Home of L.R. Stahlberg. Genre defying author and rambler on all things fanboy.
Live Last read · last published · next check
When I first started working on Talaria Voyages , I knew I wanted the setting to feel big. Not just in the sense that space is big . I wanted the kind of galaxy where the characters could leave one system behind and have no idea what they might run into in the next one. I liked the feel of The Expanse , where crossing to the next civilized planet was like crossing an ocean. But had to balance that…
One of my least favorite questions to answer is, "How's the book coming?" Not because I don't like talking about it. Quite the opposite. I could ramble for an hour about spaceship layouts, why hypergates should work the way they do, or how many decks belong inside a freighter. The hard part is explaining everything that isn't writing. For most of my life, I thought publishing a novel looked…
I finally had a chance to watch Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four. I really enjoyed both, a welcome change after years of forgettable turkeys on both the big and small screens. I would put both in the top half of my ranking of MCU installments to date. First up was Thunderbolts. I had high hopes for this one as it's totally up my alley with regards to the anti-heroes who made up the team. Though I…
I've often mentioned how I like my entertainment grounded in something resembling reality. This idea of making things like superheroes and sorcery and space knights "realistic" means different things to different people, depending on the lens through which they view life. To people like Zack Snyder and an inordinate number of comic book creators who hail from the British Isles... realism equates…
I've been a Star Wars fan my entire life. That fateful day in the theater in 1977 practically defined me. Though I'm not a blind follower by any means. I have been a strong critic of George Lucas and of the prequels. I maintained a love/hate relationship with the Expanded Universe novels. Anything by Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, and James Luceno is canon as far as I'm concerned. Luceno even…
I grew up on Marvel comics. I was rabid collector for twenty-some years. Over time the price of comics steadily crept up in sync with the decline in story quality and I stopped collecting entirely sometime in the late 90s. Which is why I LOVE Marvel Studios. They capture everything I loved about comics that the publisher has lost sight of. They are kid friendly and fun, but fully aware that it's…
A guy walked up to me at my booth at Comic-Con one year. He asked if he could take a look at my comic, so I said handed him one. He looked at it with awe and wonder, then looked up at me and asked, "How do you do..." The word hung for a few seconds as he waved his hand over my book and finally said, "... this." I'm sure every writer reading this has been asked "How do you come up with your ideas?"…
I recently saw a 2012 movie on Amazon Prime called The Words . It was a brilliant film about a writer, who wrote a story about a writer, who wrote a story about a writer. It's pretty meta. Beyond great performances from a top notch cast, it had several powerful themes masterfully woven through the story. The plot gets rolling when aspiring author Rory (Bradley Cooper) finds an old unpublished…
So a few weeks back I was approached to enter the cover of Prodigal in a monthly contest at AllAuthor.com. It IS gorgeous ain't it? I've been a bit of a dark horse in the competition, shooting from near the bottom of the list to #15. The cover needs to be in the top 12 to make it to the final week. The top 3 win and get some free promotion. I could use all the votes and signal boosting I can get…
I am wordy. Like, really wordy. And I know I'm not alone. Admit it. We love our word play a little too much sometimes. As a friend of mine loves to put it, we like to smell our own farts. So what do you do when you've finished your masterpiece, and you come to your senses about making someone slog through 500 pages of your drivel that you would be forced to price at $20? Lots of well meaning…
