Oh, yeah, this blog is about writing

Link to an interview with me: here!

"If there was the possibility of becoming any speculative fiction character ever created (except your own), would you? Who? Why?

I’m pretty happy with who I am. When I was a kid I wanted to be Doc Savage, but you can see how that turned out. It might be cool to become John Carter, if for no other reason than to watch the death match between Dejah Thoris and my wife. Second thought, that has a lot of ways of ending in tears, and after Mrs. Ehart finished with that Martian heifer, I would probably be next."

And of course more smart-aleckey goodness on the other side of the link above.

The Worst Homemade Star Wars Costumes

here.

And while I was there, this was the picture of the day:

http://www.holytaco.com/white-castle-weddings-always-make-me-cry

ShamWow? No, SlamWow! Vince goes to jail

But apparently not until he got his groove-thing on. Seems he had an altercation with a prostitute that escalated into an indulgence in physical violence. Cops were called, big mess. But at least the cleanup was easy.

I'm always a little sad when a role-model like this takes a fall. Sheesh, who ever would have thought that a guy like Vince would have anger management problems? After all, he wasn't even able to get through a taped commercial without snapping at the crew. "You getting this, camera guy?"

Television

I used to hate TV. I would watch old movies, and sometimes the news, but episodic TV left me cold. For nearly 30 years, I could count the number of series I enjoyed on my fingers. Even then, I might watch a few episodes of something different, like "Miami Vice" (which for all of its problems introduced a number of concepts, like fast cutting and had great music and a very distinctive look)and then just stop watching, my interest dissapated by poor writing or hackneyed plots.
So what in the world changed? I now watch a couple of hours a night, and at least half is episodic. Favorites include Eleventh Hour, The Closer, Numbers, Bones, Terminator, Batman brave and Bold, Burn Notice, and I flicker in out out of love with Reaper, Psych, Monk, and the sadly canceled Life on Mars. Weird, because at the same time as I have less time than ever in my life, I am pausing everything to watch a couple of hours of the tube each night.
Two things, I think. For one, even though there is a lot of copy catting and far too many CSI types of shows on, the overall quality is much much higher. Complex, mutilayerd plots from show like Heroes and Lost have shown that viewers don't always have to be spoon fed. Production values are infinitly higher than they were in my childhood, and some of the best film directors have no problem helming TV projects. Actors move much more comfortably between big screen and small. TV is just better done now, in general.
The other thing is technology. LCD makes everything look better, but the big thing is tivo. Being able to watch whatever I like when I have time makes the TV my servant, rather than the other way around. I can also deal with one of my pet peeves, the two part episode, by tivoing both and watching them together.
Finding that 3AM History Channel documentary on the Hittites and watching it right after dinner is pretty cool, too.

New Stooges? Say it ain't so!

Sean Penn as Larry? Jim Carrey as Curly? Benicio Del Toro as Moe?

Aaaaaaag!

The best gag in one of the funniest movies ever, It's a Mad, Mad World, was the airplane in distress, piloted by a passenger after the pilot (Jim Bakus) dies of a heart attack. The tower is notified, the emergency truck rolls out, and just as the plane is landing, they pan past the emergency crew. It is the stooges, ready for action, still, iconic, poised for mayhem.

Their body of work had created so much audince anticipation that nothing more was needed. You knew, that whatever chaos had occured before, it was nothing like would happen after the plane was on the ground.

How can anyone, ever reproduce this?

The Farrelly Brothers are out of their minds.

NorWesCon

Norwescon 32 Itinerary For: Michael Ehart

Thursday

Opening Ceremonies 7:00 pm Evergreen 1 & 2
What are the "Things That Time Forgot"? Come find out, and meet our Guests of Honor.


Art Show Reception 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm Grand Ballroom 1
Please join our artists for a sneak peek at the Norwescon 32 Art Show.


Reading: Michael Ehart 8:30 PM Cascade 3
The Tears of Ishtar – Fantasy – Rated PG
Michael Ehart



Small Press Party 9:00 pm to Midnight Presidential Suite
Cap off the evening with the Small Press


Friday

Rejectomancy Noon Cascade 6
Our panelists will help you divine the meaning of different rejection letters and ways to deal with rejection.
Jennifer Brozek, L.J. Bothell, Lisa Mantchev, Jeff Carlson, Michael Ehart


Adventure Stories 1:00 PM Cascade 7
Swashbucklers, pirates, oh my? What makes an adventure story different from other science fiction and fantasy stories? And do most adventure stories get the action right?
Michael Ehart, MH ("Maggie") Bonham



