From my friend Sumana's recent post.....

WisCon 34 wants ideas for panels. I am thinking of proposing "HOWTO Describe Nonwhite Characters Sans Fail" (a.k.a., "Her Skin Was The Color Of A Delicious Coca-Cola")

Hathor is running a contest to win a free copy of the Strain. Details here:

http://thehathorlegacy.com/the-strain-guillermo-del-toro-and-chuck-hogan/

Please forward?

I'm mad at you all.

Nobody told me how incredibly hot Anthony Montgomery is. And since I avoided Enterprise like the plague, I wouldn't have known if I hadn't discovered what an awesome time sink Memory Alpha is--especially when writing in the Mirror Universe.

For some reason, I'm picturing Mayweather and Hardison together. Yum.

so when does it start?

and where can i find some alec/eliot shipping icons?

Pam Noles is her own damn unicorn stampede. OK?

Consider my praise napkin RAISED TO THE CEILING.

xposted.

Apparently the new Transformers movie is bringin' back Sambo.

I like how Bay says 'it was for the kids.'

I told y'all good stuff happened this month! Two black women were hired by DC to write comics. No, I am not joking. Really. Angela Robinson will be handling writing chores on the new series The Web. And Felicia D. Henderson will be taking over the reins of Teen Titans starting with issue #75.

These are the second and third black women to ever write a story for a major comic book publisher. And by major, I don't mean Marvel and DC. I mean Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Oni, Avatar, Boom, First Second, IDW...well, I could go on and on. The only black female writer at a major company who predates them is Marguerite Abouet over at Drawn & Quarterly. She arrived on the scene in the States in 2007. So, this is pretty big.

Okay, a whole bunch of good stuff happened in comics while I was hidden under a pile of writing assignments this month. So, I'm going to share them with you as I sort through three weeks of e-mail remember them. One important one is the upcoming Adrenaline TPB release. I liked Adrenaline for two main reasons. One, there's a kick-ass black female character that does not end up half-naked and bleached out by the end of the series. Two, the hot, sexy ladies' man in this series is a Asian dude. How often do we see this in American comics? And if you see it often, please tell me where so I can go buy those books. I've always been a sucker for a diverse cast of characters.

Anyway, if hard-hitting action is your thing, you can check Adrenaline out for yourself over at Wowio. Like what you see? Then pick up the trade and get a free sketch!

With Michelle Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana, CCH Pounder ('Supper-time!!' *you get a cookie if you know where that line is from XD!*) and many other POC actors as well, as this intriguing plot, which potentially has all kinds of interesting real-life parallels (hello Manifest Destiny, blood diamonds, colonialization etc.) and recent buzz.

Yeah, I'm excited to see where this goes. :)

Here's their admittedly old teaser trailer:

At Racialicious.

The new transformer 'bots: 'Skids' and 'Mudflap'? ORLY? Causing all kinds of "race issues"?

You don't say.

For the love of god, don't read the comments. Or the article. Just don't click. Say no to clicking! Have some cheesecake instead! Or a tasty doughnut! Or go for a nice walk! Pet a kitty!

...gah...

( click right here for your failtastic )

Is it wrong that my first thought after seeing this was "Where's Barbossa"?

( I am sending Aldis Hodge to the corner. Really.  )

xposted.

This week, BBC Radio 7 is airing Paul Winfield's reading of Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress. Unfortunately it is an abridged version (five 30-minute episodes), but hey, it's Paul Winfield and free. You can listen online for 7 days after the episode first airs.

(Tech note: if you choose the "lower bandwidth version" of the BBC iPlayer, then click on the RealPlayer icon in the bottom right corner, you get a "Play in RealPlayer" option, which I find plays better with my MP3 recording program of choice.)

I am eagerly waiting the latest book by (my favorite author) Samuel Delany, and just read this I09 interview about his work and his forthcoming book In The Valley of The Nest of Spiders.


Chip (Samuel) as a young man

(excerpt)

Galatea2.2 asks: "One more question for Mr. Delany: Writers are often exhorted to write the novels they are dying to read...what's the unwritten book he would love to write (or just read)?"

All of my books have been ((what I would like to read.)) That's the impetus to write pretty much any book I've ever writen. That's true of the Jewels of Aptor, although maybe in this case, my wife would have liked to have read it, back when I was married. That cretainly was true of Dhalgren, and it's just equally true of Through The Valley Of The Nest Of Spiders... As a gay man in a long-term relationship that's been going along quite happily, for as I said, going on for 20 years, I realized I would like to read a book about a long-term relationship and the type of things that might go into it.

Chip (Samuel) today

 

EDIT: I just discovered there is a documentary about him too. Anyone seen it?

I was reading over this year's Hugo Award nominations in the hope of finding some good things to add to my summer reading pile.  I am not holding out much hope but,

1. Does anyone know if there are any authors of colors among the nominees?

-or-

2. Do any of the nominees feature well-written characters of color?

I wont actually be going, but perhaps those unicorns who are headed out could arrange some sort of meetup/gathering/whinnyfest?

I don't remember seeing this here, although if I have managed to beat delux_vivens out, I am astonished.

An abbreviated transcript of an interview with Chris Eyre, Native American Director, and Ric Burns, Documentary Filmmaker, who made the film 'We Shall Remain'.

Full podcast here.

"I love the idea that Tecumseh and his pan-Indian movement came within a heartbeat of creating a state of affairs in which if you looked at a map of the United States there would be a big horseshoe-shaped bite out of it in the middle of the country—Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota—which would have been a permanent united Indian states of America within the United States, not a reservation."

::cough Alternate History I'd Love to Read cough::

Has been awarded an MBE for services to literature.