As someone who has himself been guilty of diagramming out narrative structures, I recently had my attention directed to an infographic alleged to depict the thematic content of a particular book. On first glance, this looks cool, and not unlike the slow downward progress of a Hamlet’s Hit Points beat analysis map.
When you check out what it actually measures, the wonkiness surfaces. Welcome to the blissfully obtuse world of the Book Genome Project, which measures the quantity of certain tropes and motifs, which it seems to think are the same thing as themes. It bases itself on the already peculiar assumptions of the Music Genome Project, which powers the Pandora streaming service. The MGP thinks that people choose music based on abstract, objective criteria like “major key tonality” or a “dynamic male vocalist.” Actually we respond more according to cultural aspiration, identity formation, and the indefinable talent of people working within the styles we’re already drawn to. When Pandora works, it’s because of its user fine-tuning.
Gene-sequenced music seems downright on-point compared to judging a book by the quantity of attention given to a motif or trope in a work of literature. This leads to such hilarity as the following gem, from the Book Lamp FAQ. (BISAC is the standard subject header system, as seen on a book’s front matter page.)
A book with 90% Vampires is a very different book than one with 5% Vampires, but both would probably receive the same label in the BISAC classification.
Clearly the above was typed by an android.
We as readers might respond to certain tropes and motifs, seeking some and staying clear of others. But they are externals, and tell us nothing about why one story using a motif becomes a staple of the canon and countless others vanish from the collective imagination.
Believe me, I didn't want to take the glasses off for this one. But if we’ve learned nothing else here today, vampires are not a theme!
For the fiction writer, the process of having one’s work illustrated serves up anxiety by the bucket load. You are not only at at a remove from the art direction process, but often out of the loop altogether. Instances of character images being shaped more by inattentive illustrators than the text abound in genre literature. And that’s for novels. The idea that you’d have significant input into a short story cover lies beyond the silver veil of authorial dreams. 
Today 
RPGs, LARPs, a board-game and crowdsourced funding vie for hobby-gaming’s most eclectic and exclusive trophy. 
Insurers specializing in high-end art have become increasingly worried by the 
A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to gather a great group of players to test Hillfolk via the Google+ multi-webcam Hangout feature. Here’s how it went. 
Raiders of the Fever Sea, part two of Paizo’s Skull and Shackles Adventure Path, is now raiding its way to your purveyor of fine game products. Included among its high-grade swashbucklery is part two of my serialized novella, “The Treasure of Far Thallai.” In “Butcher’s Rock,” captain Challys Argent and her unwilling sidekicks journey to Butcher’s Rock, so named due to its shape, and its population of ravening cyclopes. Furious battle and grim prophecy ensues. 
In response to playtest comments, I’ve simplified one of the core systems of the DramaSystem engine, which powers the Hillfolk game. To test this, I’ve started up a non-Hillfolk game with the Thursday night group, because we already laid that epic series to its fitting conclusion. This time I threw the choice of setting open to the group, enabling us to collectively create something that isn’t intended for publication. The gang arrived at Carnivale with the serial numbers filed off, and thus are portraying members of a traveling show in dustbowl-era Texas. I’ve dubbed this series Greasepaint. Here’s who they’re playing.
Forensics meet fu in Peter Ho-Sun Chan’s Wu Xia, my favorite martial arts film of the last year. In a premise that somewhat recalls History of Violence, modest paper maker Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen) tangles with and dispatches a pair of dangerous thugs who descend on his rural village. Detective Xu Baiju (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a hyper-rationalist laden with the emotional and physical damage of a mistaken act of clemency performed early in his career, realizes that Jinxi’s story doesn't hold up. Applying his knowledge of physics and Chinese medicine to the crime scene, he comes to suspect that Jinxi is a powerful master of qi energy. And if he is that, the Imperial law enforcement system isn’t the only an organization who might want to know about him and his new family... 
