Best Tucson Comic-Con Yet!

Halloween is normally a holiday that my household celebrates with gusto. But between my broken foot,

my daughter’s commitment to Inktober (and heavy school workload), we didn’t even put up outdoor decorations for the first time in 15 years!

But we still had a great time hanging out with friends—her in a costume and trick-or-treating, me sitting outside enjoying the cool weather (finally!) and drinking wine.

Now November is here and that means it’s time for Tucson Comic-Con!

This year I’ll have two tables in Artist Alley (Tables 18-19), AND I’ll be on some great author panels. Some local SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America) got together to create a slate of entertaining and information panels for Tucson Comic-Con attendees.
Come out to Tucson Comic-Con to support Arizona artists, authors, and crafters. And if you attend, make sure you stop by my table to say hi AND attend the panels!

WHAT: Tucson Comic-Con

WHEN: November 3-5

WHERE: Tucson Convention Center

NOTABLE CELEBRITIES:  Billy Dee Williams (Star Wars), Gates McFadden (Star Trek),  Barry Bostwick (Actor), Michael Winslow (Police Academy), Ming Chen (Podcaster), Karen Ashley (Yellow Power Ranger) and Others

*NATALIE'S PANELS:

SATURDAY, 11/4

12:30-1:20 pm:  “Time Out to Kiss: Building Romance when Bullets Fly & Lasers Fire” (moderated by Natalie Wright with Ed Hoornaert & Kathryn Lance)

SUNDAY, 11/5

1:00-1:50 pm: “Epic Sci-Fi & Fantasy Worlds” (Natalie Wright, KJ Kabza & Kathryn Lance)

3:00-3:50 pm: “Too-Perfect Heroes” (Natalie Wright, Ed Hoornaert, Kathryn Lance & Catherine Wells)

*Please note that the online schedule is incorrect as to Natalie's panels. Natalie WILL be on each of the panels listed above.

Style Guide to Yodify Your Language via Grammarly

In preparation for writing Book 3 of the H.A.L.F. series, I've been studying language creation (ConLang). It is at times a very dry topic. I'm not sure how much time I want to devote to learning linguistics in furtherance of world building.

I think the Star Wars universe is a good example of going just far enough with language creation to make it sound plausible without necessarily going full throttle.

While Yoda doesn't speak a different language, it is one of the more fun uses of language in the Star Wars world. Now thanks to the folks at  Grammarly, you can "Yodify" your own words.

#Yodify

Sci Fi Friday: If Sigourney's In, I'm In

Movie Poster for original Alien, 1979

When I first heard that there was going to be a reboot of the movie Alien, I yawned. Reboots are always ... Well, reboots. If a remake is faithful to the original product that we love so much, then it is predictable because we've already been there, done that. If it's not faithful to the original, then we complain because it changes the thing we love so much.

And then there's the magic of a first. Some movies, like music, have a synergy that only exists the first time around. Any art that become phenomenon has this synergy. It's complex and is about more than the artists but also includes the audience.

When Alien appeared back in 1979, it came on the heels of the comparatively childlike Star Wars. Hans Solo, the bad boy of the film, is a cartoonish space pirate compared to Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. 

If the two were in a fight, I'd put my money on Ripley to kick Solo's ass.

Star Wars gave us R2D2, C3PO and Ewoks. Cute, sometimes cuddly characters.

Alien gave us this:

Alien art from Neill Blomkamp's Instagram

Alien ushered us, not so gently, into an age where all kinds of things come out of the sky, hellbent on destroying humankind (Thor, Transformers, Independence Day, Mars Attacks ... just a few that came to mind - please add to the list in the comments section). Star Wars was our age of innocence. Alien was our coming of age.

I saw the original Alien in the movie theatre when it first came out and can still remember yelling out with surprise (as did most in the theater) when that alien popped out of the guy's stomach. I've seen it several times since and I still jump at that moment - even though I know it's coming. The movie has a pervading dark tension that builds and builds up to that moment. You know bad shit's going to happen. You just don't know what or when.

And then there's Ripley. Smart, sassy, mother of all bad mother f***in women who will kick your sorry ass ... Ripley.

Sigourney Weaver on the set of the original Alien movie, 1979. Corbis

Sigourney Weaver pretty much invented the strong female lead for Sci Fi media. Sure, there are plenty of strong female characters in the world of story before Ripley. But I can't think of one in film prior to Alien that had a female character that could kick ass the way Ripley did.

