of the exhibition of The Terracotta Army of Qin Shihuangdi at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the audio guides do it enough. What I mean to describe is the impressions, the feeling one gets as one realizes the extent, the magnitude of Ying Zheng’s determination regarding his death.

Urban Intricacies: The Artwork of Joseph Bowman

By Angela Roberts

Mar. 28, 2011

We first took note of Joe Bowman when he sent us samples of his artwork to peruse. His fascinating art evokes a world that is at once surreal and realistic with a level of detail that is absolutely astonishing. Bowman also caught our attention with the unusual bio he gives for himself. He describes himself as:

Joseph Bowman (1752-1779) was an officer in the American Revolutionary War who served in the Illinois campaign. Maj. Bowman participated in the 1778 capture of Fort de Chartres, and remained there for some time as the commander of the newly renamed Fort Bowman. While attending a victory celebration, Maj. Bowman was injured by an accidental gunpowder explosion and later succumbed to his injuries, becoming the only American officer to die in the Illinois campaign. He now lives and works in Los Angeles.

Angela: How did you get started as an artist?

Joseph Bowman: I acquired the first of my hardcover sketchbooks and began filling it in 2006, when I was living in MacArthur Park and had just left a small distribution firm I had been managing. Having thus developed a body of raw material, collaging the like-kind pieces together to create a larger picture seemed to me like a natural progression. I had not yet seen anyone make semi-realistic, large-scale, intensely detailed scenes wherein the pieces themselves were all hand drawn, and I thought this to be a potential niche. The first such picture took me almost two years to complete, but I have since become much more efficient.

Willpower and Imagination

By Ludmila Rishkova

Mar.23, 2011

Everything is relative. Particularly everything subjective. Fear, hope, love, beauty, madness, are not clearly defined and their boundaries as well as their definitions may shift depending upon individual perspective, geography, era and culture. Madness may be viewed as eccentricity, acute intelligence, creativity, or even a cultural standard. The definition is ever fluid and is only fixed temporarily and in particular circumstance.

Does this mean that there’s no clear distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, between ‘good’ and ‘evil’? I do not have an answer to that question, only suppositions that I, and many others like me, take pleasure in exploring in their prose. The only reliable answer we seem to have found is that absolute extremes are hardly ever found, but that there exist many shadings and combinations of both ‘good’ and ‘evil’, of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.

Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon: Re-reading Our Favourites

By Angela Roberts

Mar.21, 2011

Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon is still what I remember as being the very first grown-up novel I ever read. I was in grade five, and my teacher came to me one day, handed me this thick hardcover book and urged me to read it. I’d been reading picture books, devouring my Dad’s old comic books, and read books and books of non-fiction already by this point, but I’d yet to really sit down with a chapter book more complex than a choose-your-own-adventure or a Goosebumps book. While it’s fair to classify the novel as YA, back then to a bright eleven-year-old, it was the thickest and most grown-up book one might imagine. I read it cover to cover, and from then on embarked on my continued love affair with big thick genre novels. It’s also the only Stephen King novel I ever actually read. I tried out a few, but never really got into his slow prose style enough to finish anything. And eventually, I fell in love with the works of authors like Michael Crichton, Terry Goodkind, and Robert Jordan, and forgot about any youthful ambitions of reading more King. But I still remembered The Eyes of the Dragon fondly, and re-reading it for this article, I realized how much the novel influences my own writing.

The Shining: A Book Review

By Ludmila Rishkova

Mar.16, 2011

In Monday’s blog, I mentioned that Stephen King's The Shining played an important part in my life. A part of this is definitely due to timing and circumstance, but one should never omit due tribute where it belongs. In my opinion, the novel was simply a product of a great writer’s work. So what is it that makes the book so good?

The plotline is fairly straightforward. A struggling young couple accept a job at a famous hotel that turns out to be haunted. The couple has a child who has a keen perception, a shining in other words, and the hotel’s ghostly inhabitants wish to make him one of their own. The ‘good’ struggles against the ‘evil’. An old man risks his life to save that of a young child and everything ends relatively well and with minimal human loss.

Gears of Imagination

By Ludmila Rishkova

Mar.14, 2011

There are decisive points in everyone’s life that give one a general idea of what one is to do with one’s future. For me, one of these points was getting a copy of The Shining for my fifteenth birthday. It was a gift from one of my mother’s friends who knew I was pretty much ready to devour any book that was given me and that I had read Gone with the Wind at least ten times already. The copy of the novel was in Russian and the cover rather bland, so I didn’t think much of it and put off reading it for weeks. Finally, after I had finished Margaret Mitchell’s novel for the umpteenth time, I decided to give it a shot.

My parents, my younger brother and I lived in a three bedroom apartment in Montreal’s suburban area. I had my own room – courtesy of flowering teenage bloom – which I decorated with everything deemed ‘cool’ enough: a poster of Kurt Cobain, cool as a cucumber, guitar in hands and a cigarette stuck between the lips, snapshots of my teenage years, and my attempts at drawing. I didn’t study much, the right answers to math, physics and history seemed to flow naturally enough, but I read and drew incessantly.

Looking back, I wish I took my time about reading the book, but having no idea of the importance it was to hold in my life I jumped in with all the thoughtless readiness of a teenager. I devoured it. The school done, I rushed through the chores and the homework, waited until my parents went to sleep, smoked half a cigarette hanging out half out of our second story window, buried myself beneath covers, and read.

Stargate Universe: The Beginning of the End

By Angela Roberts

Mar. 9, 2011

Since Tuesday night marked the return of Stargate Universe to our TV screens, I thought it would be a good time to address this excellent series and its unfortunate imminent demise. Yes, this was the first of the last ten episodes of SGU to air before its way-before-its-time series finale. SGU was the second Stargate spin-off and the shortest-lived, barely making it one-and-a-half seasons before SyFy Channel gave it the axe. Predecessor Stargate Atlantis made it five seasons. Kind of sad when one considers that the original show, Stargate SG-1, made it ten. But Stargate has had a troubled run. It’s an expensive show to produce, and SyFy has a notoriously wavering commitment to good, compelling, dramatic SF (Caprica, anyone? I mean, I got a little bored with it, but I can still admit that Caprica was at least trying to make a more elevated genre drama than the usual dreck you find on SyFy and even Space. Seen Scorpion King 2? So bad they couldn’t even get The Rock to star in it. – end side note). And Stargate Universe is good, compelling, dramatic SF. So, of course, to the TV Powers That Be, that must mean it must die.

