I'm Back, again. For a Bit.

I’m back for the weekend. I’ll be making the blog rounds today. Then the grading starts again on Monday. We’re nearing the end, though. I’m looking forward to a break.

Unfortunately, plagiarism reared its head on some papers. Very, very disappointing. I covered the problem of plagiarism numerous times this semester but not everyone listened. That’s about all I’m going to say about that.

On the positive side, I got a nice surprise in the mail yesterday. It was a neat book entitled Dragons Composed, and it contains a story by me called “Dragon Lost.” The check was nice too.

The book has a great cover, with a kind of an old-timey parchment look. It’s published by Kerlak Publishing, and was assembled by James Ferris. There are 33 stories, some 330 pages. It combines the fantasy and literary genres. These are dragon stories, but unusual ones. My tale features a chess playing dragon but is more surrealism than fantasy. The specifics about the collection are about halfway down on the left side of the screen.

Here’s a taste of my piece: “The dragon came out of a distant rain that spilled like threads of taffy from concrete-gray sky to sober earth. I watched him cross the purple sage toward me, with his gleaming iridescent hide and the triple horns that stabbed from his head like accusing fingers.”

The newest Illuminata was also published. I’ve got a short essay on poetry in it. Click on Volume 7, Issue 2, April 2009 if you’re interested. The link’s at the bottom.

And for another positive, "G" over at Cedar's Mountain has a very nice review of Swords of Talera. Thanks "G!"

And now it’s off to visit my blog friends. I’ve missed you folks.
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Various Matters of Writerly Account

For those of you who have been checking the issues out from the archives, the September Illuminata is out. My piece this time is "Endings: What's At Stake." This issue also notes the 6th anniversary of the newsletter, which is a pretty amazing accomplishment actually, and a tribute to the Editor/Publisher Bret Funk. Remember those of you who read SF/Fantasy/Horror that Bret is always looking for reviews.

As for what I'm working on. I agreed to do a review of a revised Learning in Psychology Text from Sage publishers and that has been taking up most of my past few evenings. Plus I've already started making out my first tests of the semester. I rather hate giving and grading tests. Another big project is pretty much done and I will report on that at a later date.

I watched the premier of K'Ville last night. This is a cop drama set in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina. I thought it showed quite a bit of promise. I like the actors and the setting is interesting, of course. I thought they tried to do a bit too much in the first episode. They had too many plot lines and could have benefited from cutting one or two out for later. They also, I thought, prematurely revealed the answers to a couple of mysteries that could have been continued. Still, I thought it took the city and its people seriously and took a good hard look at some of the struggles folks in this area are still experiencing. I recommend it for viewing.

Later, my friends.

Illuminata In The House

The new Illuminata is up today. I’ve got a piece in it called "Writing With Attitude." There’s also another piece by Bret Funk on writing entitled "Useless Words and Weak Writing."

Yesterday and today were spent mostly working on syllabi and notes for school, which is now approaching at freight train rate. And I’m caught square in the tracks with no chance to leap to either side. Oh well, can’t complain since without my job I wouldn’t be able to eat or do pretty much any of the other things I enjoy. But damn it was a nice summer.

In the next day or so I want to post a piece called “Reflections for the Summer of my Prose,” which is a take off on Karl Edward Wagner’s title “Reflections for the Winter of my Soul.” Anyway, in that piece I’ll try to take a brief look back at what has probably been my most productive summer ever in writing. Everyone here who has read and commented on my blog is a part of that.

Thanks.

Update

Well, I got a lot of writing done Tuesday and Wednesday, and was happy with my progress. About fourteen pages of final draft stuff. I took off today because the Psychology faculty at Xavier traditionally have a French Quarter-crawl to celebrate the end of the school year. Some of us used to end up doing some serious crawling, but most of us these days do a bit of strolling and go home early with only a minor buzz to show for it. It was a beautiful cool day, however, and we had a lot of great conversation.

While in the Quarter I stopped at my favorite used bookstore, Kaboom Books, which has the biggest selection of used SF and Fantasy in the city. I bought a few things but was very disappointed to learn that they are going to relocate to Houston. It seems business has just not come back since Hurricane Katrina and they're not making ends meet. Was very sad hearing that.

In other news, a new Illuminata is up with a column from me on "The Mechanics of Suspense." I've also been invited to present at Babel Con in Baton Rouge in August. That should be fun. I'll talk more about it later. Right now I think it's bedtime.