About

A while back two aspiring writers were talking, and after a bit, with laser sharp focus, they got back to work on writing. This is not their story. No, this is the story of two aspiring writers who decided to start a podcast instead of getting back to work on their writing.

This blog started mainly because we needed somewhere to host our podcast.

  • The PODCAST: What started this all. Posted at noon every other Sunday Monday, around 1pm. The podcast is usually about an hour, but we have been known to ramble or get off into tangents and go a bit longer. We usually have 2 segments: a book we discuss, a movie/tv/some other media production we discuss, and/or a writing subject. Then we sign off with “The Grrr and the Arrrgh,” our list of things that suck/don’t suck from the week.

AND, since we have a perfectly good blog sitting around, we have also started doing some weekly-ish features:

  • That Which We Are Reading: where we list our current reading list (I try to include comics I have enjoyed in the last week).
  • That Which We Are Listening To: where we list our playlists, be it music or podcasts or books on tape or chickens clucking.
  • Sentenced: where we post the best or most interesting sentence we have read that week, and why it works for us.
  • Customer Profiles: profiles of the customers of the Last Chance Salon. Might also be the owners, employees, and/or denizens of this crazy place.
  • Let’s Talk Process, Let’s Talk Tools, WTF Friday, Friday Ramblings, random posts: Shiri or I post something about our process, writing, or things mildly related to writing, such as science fiction or whatever is making us mad today.
  • Predictions: a couple of times a week Shiri and I watch a trailer and then ponder how good or how bad the movie is going to be. (on hiatus)

 

Now, a question that you might have is:

what is up with the name?

Well, lets start at the end. ‘Salon’ in this case is not the modern usage, so no hairdos or ladies in curlers here. Instead, it is the older definition:

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace’s definition of the aims of poetry, “either to please or to educate” (“aut delectare aut prodesse est”). Salons, commonly associated with French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries, were carried on until quite recently in urban settings.

– from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering)

Wow, that is a really nice definition from Wikipedia. But, more or less, that was the idea. Something that harked back to those salons of old, people sitting around talking only to increase the education of themselves and those around them.

And, then because the focus was on writing set firmly in the science fiction and fantasy milieu (see how far I will go to avoid the word genre), something anachronistic would be fun. The “Last Chance Saloon” made me think cheap dime store westerns (or at least the idea of cheap dime store westerns, having neither been in an actual dime store {they were all dollar stores by the time I was young} or read a whole western).

Bang those two ideas together and you have our great malapropism: THE LAST CHANCE SALON 

I have this vision of a western barroom full of fantastic characters; goblins, werewolves and undead; and maybe some steampunk and cyberpunk roughs as well. They are all sitting there and discussing the latest great book they are all reading. All of them being served by the green fairy from our logo…