Inspirational Images: An Invaluable Resource

By Angela Roberts

Mar. 2, 2011

When I was a kid, we had no internet. We had books. And TV and movies. (Don’t get any ideas; I’m only 28.) But really, the internet, as pervasive as it is now, is something that really only materialized in the average person’s life about fifteen years ago. The internet as a forum for artists to showcase their work was a concept that really began with the World Wide Web, with its browsers able to show images. Some of the first artist communities sprang up in the late nineties, early 2000s; Deviantart and Elfwood prominent among them. I even joined the former, although I never put much up, the image accompanying this article being one of the rare works. Yes, that little planet is the result of my early dabbling in digital art. But I digress. When I was a kid, when I wanted to escape into other worlds and find inspiration for my own stories, I had books. One in particular was a large coffee table book of exotic wonders from around the world. I would spend hours poring over the photos of places that seemed too impossible to exist (and sadly, probably no longer exist in that perfect state), and those photos would fuel my imagination in dreaming up my own fantasy worlds. Nowadays, I have the internet to supply me with artwork and photos to provide inspiration. Many talented artists from around the globe showcase their artwork for the world to see, and it’s not hard to build a bank of images that the writer can turn to when he/she needs a little inspiration. I keep one such bank; I collect images like others collect trading cards. Any piece of art that speaks to me in some way, that moves my mind to imagining, gets saved into a folder on my computer that I call ‘Inspirational Images’.

Book Review: The Handmaid’s Tale

By Ludmila Rishkova

Feb.28, 2011

What we do not know inspires mystery, opens doors unto possibilities, and allows the fear of ‘what-ifs’ to build itself a nest in one’s heart. It is easy to fear the unknown as one populates it with his own imagination, but what about the fear of something that we do know? On the news, we see horrid things happen in another country. Our high school history classes gloss over the horror of events of a recent past. Our local papers speak about savage events that sometimes occur walking distance from our own homes. It never happens to us, always to others, but the chilling fact of it all is that, although we know that we have escaped it this once, it does not mean we will escape the next time. Some blessed ones keep on with their daily lives. Others less fortunate stop and wonder: what if it happened to me, what would I do and how would I do it? Most naturally we imagine ourselves playing a heroic role, but deep down we know that reality isn’t like this. In reality, things happen too fast or too subtly for us to harness them and gain control. Instead, we do what humans do best, we adapt.

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale may not be science fiction according to the lady herself, but it sure does have the post-apocalyptic feel that appeals to all science fiction lovers. It is a tale that brings historic tyrannies of man back to life. It is also a tale of adaptation.

Primeval: The Past is Here (and it’s Hungry)

By Angela Roberts

Feb. 23, 2011

UK sci-fi series Primeval has been shown off and on by Canadian Space channel for the past few years, and recently Space has been broadcasting its most recent series (or season). Primeval Series Four has seen a number of changes to the show, a good chunk of the cast having changed and a new threat looming over the horizon. The show has experienced its ups and downs in Britain, nearly being cancelled after Series Three and being renewed for two more seasons. It’s fairly popular in the UK and has a loyal following in the US and Canada, but it’s definitely one of those shows that any geek should be watching, but probably isn’t. At least that’s the impression I get whenever I bring the show up. Certainly, some of that can be explained by the erratic play it’s received in Canada. Here the first three series were shown sporadically and never seemed to be in order. I know I got frustrated a few times trying to watch the show and feeling like I’d seen the same two or three episodes over and over again. This series is perhaps the first time I’ve been able to watch continuously an entire run of the show. And now that we’re nearly at the end, it seemed a good time to look at the show, where it’s been and where it’s going.

Artist Profile: Josephine Wall

By Angela Roberts

Feb. 21, 2011

British artist Josephine Wall has a gift for bringing her subjects to life with her eye for light, colour and texture. She paints fantastical compositions so rich with imagery that there is always something new to see in every viewing. Her artwork has been licensed all over the world, and it was in this way that I first encountered her work. Stopping in a shop on the Plateau Mont-Royal, I spotted a greeting card with her artwork on it. Enchanted by what I saw, I contacted the artist and she graciously agreed to answer a few questions for the Gloaming.

Angela: How did you get started as an artist?

Josephine Wall: To be an artist is all I ever wanted. From the age of four my destiny was already mapped out - although at that age I had no idea how things would turn out for me..!! With much encouragement from my father in particular, who would sit and draw with me for hours on end, I developed my passion for colour and form. Initially, I would paint landscapes, seascapes and portraits, but eventually found the realms of fantasy appealed to me much more.

Being Human: The Secret Lives of Monsters

By Angela Roberts

Feb. 16, 2011

Last year, Canadian sci-fi channel Space brought over the acclaimed British supernatural drama, Being Human, airing both Series One and Series Two to date. This was to the delight of many Canadian fans of British sci-fi who’d very likely despaired of ever getting to see the show by any means other than Bit torrent. (Side note: Space has definitely stepped up in the last few years to fill the void left by other outlets like the CBC and BBC Canada who’ve been pitifully useless in bringing quality drama to Canadian viewers hungry for good TV.) The show has found a devoted audience both in the UK and abroad, having done so well, in fact, that last month Syfy Channel premiered a “North American” remake produced by Montreal studio Muse Entertainment under the same name. I saw the UK show on Space and was absolutely entranced by it; the level of storytelling, acting, and musical score were phenomenal. So, when Space announced a remake, I was both excited and wary. There was no way I would miss it, if only for the sake of curiosity. But my perception of it would inevitably be coloured by my feelings about the original. I decided to give the remake a few episodes before writing this review, and because it’s impossible not to, this review will very much be a comparison between the original and the remake. One other warning: Here Be Spoilers.

