planetpooks

[planetpooks]

Another must read goes on my list!

“A futuristic tale of urban life in Beijing has won a Chinese novelist a top international prize for science fiction, beating out heavyweight Stephen King for the honour.

Hao Jingfang, 32, won the Hugo Award for best novelette with Folding Beijing, a year after another Chinese writer, Liu Cixin, won the best novel prize for The Three-Body Problem, Xinhua reported on the weekend.

Receiving her award in Kansas City, Missouri, Hao said she was not surprised she had won but had also been prepared to lose.

“In Folding Beijing, I have raised a possibility for the future and how we face the challenges of automated production, technological advances, unemployment and economic stagnation,” she said.

Hao said her book offered a solution to those challenges, but she hoped the situations she described would not become reality.

Hao is from Tianjin, and graduated with a physics degree from Tsinghua University in 2006.

The Hugo Awards, established in 1953, are regarded as the highest honour in science fiction and fantasy. They are named after Hugo Gernsback who was the founder of the American science fiction magazineAmazing Stories.”

Read the full piece here

Congratulations Hao Jingfang!

[planetpooks]

Indeed. I am wild for Wilde. But then, who isn’t? Nobody I want to know.

[planetpooks]

Looooove. The girl I wish I’d been.  Strong. Sure. Fast. Even when [maybe] afraid?

The GCU Catch Me If You Can

[planetpooks]

My First Fan Art!

 https://exstarsis.deviantart.com/art/Bardan-Fury-690160537 Artist: Chrysoula Tzavelas Meet Bardán Fury, progenitor of Persephone Fury, in The Fury Triad. His life spanned the reigns of four Tudor monarchs, and it is because of him that they say: “In England it is is said that the Furys have a gift for pleasing kings.   But in Ireland they say, never trust a Fury.”

[planetpooks]

Treat yourself to a Halloween fantasy. Preorder The Dead Shall Live today and it will land on your ereader automagically at 12:01 am, October 31! At Amazon , Barnes&Noble, Kobo, iBooks, or any of these other fabulous stores! IT’S IRELAND, 1811, AND AT MIDNIGHT ON SAMHAIN, THE DEAD SHALL LIVE...

The Dead Shall Live begins the moment the award-winning dark YA fantasy, This Crumbling Pageant, ends—with two kings but only one throne.

Persephone Fury’s Dark powers are finally under control but at a horrific price, and she is married to a man she has long loathed but with whom she shares her Dark powers.

Nevertheless, her beloved Robin has sworn to bring her back from the Dark.

“To unthrone the usurper, return to the cradle of the Fury.”

This mysterious message from within the stronghold of the enemy sends Persephone to Ireland with Vespasian. There, they will finally learn the truth and horror of their Dark powers and the prophecy that binds them together.

Death in all its forms is Vespasian’s gift and Persephone’s curse.

How much more of her soul will she have to sacrifice to the Darkness within?

And under the malevolent midnight moon on Samhain, who are the dead that shall live?

Preorder THE DEAD SHALL LIVE today!

______________________ Only 3.99 everywhere [price goes up on Halloween!] PREORDER NOW ______________________ Amazon/Kindle  http://amzn.to/2y78fk4 Barnes&Noble/Nook  http://bit.ly/2x1O7Bk Kobo http://bit.ly/2h3iXQN iBooks http://apple.co/2f6ntkX And book stores around the world. http://bit.ly/2f5HSX5

Website: https://furytriad.com Cover design: The Killion Group Soundtrack: "Dance With the Trees," Composer, Adrian Von Ziegler, http://bit.ly/2x2Hfnw Some Photos by: Shane Broderick, http://bit.ly/2xziPU7 Video Production: Prithee & Gramercy Press

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Get swept away into the first book of a dark fantasy series combining sorcery and magic, Arthurian legend turned upside down, and a coming of age that leaves Persephone Fury choosing between love and honour, between desire and destiny.

Winner, Golden Quill for best Romantic Fantasy in 2015

The Fury family is known for its extraordinary music, its powerful magic, and its historic role as kingmakers. But the Furys have their secrets as well, none so dangerous as the daughter whose Shadow magic spills from her, unchecked. Unless her powers are concealed, she’s not only ruined in Society, but marked as a target for those who would use and abuse her magic.

Persephone Fury is the Dark daughter, the one they hide.

But desperate times call for desperate measures, and a good marriage for this frightening daughter is desperately needed. On the night of her debut, her world comes crumbling down around her when she is abducted from the man she loves by the man she most loathes.

Evil powers circle, calling her to the destiny foretold at the moment of her birth, drawing her to the source of her power, to the only way she can finally be free--

But at what cost? For she must embrace the Shadows, embrace the Darkness within her.

Persephone is ruthless, devious, and clever, but when confronted with the truth, she must make horrifying choices.

Can she defy destiny and seize her own fate?

______________________ Only 99¢ everywhere START READING NOW ______________________

Amazon/Kindle http://amzn.to/2p0FtzF Barnes&Noble/Nook http://bit.ly/2vNH8Z7 Kobo http://bit.ly/2xBntha iBooks http://apple.co/2iLLWNm And book stores around the world. https://books2read.com/u/4jKXlo

Website: https://furytriad.com Cover design: The Killion Group Soundtrack: PurpleFogSound via Envato Market Video Production: Prithee & Gramercy Press

[planetpooks]

Not all who are ignorant are overtly racist. A lot of people are just that, uninformed. This? I wish I could share with people who would find it interesting and possibly even experience a change in the world view, but I fear the presentation would negate any good it could do in their cases. That said, it is AWESOME.

