Crossword Puzzles!! SF-Colorado Now Offering Crossword Puzzles

I've started creating speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror) crossword puzzles. Click here to try the very first one, which is titled "Of the Federation." You can also click here or click the Crossword link in the menu bar above to see all of our crossword puzzles.

WARNING. The "Clear ALL" button is awfully close to the "Check Answer" button. There is NO undo, so if you accidentally click "Clear ALL" ... well, you're screwed. Sorry. I couldn't see a way to alter the button locations without delving into javascript. I'm not a programmer, but I might try playing with it later on. We'll see. Just be careful. 'Kay? There is also no "Save" button as of yet. I might be able to add one at a later date, but I'm not sure about that right now.

HOW IT WORKS. Click inside the puzzle to begin. Press the ENTER key to move from word to word. Click the yellow square to change between "across" and "down." Click on the clues (on the right-hand side of the puzzle) to go to that word in the puzzle. I've provided a rundown of the buttons farther on in this post.

LEAVE COMMENTS. Heh. I'm a little leery of posting these crossword puzzles so PLEASE leave comments on this post if you like it, don't like it, the puzzle didn't work, it was too easy, it was too hard, or it was just right for Baby Bear. It's presented through Java, so you have to have your browser java-enabled. The program I use to create them is called Crossword-Compiler. It's a really cool program.

AND ANOTHER THING. And please note, I'm not a professional builder of crosswords. I've tried to stick to normal American crossword conventions, but since I don't actually know what all of the conventions are, I'm sure I broke the rules in places. But each puzzle will have a theme (implied (or is it inferred?) in the title) with theme words; I think a minimum of three theme words, but as soon as I say that, I'll have a puzzle with only two. So far they've been three and four theme words. This puzzle has four.

THE BUTTONS. Here's a rundown of what the buttons do:

• Clear ALL. Clears the entire puzzle. NO UNDO!!
• Check Answer. Checks all the letters you've entered on the entire puzzle and REMOVES the incorrect ones. It removes letters, not words.
• Reveal Letter. Reveals the letter that the yellow square (cursor) is on.
• Reveal Word. Reveals the word the yellow square (cursor) is in.
• Reveal Puzzle. Shows you the entire solution.
• View in PDF for printing. Okay, not a button, but it displays a blank PDF version of the puzzle that you can print out and fill out in pen (or pencil).

I guess that's it.

Enjoy!

Oh, and P.S.

The plan right now is to put up a new puzzle each week. Probably over the weekend. I should probably be a little more specific, but I'm wingin' it here, people.

Kevin J. Anderson Written Up on Sci Fi Wire

Kevin J. Anderson got a nice write-up on the Sci Fi Wire website. It primarily concerns his latest novel Metal Swarm, which is the sixth book in the The Saga of Seven Suns. And if you want to meet Kevin, he will be in attendance at COSine.

Get Your Trig on with COSine in Colorado Springs

I didn't realize that COSine was coming up so quickly:

Colorado Springs February 1-3, 2008
Featuring Guest of Honor: Mike Resnick

This gathering of science fiction fans is held at the foot of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs. COSine features multi-track programming with panels, great guests, cool art, dealers, video room, gaming, animé, a Regency Ball, and everything else needed for a fun-filled weekend!

Tom Piccirilli's The Midnight Road Book Trailer

Gotta love this thing they call the interweb. I'm surfin' around and stumbled upon this little YouTube video featuring a book trailer for Tom Piccirilli's The Midnight Road.

Barb & J. C. Hendee Lay Dead Gods to Rest

Barb & J. C. Hendee's final novel in series one of the Noble Dead Saga came out this month from Roc. Even though Child of a Dead God marks the end of this series, feel comfort in knowing that the Noble Dead Saga continues as they've already submitted the initial draft for In Shade and Shadow, which will be the first book in their second series with Roc.

Rex Burns Shoots for Derringer

Rex Burn's short story "Shadow People," which appeared in Alfred Hitchcock, was nominated for a 2007 Derringer, an award for the best mystery short stories of the year. Sure, this is somewhat old news, but it was new to me. Besides, Dr. Burns (as I knew him) was my professor at UCD awhile back. Took a fiction workshop and a lit class from him (I remember reading five Great American Novels in a week to pass my final).

His short story "Homestead" came out in the November 2007 issue of Alfred.

Tattered Podcasts

Looks like the Tattered Cover has a series of podcasts from traveling authors. I can't really tell if this is a webpage that they created or if they're posting this stuff on a communal site. Huh, says it's maintained by a Colorado company, so maybe this is Tattered's own site. Regardless, check out the podcasts from authors who have stopped by the Tattered Cover.

