2020 sucked. The few bright spots cannot compensate for the vast amounts of suckage. It has sucked so badly that it will undoubtedly poison at least half of 2021, too. I am grateful for those bright spots. Really. So I will use them as the most fragile of platforms as I look ahead. We voted…
Read More Looking Back, Looking AheadSince the first week of November I have had to listen to Christmas music at work. First, I enjoy Christmas. The lights on winter nights, the spectacle, the food, the myriad messages of hope for humanity. This year more than *ever*, we need to hold on to delight and peaceful interactions. I even like most…
Read More I roast Christmas SongsBackstory: there’s a virtual gallery opening today that I’d wanted to attend, at a specific time. I have artwork in this show, I’m proud of the work, and I love the gallery. I also am lucky enough in the midst of a pandemic to *have a FT job with benefits*. It’s nearing the end of…
Read More Artists explaining themselvesDonald J. Trump lost. Now in addition to being a *known* conman, grifter, liar, coward, cheater, bully, racist, semiliterate ignoramus, incompetent businessman, serial adulterer, serial rapist, malignant narcissist, and likely traitor… He is that thing he feared most. A loser. Exposed as a loser. I don’t hold out much hope that the majority of his…
Read More US 2020 ElectionsWell, my very outspoken needling of Trump & his Trumpculties on Twitter has resulted in my *second* account throttling, this time for six days. So if you don’t see me on Twitter this week, posting or answering, that’s why. Yes, I did say that specific Trump proxies should be ‘chomping Oxy by the dozen.’ I…
Read More Second Twitter ban!So, I have this job. I like the work, it pays well, and offers fascinating coworkers. (I’ll skip the Trumpcultie militia members who still refuse to cover their damn noses with masks.) Backstory: for various safety reasons we can’t bring in earphones or our own players. We have to listen to radios, which in my…
Read More Fake drama, failing democraciesSpoilers! I’ll be honest: the main reason I got a new phone was its swanky camera, better rates from T-Mobile, and a reduced subscription to Netflix. The main reason I wanted Netflix was The Jim Henson Company’s ‘The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’. This ambitious prequel to the Dark Crystal movie promised intriguing characters, plus…
Read More Dark Crystal CancelledNineteen years ago, I’d almost pulled up to the parking lot at my factory job, when shocked co-workers flagged me down in the street. ‘There’s been an airplane accident in NYC. Big one. Management wants us to stay home today.” I drove the 20+ miles home listening to NPR coverage. Once home I turned on…
Read More 9-11 Memories and Fake DramaHigh contrast: last week it was responsible adults in the room talking about hope, diversity, unity, and hard work. This week: rallying cries for a second Civil War delivered by coked-up nepotistic sycophants to a hateful demented old lech who can barely read from a teleprompter (yet mocks even family members with disabilities). Seriously, Don…
Read More DNC vs RNC conventionsIt’s literary pie fight time! Otherwise known as the Hugo Awards. And lo, in the midst of the Covid19 Plague Year, heat waves, hurricanes, murder hornets, and global political unrest, the speculative fiction community did come together virtually to award (some) of the best creators in the business. They did so in what could have…
Read More Those 2020 Hugo AwardsWarning: political snark. I’ve been admonished for being too political in my art & writing. I have also been accused of not being political enough. To be clear, I have been political since at least 1986. Sometimes it didn’t show as much. All that socially liberal SFF I’d read since 1977 ran up against my…
Read More Everything Is PoliticalTL;dr…Look up authors on social media before you decide to join their private writers’ groups or professional organizations. Yeah, there’s a pandemic happening, and it’s getting worse in the regions where Stupid Meets Hateful. I live in Arizona, one of the current US hotspots. Covid19 is around every corner. I’m in lockdown right now from…
Read More The RWA Meltdown: CodicilAfter the bloviated weirdness of Trump’s Nuremberg-Rally-style ‘celebration’ at Mount Rushmore on July 3, 2020, I’ve noticed a common thread on social media feeds. Ordinary non-Trumper Americans, especially people of color and LGBTQIA folks, are *flinching* at American flags. Because now there’s a deadly calculus going on in our heads: “Is that flag being flown…
Read More I Want My Symbols BackTwo good things have come out of our Plague Year nightmare: I’ve forcibly learned tips and tricks for a masked/veiled population in at least two of my books, so I have no excuse for any lack of verisimilitude later when working on NEEDLE AND SWORD or RED AMBER. As a rather standoffish person, I hate…
Read More Mask Selfie #1Is there any craft more ‘Karen‘ right now, than beadwork? Bear with me, I’ll circle back to that particular Molotov cocktail. My little existential crisis is *nothing* to the convulsions my beloved USA is going through right now. And yet, my tiny crisis has a direct link to what we’re seeing right now, in the…
Read More Beadwork, Karens, and Burning CitiesBecause I can’t stay away from fiber arts. These fabric masks have an outer shell of embroidered and beaded cloth, surgical cloth filters, and inner linings of copper-infused bamboo and cotton cloth. They can be washed and sterilized. They fit very well. Are they the equivalent of N95 masks? Hell, no. But they help with…
Read More Three Covid MasksHeading into a grim week. So far, I and my loved ones are safe. Arizona lagged behind others in setting a ‘Stay Home’ order. I only go to grocery stores, mail drop, a health clinic, and work. I’ve been masked in public for a week (my own sewn masks). Work…is problematic. My company is essential…
Read More Covid19 update: ArizonaThe novel coronavirus (‘novel’ simply means this is a new strain in humans) has reached Arizona. As of Saturday, March 14, Arizona has twelve confirmed cases of Covid-19. Scary enough, many of those cases came from one family, and a health worker whose original Covid-19 exposure remains a mystery. We have large numbers of senior…
Read More Covid19 in ArizonaI was in countdown to the March 3, 2020 release of K.M. Szpara’s (M/M Dystopia? Romance? Slavefic? Cautionary screed?) DOCILE, from Tor Books. I’ve been hearing about this book for over a year. I’d planned on actually ordering it. Then I read the first eight chapters on a free Kindle Sample offer. Oh, dear. I…
Read More Review: DOCILE by K.M. SzparaYou should read R. B. Lemberg’s THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES from Tachyon Publications. You should also read their prequel novellette ‘Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds’ in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It would not be a bad thing to read their charming ‘The Desert Glassmaker and the Jeweler of Berevyar’ in Uncanny Magazine. Or their…wait. Stop. Just go…
Read More Review: THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES by R.B. Lemberg