Fantasy as Social Commentary 3:00 PM Cascade 4
Fantasy and Sci Fi have long provided "safe" ways for authors to discuss the real world they lived and struggled in. Examine fantasy realms and lift the thin veil to look at social critique on racism, sexism, religion, politics and more.
Michael Ehart, Cat Rambo, Rosemary Clement-Moore, Spencer Ellsworth

The Use and Misuse of Violence in SF and Fantasy 10:00 PM Cascade 4
Lawrence Block once noted that sex and violence in fiction are the best ways to get people's attention. But on the flip side, there's a point at which such things become gratuitous. When is violence absolutely necessary in a story? When does it become gratuitous, or simply in the story for its own sake? And how much is too much?
Carol Berg, Jena Pittman, Josh Palmatier, Michael Ehart


Norwescon 32 Pro Party 9:00 pm to Midnight Presidential Suite
Cap off the evening with your fellow panelists.

Saturday

Tradeoffs between Freedom, Security and Privacy 9:00 AM Cascade 9
Is she free? Is he secure? Should we know? It seems that to get more of one thing, you have to give up something else. Since different people want different levels of freedom, security and privacy, how can we reach a societal consensus on the tradeoffs? What happens when smart dust watches everything we do, scanning technologies monitor what we think and microbots will take action? Where is all this going? Where should it go? What can we do? Is Big Brother coming at last, just a bit behind schedule?
David Nassett, Michael Ehart, Mary Rosenblum



Autograph Session 1 11:00 AM Evergreen 1 & 2
Grab your books! Our Guests of Honor and many of our pros will be available for autographs.
R.A. Salvatore, Geno Salvatore, Todd Lockwood, Richard Baker, John P. Alexander, MH (“Maggie”) Bonham, L.J. Bothell, Ted Butler, Jeff Carlson, Greg Cox, Darrin Drader, Michael Ehart, Elton Elliott, Spencer Ellsworth, Roberta Gregory, Jeff Grubb, Warren Hammond, Paul Melko, G.David Nordley, Sean Reynolds, Kat Richardson, Ken Scholes, Jeff Sturgeon, Tiffany Trent



The Evolving Superhero 4:00 PM Evergreen 2
The Superhero Genre has changed, due to a shrinking readership and the increasing age of the average reader. In other words, the superhero is now aimed at a niche market rather than mass and the average reader is now 28 (or so) instead of 12 and this has all radically altered the material.
Michaela Eaves, Andrew Dolbeck, Michael Ehart



Wizards of the Coast Party 9:00 pm to Midnight Presidential Suite
A chance to party with Spotlight Publisher Wizards of the Coast.


Sunday

Closing Ceremonies 5:00 pm Evergreen 3 & 4
The time and place where we wrap it all up. Come say goodbye to our Guests of Honor, and bid farewell to Norwescon for one more year.

Coming This Summer!

"They were late, but it didn’t matter. The caravan was in disarray, with camels yet unloaded and a factor standing toe-to toe with the caravan master, both shouting with red faces and gesticulating arms. Humri was a great ox of a man, his shaven head puckered and scarred. His face was marked by a deep furrow that ran from his forehead to his jaw, emphasized by the missing teeth on that side...

The factor was almost as tall, but slender and quick. His thick hair was oiled and braided in the Hurrian fashion, and he mostly shouted in that language, too. It appeared that both men had run out of curses in their native tongues, and had moved on to others.

The factor was just as angry as Humri, and seemed to be fluent in more than a dozen tongues, but Humri had an amazing gift. His familial denigrations were poetic and pungent. His anatomical suggestions were inspired. But his rapid-fire, multi-lingual descriptions of the generational curses to be visited on the factor, his never-to-be-begotten offspring, his cousins, nephews, uncles and their descendants was dazzling. Deeply profane, it was the stuff of which great epic poems were wrought, and after a while even the factor noticed, and stopped in mid-curse, first in puzzlement and then in amazement as Humri carefully and lovingly cursed the factor for seven generations in each direction.

At last, each jackal-descended third cousin cataloged, fated and dismissed, Humri paused for a breath.

“Forty-five, then,” conceded the factor, his voice hoarse, his posture resigned.

Humri closed his mouth, drilled the factor with his one good eye, and apparently discerning no duplicity, nodded. “Forty-five, and done,” he said, his booming voice not a hair quieter.

