RAZORED ZEN

  January 1, 2022. Beneath a warm wind that rocks the pines, I walk through the aftermath of the war. I watched last night as 2021 fought a ...

Yolande Du Bois Irvin has died. She was 89. Almost always when her name was mentioned someone added that she was the granddaughter of W.E.B...

I ’ve been thinking a lot this last week about narrative drive. What it is. How it works. And why it works. Every story I’ve read has been f...

Who could have thought that one of my favorite memories of all time would involve tennis shoes. Here’s a picture of mine. I love the Velcro ...

Have to admit I was a little scared when Paul Bishop of Wolfpack Publishing offered me a chance to write the first book in The Ranger: Conch...

I was working on book 4 in the Concho: Texas Ranger series this morning when an odd event occurred. Concho is half Kickapoo and there's ...

GALLIMAUFRY : By Bruce Boston. Plum White Press, 2021, 134 pages. Bruce Boston is a Bram Stoker Award winner, but that says little about t...

 Here is my review of The Lost Empire of Sol anthology, which was a labor of many years and at least 2 incarnations. The initial discussion ...

I cut my teeth on Sword and Planet fiction, first reading the Barsoom stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and then the many tales by those ERB ...

I'm thrilled to have my very first full-length western novel included in this handsome box set of 8 action packed novels of the west. Mi...

  The Withering , by Ashley Dioses: Jackanapes Press, 135 pages. Poetry. I picked up a signed copy of this book from the author and read it ...

I dreamt of crows last night, millions of them swirling like black blades in an apocalyptic sky full of flames and clouds. I was a teenager ...

I don’t need to tell you about 2020 in general. We lived through it. Except for those of us who didn’t. And there were far too many who didn...

  30 th anniversary edition, 414 pages:  Harcourt, INC It took me a long time to watch the movie, The Princess Bride . I was put off by t...

Guest Post, By Sidney Williams: (Thanks to Charles for letting me drop by and chat here a bit.) I have a new hardboiled novel called Fool’...

I just discovered Thomas McNulty's Book Corral . Thomas is a lifelong reader, a collector, and a writer himself. He seems to have a part...

Though I didn’t grow up in the literal pulp era, I started reading paperback fiction in the 1960s and 70s that was a direct descendent of th...

Some of you may remember that I record my reading year from October 14 (my birthday) to October 13 of the next year. Then I typically give a...

There's a long tradition in pulp fiction of the masked avenger, the individual who dispenses justice at the point of a sword or through ...

Richard Prosch, over at Six-Gun Justice , recently asked me a few questions about writing and reading. It's mostly western related, but ...