“I enjoyed your panel,” a gentleman called out to me as I was walking past his table, at Orycon, the annual science fiction/fantasy convention in Portland, Oregon, over the weekend.…Continue readingOrigami dragons et al
“Things sometimes get transcendent bad, purple prose can transform into ultra violet.” That was one of the more fascinating observations during a well attended Saturday morning panel on Description in…Continue readingWhen purple prose goes bad
So, then. Let us start at the beginning. After waking up at oh-dark-hundred, there I was at the Bellingham station ready to take the 8:32 Amtrak train to Portland. The…Continue readingOrycon time…
The Forgotten Perks of Reading Fiction The Digital Age has heightened the habit of skimming everything we read, Soli Salgado writes at Utne. But, he suggests, we lose something invaluable…Continue readingWhy fiction?
Glaciers are melting, oceans are rising, and the male population is dwindling as temperatures continue to increase—at least in Japan, a new study shows. Japanese researchers found that in the…Continue readingGlobal warming = more girls
My friend and colleague, writer Jay Lake, lost a bitter battle with cancer yesterday. I dipped into my memories and wrote a memorial for him – and it starts, like…Continue readingRemembering Jay Lake
Elmore Leonard had ten rules for writing. 1) Never open a book with the weather. 2) Avoid prologues. 3) Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. 4)…Continue readingThe rules, the rules!
Can you guess these classic books by their one-line spoilers? Alanna Okun asks at BuzzFeed. She gets hit by a train He never shows up The dogs die She was…Continue readingSpoiler alert!