John Barnes Well Bitten

It would appear that John Barnes is writing a column called The Well-Bitten Hand for a nice looking e-zine called Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly. Honestly, I don't know if that's the title of his latest column or the title of the column itself. But such is life. It would also appear that John does not have his own website. I kid you not. However, thanks to Google, I found this blog-like thing on Amazon.

Win Scott Eckert's Pulp Fiction

Win Scott Eckert's short story "The Atomos Affair" is out this month in the Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror anthology from Black Coat Press. With stories from Win, John Shirley, Brian Stableford, and others, this looks like a great anthology to pick up.

But what has me really excited, is that you can pre-order The Avenger Chronicles at Amazon right now. Win's short story "Death and the Countess" is appearing in this anthology, coming out from Moonstone Books in March 2008. Moonstone obviously bought the rights to The Avenger.

Why does this have me excited? I was a fan of The Avenger growing up. I have all of the paperback reprints (including the dozen or so written in the '70s when they ran out of the original magazine from the '40s because it had stopped production, but the series had picked up steam again in the '70s. Confused? Welcome to my world).

Steve Rasnic Tem Gets all Technological with Podcast

Steve Rasnic Tem has a podcast up of his short story "The House by the Bulvarnoye Koltso." Click the story title to hear the story.

Team Tem Gets Their Blog On

The Tems (Melanie and Steve, but did I really need to say that?) have also entered the Age of Blogs, thanks to their webmaster/computer consultant, Stace Johnson. Not sure what else to say about the Tems. If you write speculative fiction in Colorado, then chances are you've crossed their path and been enriched by the experience. If you haven't met them, then stop by a Stories for All Seasons reading (2nd Saturday of each and every month), because barring unforeseen circumstances, they'll be there.

Carrie Vaughn at The Book Rack

January 24, 2008, 6 pm. Carrie Vaughn will appear at The Book Rack, 1801 South College Ave., Ft. Collins.

Mario Acevedo's Nymphos Go Mass-Market

Mario Acevedo's first book in the Felix Gomez adventures The Nymphos of Rocky Flats is out now in mass-market paperback from HarperCollins. Check out a review at BookLoons. It's one of many glowing tributes.

Melanie Tem's The Yellow Wood Fells Discoveries

Melanie Tem's new novel The Yellow Wood, a magical realism exploration of the father-daughter relationship and the struggle for a child to emancipate herself from the father she believes is a sorcerer, has sold to Wizards' Discoveries line, and will be published in January of 2009. As you may remember, this is also the publisher of The Man on the Ceiling, appearing March 2008.

Carrie Vaughn's Wild Card and Silver Bullet New Year

Carrie Vaughn's having a happy new year so far. Her novel Kitty and the Silver Bullet is out this month from Grand Central Publishing. It's her fourth book in the Kitty series. And if you didn't know, Kitty also happens to be a werewolf, hence the scary looking wolf on the cover. Good doggie. Sit ... stay! Ah, crap.

But that's ain't all, folks. Also this month her story "Chosen Ones" appears in the Inside Straight anthology from Tor, which happens to be the latest Wild Cards book to hit the mean streets.

Ed Bryant Goes Back to the, uh, Past

Here we see Ed from 1988. From the 1988 Worldcon, to be precise, on a panel for George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards. If you want to see the entire panel, then go to the Wild Cards website. That's George himself moderating at the beginning.

Does the Rocky Mountain Book Festival Still Exist?

Can anyone tell me if the RMBF is still around? I tried to find it online, but the last mention I found was 2002. If you have any information about this, please leave a comment to this post. Thanks!

Welcome to the New Speculative Fiction of Colorado

Exciting, ain't it? I started this website about 7 1/2 years ago. Click here to read the post about the beginning of this site. The site changed some over the years, but nothing too drastic. Just a simple HTML site created first in FrontPage and then Dreamweaver. But that's mostly behind me now because I've joined the Age of Blogs.

My hope is to create a more interactive experience as all y'all leave comments and discuss things amongst yourselves, provide a cleaner-n-leaner site, and ultimately provide you with a fantastic web experience as you ... ah, who am I kidding? I got sick (and tired) of updating in HTML and ftp-ing pages to the website. What a pain. Using a blog site (blogger.com, thanks Google!) to do all that for me (after a bit of template tweaking on my part) makes this process quite a bit easier.

But despite my motives being suspect, I do hope you enjoy the new site. Let me know if you have any suggestions (click the Comments link below). For instance, do we want a page of links to the blogs of writers? Seems like a good idea, but so did jumping out of a tree with a sheet as a parachute once upon a time.

Take care.

Gary
January 3, 2008 (already? what happened to Y2K?)

Stories for All Seasons, January 12th

Second Saturday of Every Month at 7:30 PM. Stories for All Seasons at West Side Books, 3434 W. 32nd Ave., Denver (between Federal and Lowell, the purple building with the red pole). Admission is free. Refreshments as always. Call 303.480.0220 or e-mail westsidebooks@qwest.net. Ed Bryant usually hosts and you'll almost always find other local writers in attendance as well.

