OK, Aenya fans, I have some great stuff for you today! First and foremost, I have completed the final edit for the first book in The Magiq of Aenya series: The Stargazers' Daughters. After painstakingly going through it for months, I managed to cut it down from 172k to 164,711 words. If you want to... Continue Reading →
Contact and Carl Sagan’s God
You get to thinking of the Earth as an organism, a living thing. You get to worry about it, care for it, wish it well. National boundaries are as invisible as meridians of longitude, or the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The boundaries are arbitrary. The planet is real. Carl Sagan Carl Sagan was a... Continue Reading →
“Age of Aenya” is NOT about nudism!!!
AENYA is as diverse a world as Middle-earth; to call Ages of Aenya a book about nudism is like calling The Lord of the Rings a book about not wearing shoes. Sorry for YET another rant---I really didn't want to do this, I swear---but I recently stumbled upon an article in Planet Nude about 'nudist... Continue Reading →
Exploring Sex and Challenging Taboos in Literature
SEX!!! Everyone loves to think about it, and everyone is afraid to talk about it. So, as Salt-N-Pepa famously put it, "let's talk about sex babeee, let's talk about you and me, let's talk about sex." Sex has been a part of literature since the first cuneiform tablets were baked by the Sumerians, and yet... Continue Reading →
The Intersection of Science and Fantasy: King, Sagan, and Dunsany
I have this crazy idea. I want to get Stephen King, Carl Sagan, and Lord Dunsany (Edward Plunkett) in a room together ... At first glance, these writers could NOT be further apart in terms of tone and subject matter. One of the books I am reviewing for this post isn't even fiction. But as... Continue Reading →
Why Jeff VanderMeer is Lovecraft’s True Successor
In glimmers, in shreds of thought, in the aftermath of my reading, I wondered if he kept a journal still, or if the dolphin's eye had been familiar for a reason other than that it was so human. But soon enough I banished this nonsense; some questions will ruin you if you are denied the... Continue Reading →
Anthony Doerr Shows Us “All the Light We Cannot See”
After reading and reviewing Cloud Cuckoo Land, my best book of 2023, I knew I had to pick up another of Anthony Doerr's books. This time, I figured, why not the book that won him the Pulitzer? In true Doerr fashion, All the Light We Cannot See is a masterclass in poetry. Every sentence sings.... Continue Reading →
Asimov’s Foundation Fails as Fiction
While I love the idea-driven, philosophically oriented science fiction authors of the 50s and '60s, the likes of which include Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clark, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and Isaac Asimov---I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed by the first in Asimov's Foundation series. I truly, truly wanted to love... Continue Reading →
Why AI Books Will Never Be Worth Reading
No matter how advanced artificial intelligence becomes---even after a thousand years of quantum computing---novels written by AI will never be worth anyone's time because fiction isn't a math problem to be solved. Storytelling is the greatest form of human expression. It's how we share our lived experiences, our fears, our pain, our aspirations. But a... Continue Reading →
To Straight Up Murder a Mockingbird
What can I say about this book that hasn't already been said? Harper Lee's masterpiece and only true novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, has been analyzed to death by critics and is quintessential reading for any middle school English class. How Lee manages to write with such pathos, conviction, and storytelling skill without ever having... Continue Reading →

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