Friday Link Pack 08/21/2015

Friday is here! As is today’s Friday Link Pack! Some of these links I’ve mentioned on Twitter, if you’re not already following me there, please do! Do you have a link I should feature in the upcoming link pack? Click here to email me and let me know! (Include a website so I can link to you as well.) Let’s get to it…

WRITING:

6 Unusual Habits Of Exceptionally Creative People
Sometimes a shift in our routine can help our creativity. In this article, Dr. Travis Bradberry examines six habits used by some pretty talented folks to boost their creativity.

Obsessively Detailed Map Of American Literature’s Most Epic Road Trips
If you have read my second book, Old Broken Road, it’ll come as no surprise to learn that I love a good road trip story. So I was pretty excited when my favorite blog, Atlas Obscura, put together this incredible post mapping out some of America’s greatest road trips.

Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing
I have long been a fan of writer’s personal lists of rules. It’s always good to glean what you can apply to your own list (and yeah, we all have our own personal list.) Neil Gaiman is no exception. (Note #5.)

Map Of The Known Territories
This Monday, I released the official map for my Lovecraftian urban fantasy series: The Bell Forging Cycle. Hand annotated by Wal himself, the map gives readers a glimpse into the world of the Territories and covers everything up to the forthcoming Red Litten World. Check it out, I think you’ll dig it.

ART:

Banksy’s Dismaland
So, Banksy has a new art show. The work itself is solid, as always. But, the whole shtick of thinking you’re making some new revelation by calling out Disney as a purveyor of fantasy while true injustice flourishes in the world is tiresome and juvenile. To quote a friend of mine this is a: ‘bitter and angsty teenager dabbling in punk rock.’ Honestly, the New York show was more interesting. This lacks subtlety and nuance and the theme is played out. It’s Banksy, so it’s making waves, so I’d be remiss not to mention it. You can see more at the Instagram account.

The Title Sequence For The Dunwich Horror
My badass editor, Lola Landekic, put together this piece for the blog Art of the Title. Examining Daniel Haller’s 1970s Lovecraftian B-Movie The Dunwich Horror. The movie is not good, but Sandy Dvore’s titles combined with Les Baxter music is wonderful.

RANDOM:

Ammassalik Wooden Maps
It’s no secret that I love maps. So when I saw these wooden maps carved by the Inuit in the late 1800s I was blown away. Rendering land in such a tactile way makes a lot of sense when you think about it, but we’ve been so programmed to view a map as a flat image that this comes across as foreign and strange. More reading on Wikipedia. [Thanks to Adam for sharing this with me.]

Realise Minas Tirith
So… this group in the UK wants to build Tolkien’s Minas Tirith… with crowd funding. And over the next 40 days they’re trying to raise $2,904,500,000. Yeah, nearly 3 billion dollars. A lofty goal for sure, but it’s still cheaper than most US military spending.

Underwater ‘Stonehenge’ Monolith Found Off Coast of Sicily
If the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh was Cthulhu’s home, perhaps this recently discovery near Italy is his summer vacation home?

Superheroes A ‘Cultural Catastrophe’, Says Comics Guru Alan Moore
As the part time crazy wizard and comics icon, Alan Moore, steps out of public life. He gave one last (???) interview to Pádraig Ó Méalóid at Slovobooks. In it discusses a variety of things from superheroes to defending his work from the accusations of violence, sexism, and racism in his work. It’s worth reading even if you’re not an Alan Moore fan. You can read the full interview here.

WEIRD WIKIPEDIA:

Bubbly Creek
“Bubbly Creek is the nickname given to the South Fork of the Chicago River’s South Branch, which runs entirely within the city of Chicago, Illinois, US. It marks the boundary between the Bridgeport and McKinley Park community areas of the city. The creek derives its name from the gases bubbling out of the riverbed from the decomposition of blood and entrails dumped into the river in the early 20th century by the local meatpacking businesses surrounding the Union Stock Yards directly south of the creek’s endpoint at Pershing Road. It was brought to notoriety by Upton Sinclair in his exposé on the American meat packing industry entitled The Jungle.”

Gross.

H.P. LOVECRAFT STORY OF THE WEEK:

The Challenge from Beyond
This isn’t a story from only H.P. Lovecraft. Each section was written by one of his contemporaries. The final story features sections written by C.L. Moore, A. Merritt, Lovecraft, Robert E.Howard, and Frank Belknap Long. The end result is, well… interesting.

GIF OF THE WEEK:

Thanks to Setsu for submitting today’s gif!