Sexuality: Power and Weakness Mis à Nu

A review of the Montreal exhibition of Flesh and Blood

By Ludmila Rishkova

Feb. 14, 2011

How fitting was it for Shary Boyle’s Flesh and Blood exhibition at Galerie de l’UQAM to be situated on the basement level? There is something cavernous about her paintings, drawings and sculptures, something that suggests vast possibilities and things lurking in the dark. Except that the things that lurk are not exactly monsters. They are rather extensions of human facets and emotion.

Indeed, after graduating in 1994 with a Diploma of Fine Arts from the Ontario College of Art and Design, Shary made quite an impact on the Canadian art scene. She’s had over twenty exhibitions, group and solo; her collections are present in museums across Canada and the Flesh and Blood collection is her cross-Canada tour.

The Flesh and Blood paintings are powerful, the porcelain sculptures are mesmerizing and her large-scale installations Scarecrow and White Light make one feel privy to something personal and otherworldly.

The Dystopian Paradigm: We are now in control

By Dania Sonin

Feb. 9, 2011

Dystopias are a staple of the sci-fi universe. Often they criticise the current zeitgeist and put a negative spin on whatever mainstream political ideal seems to be taking hold. A main character or characters are thrust through a system set up to benefit those running the system which itself is being heralded as a utopia despite bringing misery and undue suffering. It’s something I’ve always wanted to tackle, though as far as short stories go, it’s fairly difficult to set up an adequately fleshed out government system; motivation, history, and strife are hard things to condense. As I’ve tried to transcribe my own story, I’ve found three things are the most conducive to getting it all right and having it all make sense, because, in the end, creating a universe beyond a single character is quite the endeavour.

Rebuilding Evangelion

By Angela Roberts

Feb. 7, 2011

Back when I was in my college’s Anime club, one of the ‘challenges’ we had was to watch the entire series of Neon Genesis Evangelion back to back through to the end (and that includes the extremely weird and mind-bending final episodes). I did it, although not in one sitting. Neon Genesis Evangelion, a Japanese mecha (giant robot) anime created by Hideaki Anno, was an immensely popular television show that ran from Oct.4, 1995 to Mar. 27, 1996. It is considered to be an absolutely ground-breaking series, not only for its innovative character and robot design, but also for its exploration of psychological, metaphysical, and existential themes. It was not for kids. It was, in essence, a series that would blow your mind. One thing about Evangelion, or Eva as many fans refer to it, is that there is no way it could ever be considered light entertainment.

Man vs Nature: A Descent Into the Maelström

By Ludmila Rishkova

Feb. 2, 2011

Unknown, unfathomable, uncertain, unusual, these are the words Edgar Allan Poe uses when describing natural phenomena. Or rather, these are the words he uses when describing human reaction to natural phenomena. He may also use the words "horror," "magnificence," and "grandeur" dozens of times. And while man can admire, be mystified by and bow in reverence to nature, he also has to deal with it on a daily basis. One way or another, he has to harness it in order to survive. Whether he succeeds or fails, the result is always spectacular.

Although he is well known for tales of mystery that inspired the detective genre, such as The Tell-Tale Heart and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Poe also wrote tales of a Romantic nature. A Descent Into the Maelström is one of those tales.

My Neighbour Mephistopheles

By Dania Sonin

Jan. 31, 2011

I’ve always been one to make weird associations. It took me forever to get it into my head that “puffy” did not mean “pastel” to other people just because clouds are puffy and often pastel coloured in my mind. It probably helped immensely with my writing, as I tend to use words that are sometimes a little off, or maybe too specific, if there is such a thing. And it most definitely helped with English class since profs are apt to praise even an iota of creativity, accidental or not. There are, however, some odd associations that defy even my convoluted logic, and one of my favourite ones has to do with one of the best artists and directors to come out of Japan, Hayao Miyazaki.

The Origin of the Origin of Species

By Dania Sonin

Jan. 26, 2011

Sometimes the weirdest mysteries don’t come from the realm of the supernatural, but rather, the world of science. In fact, scientific research often breeds more questions than answers and those questions can make amazing fodder for fiction.

I thought that since the last call for submissions got so many sci-fi stories, I’d hit up one of my least favourite but mildly legitimate scientific theories. At some point we’ve all asked where we all came from, not the universe (that’s another blog), but life. How did life arise on our little rock? There are thousands of theories – probably as many as there are different cultures, religions, and branches of science – but most start off with some sort of creation event or strange, biological actualisation event. Exogenesis, however, is one of the few theories that doesn’t. But not in a good way.

Author Interview: Walter Rhein

By Angela Roberts

Jan. 24, 2011

Walter Rhein is the hard-working author of the fantasy adventure, The Bone Sword. He also runs the popular Heroic Fantasy group on Facebook, where he interviews leading authors and supports aspiring fantasy novelists by bringing them more recognition. We reviewed Rhein's novel earlier this month, and he kindly gave us some of his time to answer some questions.

Angela: How did you get started as a writer? Any particular schooling? Experience?

Walter Rhein: I've been attracted to reading books and telling stories from as early as I can remember. I think it's mainly because writing is such a convenient way to burn up creative energy. I've dabbled in painting and drawing to some extent, but it has never brought about the same feeling of relaxation or calm that writing does. Honestly, if I don't sit down and whip off a couple thousand words daily, I get really agitated.

I wrote all through high school and had a couple things published here and there before going off to college. I earned a degree in English Literature and, after graduation, I moved to Lima, Peru where I worked as a freelance writer, editor, and teacher. I would say that working as an editor was my greatest aid in getting a publishing contract. When you're on the other side of the submission process, you instantly understand what it takes to write a submission that stands out.

Click here to read our review of Rhein's novel, The Bone Sword.

Tim Burton’s Odd World at TIFF

By Ludmila Rishkova

Jan. 19, 2011

Walking in to Tim Burton’s exhibition at the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) is a little like walking into Alice’s Wonderland. The entrance floor is striped black and white and evil laughter from different short films drifts around the room. The greeting is magic; the anticipation of what one will see is gruesomely pleasant.