Can you explain why Europeans were much more technologically advanced than the indigenous populations of Africa? I mean, these cultures hadn't even invented sewage systems, which is something the Romans were able to design and implement in 800-735 BC (a long fucking time before "the white man" colonized it)... I mean fuck, without "the white man", they would probably still be in the fucking bronze age.

I don’t really know what kind of history books bigots like you read.

The Great Libraries of Timbuktu? The steel metallurgy of the Haya? Dentistry? Caesarean section? Premature neonatal care? Mathematics, architecture, engineering?

I know it’s hard for a racist like you who imagines “technological advancement” to be some kind of end-all-be-all, or proof of some “inherent intelligence”. I know, I know. It’s hard to imagine, but Europeans have been drawing knowledge from everyone around them since the dawn of time. What did you think ended the Dark Ages?

Your magical (read: white supremacist) idea of a purely ‘white’ Rome never existed.

Nevertheless…

The Minoan culture on the island of Crete between 1500-1700 B.C.E. had a highly developed waste management system. They had very advanced plumbing and designed places to dispose of organic wastes. Knossos, the capital city, had a central courtyard with baths that were filled and emptied using terra-cotta pipes. This piping system is similar to techniques used today. They had large sewers built of stone.”

In case you needed further clarification, neither the Minoans nor other (later) Greeks were ethnically uniform. They also had the first flush toilets, dating back to 18th century B.C.E. They had flushing toilets, with wooden seats and an overhead reservoir. The Minoan royals were the last group to use flushing toilets until the re-development of that technology in 1596.

Oh, and look the Mayans had indoor plumbing, acqueducts, and pressurized water too. I mean, you can ignore that the area Mayans lived in had little to few rivers, no lakes or standing water, nor other sources of running water, while simultaneously dealing with monsoons and flooding due to one of the heaviest yearly rainfalls in the Americas.

Classic Maya even used household water filters using locally abundant limestone carved into a porous cylinder, made so as to work in a manner strikingly similar to modern ceramic water filters.

Of course, by this time millenia later none of your precious “white people” had developed any methods besides shitting in pots.

Continuing, the earliest archaeological record of an advanced system of drainage comes from the Indus Valley Civilization from around 3100 B.C.E in what is now Pakistan and North India. By 2500 B.C.E (almost 5,000 years ago), they had highly developed drainage systems where wastewater from each house flowed into the main drain.

All houses in the major cities of Harappa and Mohenjo−daro had access to water and drainage facilities. Waste water was directed to covered drains which lined the major streets directed to covered drains, which also lined all major streets. Each home had its own private drinking well and its own private bathroom. The mains that carried wastewater to a cesspit were tall enough for people to walk through. Reservoirs, a central drainage system, fresh water pumped into the homes. Pools. Baths.

It was made from bricks smoothened and joined together seamlessly. The expert masonry kept the sewer watertight. Drops at regular intervals acted like an automatic cleaning device.

Filters for solid waste.

Sorry, what were the British doing up until like, 200 years ago? Shitting in the streets? Oh yeah.

I mean, I could get into how by the Shang Dynasty (roughly 1600 B.C.E.), China had sophisticated plumbing including pressure inverted siphons.

Or into the city of Amarna, Ancient Egypt. Or Persepolis, Persia and the Achaemenids in 600 B.C.E.

But, I mean, it sounds like the only one still in the Bronze Age is you.

[planetpooks]

Details. Why did it have to be details?

Writing is hard.

Revisions. Nuff said. #thedeadshalllive #yaauthor #yaauthors #yaauthorsofinstagram #writersofinstagram #fantasywriters #geterdone (at Dallas, Texas)

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I’m writing a book, Writing With Passion. 

Be a patron of the arts. Support me for only $1 a month, and you too can be a Medici! [more or less]

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Loving the Diverse Reading Challenge! #diversereads2017

I’ve been a bit surprised to see how many of the recommended diverse SFF books I’ve already read, which becomes more obvious when I’m looking for something for this challenge. On the other hand it’s not all that surprising since one of the things I love about reading is the opportunity to ‘live’ another life, experience another world, and that includes the characters, not just the universe they…

[planetpooks]

#DiverseReads2017 Challenge:  January - Stories based on/ inspired by diverse folktales/culture/mythology

ust another one of those 18-year-old King kills his bride the morning after the wedding. Again. And again. And again. And then 16-year-old Scheherazade volunteers to be his bride… to kill him. You know. Just another one of those. ;-)

Loving this but why the heck an American narrator for an ancient Persian tale? Really destroys the aura.

http://furytriad.com/working-hard-working-hard-at-escape-reading/

[planetpooks]

Working Hard, Working Hard at Escape Reading

Working Hard, Working Hard at Escape Reading

Did I ever mention this anthology I’m editing? I did? Well, yeah, it’s a big, big job and right now a BIG, BIG job and all worth it. It’s awesome and amazing and I’m so proud. But I’m also exhausted and need some escape reading.

Artist: Sophie Gengembre Anderson, Created between 1850-1900

I mentioned that this month, January, I’ll be reading The Wrath and the Dawn, and I am. Only I finally…

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These photos ignite my imagination!

The Old Public Library in Cincinnati, Ohio.

[planetpooks]

cute vs. badass

Thinks they're badass but are actually cute: Virgo, Leo, Sagittarius

Thinks they're cute but are actually badass: Taurus, Aries, Cancer

Thinks they're cute and are actually cute: Pisces, Libra, Gemini

Thinks they're badass and are actually badass: Capricorn, Aquarius, Scorpio

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2017 is sneaking up on me faster than a rabid monkey on speed, and frankly, it can’t come soon enough. I’m talking planners, and why choosing the right one matters. Come join the conversation!

[planetpooks]

http://eepurl.com/csjAyH

The first newsletter goes out on Dec 26. Let’s make 2017 an awesome writing year. Our words and worlds are needed now more than ever before!