social issues theme
Long post! TL:dr… I’m going to France for an art residency next year. At this place, Chateau d’ Orquevaux. Yep. I’m doing this. I applied on a semi-whim in December 2023, knowing that odds of being accepted were somewhere between 20% and never. I make a habit of applying every couple of years to *big*…
Read More Art Residency 2025: Chateau d’Orquevaux, part 1Come back to the Birdverse with this unforgettable tale about despair, hope, self-care, and friendship! Words shape thoughts and cultures. Fantasy is uniquely suited to reveal this in subtle, entertaining ways that sneak in high-level concepts on the sly. R. B. Lemberg’s YOKE OF STARS is a remarkable novella. It could only come from a…
Read More Review: YOKE OF STARS, by R.B. LembergI’ve already voted. In Arizona, I have the fragile luxury of voting by mail, tracking my ballot, and knowing to the day when it was received and counted. I know a lot of people don’t have that chance. I wish everyone could, in every state. These midterm US elections are desperately important. They’ll either push…
Read More Midterms down to the wireSo after nearly 50 years, Roe v. Wade was struck down this June, by an overtly Dominionist Christian Supreme Court that has been at least 45 years in the making. Roe was the glacial shelf holding back a deluge of conservative wet dreams: overturning gay marriage and gay rights, the right to privacy (especially in…
Read More A Scarf For Vengeance and HopeShort novels, when done very well, are both honey-sweet and sharp as knives edged in fire. They mean something. They forge new connections in their readers, who are never quite the same people they were before reading that particular story. R. B. Lemberg’s new Birdverse book, THE UNBALANCING, accomplishes a startling amount of heavy work.…
Read More Review: THE UNBALANCING by R.B. LembergContent warning: guns and mutilation. When I was nine years old, Mom opened a cooler in the car, hauled a pork shoulder joint onto a meat hook and a chain, then hung it from a tree out in the middle-of-nowhere New Mexico. I was already enrolled in the local NRA gun safety classes. We were…
Read More More dead kidsIn ‘Vows of Empire’, Emily Skrutskie delivers a wrenchingly good and mostly unpredictable end (for now) to her YA space opera M/M romance ‘Bloodright Trilogy’. This review contains spoilers and reader deductions. I will reference characters and events from the first two books. For spoiler-free review, TL;dr….read the other books first, grab this one, &…
Read More Review: Emily Skrutskie, ‘Vows of Honor’CW: war, war crimes, and poison in a thinly-veiled faerytale. A lovely city thrived beside a blue sea. Autumn brought golden leaves tumbling with the wind. Winter gave crystalline snow and indigo shadows at noon. Spring sent all the perfumes of blooming fruit trees. In summer, sunflowers bloomed. At the center of the city slept…
Read More The Dragoncurse and the Sunflower CountryHappy very late December! Now that my initial rant is behind me, let’s move on to more positive things. What did I do this year, other than survive? In writing, this year was a wash. I’ve been too busy to write much long-form fiction. I had pieces more-or-less edited and ready to go, so I…
Read More Pandemic Year 2: In Review, Part 2Happy late December! I’m going to start this series of posts by being extremely cruel and vicious. Fair warning, I rant about Covid and the economy. We are all still here (except for those of us who aren’t)* because the world can’t manage a mutating virus. In the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK, specifically,…
Read More Pandemic Year 2: In Review, Pt 1PSA: Gotta blog? Use images in it? Be very careful about the images you use. Readers may discover some images on this blog might be disabled going back to 2012. The reason is one ‘professional litigant’ who apparently sniffs around blogs & websites for allegedly-stolen images. Claiming infringement even in fair-use cases, they use SLAPP…
Read More Some legal housekeepingThis. Today. Right now. I have lost patience, understanding, and tolerance for people who won’t wear protective masks in public. Who *could* get a Covid vaccine, but choose not to for insanely stupid reasons. Immune system compromised? That’s a good reason. I want to protect you. But if your excuse is some fake medical news…
Read More The End Of My PatienceTl;dr…Why ‘Outsider Artists’ *should* enter prestigious contests, and why many marginalized artists either give up or never even consider these opportunities. Every year I apply for every reputable art-related grant or show opportunity I might remotely qualify to enter. I usually don’t pay, unless the entry fees are modest (under $35 per entry). I do…
Read More Genres, Grants, and Outsider ArtistsFrom Emily Skrutskie, Oaths of Legacy, Book 2 in the Bloodright Trilogy, to be published later this year. Note: this review is based upon an ARC furnished to me for free by NetGalley. It’s always a joy when a second book in a series surpasses the first, and Emily Skrutskie does that and more with…
Read More Review: Oaths of Legacy, by Emily SkrutskieI’ve now had my second dose of the Moderna vaccine. In three or four weeks I should have as much Covid coverage as I’m going to get. Of course, I will continue to be masked in public. I enjoyed the lower allergies last year! Also, there will more handmade masks, and more *obnoxious* masks in…
Read More Moderna vaccine!Of cancer. At age 70. I’m going to more remember this day for two other images: the implosion of a defunct Trump casino in Atlantic City, and the utter failure of the deregulated Texas power grid. But all three news items are intricately linked into a larger problem: America’s self delusions smacking face first into…
Read More Rush Limbaugh is dead…Are nearly done. Two days before I have to drop them off, nearly a year since I volunteered to do them, and at least six months after I intended to finish them. Life in a pandemic, eh? You’d think it would give us more time to finish things. But my job never locked down, and…
Read More Panels for The Violet Protest Project…That’s it, that’s the post. The only president so far in US history to be impeached TWICE.
Read More Donald J. Trump Impeached AgainI had to wait three days to even *start* writing this. I am that angry. I am a white woman of a certain age, so I have tons of privilege. I could dress and speak the parts, and blend right into at least two levels of the mob that just literally *shat* in the halls…
Read More The Republican (Attempted) Coup2020 sucked. The few bright spots cannot compensate for the vast amounts of suckage. It has sucked so badly that it will undoubtedly poison at least half of 2021, too. I am grateful for those bright spots. Really. So I will use them as the most fragile of platforms as I look ahead. We voted…
Read More Looking Back, Looking Ahead