Coming soon the 2nd of the Enigma Front anthologies - it's already listed on Amazon but not available yet (the launch is on the 12th of August 2016) - with short stories from 21 authors including a Hugo and Nebula winner.  It contains my 2nd published short story, "Slayer's Revenge", about a dragon hunter looking for payback. If you are going to ( Read more... )

"...the rash of home renovation or cooking or talent shows has empowered a whole generation to truly believe that, if the put their mind to it they can appear as gifted as any so-called specialist ( Read more... )

An excellent speech about fantasy - and esp. faerie-tale based fantasy - by Terri Windling.  It's rather long, but well worth listening to.

http://www.tor.com/2016/06/22/faerie-led-thoughts-on-writing-meaningful-fantasy/As the speech progressed, I found myself thinking of my own writings in her terms, and they match well.  I've long maintained ( Read more... )

With the excitement surrounding the "discovery" of planet 9, I just want to caution peope who want to use this as the basis of a story, especially doomsday stories.  There have been a number of sensationalist articles about the danger it poses:  to wit that it could destroy all life on earth any day now as claimed by, for example, a NYP article.  ( Read more... )

I was reviewing one of my stories the other day and reflecting on the behaviour of some drugs (potions).  It doesn't matter whether they are potions, spells, or other magical mechanisms, the effects would be the same.  The first was a drug that caused a person to weigh less.  Now, to be clear, the potion doesn't cause the person to lose mass, just ( Read more... )

Having just been to When Words Collide, I have been editing my novel The Tower of the Ancients, cutting unnecessary words, phrases and sentences.   Adverbs are, these days, considered a sign of bad writing.  Same for adjectives, although not to the same degree.  I, however, defend the value of adjectives in particular and even adverbs.  Some are ( Read more... )

I was recently given a URL for an interesting web site: Hacker Factor Gender Guesser.  It purports to use text to determine the gender of the author, and while I have no idea what the general validity of the method or how independent it is of things like education levels, socio-economic classes, religious points of view, cultural backgrounds, etc. ( Read more... )

A standard cliche we often see in film, and on the page, is the flying car, not just for science fiction but even for futurists.  A film that was commonly shown to early grade school children in the early 70s predicted that the average family would have a flying car by the end of the 20th century.  Despite not being presented as fiction, that film ( Read more... )

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Just watched Nova (25 March 2015), The Bible's Buried Secrets.   It was a fascinating look at the archeological evidence for the writing of the Old Testiment and Torah, and the development of the idea of monotheism.  I haven't seen a documentary of this subject that was that interesting before.   It was a documentary of the best kind, one that ( Read more... )