Latest Posts

  • I have been reading some great fantasy recently!

    But I have sorely neglected this blog. That’s because I’ve been busy trying to finish my own nine-book fantasy series, three interconnecting series, actually: The three-book prequel series, Stormclouds, which is fairly dark and adult; the four-book Harbingers series, which… Continue reading

  • N. K. Jemisin wins the Hugo and schools the Puppies

    In August, science fiction writer N. K. Jemisin, who happens to be black and female, won the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novel with the third in her Broken Earth trilogy, Stone Sky. The award, presented at Worldcon 76 in… Continue reading

  • Blackbird Rising available on Amazon

    My fantasy novel, Blackbird Rising, is now available in paperback and for Kindle (and other ways to read a Kindle book, such as on an ipad). Click this link to find it or go to amazon.com or the Kindle Store:… Continue reading

  • It’s a COOKBOOK!!!!

    Recently I was remembering Twilight Zone episode 89 (1962), the one with the big reveal so iconic I don’t even need to issue a spoiler alert for it. You know the one. This line of dialogue, “It’s a cookbook!” has… Continue reading

  • Re-reading TIGANA

    Partly because I so admired it the first time I read it, and partly because it shares some themes with a fantasy novel I myself am writing, I recently re-read Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana. The main character of my own… Continue reading

  • The Great Sci Fi Divide

    This post started out as a digression from my obituary for Harlan Ellison. Ellison had mentioned in an interview the difference between science fiction and fantasy, and I’d wondered whether there really was such a sharp division between the two.… Continue reading

  • Sci fi world mourns Harlan Ellison

      When The Guardian interviewed Harlan Ellison in 2013, the interviewer begged the famed science fiction writer to define the term “speculative fiction.” Here are Ellison’s words: “I will give you the only answer that there is. It is the… Continue reading

  • THE KINGKILLER CHRONICLE comes to the screen

    Two versions of Patrick Rothfuss’s great fantasy series, including The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, as well as an as yet untitled and unwritten third novel, are heading to screens near you–a long-form television prequel to… Continue reading

  • New Tolkien book to be published –and BEYOND (or maybe BACK)

    Houghton Mifflin will soon publish a new book drawn from J. R. R. Tolkien’s unpublished materials. The Tolkien Society’s web site reports that the book, titled The Fall of Gondolin, is due to be published in August 2018. https://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/2018/03/new-tolkien-book-to-be-published/ Tolkien’s… Continue reading

  • Theories and Definitions of FANTASY

    Open the link to view the PowerPoint presentation Fantasy definitions and theories Continue reading