Eastlick and Other Stories by Shannon Page “Like a good glass of wine, a good short story offers complexity and buzz. When you finish a good story, you take a moment to savor the experience, to let the resonance of … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: October 2013
Writer Shannon Page spent her elementary school years living on a back-to-the-land commune in northern California. The commune had two board games (Monopoly and Scrabble) and a deck of cards. And books.
“So basically I read. I read everything I could get my hands on—from school, from the library, a few very precious books I was privileged to own, magazines my parents certainly didn’t know they’d left where I could find them—and I told myself stories. I played out in the meadow with tiny ceramic figurines (small enough to drive around in Matchbox cars), who all had names and stories and personalities and histories. I had a vivid imagination and a rich fantasy life. I was a weird kid at school—didn’t fit in at all with the farmer’s kids, who had electricity and telephones at home, and got to eat meat and processed foods, and spend the night at each other’s houses. I was chosen last for PE teams and first for spelling bees. What else could I become but a writer?”
Continue readingSteens Mountain Region, August 2013 by Ursula K. Le Guin This is what a lot of it looks like. It is the northernmost part of the Basin and Range country, high desert, altitude over 4000′, annual rainfall under 12″ except … Continue reading
King Kong has been a staple in media for a long time. I’m not sure what sort of genre to put something like King Kong. SF? Fantasy? Paranormal romance? It’s certainly the first of the Kaiju sort of films but … Continue reading
In last week’s post we looked at the three magical weapons that popular culture has with which to fight monsters, including poop. Thus armed, let’s consider our strategy and then go look under the bed. With Fava Beans and Chianti for All Taking … Continue reading
I’m hoping that by the time this post goes up our government will be back on track. If that’s the case ignore the remainder of this. As I write this, though, partisan politics is still holding sway. There is a … Continue reading
By Brenda W. Clough The pupils at the workshop I was teaching, such dewy-eyed and youthful sprouts! Their tender and innocent question was, how do you begin a story? My first and accurate response was (per Rudyard Kipling) that there … Continue reading
I stumbled on a review of Gravity the day it opened in Austin and went to see it on the spur of the moment. The visuals were incredible. I enjoyed them even though I didn’t see it in 3-D (not … Continue reading
It’s dangerous out there, people. There are risks involved in reading the wrong sorts of science fiction, and while advice and counsel is available around the web, the time has come for a concise glossary of the most common debilitating … Continue reading
It’s WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading. • What are you reading now? John Buchan’s *The Courts of the Morning*. Seized by an urge to read something new by a long-known author, I was actually pursuing the rarely seen … Continue reading