Short novels, when done very well, are both honey-sweet and sharp as knives edged in fire. They mean something. They forge new connections in their readers, who are never quite the same people they were before reading that particular story. R. B. Lemberg’s new Birdverse book, THE UNBALANCING, accomplishes a startling amount of heavy work.…
Read More Review: THE UNBALANCING by R.B. LembergTwo claims / discussions in #BookTwitter converged in my mind recently. 1. ‘Copyright has to be truncated so authors are forced to create more work, instead of resting on their past achievements.’ 2. ‘If authors (commercial or self-published) want go get ahead or even get noticed, they must write quickly and to-trend.’ First, on author-copyright.…
Read More Trends or Treadmills?Content warning: guns and mutilation. When I was nine years old, Mom opened a cooler in the car, hauled a pork shoulder joint onto a meat hook and a chain, then hung it from a tree out in the middle-of-nowhere New Mexico. I was already enrolled in the local NRA gun safety classes. We were…
Read More More dead kidsIn ‘Vows of Empire’, Emily Skrutskie delivers a wrenchingly good and mostly unpredictable end (for now) to her YA space opera M/M romance ‘Bloodright Trilogy’. This review contains spoilers and reader deductions. I will reference characters and events from the first two books. For spoiler-free review, TL;dr….read the other books first, grab this one, &…
Read More Review: Emily Skrutskie, ‘Vows of Honor’I just learned of fantasy author Patricia A McKillip’s passing last week. She was a poet, wordsmith, and major inspiration of mine since 1977. That was the year I discovered a paperback copy of ‘The Riddlemaster of Hed’ in my junior high school library. It changed my life. The high fantasy of Tolkien, but with…
Read More In memoriam: Patricia A. McKillipCW: war, war crimes, and poison in a thinly-veiled faerytale. A lovely city thrived beside a blue sea. Autumn brought golden leaves tumbling with the wind. Winter gave crystalline snow and indigo shadows at noon. Spring sent all the perfumes of blooming fruit trees. In summer, sunflowers bloomed. At the center of the city slept…
Read More The Dragoncurse and the Sunflower CountryHappy very late December! Now that my initial rant is behind me, let’s move on to more positive things. What did I do this year, other than survive? In writing, this year was a wash. I’ve been too busy to write much long-form fiction. I had pieces more-or-less edited and ready to go, so I…
Read More Pandemic Year 2: In Review, Part 2Happy late December! I’m going to start this series of posts by being extremely cruel and vicious. Fair warning, I rant about Covid and the economy. We are all still here (except for those of us who aren’t)* because the world can’t manage a mutating virus. In the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK, specifically,…
Read More Pandemic Year 2: In Review, Pt 1PSA: Gotta blog? Use images in it? Be very careful about the images you use. Readers may discover some images on this blog might be disabled going back to 2012. The reason is one ‘professional litigant’ who apparently sniffs around blogs & websites for allegedly-stolen images. Claiming infringement even in fair-use cases, they use SLAPP…
Read More Some legal housekeepingWhat defines ‘good weaving’? In this limited context, it’s basically size of thread, number of colors, and complexity of design. I buy textiles primarily to use in jewelry, book art pieces, costumes, or wall hangings. I’m finding more and more textiles that *are too good to cut up*. Shame on you, collectors. I should not…
Read More Four Woven Ribbons‘Look but don’t touch’ was my mom’s commandment whenever we drove to the next biggest town to visit the mall. That mall, circa 1973-1978, had a department store and lunchroom on one end, a record store and Waldenbooks at the other, and in between stretched a dim, cobblestone-paved concourse lined with various odd shops. A…
Read More Art Glass in an Oilfield TownThree decades ago, DAW Books had enough cash cows & editorial moxie to publish some weird and lovely stories alongside their SFF best sellers. A recent house rearrangement unearthed some old mass-market paperbacks (as in: ‘Wow, I didn’t know I still had that!’) Two of these were from Ursula K. LeGuin pupil and academia professional…
Read More Forgotten Fantasies: Stephanie A. SmithThis. Today. Right now. I have lost patience, understanding, and tolerance for people who won’t wear protective masks in public. Who *could* get a Covid vaccine, but choose not to for insanely stupid reasons. Immune system compromised? That’s a good reason. I want to protect you. But if your excuse is some fake medical news…
Read More The End Of My PatienceTl;dr…Why ‘Outsider Artists’ *should* enter prestigious contests, and why many marginalized artists either give up or never even consider these opportunities. Every year I apply for every reputable art-related grant or show opportunity I might remotely qualify to enter. I usually don’t pay, unless the entry fees are modest (under $35 per entry). I do…
Read More Genres, Grants, and Outsider ArtistsFrom Emily Skrutskie, Oaths of Legacy, Book 2 in the Bloodright Trilogy, to be published later this year. Note: this review is based upon an ARC furnished to me for free by NetGalley. It’s always a joy when a second book in a series surpasses the first, and Emily Skrutskie does that and more with…
Read More Review: Oaths of Legacy, by Emily SkrutskieA record forty-seven days after I started the physical work on it, ‘Rivers Under The Sahara’ is complete. I’ve been designing this book since before I ever considered making weird book art sculptures out of fabric and beads. Since 1991-92, when I first heard Rush’s haunting anthem ‘Dreamline’ on their Roll The Bones album. The…
Read More Book Art: Rivers Under the SaharaIf you read this blog you might have seen my fabric panels for Ann Morton’s vast and amazing ‘Violet Protest Project’, currently on display at the Phoenix Art Museum. While building the first set of 8×8″ panels last year I was struck by how well the idea would work in book art form: red and…
Read More Violet Nation Book Art…And hi, Filigree’s Rule! I’d hoped to leave all my Filigree’s Rule writing posts up on this blog, but a stipulation of Amazon means I have to privately publish them now. Effectively hiding them from internet search. I’ve taken those posts, condensed some, expanded others, and updated everything I could into a more-easily read book…
Read More Bye, Filigree’s Rule…I’ve now had my second dose of the Moderna vaccine. In three or four weeks I should have as much Covid coverage as I’m going to get. Of course, I will continue to be masked in public. I enjoyed the lower allergies last year! Also, there will more handmade masks, and more *obnoxious* masks in…
Read More Moderna vaccine!I’m spiffing up some older stories…foundational myths, if you will…from my Lonhra Sequence space-fantasy universe. One of the fun/infuriating things about hobby-crafting a universe for nearly 40 years, are all the small stories that make up those secondary worlds and their histories. Side-characters and historical footnotes who would very much like to tell *their side*…
Read More More Lonhra Sequence stories