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What is the most important thing in a story? That it contains characters that you can identify with, people who look like you, see the world like you? For far too many readers, that is what they expect from any … Continue reading
Category Archives: Rants
You’ve heard it, all too often. It’s “The War on Drugs”, “The War on Crime”, “The War on Cancer”, “The Culture War,” etc. The rhetoric is supposed to convey the importance of a particular “War” and how powerfully we are … Continue reading
I frequently see on what my sweetheart refers to as my corner of social media lists of things that women must worry about that men don’t have to. While these lists are posted with good intentions, they perpetuate a lot … Continue reading
Look, you must have heard about this by now. It’s been everywhere. This is just one of the many many articles that has appeared on the subject since the whole thing was announced. This is another. And I… am unsure … Continue reading
I have this nice bedside clock that re-sets itself to the correct time if there is a power outage, and it automatically adjusts for the twice-yearly time shifts of Daylight Savings Time (Fall Back, Spring Forward). There is only one … Continue reading
Today I almost had to cancel my blog for this Sunday. Actually I’m supposed to review an anthology for a friend’s short fiction. I haven’t even gotten to that. Instead, I am in a Seattle hotel room, early pre-sunrise, with … Continue reading
This whole “living in interesting times” thing is exhausting – John Scalzi on Twitter I’ve seen several variations on this theme on social media lately. No question that “May you live in interesting times” is not something said by anyone … Continue reading
Any one of us who has ever done anything creative at all – and an unconscionable amount of people who do not-necessarily-creative-but- applicable- craft-or-business-stuff – know that particular siren call. “Oh, we LOVE [the area under discussion]. That’s why we … Continue reading
I was going to write you about the ballet today, because yesterday I saw the Royal Russian Ballet. A friend gave me a ticket (this is the only present for a while, I was told, and looked at the price … Continue reading
We learn history in the schoolroom by rote. We learn dead dates, what happened on exact days three and half centuries ago in worlds and societies which we cannot begin to imagine, let alone understand. Because histories are written by … Continue reading