Linda Hamilton (with cut arms to die for) in Terminator II:Judgment Day (19991) owes her bad assedness to Weaver paving the way for this type of character.

In fact, Weaver paved the way for a lot of us. Seeing Ripley on the screen back when I was a kid allowed me to see that a woman can save herself. Ripley looks that alien bitch with two sets of teeth in the face and says eat it.

So Neill Blomkamp wants to give us his take on Alien? And media touts it as from the director or Elysium and Chappie. Well, that made me snore. I wouldn't exactly call those two movies a great sci fi pedigree (some of you may disagree and if you do, feel free to tell me so in the comments).

But somehow or other, Neill convinced Sigourney to come along for the ride.

If Sigourney's in, I'm in. I look forward to seeing how she'll fit into the Alien world (re)created by Blomkamp nearly 40 years after the original (damn, that's a long time!).

Just please, Neill, don't try to make her more "feminine" - more likable - like they did in the second film, Aliens. So typical of Hollywood, they had to give her a kid to take care of (1986 Aliens, written and directed by James Cameron). So many Hollywood stories give us female characters that have a kid slung to their hip, even if they're toting a gun with the other hand (and typical of Hollywood too to put kids, dogs, and  yes, Ewoks, into movies to cuteify them, perhaps thinking it will make the franchise appeal to a larger audience).

So go forth, Neill Blomkamp, and revision Alien. But please, while your re-envisioning what Alien can be, don't take away from us the strong, self-reliant Ripley that we love.

Review of Cowboys & Aliens

Daniel Craig as Jake Lonergan in "Cowboys & Aliens"

Clint Eastwood

"Cowboys & Aliens" isn't going to win an Oscar for best picture, but if you enjoy westerns or action movies, you'll like this one.  Daniel Craig channels Clint Eastwood to give us a modern version of the old-fashioned cowboy outlaw with a chance at redemption.  It's a risky movie melding the western with science fiction.  But the melding of the two genres is fun and "Cowboys & Aliens" is mostly a hit with a little bit of a miss.  I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the movie the most as it had that feel of the best of spaghetti westerns like "The Good, the Bad & the Ugly."


The movie starts with a close-up of Craig, beat up, dirty and bloody while still managing to look hot.  He's shoeless and confused, clearly unable to recall why he's in the desert or why he has a metal bracelet on.  The mystery of who he is, where he comes from and why he has the strange but powerful metal bracelet is revealed slowly.  And while the aliens make appearances on screen in wasp-like metal flying machines, the true nature of the aliens and their reason for being on Earth is also revealed bit by bit.


Daniel Craig is the stand out and he stays true to his stoic character throughout.  Harrison Ford is the weak link of the cast.  He plays Colonel Dolarhyde (a rancher - get it - dollar-hide), a grumpy, hard-ass former soldier who now is the big-cheese in town rancher.  Ford starts out strong but can't help but curl his lip from time-to-time in a Han Solo-esque sneer and by the end he's playing it sappy.


Daniel Craig's not afraid to get gritty in his role.  In one of the most bad-ass scenes ever, Craig's character beats a man to death with his bare hands, the blood splattering all over him.  He doesn't even wipe the blood splatters off his face as he takes the boots off the dead guy and puts them on.  Stone cold bad ass.  Next to Craig, Ford looks like he's uncomfortable in his skin as he struggles to portray a less than desirable character.  He ends up resorting to a mix of Indiana Jones and Han Solo, a cartoonish cliche.


But back to the good news.  The special effects are top notch.  One of my beefs with the later Star Wars movies is that the CGI takes over and the acting becomes stilted and ineffectual (George Lucas clearly preferring to work with computers over people).  In Cowboys & Aliens there are no lines of thousands of CGI aliens marching across the screen.  Instead they did a great job of interspersing the CGI aliens amongst the sagebrush, sand and rock to make it more lifelike.  There's plenty of hand-to-hand combat with the bad guys oozing gooey green blood.


If you enjoy a gritty western or action movie, you'll enjoy this offering.


Some of you may know that I have a particular interest in this movie because I have a work in progress that was originally titled "Cowboys & Aliens" (before I saw the trailer for this movie!).  See my previous blog post on the WIP here.  I was glad to see that the movie has nothing in common with my forthcoming novel except some aliens (and mine are very different).


If you've seen "Cowboys & Aliens," let us know what you think by posting a comment below or on my Facebook page.