The exposition is based on Tim Burton’s sketches, paintings, and short films, as well as props and costumes from major movies. One of my favourite bits is one of Tim Burton’s earliest films, Vincent, a short animation dedicated to Vincent Price. It is about a boy named Vincent Malloy who is convinced he is Vincent Price and thinks he is doomed to live a life of horror and woe. Narrated by Vincent Price himself, the short film alternates between the little boy Vincent’s doomed imagination and jarringly comic bits where the realities of a little boy’s life catch up and pierce through the darkness of the world he persists on inhabiting. It is black and white, sweet and sad; it is cruel monsters and Mommy telling Vincent it’s time to play outside. Paving the way for the aesthetics in his later works, the short film is touching in Tim Burton’s unique fashion.

Artist Profile: Junior Mclean; Fractal Fantasies

By Angela Roberts

Jan.17, 2011

Bronx, NY-based digital artist Junior Mclean creates fantastic abstract fractal art and genre figure art which he sells in various forms in his online stores. His artwork displays an acute attention to colour and detail and a rich imagination. We at The Gloaming were intrigued by the pieces we saw and are certain that our readers would be interested in this accomplished artist as well.

Review: Chew on Chu

By Dania Sonin

Jan. 12, 2011

I often spend time on Amazon.com just surfing the deals and new releases to see if anything catches my fancy. It’s not the best habit, as I usually wind up spending the minimum amount to get free shipping and wind up with things I will never ever read, but as far as needless consumption goes, I’ve always felt books a bit more noble than gadgets and shoes.

So, a few weeks ago, in the mood for comics and feeling my credit card burning a hole in my pocket, I set myself up to find something worth reading. It was easy enough – I had to own The Walking Dead before I watched the series. Added that to cart, which left me with a whopping eight or so dollars left to spend on something, anything really, that seemed worth the free shipping. I browsed the sci-fi comics and saw tons of things that caught my literary eye, but nothing that satisfied my parameters – I never like to spend more than I have to – until finally I came across a rather sparse cover by comparison and a price tag I could feel okay about. It was called Chew and even better than being cheap, only had two volumes published so far. This was something I could get into almost from the start and maybe even stick with if it was good enough. I was at the very least, excited to get in on something on the ground floor.

Artist Interview: “Rather than “thinking outside of the box,” create a mindset that there is no box.” -Ed Emrich

By Ludmila Rishkova

Jan. 10, 2010

Ed Emrich is a New York photographer Mila met in Montreal last summer. We liked him so much we featured him twice. In this interview, he talks about his art, his medium, but also about the paths he took in order to become the rising artist he is today.

Mila: Considering your attorney background, what made you turn to art and how did you go about it?

Ed Emrich: Being an attorney has been a very rewarding job, but it also requires that you think in a very structured way that sometimes can be confining. I needed an outlet for my imagination where there are no rules or boundaries, and also to have fun. A good friend of mine owned an art gallery, and I thought “wouldn’t it be great to be part of that world?” I ultimately became his partner in Magnan Emrich Contemporary, a contemporary Latin American art gallery in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. Although I no longer own the gallery, it was a terrific way to see some cutting edge art, meet some interesting people and travel to various parts of the world. During that time, I learned some important lessons about the conceptual side of art and the need for an artist to maintain the uniqueness of his or her work. My photography skills at that point were at their infancy stage. I was never taught how to take good shots, it just came naturally to me. After a while, I realized that I was producing professional quality work that for the most part was completely unique. As my confidence grew, so did my passion for creating works of art.

Review: The Bone Sword by Walter Rhein

By Angela Roberts

Jan.5, 2011

The Bone Sword, by Walter Rhein, was released on November 1st by Rhemalda Publishing, a small-press publisher based in Washington State. The novel centers on Malik, a former member of the elite Camden Guard and wandering swordsman, and his adventures after a twist of fate finds him protecting twin orphans with a miraculous ability to heal from an evil priest intent on destroying them for witchcraft. The trio flees to the mountains to escape the cleric and his villainous noble collaborator, and eventually end up at the center of a peasant revolt which attracts the attention of Malik’s former master, forcing him to confront his inner demons.

I’ll admit that, at first, I wasn’t sure that I would like this novel. It’s not that I’m not into fantasy; I am pretty much considered the fantasy component of our little editorial group. Thus, I was assigned to do this review. I have my own pet peeves and pet pleasures when it comes to fantasy, epic and action-adventure fantasy in particular, and there were elements of the book that picked at those pet peeves. But that’s hardly something confined to any one book. And there were definitely parts that spoke to my pet pleasures. In fact, what I discovered as I read The Bone Sword was that it slowly seduced me. We received a PDF copy of the novel for our review, and being one of those types that hates reading off a computer screen (ironically, one might say, since I run an online magazine), I printed the novel and read it in chunks so that it might not completely overwhelm my printer. And as I printed and read, and printed and read, I found that I was able to go less and less time between printings. I began printing larger chunks because I told myself that I needed such and such chapter, or stopping earlier would cause too much suspense. But really, I was just getting into the novel more and more, and I had trouble putting it down.

Artist Profile: M&T, The Creators of the Haanta Series

By Ludmila Rishkova

Jan.3, 2011

Last Fall, we published an author profile on Michelle Franklin, an avid fantasy writer and author of the Haanta series and multiple short stories featuring The Commander and the Den Asaan Rautu. What we haven’t mentioned is that Michelle works in a partnership with an artist, the talented and mysterious Twisk.

When we spoke to Michelle, she mentioned that Twisk was the sole artist who could truly see eye to eye with her when it came to the Haanta characters and events, and the two of them, M&T, have been working together for several months now, feeding each other’s imagination as they created the intricate world of Old Frewyn. While Michelle gives every character a background, Twisk instils a note of realism with detailed illustrations. She gives a face and a visual presence to Michelle’s characters, and they literally seem to live a life of their own, guiding, rather than being guided by the author’s and artist’s hand.

Crafting Character: Heroes and Heroism

By Angela Roberts

Dec. 29, 2010

Recently, a study by an economist at Queensland University of Technology examined the conditions under which chivalry prevails in a disaster situation. The scientists compared the sinkings of the Titanic and her sister ship, the Lusitania, and came to the conclusion that a significant factor in the survival rates of certain groups of people was time. The Titanic took two hours and forty minutes to go down, and consequently, social norms took over from the natural impulse for self-preservation. The Lusitania took only eighteen minutes, and the majority of survivors were people between the ages of sixteen to thirty-five, and mostly men. The opposite was true for the Titanic, the social convention of “women and children first” was dominant. So, the conclusion drawn was that with more time to escape, as a group, the survivors of the Titanic were able to process what was happening to them and re-adjust to the ideas of chivalry and consider others before themselves. On the Lusitania, it was every man for himself because there was no time for any other kind of consideration.

