Sometimes wearing a costume can come with a risk: the over-zealous fan. Chris covered one aspect of this last month, but objectification isn’t the only peril of cosplay, so I’ve put a guide together to help you, the fan, make sure you’re not “that guy” when approaching a cosplayer in person.

With con season upon us, I thought this would be a pertinent time to discuss an issue that is familiar to essentially every con-goer: hygiene. Or, rather, bad hygiene.

If you’re the person who asks five minute long questions at panels about minutia, keep reading so I don’t have to smack you next time I’m at a panel. Here are the “Kelly Cipera Guidelines to Effective Convention Panel Questioning”.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a rare book that I keep thinking about after reading. I find that there is a lot more to it than a bunch of high school kids trying to find their identity, their voice, or acceptance from their peers — it has a really good message that I think could really be spread around a little.

The Sigh, which reads like a fairy tale, is a story appropriate for all ages. The art, typical to Satrapi, is perhaps not super sophisticated, but is really an addition to the story telling rather than the meat of the story telling.

I apologize for being negligent in my posts leading up to NaNoWriMo. However, I am gearing up to start NaNoWriMo (in fact, I currently have 1349 words — how about you?). I am going to try my darndest to have posts throughout the month with encouragement for my fellow NaNoWriMo participants!

Now that we know what NaNoWriMo is, we’re at the perfect opportunity to start thinking about an idea for our stories. If you already have an idea, some of these could just be fun writing exercises to practice getting a certain amount of words a day.

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is going to be starting the 1st of November. If it starts in a month, why am I talking about it now? Well, because this is the best time you’ll have to A) Learn about NaNoWriMo if you haven’t before and/or B) Start getting prepped for the the when November does roll around.

Elves have dotted folk tales and myths throughout history in many different cultures and they have appeared in many modern fantasies as well. What attracts us to these creatures of magic and mystery? Here I give you the top five reasons why we so idolize elves, even the bad ones.

In this first of three installments, we are introduced to Samuil Petrovitch, a smartass Russian physics genius with a shady past who accidentally puts himself in the middle of two warring crime syndicates in a post-nuclear Armageddon London. That could be the coolest sentence I’ve ever gotten to write and this book was one of the coolest I have read in a long time.