The US elections have come and gone, sadly exactly as I suspected: too many of my fellow Americans are lazy and stupid. So the next pandemics are brewing. Climate change is happening. Techbro oligarchs and Christian Theocrats are trying to rebrand the US into their own fiefdoms. Now is the time to rebuild on our…
Read More Autumn MusingsTl:dr… This book no longer exists in its previous form. It may never exist again. How that happened is a lesson in online manners and performative fragility (and one that my readers can look up, because a lot more people have dissected it since December 2023.) It may be that the original publisher Del Rey…
Read More I read Cait Corrain’s ‘Crown of Starlight’Disclosure: I’ve been accepted into one of the Spring 2025 art residency cohorts at the Chateau d’Orquevaux. I’m deep into planning what I want to make and write there. That entails my usual obsessive research. I came across this enchanting little self-published book by well-known illustration artist Christina Wald. Château d’Orquevaux, A Travelogue distills Wald’s…
Read More Review: Chateau d’Orquevaux, A TravelogueWiser heads and a month of planning have prevailed: I’m saving the ‘big’ projects for later grants applications here in the States. The Chateau in a typical March is just not set up for projects the size & complexity of ‘Crystal Curtain’ or ‘Sky Tent’. Then add to that the rigors of shipping from Arizona…
Read More Art Residency 2025: Chateau d’Orquevaux, part 2Go into a thrift store, any thrift store. Keep your eyes open: not necessarily for treasures, but for *stories*. Chances are, if you are alert, you’ll stumble across items that seem to resonate with questions, half-guessed histories, and unfinished quests. In February of 2024, I wandered by a shelf of carpentry tools in a local…
Read More ‘Winter Tree Egg’, by M. J. Moye(Me, trying on the larger-scale art installation hat. I like this hat.) (Also, because last fall was eventful enough that I forgot to post my Halloween yard installation when it happened.) For the last few years I’ve been gathering Halloween and Dia de los Muertos (they are not the same) decor from thrift stores. A…
Read More Halloween 2023 Yard InstallationLong post! TL:dr… I’m going to France for an art residency next year. At this place, Chateau d’ Orquevaux. Yep. I’m doing this. I applied on a semi-whim in December 2023, knowing that odds of being accepted were somewhere between 20% and never. I make a habit of applying every couple of years to *big*…
Read More Art Residency 2025: Chateau d’Orquevaux, part 1Come back to the Birdverse with this unforgettable tale about despair, hope, self-care, and friendship! Words shape thoughts and cultures. Fantasy is uniquely suited to reveal this in subtle, entertaining ways that sneak in high-level concepts on the sly. R. B. Lemberg’s YOKE OF STARS is a remarkable novella. It could only come from a…
Read More Review: YOKE OF STARS, by R.B. LembergThe ribbons got finished, delivered, and (by the accounts I’ve heard) the winning artists were happy! For Spring 2024, the TFA and I did our usual riffing off the Featured Artist’s work. This time, the Festival showcased the work of a family of extraordinary weavers: Mel Mendez, whose family has been weaving for a century…
Read More Spring Award Ribbons, Tempe Festival of the ArtsFirst off, the cover is gorgeous. Kudos, Mark. The artists you found did *right* by Pawly and that scene. Anyway, off to the actual review of WERECATS RESURGENT. “‘Mission Impossible’ grows fangs and claws! For lynx werecat Pawlina Katczynski and her loved ones, meeting their isolated Forest Brethren cousins in eastern Poland was both liberating…
Read More Review: Werecats Resurgent, by Mark J. EngelsAfter the suspiciously-fast progress of ‘Sun Bird’, I started thinking about more book art sculptures with carved-wood bird spines. Lo, I found the Second Bird! Hailing from Bisbee AZ but made who-knows-where, of two-toned mesquite or another desert wood, and very woodpecker-like…this 11″ long sculpture has a flat back that will be ideal to support…
Read More The Second and Third BirdsWERECATS CONVERGENT, the second novel in Mark J. Engels’ The Forest Exiles Saga, starts off with a bang and doesn’t let up for a single page. Honestly, look at this cover! (I had nothing to do with making it, I just love it and how close it comes to the feel of this book.) Tormented…
Read More Review: WERECATS CONVERGENT by Mark J. EngelsTl;dr…if you aren’t a fabric craft geek, this post will just bore you. That’s okay. I’m taking aim at a beloved part of recent Fashion History and dissecting it. For the 2017-18 fashion season, Dior released a now legendary Tarot-inspired fabric coat. If you don’t know much about embroidery, this mix of fabric pieces and…
Read More Cheat Codes of the Dior Tarot CoatWhat’s a Wonderwall? Okay, yes, it’s an angsty 1995 ballad from Oasis. I take my meaning from the original songwriters: a wall in their childhood home where they posted photos & quotes that inspired them. In their case, mostly football (soccer to Americans). The Women-With-Studios meme shows off some incredibly creative wonderwalls on Instagram and…
Read More The WonderwallThis is a very long post! Scroll to the end to see a finished book art sculpture! A month ago I found this carved wooden bird in a plastic bag (with some other oddities) hanging on a wall hook at Goodwill. $3.49 for the whole bag. Stupidly, I walked away and left the bag on…
Read More A Bird, a Dream, a BookTldr: WERECATS EMERGENT is a great book if you like military adventure fantasy and kickass heroines coming of age, with *shapeshifting* feline humans. The author’s homepage is here: mark-engels.com The book’s main Amazon page is here. Look at this cover. It’s subtle but it gets the point across. I had nothing to do with this…
Read More Review: WERECATS EMERGENT by Mark J. EngelsSince I’m doing this within a couple of months, here’s the cover art for my *terrible horrible cringefest* 1987 fantasy novel SILK OVER STEEL, soon to be on Ream.ink. As befitting something that at at the time was a juvenile pastiche (I was 22, c’mon) of Patricia McKillip, Elfquest, Tanith Lee, Jack Vance, and Steven…
Read More Silk Over Steel cover revealMy writing platform on Ream.ink has launched! I write sweet to scorching sword & planet and space opera fantasy. https://reamstories.com/page/lfr7ennrzk There’s a Lonhra Sequence short novel already up on Tier One. That’s BLOODSHADOW. This is in prep for launching the sequel SOULBINDER in a month or so, chapter-by-chapter. My Ream site will start with two…
Read More The Lonhra Sequence on Ream!I’ve already voted. In Arizona, I have the fragile luxury of voting by mail, tracking my ballot, and knowing to the day when it was received and counted. I know a lot of people don’t have that chance. I wish everyone could, in every state. These midterm US elections are desperately important. They’ll either push…
Read More Midterms down to the wireSo after nearly 50 years, Roe v. Wade was struck down this June, by an overtly Dominionist Christian Supreme Court that has been at least 45 years in the making. Roe was the glacial shelf holding back a deluge of conservative wet dreams: overturning gay marriage and gay rights, the right to privacy (especially in…
Read More A Scarf For Vengeance and Hope