RAZORED ZEN

I’ve been reading (slowly) a collection called The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories: 9 , edited by Arthur W. Saha. This was published in 1983 by...

I just finished reading John Lennon and the Mercy St. Café by the blogosphere’s own William Hammett , who is better known here as Billy. A...

A combination of my writing group’s meeting last night and the book I’m currently reading got me started thinking about how writers convey c...

I'm spending most of the day helping Lana with an art show today so here's a quick post. I should get back to some writing stuff ea...

Many of you know that James Frey, the fellow who parlayed a fake memoir into fame and wealth, has a new book out. It's ranked at 33 on ...

Seems like quite a few folks have been posting plays lately so here is my entry. I call it: How a Cowboy Picks up a Lady: A Play. Cowboy...

I just finished a very good book by S. M. Stirling called In the Courts of the Crimson Kings . This is actually a newly released Sword and ...

I’ve been tagged for the Six Quirks about me meme by Lisa over at Eudaemonia . I’ve given away quite a few of my weirdities before, includi...

Now that grades are in my mind has finally been able to turn toward writing, but I’m largely in the pre-writing phase at the moment. I’ve ...

I was in the comic book store the other day, my first time in probably twelve years, to order Femme Noir by Christopher Mills . While ther...

Just a reminder that I'll be hanging out mostly on Christine Eldin's blog today. She's having her Author's Week this week ...

I gave another final yesterday. Yes, on Saturday , and got those grades turned in last night. One more test to go, on Monday, and I'll...

Despite my last post about learning from bad books, I’ve been reading good books lately. I just finished two worth mentioning. The first i...

Even as a kid I loved telling stories, to myself if not to others. But I first thought of becoming a writer in my late teens (17, 18) and o...

The slaughter at the desk is over. For the moment . Slowly, the academic warrior lowers his mighty pen while around him pools of red (ink)...

It’s getting close to semester’s end here. And close to graduation. Some seniors are starting to panic; everyone is a little tense, includ...

I heard about a study this morning conducted in England that says that about 10 percent of all the words we say each day are meaningless fil...

The Sword and Planet hero lies somewhere between the extremes of Sword and Sorcery and High Fantasy. The archetype is Edgar Rice Burroughs’...

JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the prototypical High Fantasy series, but it’s much harder to describe the “archetypal” hero ...

I thought I might run a short series of posts on the nature of fantasy heroes. My comments will necessarily be rather broad and there may b...

I received a very nice, and I thought very accurate, review of “Swords of Talera” in a podcast from Dial P for Pulp . The mastermind behind...

One of the points I'm going to make in my current nonfiction project is that science is self-correcting, although the process is not nec...

Well, the newest Illuminata is out and the relaxed schedule seems to have pumped up the content. I’m talking 26 pages of material about SF...

*A Drumroll begins slowly and builds toward a crescendo. Charles, in a gold tuxedo complete with gloves, bow tie, top hat, and cane, stride...

I heard this on the radio this morning, and the disk jockey, who is normally reliable, swore it was true. A 54 year old man needed a heart ...

Just a couple more days to enter my contest if you're of a mind to. The deadline is midnight Sunday, April 6. I'll do the drawing...

Writing is the closest we humans can get to experiencing an act that we usually associate with God. That is, sheer creation. It is certain...

One day before Gray sky turns April The weight is already here Gathered like flood waters Black behind my eyes Memories press down Like tomb...

You see them occasionally in your home town. They are always passing through. They are young men with long hair and blue jean jackets, and...

Travis Erwin has posted a very nice review of Swords of Talera over on his blog, and I much appreciate it. I didn't even have to pay h...

Today I'm just going to refer you to something that I found very interesting. It's a post by William Jones about Biopunk . Biopunk ...

The Contest is still running, but I thought it time for another post. I probably won’t post a lot this coming week since we have more job c...

OK, quite a while back I won Sarai’s “Pay It Forward” contest and now I need to run my own. Like Angie , who also won, I’m going to do it ...

A City Equal to My Desire is a collection of stories harking back to James Sallis’s early days as a writer of speculative fiction and SF, a...

This will be my last post on Creationism for a while. I hope I didn't bore everyone too much but it was fresh in my mind from the proje...

Here's another type of creationism that I thought I'd share with you from my research. Gap Creationists: There is much more variabi...

This may seem like a rather weird post but I'm working on a non-fiction book about the conflict between evolutionists and creationists, ...

Really feeling pretty swamped today so only a brief post. I may not be making the rounds of everyone's blog for a day or two as well. ...

I thought I hated poetry when I was a kid. It wasn't until I discovered Poe and Dylan Thomas in college that I came to understand how p...

Curious about exactly what an info dump is? Well, here's one from page 18 of the hardback edition of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown: “...

I suppose most have heard that Gary Gygax died. He was co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve never played the game, and haven’t read a...

One of my favorite authors is much forgotten these days, so I thought I might take a few posts to refresh people’s memories. This is Poul A...

It's a beautiful day here so I'm probably going to get out and do some walking, but I thought I might mention a couple of quick thin...