Artist Profile: Jean Pierre Normand

By Angela Roberts

Dec. 27, 2010

Talented Canadian artist Jean-Pierre Normand has illustrated the covers of many notable SF magazines and books in his long career. He has won many awards, including several Auroras, Canada's award for achievement in the field of speculative fiction. He's also a kind and down-to-earth artist, and graciously agreed to answer our questions for this artist profile.

Angela: How did you get started as an artist?

Jean Pierre Normand: I have drawn since I was a kid. I chose to study graphic arts in the 70's. I grew up with the space program and that was very stimulating for me. So I had more fun drawing space related images.

The Art of Reinvention: The Flatwoods Monster and Kaiju

By Dania Sonin

Dec. 22, 2010

On September 12, 1952, in the small town of Flatwoods, West Virginia, a group of townsfolk had an encounter of the third kind. They reported seeing a bright red ball of light hovering in the sky, which proceeded to crash in the woods on a local farmer’s property. They promptly set out to investigate and what they discovered was followed by 48 years of mystery and investigation. It was a creature, tall with tiny, claw-like arms and a massive head or cowl shaped like a spade and was reportedly wearing a green pleated skirt. Its massive eyes were luminescent and every person that night who saw them reported breathing in a strange, noxious gas that would make them ill in the weeks to follow. The creature would come to be known by many names, the most famous being The Flatwoods Monster.

MONTsurREAL: Through the Eyes of a Stranger

Artist Profile

By Ludmila Rishkova

Dec. 20, 2010

Living somewhere, wherever it may be, involves seeing our surroundings through a filter, a ‘taken-for-granted’ filter to be precise. It’s unavoidable, blinding, and can only be remedied through contact with an outsider who has not only a fresh eye, but also his own vision.

Two months ago, we published an article on New York photographer (and attorney) Ed Emrich, who has a unique approach to ‘special effects’ in an era laden with special effects. His approach is all about the natural play of movement, reflection and light. The effect is pure, unadulterated and compelling in its simplicity as discussed in the October article Ed Emrich’s World Without Rules.

I met Ed Emrich on the eve of his departure from Montreal. He was just a stranger, asking about nice locations to shoot pictures. Today, I have the pleasure and privilege to share these images with our readers to show them a glimpse of our hometown, and with Montrealers who forget, or fail to notice, the intriguing and diverse facets of our city. What Ed Emrich managed to capture is the diversity that makes Montreal one of the top fabulous cities in Canada. We’re not talking a post-card overview of the city. Those are numerous and widely available. In MONTsurREAL, Ed Emrich captures the details that construct the whole.

Review: The Walking Dead; Comic vs. Show

By Dania Sonin

Dec. 15, 2010

For writers, it’s never enough to just ask the question, “What would you do if...?” No. We have to build up a person just to destroy them. We have to make them loveable, personable, justified, sincere. We make them everything we think a person ought to be then take them by the throat and dangle them over the cliff. We let them sit out in the rain – let them rot and ripen into monsters who want nothing more than to survive – family and friends be damned. We see what they do when. We watch the outcomes and delight in their pain.

Readers similarly love to watch us torture our fictitious vessels and, for awhile now, one of the most popular ways has been through post-apocalyptic dystopias rife with supernatural dangers. We’re all very used to the tropes involved in just about every zombie movie ever made. A decent, suburban person must ignore his or her fight or flight response and become a hero and a leader in order to save the select few who make it long enough to build at least some sort of stronghold. We watch them fight off a swarm and make it to relative safety. They smile and hug, we feel happy that they made it, and the credits roll.

Robert Kirkman, however, wanted to explore the next chapter. He sought to answer an entirely different question: what now? Since 2003, he’s been writing The Walking Dead, a comic book series centred around Rick Grimes and his family as they attempt to make sense of life after a zombie apocalypse. In 2010, AMC decided to go ahead and produce a television series based on the comic. The first season, six episodes long, is meant to encompass the first volume of the comic series. I found out about both the comic and the show at the same time, and while waiting for the premiere, I decided it’d be a good idea to immerse myself in Grimes’ world and find out what I was in for.

Artist Profile: Bettina Forget

By Angela Roberts

Dec. 13, 2010

We first encountered the works of Montreal artist, Bettina Forget, at Montreal sci-fi convention Con-Cept and were immediately blown away by the imaginative quality of her art. Her most recent project, Somnium, is inspired by the first-ever science fiction novel by Johannes Kepler of the same name. We contacted her for an interview, and she was kind enough to share some of her artistic insights with The Gloaming.

Angela: How did you get started as an artist?

Bettina Forget: Art is the "family business". There's an artist in every generation in my family, and I was trained in drawing and painting as soon as I could hold a pencil (and not poke my eye out).

Rouge Cabaret: The Terrifying and Beautiful World of Otto Dix

By Ludmila Rishkova

Dec. 8, 2010

More explicit than the warning to the sensitive is the quote from Otto Dix that opens up the visit to the Rouge Cabaret exhibition at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: “I [...] don’t have the intention of revealing to astonished bourgeois and contemporaries the depths and the abyss within my soul”.

Born in 1891 in Germany, Otto Dix lived a life tainted by the violence and magnitude of the two World Wars. As a result, his art is captivating, mystifying, terrifying, desolating, and thought-provoking. Through it transpires a personality that was curious, troubled, with a dark sense of humour, a closet full of skeletons and a bottomless pit of emotion. From what I glimpsed, Otto Dix was a chameleon, an actor who adapts from medium to medium, from one shattering event life brings to another; in short he was an artist that fed off experience.

