Had an interesting day last week with a significantly important coincidence: So we spent two hours at work last Wednesday doing our annual insurance benefits review. For two hours, with our insurance broker and our Aflac rep, we discussed how much our insurance costs. How many thousands our deductible is. What’s in-network and what’s out. [...]
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I’ve kept my resolutions for a whole day already! Wee, I’m on a roll! I’ve deleted or hidden around 15 Facebook people/pages, 8 RSS feeds, and 6 podcast feeds. What I’ve kept are only media involving sci-fi, writing, literature, general philosophy, and technology news. That so means that this blog will probably go to sleep [...]
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This has, without a doubt, been an absolutely terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. Probably the worst one, evah! (The only, and I mean only, bright spot was I finally got my Masters Degree in English . . . and even that’s pending until next year when I pay for and turn in super-expensive [...]
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My new short story has been published! I’m, oh, just a little excited. The story, “The End of the Beginning,” is in the latest edition of M-BRANE SF magazine, issue number 10. You have a few quick, easy, and inexpensive methods of getting it: Visit this URL: http://mbranesf2.blogspot.com and on the right-hand side you’ll find [...]
READ MORE »(New post on my writing/scholarship focused blog, The GrogMonkey, about my participating in NaNoWriMo in November: “NaNoWriMo, again. Maybe. Perhaps?“)
READ MORE »Bruce Sterling is a favorite scifi author of mine. Granted, his CRYPTONOMICON had some serious storytelling flaws, it was still brilliant. And SNOW CRASH is classic. I still need to read ANATHEM…. Anyway, he writes SF so brilliantly because he understands the notion that for the future, or alternate-tech, to be believable, it needs to [...]
READ MORE »First an annoying introduction; feel free to skip to the next heading: I, unlike pretty much every other English grad student I know/have known, am not an English teacher. Not for high school, nor did I teach undergrads while earning my English MA. Chances are pretty certain, though, that when I go for my PhD [...]
READ MORE »Been really ignoring my blog lately. Now that the iPhone has the supercrazymechahappyfun copy-n-paste, I’ve been doing most of my “hey, look at this neato-keen link” on Facebook. Well, I’ve a slew of Web pages I want to comment on queued up in Instapaper I may get to tonight. In the meantime, I’m WAY behind [...]
READ MORE »I’m listening to multi-award winning SF author Robert J. Sawyer on the SciFiDimensions podcast (I’m on my iPhone so you’ll have to google for a link), and he’s asked why so many award winning and critically aclaimed SF writers come out of Canada and the U.K. His answer: socialized health care. There’s an addage that [...]
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The “invisible hand” to which I refer is the famous metaphor for the free market economy. The supposed magic hand that makes everything cheaper and more efficient. Feh! But more on that general topic later. Right now, here is some excellent information on how the free market health care system is f—d up. Here’s an [...]
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As you may know I’ve been writing my master’s thesis for my English (Creative Writing) M.A. as a creative thesis–a novel. It’s based on an idea I’ve had for a few years now but never got more than five pages into it. So when I started my ENG 699 (Thesis) coursework this last Spring, I [...]
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All-things-scifi Web site, io9, has a wonderful article today: Great Opening Sentences From Science Fiction As a student of creative writing and hopeful one-day teacher of it, I’m acutely aware of how important a good first line or two is for capturing the attention of the reader, and especially the editor who’s sifting through the [...]
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I read Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling) when it first came out in 1995. I bought and read…no, devoured all of the collections of “modern fairy tales” when I was an undergrad those early 90s–Snow White, Blood Red, Black Thorn, White Rose, etc. Now, the series is being re-released [...]
READ MORE »Well, the semester is almost done–one final tonight (contemporary theories in cultural criticism…or something like that. I never have actually learned the name of the class), then begins the summer of self-directed…stuff! (Only one more year until I graduate with my MA in English (Creative Writing track). Assuming I pass my German literacy requirements, my [...]
READ MORE »It’s really sad, and in a way is reflective of how my life has been going. I used to be a voracious reader. I was introduced to the works of Poe, Bradbury, and Lovecraft around the 3rd grade. I was hooked on scifi and horror ever since. In jr. and high school I read a [...]
READ MORE »I wrote 25 new pages on my novel/thesis this weekend. A huge burst of productivity! And best of all, it got me past a certain bit of creative block and got me to an area that’s progressing the plot again. And it takes me to the beginning of a character development that the novel really [...]
READ MORE »(And still, the weird problem remains with using “from” too many times. I swear, the blog refuses to post unless I change some of the “from”s to “frm”. It must be some kind of bug in the module that tries to detect SQL injections, is the best I can figure.) Yesterday I posted some of [...]
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