Both men spat on their palms, and clasped hands. The factor turned to a small man behind him, who was standing ready with a wet tablet and a stylus, and muttered a few instructions. The factor made his mark, and the tablet was slipped into a small leather bag. The scribe trotted off with it, most likely to the master trader the factor worked for.

Humri bellowed out orders, and in a few heartbeats the chaos was banished, and from it arose the order and bustle of a caravan." (c) 2009 Michael Ehart

Coming this summer!

"As from His Lair, the Wild Beast"

Another Servant tale will see publication later this year in Rage of the Behemoth from RBE, the folks that brought us last year's Return of the Sword. Some pretty great folks are part of the lineup, including one of my favoriet persons to share a panel with, Mary Rosenblum, and Lois Tilton's out of retirement story, to which I will get to write the introduction as well.

Cool idea, with several stories each set in a different environment, like Scalding Sands or Ageless Mountains. There will be special editions with each of the differnt environments own cover, as well.

Magic and Mechanica

It is finally here!

Enter a world of piston-driven fantasy, where magic smashes headlong into the down-to-earth reality of technology and machines. From the all out war of dragon-riding sorcerers against an army of self-replicating, clockwork robots in Christopher M. Cevasco's "Gambit," to the discovery of an alien submersible by pirates in Christopher Heath's Azieran tale "Savior in a Flask," further still to Nicholas Ian Hawkins' collision of a wizardly scholar and the newly-invented printing press that will ruin his career in "Knowledge and Dust," you will certainly be amazed at the breathtaking imaginations of fifteen authors. Dragons, steam-powered tanks, Aztec warriors, angry gods, assassins both large and small...Magic & Mechanica is unlike any collection of fantasy you've ever seen.

This anthology includes my story "Night of Shadows, Night of Knives" which probalby has the longest path to publication of any of my stories, ever. I first conceived of the beginning nearly 20 years ago. The first drafts are long lost, but about 4 years ago I discovered a version that had been adapted for Wizards of the Coast in the late 90's. They had an editorial change, and then lost it, eventually returning it to me rejected after nearly two years.

I re-wrote it for this anthology, they liked it, and here it is, finally, in print.

It is a very streamlined story, set in a vaguely middle-eastern city. A crit partner called the style "Castle Noir" which I like, and fits it as well as any other description.

Lots of good stuff in this anthology, from some pretty good writers.

Servant review by Rich Horton

Kind words from Rich Horton!

Michael Ehart's The Servant of the Manthycore is a short novel that appeared in 2007 from a small outfit called Double-Edged Publishing. I confess I started reading with minimal hopes. But I was quite pleasantly surprised. The title character and heroine is a Bronze Age woman who with her lover was tricked into an encounter with the Manthycore, a monster that requires a human servant to kill other people for him to eat. The Manthycore has imprisoned the lover in a sort of stasis, as a hostage, while the woman, later named Ninshi, travels around, almost invincible, killing people. By the time of the main action she was for generations been trying to find a way to escape this service. In this book she rescues a young slave girl, kills some bad people, and finds a hint at a secret that may allow her to compel the Manthycore to release her, only to again be betrayed. Besides some fine action and some nicely plotted episodes, and sturdy writing, I enjoyed the hints seeded through the book of some familiar characters. The main weakness is that the novel, assembled from several short stories, is a bit loosely structured. To be marketable to a major publisher it would probably have to be twice its length (and I think it could bear that expansion) and the plot would have to be tightened considerably. But as it stands it's enjoyable work.

Okay now!

link here: The Elephant Forgets - http://ecbatan.livejournal.com/

Tomb of the Amazon Queen

A new "Servant" story. Dark Worlds is a "pulp descended" magazine, so I gave this one my pulpiest title ever. In this story, Ninshi and Miri travel with a band of women warriors to recover an ancient treasure. I'll let you know when it comes out!

Brag Time!

My story, "Without Napier" has been nominated for the Pushcart Award. Needless to say, I am pretty stoked. I don't think of myself as a literary writer, and when something like this happens, I am always caught by surprise.

"Without Napier" appeared in EveryDay Fiction earlier this year. As you may recall, it was a French Noir homage about the sidekick to a Great Detective, and how his life changes when the detective dies.

If you would like to give it a gander, you can find it here. It is quite short, but it got great reviews and was a reader favorite.

Wish me luck!

Filter House

Nisi Shawl, who is in my live crit group, STEW, has had her first collection of shorts selected by Publishers Weekely as a Best of the Year. Nisi's stuff is dense, rich and full of skewed visions. I don't know anyone who writes better than she does, and the recognition is entirely appropriate.
For those who fancy themselves as writers, this is a great companion to her book "Writing the Other" a fantastic how-to manual. One tells you how, and the other illustrates just how amazing our genres can be.