Vitaly S. Alexis: Romantically Apocalyptic

Artist Profile

By Angela Roberts

Dec. 6, 2010

Russian-born digital artist, Vitaly S. Alexis, has quickly become known for his beautiful and mystical paintings that blend an intriguing imagination with an incredible understanding of light and shadow. His subjects are mostly speculative in nature, and he is most famous for his painting, “Seasonscape,” which has been downloaded more than a million times. His paintings blend colour, light, and shadow to create fantastical landscapes so detailed and realistic that they nearly leap off the page (or the screen).

The Fantasy Writer's Soundtrack

By Angela Roberts

Dec. 1, 2010

I’ve always been the kind of writer who needs to be surrounded by sound while writing. My ideal writing environment is a busy coffee shop with my Ipod on. Not every writer is like this. Some need absolute silence; the slightest noise is a huge distraction. Some just have to be alone; music’s fine but the temptation to people watch instead of write makes productivity difficult. Maybe I’m just weird. I don’t know. But this did get me thinking about what music works for me when I’m writing. When I write literary fiction, I tend to listen to a lot of pop and alternative. Stuff that keeps me in the present. Or there were the several days straight when I listened to nothing but Fado (Portuguese folk torch songs) when I was working on a short story drawn from my Portuguese roots. But when I’m writing speculative fiction, what I listen to is totally different. The miracle of internet radio means that writers can find numerous sources of music to inspire them and get them into the mood. You can find stations that play every soundtrack you can think of, stations that play every type of instrumental music from any era, and stations that play all kinds of experimental, ambient, and metal out there. With that in mind, I thought I would talk about some of the interesting artists and sources out there that inspire me, in the hope that they might inspire others.

Cult.Pulp.Sex.Obsession.The Kill...

By Ludmila Rishkova

Nov. 24, 2010

(Foreseeing several impenetrable winter storms: 5”of snow for us Montrealers and several inches for people from other more southern regions, we decided to do a short bit on Movies, TV series and Books you might want to put on your list of things to do this winter.)

It’s not a matter of choosing sides when it comes down to Cult and Pulp movies and fiction. And it’s not a war of subculture versus mainstream as we will often find highly loyal fans of cult movies joining the ranks that admire mainstream pulp. Pulp and Cult are seductive in nature, looked down upon by higher culture and carry with them the alluring scent of the forbidden. Neither is afraid to toy with shallow content and superficial, even cliché, plot lines. Neither is afraid of sensationalism and both walk the thin line that splits a bad movie from a good, moving from one category to another depending on the judge. Most important of all, Pulp, like Cult, can make it into the Classics category.

Author Profile: Michelle Franklin

By Ludmila Rishkova

Nov. 17, 2010

Recently published author of The Commander and the Den Asaan Rautu: Book 1 of the Haanta series, Michelle Franklin is no stranger to the Fantasy writing scene. In fact, although I have known her for a few years now, it is only when I interviewed Michelle that I realized how prolific and intense a writer she was.

Cthulhu Calling: Inspiration in the Depths of the Ocean

By Dania Sonin

Nov. 10, 2010

I’ve always been fascinated with the mysterious and the unsolvable. I remember nights innumerable, snuggled up to my eyes in blankets in my parents’ room watching Unsolved Mysteries. Among the stories of missing persons and escaped villains, the ones that always tweaked my interest and kept me up were the ones that seemed almost too natural to not have an answer. UFOs and strange forest monsters, the sort of things that should, by all accounts, have evidence for or against their existence. Instead, the tapes were always fuzzy, or the object just out of frame, or the witnesses suspect. These scared me the most, but in a fun way, in a fictitious way, like reading creepy pulp before bed.

Author Interview: Erik Buchanan

By Angela Roberts

Nov. 3, 2010

Erik Buchanan is the author of two fantasy novels from Canadian publisher, Dragon Moon Press, Small Magics (2007), and Cold Magics (2010). The Gloaming's managing editor, Angela Roberts, met up with the author last October at Montreal scifi convention, Con-cept, to talk about writing, reading, and his works.

Angela: Was Small Magics your first professional sale?

Erik Buchanan: It was. It took a long time to write, because it’s your first book, and when you’re writing your first book, it takes longer to write than all the others and then selling it takes longer than all the others.

A: How long did it take to get sold?

E: The time I started writing it to the time I sold it was seven years. And that was because I was working full-time, I had a job. I’m also an actor, so I was working part-time on that and then part-time on writing so it took me about three years to write the actual book. ...

Click here to read a short review of Buchanan's novel, Small Magics.

Ed Emrich's World Without Rules

Artist Profile

By Ludmila Rishkova

Oct. 27, 2010

Emerging photographer, New Yorker, attorney and self-taught surrealist artist, Ed Emrich is quite an enigma. Charismatic and somewhat shy, he carries within himself a passion that becomes apparent the moment he talks about his work. His art takes us into a world where rules of symmetry and expectation are twisted out of recognition and literally turned upside-down.

Author Interview: Tad Williams

By Angela Roberts

Oct. 20, 2010

Tad Williams is the celebrated author of such fantasy and science fiction novels as Tailchaser’s Song, The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, the Otherland series, and the Shadowmarch series, the newest and final book of which, Shadowheart, comes out next month. With his wife, Deborah Beale, he is also working on an All Ages series called Ordinary Farm, of which one book, Dragons of Ordinary Farm, came out last year and the next, Secrets of Ordinary Farm, will be out next year. The Gloaming’s managing editor, Angela Roberts, sat down with Williams to talk about writing, arts, and the writing life.

Angela: You worked at other jobs besides writing. What made you decide to become an author?

Tad Williams: Well, to be honest with you, I never really decided, at least in the early stages, to be an author. Since I was young, I've had a very powerful urge to make things, and to perform, and to create. And as a result, I did a whole lot of different art-like things; I did music, I was in a band (I still am), I did a lot of theatre, I did radio, and I was a visual artist, painting, cartooning, and things like that. And once I was out of high school, and after I had dropped out of university, I continued to do all of these things, but I was also working at least one or two other jobs in order to make a living. ....

There’s No Place like Dome:

Spoiler Alert: review of Stephen King's latest epic “Under the Dome”

By Ludmila Rishkova

Oct. 14, 2010

An Impenetrable Dome descends upon Chester’s Mill, injuring some of its inhabitants, trapping others and leaving them to fend for themselves with hardly any fresh air and no outside help.

