Dear Readers! Do you require assistance with a question of propriety, honor, duty, sacrifice, or sangria? Our resident Genius can help! Ask him your questions and he will give you his (or his friends’ and relations’) answers! Do you have a burning need to know about a topic in biology, mythology, folklore, or battling ghosts of the evil dead? ( Read more... )

Human beings tell stories, to entertain, to explore, and to define themselves. We class ourselves and others by comparing the narratives of the cultures we are part of, and deciding which assumptions of another’s culture are like or unlike our own. Every other person is an alien to us, their culture a foreign planet whose ways we can never fully ( Read more... )

Dear Readers! It has been, like, three and a half months! But it’s still Winter (but not Still Winter, which is a distinct season around here), so it feels like no time at all has passed! I still have not figured out how to maintain a Schedule, such that I get all my work done and post regularly to the blog-probably in large part because I ( Read more... )

[Warning: this post includes for purposes of discussion innapropriate metaphors that rely on misogyny, homophobia, and ablism.]

I just read Joshua Foer's article about a year in the life of John Quijadaarticle about a year in the life of John Quijada, creator of the constructed language IthkuilIthkuil, in the December 24 & 31, 2012, edition of The ( Read more... )

Today in Newtown, Connecticut, a person shot and killed at least 27 other people, almost twenty of them kindergarteners. A White House spokesperson issued an official statement in which he said ( Read more... )

On Monday Mother Jones** posted a video online of Mitt Romney, presidential candidate, speaking at a private fundraiser.  In the speech, Romney*** made claims that 47% of Americans pay no taxes, and therefore will automatically vote for Mr. Obama in November, as this near-half of the population are basically parasites on hardworking Investment ( Read more... )

Dear (U.S.American) Readers,

If you do nothing else today, Watch this, or read this transcript. Retired newsman Bill Moyers spoke last week at Boston University about the American Plutocracy. It is a powerful indictment of how the combination of the Evil of the few coupled with the Apathy of the many reduce us all to Tyranny that made me (literally ( Read more... )

Dear Readers,

The last two weeks, I finished Part Two of L&W, which came in at 137,000+ words, or 481 pages, making it the single largest hunk of manuscript pages I've ever had the misfortune to write (I love it); I went to Sirens, a conference for, by, and about women who write fantasy (where I heard much of interest, and had some fun); and I ( Read more... )

Dear Readers, I have much to say and more to do, but I was tired of linking to entries that had one line in the middle of something unrelated, so I thought I'd make a post quickly summarizing what I believe...basically. Now, I am certainly a person who does things in the wrong order; most of what I'm saying here is going in to L&W. On one hand, ( Read more... )

Just when I got through telling people I had no religion, I realized I'm an absolute lunatic.
( I will never tire of that face )