BilmBlog500

Can't wait to be back at Balticon this Memorial Day weekend, and am sharing my full program schedule below.  The convention and all of the events are at the Renaissance Inner Harbor hotel. This is a special convention for me.  Balticon was the first convention I attended as a pro, heading down to meet up with Elizabeth Moon the year she won the Compton Crook Award for best first novel for Sheepfarmer's Daughter, which is about to be reissued in a 30th anniversary trade paperback edition , with a new introduction from Elizabeth.  Last year's Balticon was where I sat down in the Renaissance, read the opening page of Nick Martell's The Kingdom of Liars, and knew instantly that I'd found a great new author, ultimately doing my best deal ever for a debut author. Balticon has done a great job keeping with the times, broadening its program to appeal to a wide range of ages and a wide range of interests, all unified by their love of science fiction and fantasy in all its ...

11:55 PM - 3:53, but thought it moved at a decent clip. At the end of the day, no great surprises. 11:46 PM - Three Humbugs Outside Queens, New York. 11:37 PM - "We'll be opening this envelope when we come back." 11:22 PM - I melt in Timothee Chalamet's smile. 11:20 PM - John Avildsen for Rocky, Jonathan Demme for Philadelphia, Michael Ballhaus for Fabulous Baker Boys, Roger Moore when all I wanted was a sweet distraction for an hour or two, Sam Shephard for The Right Stuff, 11:14 PM - del Toro not my first choice, but he gave a really nice speech. 10:59 PM - well, multiple great scores had to lose, and no complaints here about what won. 10:56 PM - This Is Me. Best for Last. The only musical number when I closed by iPad to watch the whole number without distraction. What a great number,more at performance, great anthem. Can this please win? And the movie such a word of mouth audience driven hit. 10:51 PM - Deakins! 10:38 PM - Screenplay was an interesting race. A scho...

Movies are the thing I do that I've done the longest, aside from reading, and aaaahh! Oscar night. I saw over 100 movies in 2017, a lot but there are years I've been closer to 120. Around 90 of those new first run films. Most but not all of the Oscar nominations.  I'm old enough to know what I'm not likely to like, and if there's a movie like The Florida Project or Mudbound, where every wonderful review screams out "Joshua will not like this," I am happy to listen to that voice, Call Me By Your Name was close to being that kind of movie, but the Paris has a nice balcony, and Timothee Chalamet was very pleasant to watch in Lady Bird, and even though I hate Merchant Ivory movies I went to see this movie with a screenplay from James Ivory.  And it was about as good as a movie I'm not going to like can be? Did I snooze through the peach scene? Possibly. But I mostry stayed awake. Chalamet was good. The last scene was great. Yeah, could have and should have...

Pasting below my full schedule for Boskone 55 , which will be taking place at Boston's Westin Waterfront Hotel from 16-18 February.  Hope to see you there! If you're spending all of your time hanging out at big comic book and media conventions, and you have any ambition to be a published writer, I'd strongly suggest  you do a re-think some, and look a lot more closely at attending some of the conventions like Boskone that have been part of the science fiction and fantasy community for several decades.  In a convention center full of tens of thousands of people, I'm awfully hard to find.  At Boskone, it's a great opportunity to find and spend quality time with the editors, agents and most especially the authors that can help you to achieve your dreams.  In 2018, Boskone will have half a dozen of our clients attending, and some of them clients as a direct result of my meeting with them at Boskone or another sf/fantasy convention like it. clients in attendance: Dan...

When we’re interviewing for new staff, we’re often talking to people who are currently working at a publishing company, and we’ll often ask why they’re looking to move to an agency. The most common response is a variation of: “I realized that I want to work on the books I like, and at the publishing company, I’m having to work on books the publisher can publish.” And for me, I don’t think that’s ever been truer than in our work on Gil Griffin’s JUMPING AT THE CHANCE , a wonderful fish-out-of-water story about fish swimming very very far from America’s coastal waters. Twenty years ago, I was like many Americans.  Australian Rules Football was this weird thing you heard about, mostly as a strange joke about the strange things you’ll find watching TV in the middle of the night.  Then, in 1999, I went to Australia for the first time, and I went to see this strange thing for myself. Well, let’s just say I was mesmerized.  I sat in the Melbourne Cricket Ground and watched a Kan...

12:23 AM: Actually, I do know what to say.  For a movie full of shots of people slowly coming into focus, it's only fitting that the Moonlight win for Best Picture was initially so cloudy.  Totally, 100% fitting. It summarizes the aesthetic of the film itself.  And, I still can't stop laughing. 12:13 AM: I have nothing more to say.  I look forward to reading about the final ten minutes of tonight's ceremony.  I don't know what to say. 12:04 AM:  And Dunaway looks spectacular. 12:03 AM:  Beatty and Dunaway.  A nice touch.  Drunaway also appeared twice in the ill-timed Rolex ad, in her role in Network. 12:01 AM:  The most special Oscars are the ones when I get to start typing an "AM" in for the live blog. 11:58 PM:  If wishes were fishes.  But while I enjoyed La La Land, I just don't really see this, even if everyone kind of said it's what would happen. 11:57 PM:  I don't want Emma Stone to win. 11:50 PM:  The Best Acto...

The Oscars are a little over an hour away, and I reckon I shall do that old-fashioned live blog things again, so that my thoughts do not need to be burped out 140 words at a time. Last year, I was passionate about the MIA Oscar for Straight Outta Compton, which was a great movie that was left looking for stray drops of wine in the discarded bottles from the Oscar party.  This year the feeling's a bit different, because I'm not a big fan of Moonlight, or at least the half of it that I endured before walking out.  And Moonlight is considered a lock to win the Adapted Screenplay award, and near to a lock for Supporting Actor. And the movie didn't do it for me. My one lasting impression is of repeated overly artsy shots of people emerging in the frame out of focus and then, belatedly, does the focus puller decide to actually start pulling the people into focus.  I wasn't engaged by the story. Moonlight isn't along in being a critical darling that I didn't cozy up to...