This week I'm in Orlando at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, the annual gathering of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. Since many authors and editors attend in addition to scholars, this event combines the best features of academic conferences and SF cons (well, except for costumes, which we don'...
Verrrrrrrry interesting if true (and it seems very possibly true to me): "The fear of failing can make a person quite changeable. Soon they develop a suspicious nature and lack any motivation - which causes them to be lazy and neglect their responsibilities. This results in nervousness and confusion - they become afraid, mistrustful of others and e...
EPIC (the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) is holding its annual EPICCon in San Antonio this week. My erotic, Lovecraft-inspired paranormal romance "Song from the Abyss" is a finalist in the Novella category of the annual e-book competition. Here's the list of finalists: http://www.epicorg.org/competitions/2012-awards-finalists.html This i...
This may turn out to be Part 1 of a series. Among my "circles" on Google I met a Paranormal Romance Writer (what a co-incidence!). Her name is Azure Boone, and I haven't read any of her romance stories yet, but her Google profile says (irresistibly) "Writer of paranormal romance involving demons and angels." So I saw her note about a...
Anne Rice has just released her first werewolf novel, THE WOLF GIFT. The protagonist, Reuben, at first looks like a typical movie werewolf. In fact, the text makes explicit comparisons to the Lon Chaney film. Reuben gets transformed by a bite, and he looks like a bipedal beast man, not a wolf. He thinks of himself as the Man Wolf, which is what the...
Before we get started on this huge, deep topic, let me just note I've put up an experimental blog listing the characters (one character per "post") in my most recent Sime~Gen Novel, The Farris Channel , Sime~Gen #12, with a quick reference about "who" they are in the story. It's a blog so that people who are reading the (very large, character...
Has anyone been watching the new TV programs GRIMM and ONCE UPON A TIME? Two series debuting in the same season about fairy tale characters living in the modern world, but very different in tone and in their development of the premise. The "Grimms" are people who can recognize supernatural creatures for what they are and, if the creatures are evil,...
Last November, while I was sending out the contracts for the stories in my upcoming Vampire anthology ( Vampire's Dilemma edited by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah, but none of the 10 stories are by us), an email dropped into my box from a Sime~Gen fan and it blew my mind. It's from a fellow who is a writer, as well as a reader. ...
Recently I watched the Frank Sinatra movie A HOLE IN THE HEAD, which I saw as a child when it first came out (1959). From what little I remembered of the story, I thought of it as a romantic comedy, with the widowed father protagonist, Tony, torn between his free-spirited girlfriend who lacks any interest in family or marriage and the sweet, homebo...
The Nanowrimo exercise always has beginning and professional writers talking all over facebook and twitter about how many words they produced in a day, or week, and declaring failure and dropping out of the race if they can't produce words by the yard. Measuring of success at writing as a number of words has two sides to it: a) many markets do pay ...
There may or may not be a connection. Have you ever googled "direction of swirl in toilet"? (Before you get to the "toilet", Google will offer you the option of the bathtub, instead. But that is beside the point.) According to Wikipedia "It is a commonly held misconception that when flushed, the water in a toilet bowl swirls one way if the toilet i...
A scientist theorizes about the effects of toxoplasmosis, often transmitted by domestic cats, on the brains of infected people: How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy This organism is far from the only parasite that changes the behavior of its host. Parasites that cause their hosts to behave in ways that make them more likely to be eaten by predators (wh...