Those who do attempt to help from the outside are overridden by Chester’s Mill second selectman and used-car dealer Big Jim Rennie who takes control of the town slowly but surely, like a fat spider weaving a web for his lair. Big Jim’s reply to outside forces, army included, is “What are you going to do?” To Jim Rennie, long term consequences are not important: a dangerous situation that foreshadows the future turn of events quite well.

Con Report: Con-Cept 2010

By Angela Roberts

Oct. 6, 2010

The best conventions are those at which you forget to eat. Or at least it’s not a priority. Fan Expo is usually like this. You get so busy going from panel to panel to seminar that you don’t realize you’re hungry until your stomach is rumbling. You’re just enjoying yourself too much to care. The convention that I and co-editor, Mila Rishkova, attended this past weekend, Con-Cept, is another example of this kind of fun con. Con-Cept is a fan-run convention held annually at what is now called the Hotel Espresso in Montreal, Quebec. Small, intimate, and friendly, the main attraction of conventions like Con-Cept is the great programming. Unlike big commercial cons, Con-Cept caters best to the literary side of SF, providing numerous panels on writing and a forum for authors to showcase their work and hopefully get new fans. Mila and I fed our interest in the discourse of writing and scored some great interviews that will be appearing soon on the site. We also met some interesting people and had a lot of fun.

Adriana Coluccio: Lady Post

Artist Profile

By Ludmila Rishkova

Sept. 29, 2010

Adriana Coluccio, or as we tend to call her in smaller circles, A.D., has stuck with The Gloaming Magazine since the very beginning in 2006. She has been our underpaid, or rather unpaid, illustrator for five years and it’s only fair that we begin our artist of the week profiles with her. Thus we sat her down and began an impromptu interview over some cold coffee. Some things we already knew; others proved to be a revelation.

Fan Expo and Montreal Comic-con: Pros and Cons

By Angela Roberts

Sept.22, 2010

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend both Fan Expo (Aug. 27-29) and the Montreal Comic-con (Sept. 11-12). Rather than do separate con reports, I thought I would combine them and offer some sort of commentary on both. These two genre conventions have many more differences between them than just location, but they have similarities too, and it struck me as interesting how each has their good points and bad points.

Otakuthon 2010: Taking Cosplay Out for a Walk

By Ludmila Rishkova

Going to the annual Otakuthon convention was like stepping into Bizarro World. Moved, in the last few years, from Concordia University to the Palais des Congrès de Montréal, the convention at first seemed like a mishmash of the everyday and the imaginary. Businessmen in suits mingled with everyday tourists and security guards while all around them unravelled the world of Japanese anime culture and the fabulous world of kosupure or Cosplay, as costumed teens and adults darted here and there dressed as ninjas, sailor moon girls, gargoyles, superheroes and even birds. However, the above mentioned tourists and business men and everything we take as landmarks for everyday ‘normality’ were outnumbered by the world of Anime culture.

Movie Review: Mai Mai Miracle

By Angela Roberts

Gorgeous and compelling, Sunao Katabuchi’s Mai Mai Miracle is a masterpiece worthy of being compared with the works of his mentor, Hayao Miyazaki. Katabuchi’s film offers an amazing glimpse into rural Japan in the 1950s and into the imaginations of children in a way that never disdains or makes saccharine this innocent perspective.

Movie Review: First Squad: The Moment of Truth

By Angela Roberts

This Russian/Japanese co-production was a unique and interesting blend of Russian storytelling and Japanese animation. The artwork was created by Studio 4ºC, the studio behind such works as the Animatrix, and there is a flow and detail to the design of the characters that is reminiscent of more mature animes like Cowboy Bebop. No big-eyed characters flouncing about (not that there’s anything wrong with that); the characters and setting, based on popular Soviet-era propaganda comics, are infused with a Russian austerity that makes for a film with compelling imagery.

Movie Review: A Frozen Flower

By Angela Roberts

The Korean historical drama, A Frozen Flower, is a beautiful and compelling tragedy that is almost Shakespearean in its complexity. Set during the medieval Goryeo period, the film tells the tale of a forbidden love triangle between a king, his queen, and his chief guard, and not the type of triangle that most people would assume. Hong-lim is the chief of the Gunryongwi, the personal bodyguards of the King. Hong-lim, along with the other guards, has grown up in the palace alongside their King, and he and the King become lovers. But the king has to have a queen, so he marries the girl chosen for him, a princess of the Chinese Yuan dynasty, which dominates Korea politically at this time. Korea is a place dominated by China and threatened by attacks from outside and within. As time passes, the King is pressured more and more to produce an heir, but he can’t bring himself to consummate his marriage. Enter Hong-lim, the man he trusts and loves more than anyone. The King persuades his lover to take his place with the Queen, not realizing the world of trouble he creates for the trio. Awkward and feeling betrayed, Hong-lim and the Queen despise the arrangement at first, but slowly they find comfort in each other’s arms, and lust blossoms into a true love affair. The two are driven to be together, despite the fact that their love is an act of treason. When the King finds out, his vengeance is swift and brutal, starting a cascade of violence that can only end in death.

Review: Alien vs. Ninja

By Angela Roberts

What makes watching a film with the Fantasia audience different from watching a film in a conventional movie theatre is this; interaction. Genre festival audiences (and con audiences too) tend to interact with the films they watch. They laugh uproariously, they applaud, they jeer, and they cheer. They’re attentive. And the first film I saw this year at Fantasia, Alien vs. Ninja, was the perfect film to illustrate this phenomenon.

Alien vs. Ninja, released by Sushi Typhoon, is a Japanese sci-fi action comedy with a pretty simple (and awesome) premise; big creepy aliens come to medieval Japan and fight it out with a troop of ninja. That’s it. This is not one of those deep melodramatic cinematic tragedies that move the soul and fill you with wonder. Nope. It’s aliens fighting ninjas. And it is AWESOME!

Why are you all wet, baby

By Ludmila Rishkova

Love it or Hate it is pretty much the word. After all, there were a few grunts and quite a few more “What the Fuck”s floating in the theatre room the second the screen went black. Indeed Scorsese is not exactly the easiest director to digest, but then again if you want an easily digestible experience you probably shouldn’t have bought your ticket for a movie about a psychiatric institution treating the criminally insane.