January 12th, 2008:

Brian K. Hodge, reading from his new novel, mad dogs.

Tom Piccirilli, reading from his latest novel, The Midnight Road.

Multiple Signings at the Denver Book Mall, January 13th and 20th

From Nina Else of the Denver Book Mall:

Three book signing events coming up at the Denver Book Mall, 32 Broadway (between 1st Avenue and Ellsworth), Denver, 303-733-3808.

A dual author appearance on Sunday, January 13, 2008, 3:00 p.m.:

Carrie Vaughn will discuss and sign the 4th in her Kitty werewolf novels, Kitty and the Silver Bullet. Kitty is a Denver-based talk show host who was forced to "come out" as a werewolf in the first book, Kitty and the Midnight Hour. All 3 prior titles will also be available.

Lynda Hilburn, discussing and signing her debut novel, The Vampire Shrink, featuring Denver psychologist Kismet Knight, who most decidedly doesn't believe in the paranormal......until..........

On Sunday, January 20, 2008, at 3:00 p.m., national best-selling mystery author J. A. Jance will discuss and sign Hand of Evil, the third in her Ali Reynolds series. J. A. is the author of the J.P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, three inter-related thrillers featuring the Walker family, and a book of poetry. This hardcover book will be discounted through the day of the signing. Copies of several of her prior books will also be available.

MAIL ORDERS and ADVANCE ORDERS always welcome. If you have any questions about the book signing, please call me at 303-733-3808.

Nina Else

Denver Book Mall

Tom Piccirrilli's Novel The Fever Kill Infects Shelves Soon

Tom Piccirilli's new novel The Fever Kill comes out January 8th, 2008, from Creeping Hemlock Press.

Have you read Tom's book yet? Leave your thoughts in a Comment.







Ed Gorman calls it:

a rattlesnake-mean noir ... powerful, hard-hitting, fearsome stuff.

Ed Bryant's Movie Moves to Post

Ed Bryant's short story, "While She Was Out," is currently in post-production with AngryFilms (Natural Born Killers, Bully, Apt Pupil) with a 2008 release date. See the info on IMDb.

Richard E. Friesen Story in Twisted Fayrie Tales

Richard E. Friesen's "Pebbles in the Stream" appears in the Twisted Fayrie Tales anthology, which is available online at Eternal Press.

Melanie Tem Offers Writing Help

Melanie Tem (email melanie at melanietem@earthlink.net), recipient of the British Fantasy Award and multiple Bram Stoker awards, offers the following:

• Writing class/workshop. This is an ongoing, pay-as-you-go ($10/session) class and workshop for fiction writers. The group will combine writing instruction with critiquing.

• Editing, book doctoring, and ghost writing on a pay-for-hire basis.
  

Connie Willis Novella in Asimov's and Sub Press

Connie Willis's novella "All Seated on the Ground" is in the December 2007 issue of Asimov's. Purportedly you can read part of it online at Asimov's (though I couldn't find it so, you know, good luck with that).

Subterranean Press has published it as a short standalone available in a signed limited edition and a trade edition. The cover (shown here) is by J. K. Potter.

Carol Berg was GoH at Icon

Carol Berg was the Guest of Honor at Icon, Israel's annual Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Role Playing festival. Icon was held at the Tel-Aviv Cinematheque and adjoining facilities, this year from September 28 - October 3. Icon promotes fantastic literature, art, and gaming in all forms, and offers a huge variety of activities to its audience: panel discussions and workshops; expert lecturers in various academic, creative and fandom fields; educational activities for children, fan-based events and much more.

Brian Hodge's Novel mad dogs is Out

Brian Hodge's novel mad dogs [sic] is out from Cemetery Dance Publications. I'm pretty sure you save printing costs by not capitalizing book titles. I'm just sayin'.

Leslie Caine's Fatal Feng Shui Decorates Shelves

Leslie Caine's latest Domestic Bliss mystery, Fatal Feng Shui, is out now from Dell. The series is said to be a mix of Nancy Drew meets Martha Stewart meets The Wolfman (okay, I threw in that last bit about The Wolfman, I'm pretty sure Lon Chaney, Jr. is not in the series). And in the interest of full disclosure, I doubt Nancy or Martha make an appearance, either. Though, Leslie, would it kill ya to put in The Wolfman?

James Van Pelt Sells Story to Realms of Fantasy

James Van Pelt sells his short story "The Light of a Thousand Suns" to Realms of Fantasy.

Ian Breeze-Cannon Story in Forgotten Worlds

Ian Brazee-Cannon's story "Renee of the Sacred Order of Our Lady of Bloody Vengeance" is in Forgotten Worlds, Issue 9.