Filter House
Nisi Shawl (Aqueduct)
Shawl's exquisitely rendered debut collection weaves threads of folklore, religion, family and the search for a cohesive self through a panorama of race, magic and the body.

Come hang out with me at OryCon!

Here's the lowdown for my time at OryCon this weekend --looks like I'm gonaa have a lot of fun! Join me if you happen to be in the Rose City!


Friday
4:00PM-5:00PM Sunstone "Group 3 Dark Fantasy" - Michael Ehart and Devon Monk lead a critique group Michael Ehart, Devon Monk
5:00PM-5:30PM Salem "Readings with Michael Ehart" - Reading of the works of Michael Ehart by Michael Ehart Michael Ehart
6:00PM-7:00PM Mt. Hood Mythic imagery in speculative fiction Nisi Shawl, M.K. Hobson, Michael Ehart, Felicity Shoulders, Sara Mueller

Saturday
12:00PM-1:00PM Mt. Hood "The structure of writing" - Structurally speaking, what makes a good story? Editors and writers (especially new writers) sometimes have different viewpoints. Experienced editors and writers offer their views. Mary Rosenblum, Jean M. Auel, Michael Ehart, Ginjer Buchanan, Blythe Ayne, Ph.D.
3:30PM-4:00PM Autograph Table "Signing with Michael Ehart" - Autograph session with Michael Ehart Michael Ehart
6:00PM-7:00PM Salem Non-European mythology – an untapped resource Nisi Shawl, Michael Ehart, Jayel Gibson, Felicity Shoulders, Dianna Rodgers

Sunday
12:00AM-01:00AM Salem Midnight Horror Readings Joan McCarty, Dianna Rodgers, Michael Ehart, Edward Morris
10:00AM-11:00AM Mt. Hood That’s gotta hurt: how to wound, torture and maim characters Bart Kemper, Britta Dennison, Michael Ehart, Anne Sattler
11:00AM-12:00PM Medford Cyber crimes of today, and the future John Hedtke, Catherine Rambo, Michael Ehart, Randal Schwartz
12:00PM-1:00PM Salmon "The Marketing of Historical Fiction" - Does it only sell as romance and mainstream? How might historical fiction be made appealing to a broader audience? Michael Ehart, M.K. Hobson, Jean M. Auel, Joan McCarty

Congratulations to David R. Montgomery!

David R. Montgomery has been awarded the MacArthur "Genius" Grant, moving him into a very limited club, the club of MacArthur recipients I have met, which has a membership of two. (The other was the late Octavia Butler).
Shaharazahd and I met Montgomery at a Conservation District conference. His presentation was based on his book Dirt, and was so compelling we bought a copy. Hi thesis is simple: the history of nearly any civilization is told in its soil. This was especially interesting to me in that I write fantasy set near the Bronze Age Collapse, an event still little understood by historians. It was the world'sm fisrt known dark age, and the economic, political and social collapse was unparalled since. Entire civilizations vanished overnight, and cities that had been occupied for hundreds of years were abandoned and never resettled.

Montgomery's book gave me a lot to think about, and some of his ideas may end up incorporated in future "Servant" stories.

At any rate, congratulations, David! Your book is pretty cool, and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

"The Death of Number 23" to Arkham Tales.

My WWI submarine boogie story has sold to Arkham Tales, a new magazine of weird fiction. I am thrilled to be a part of this project!
Their first issue will be in November; no word yet on when my story will appear.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Arrrgh!

"As From His Lair, the Wild Beast"

The latest Servant story is done and off to crit. My live crit group is starting up again after summer hiatus, just in time.
The new story has Ninshi and Miri fleeing the soldiers of the Temple of Ishtar, and a quite large beastie as part of the plot. 6500 words, a little shorter than I have been writing lately, but it was still good to be finished.
Next up, a promised novella that has them traveling to Illium to sort through the wreckage of the recently destroyed city, with some unusual allies along the way.

Back in the saddle

Finally got most of the real world issues pushed out of the way for a bit, and getting some words in a row. A few hundred yesterday, on a new Servant story for an anthology. More today, I think and back to full throttle by the weekend. I'll keep you posted!

Has it been a month?

Wow! I don't think it has ever been this long between posts! I have been very busy, still writing, but sidetracked by putting in a hot tub, studying for a cert test, and just life in general.
I'll do better, promise. In a couple of weeks I should be caught up enough to at least pretend to post here :)