My Review of “The Gathering Storm” Chapters 41-50 + Epilogue

By Angela Roberts

OK! The fifth and final installment of my review of “The Gathering Storm” is here! It has been quite a ride and quite some time, but I finally finished the book not long ago. As I said in my first review, I’ll talk briefly about these final chapters and then try to sum up my feelings about the book as a whole. So, let’s get started!

First thing I could possibly say is that the ending is fantastic! It was dramatic, it was moving, and it worked. I liked how more than one thread was tied up in these final chapters and yet some were still left open for the next books. Not only that, but we weren’t left with a pervasive feeling of gloom like it actually looked like we would be. The characters are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Whether or not that means that the next book will challenge them in new and more devastating ways is unknown, but for now, there’s a little hope.

My Review of “The Gathering Storm” Chapters 31-40

By Angela Roberts

I can honestly say for the first time that it was difficult putting down the book to write this review. Although things started off slow in this collection of chapters, by the end we’re really getting going and speeding toward the climax. Woo! Some major plot points occur in this portion of the novel, and we’re pretty much on the edge of our seat by the time we get to Chapter 41. Well, basically.

My Review of “The Gathering Storm” Chapters 21-30

By Angela Roberts

OK, so due to my terrible laziness (and other commitments but mostly laziness), this review has been delayed quite some time. Boy, does time go fast. Actually reading these chapters went pretty quickly for me, and I had to stop myself from reading more before I forgot what I had to say about what happened in this collection of chapters. Sorry about the delay. So, we’re into the third fifth of the novel and some of the most compelling plot points are finally coming in. Finally.

My Review of “The Gathering Storm” Chapters 11-20

By Angela Roberts

All right, remember when I said in my last review that exposition was being relayed to the reader in an effective and not too heavy manner? Well, I may have to revise that for my review of this group of chapters. This section of the book has presented some of the most frustrating and slow reading I’ve experienced so far with "The Gathering Storm". My beef generally lies with two annoyances; heavily-built up plot points that have resulted in nothing, and chapters that have served entirely as exposition-delivery devices with no conflict (hence no drama). OK, it’s early still, and I do hold some hope that some things, while seemingly useless and for naught, will bear valuable dramatic fruit later on.

My Review of “The Gathering Storm” Chapters 1-10

By Angela Roberts

Last October, the first of three books concluding Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time saga came out in hardcover. Like many people who have read the series since the beginning and waited eagerly to see the end (something that we feared might not happen when Jordan died in 2007), I pre-ordered the book. I wasn’t able to get to it right away, with the holidays and work on the website keeping me busy, but I finally managed to sit down and start reading. It also occurred to me that it would provide an interesting opportunity to bring some content to the website, in the form of a review from my perspective as a writer, reader, and editor.

Bone Addiction

By Ludmila Rishkova

We all know what the things that keep us from reading are. They are those legitimate things, such as school, term papers, exams, the work-socialization ritual, cleaning the dishes, laundry, feeding the baby and/or the pet, watering the flowers, we know the story as it’s a been-there-done-that routine for most of us. Of course, most of us fail to mention that we do keep time aside for our secret addictive behaviour, whether it’s a couple of back-to-back episodes of CSI, the mind-numbingly boggling Jersey Shore, or even the couch-bonding capacity of a Seinfeld marathon, we all have that one thing to which we devote a few sacred hours of our day. While for some that routine may involve changing, or saving, the world, for others it’s an obsessively compulsive tendency to either stay glued to the same TV shows, or read the same authors, or subjects, over and over, and over again.

Vampires!

By Angela Roberts

Two events, one might say, occurred this past week in vampire television: the premiere of The Vampire Diaries and the season 2 finale of HBO's True Blood. As an avid watcher of True Blood, I was curious enough to check out Vampire Diaries (especially after the incessant ads on CTV) and after a few tries, I managed to catch a late-night presentation. Yay for west coast CW. Both of these shows are quite different, no surprise, but they are similar in that they partake of a similar trend in supernatural romance these days - the benevolent vampire.

Fan Expo 2009

By Angela Roberts

So, last weekend I attended Fan Expo in Toronto. Since it's impossible to relay all my thoughts and impressions in one post, I will just lay down some highlights of my weekend.

Harry Potter

By Ludmila Rishkova

Last week I finally finished reading the Harry Potter series. I’ve been trying to hunt down a decent paperback edition of The Deathly Hallows for months, but after failing to find one I capitulated and opted for a kids’ version (to give myself a little credit, it was lying around, inconspicuous, in the novel section). It’s been about two years since I had finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and I dug into the Deathly Hallows without a single glance into the preceding book. I had forgotten that Dumbledore was dead, which came as a little shock, and I had absolutely no idea what Horcruxes were but thumbs up to miss Rowling, I had figured it out soon enough simply by reading on.

Worldcon!

By Angela Roberts

Last weekend, I attended Worldcon here in Montreal. I splurged, bought a weekend pass and was there for Friday evening, most of Saturday, and all of Sunday. It was pretty sweet. I got to meet a couple authors I admired, attended some panels, and handed out some flyers for the magazine. Wore a gloaming t-shirt and represented too. And, if anyone reads the magazine or visits this blog because they saw my t-shirt or spoke to me at the con, thank you very much. We welcome you whole-heartedly and we hope you see something you like and tell your friends.

The Gloaming

By Ludmila Rishkova

Over the last twenty years I have been harvesting an unhealthy addiction to pulp literature. This started ever since I got over my love affair with Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs and embarked on a long and shady romance with Andersen. We're talking original Hans Christian Andersen, the one who kills off the Little Mermaid and sends little barefoot Gerda to the Snow Queen's palace.

What makes a good story?

By Angela Roberts

What makes a good story? Some would say that it’s all about character. As long as you have a solid, multi-dimensional, believable character, you have a good story, and plot is less important. Others say the opposite. As long as you have an interesting, gripping, coherent plot, you don’t need to spend so much time on character. The reader will be carried away by the story. Both schools of thought have their examples and their fans. Both are right and both are wrong. And here’s why.