[Trumpet fanfare] I am DELIGHTED to announce that McFarland & Co. has agreed to publish my nonfiction book TV's Female Spies and Sleuths: A Compendium! About 15 months of research and writing ahead to complete it, but thrilled it will have a professional publisher. :-D

This poem is both a personal favorite of mine and a reader favorite as based on comments I've received over the years. It was first published in Full Unit Hookup Magazine, Issue Number Six, and reprinted in The Sword Review, Issue Number 23 ( Read more... )

MARS BEAT
By Karen A. Romanko

Mars beat
Sol fleet
cool heat

Star race
set pace
shoot space

Rouge hip
Zen zip
real trip

Mars beat
port seat
cool heat

First published in The Martian Wave, September 2002.

(This post is an excerpt from my article, "Where No Librarian Has Gone Before: The Ten Best Star Trek® Episodes on Video," which appeared in Emergency Librarian, November/December 1993. I thought I'd trot part of it out now as a freebie. The picks are in episode order, not order of preference.)

Ten Best Treks

Episode 8: "Charlie X"

The Enterprise ( Read more... )

I have two readings that just went live on the "Broadpod" podcast. The first is for the poem "The Invisible Woman Runs for President," which was published in Strange Horizons and the second is for the story "Screening of a Silent Film" by JS Bangs, which appeared in the anthology I edited, Cinema Spec: Tales of Hollywood and Fantasy. Here's the ( Read more... )

In 2002, my fictional story "August 12, 2017" appeared in a small press magazine called Full Unit Hookup. The story was about the first female player in the major leagues, who happened to be a knuckleballing pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. Although the story had a science fiction angle, I reckoned that a female player might actually be able to make ( Read more... )

My scifaiku (science fiction haiku) 'one foot on Mars' has been nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association's 2009 Dwarf Stars Award and will appear in the 2009 Dwarf Stars Award Anthology. The Dwarf Stars Award recognizes the best speculative poem of 1 to 10 lines published in the previous year. Last year there were about 50 nominations, ( Read more... )

My poem "Phoenix III" is now online at SF/fantasy e-zine The Fifth Di. It takes the well-known myth of the phoenix, a bird which dies a fiery death only to rise from its own ashes, and applies it to the life, death, and rebirth of a planet:

http://samsdotpublishing.com/fifth/phoenix.htm

I've done two prior riffs on the phoenix myth. "Phoenix II," ( Read more... )

I never received tear sheets for this review, so I'm not sure exactly when it came out, though the issue is dated "Spring-Summer 2008." But my intrepid and incessant quest for Sporty Spec information has paid off.

Ernest Lindsay of Holcomb (OH) College says in his Aethlon review:

"The children of Lucas and Nintendo have marvelous fun. We get ( Read more... )

I'm running a bit late on the "year in review" front, but since the deadline for SFPA Rhysling nominations is approaching, I figured I'd better start compiling a poetry bibliography. Below are links to my 2008 poetry publications, both as author and as editor.

I was aided in this effort by that lovely, little virtual doohickey the LJ "tag." Up until ( Read more... )