2020

TL;dr…I drone on about embracing one’s weird stories. Several writer friends confessed they don’t read many other writing blogs: “Because below a certain level of skill/experience, they all have the same bravado, bewilderment, and desperation to promote their work.” Above that level, writers’ blogs are often about other things than writing, an informative and often…

Read More The Sun and the Moon Debacle

High contrast: last week it was responsible adults in the room talking about hope, diversity, unity, and hard work. This week: rallying cries for a second Civil War delivered by coked-up nepotistic sycophants to a hateful demented old lech who can barely read from a teleprompter (yet mocks even family members with disabilities). Seriously, Don…

Read More DNC vs RNC conventions

Three years ago I bought a display form from a local boutique that was going out of business. I named it ‘Adelaide‘ after the boutique. Adelaide-the-mannequin had a cracked support post and base, and was permanently pitched backward (she frequently fell over). She also needed various bits of padding to mimic my ridiculously variable girth.…

Read More Say hi again to Adelaide

It’s literary pie fight time! Otherwise known as the Hugo Awards. And lo, in the midst of the Covid19 Plague Year, heat waves, hurricanes, murder hornets, and global political unrest, the speculative fiction community did come together virtually to award (some) of the best creators in the business. They did so in what could have…

Read More Those 2020 Hugo Awards

Warning: political snark. I’ve been admonished for being too political in my art & writing. I have also been accused of not being political enough. To be clear, I have been political since at least 1986. Sometimes it didn’t show as much. All that socially liberal SFF I’d read since 1977 ran up against my…

Read More Everything Is Political

TL;dr…Look up authors on social media before you decide to join their private writers’ groups or professional organizations. Yeah, there’s a pandemic happening, and it’s getting worse in the regions where Stupid Meets Hateful. I live in Arizona, one of the current US hotspots. Covid19 is around every corner. I’m in lockdown right now from…

Read More The RWA Meltdown: Codicil

I’m publishing a new version of my sword-and-planet fantasy novel BLOODSHADOW on July 10, 2020, through Draft2Digital. At 40,482 words, this is a revised version of the first part of the monster 135K book that was on Wattpad some years ago. Amazon US buy link Amazon global buy link Universal buy link (for platforms other…

Read More Relaunching Bloodshadow!

After the bloviated weirdness of Trump’s Nuremberg-Rally-style ‘celebration’ at Mount Rushmore on July 3, 2020, I’ve noticed a common thread on social media feeds. Ordinary non-Trumper Americans, especially people of color and LGBTQIA folks, are *flinching* at American flags. Because now there’s a deadly calculus going on in our heads: “Is that flag being flown…

Read More I Want My Symbols Back

Two good things have come out of our Plague Year nightmare: I’ve forcibly learned tips and tricks for a masked/veiled population in at least two of my books, so I have no excuse for any lack of verisimilitude later when working on NEEDLE AND SWORD or RED AMBER. As a rather standoffish person, I hate…

Read More Mask Selfie #1

Of course, I mean the wonderful Weird Western Bruce Campbell show that ran for a single season on the Fox Broadcasting Co. back in 1993-1994: ‘The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.’ Go here for a fond, detailed retrospective. My quarantine binge-watching led me back to this show and happy memories of its direct ancestor, ‘The…

Read More Let’s Talk About Brisco

We’re moving into the white-hot, flat-blue-sky phase of Arizona summer. There may be storms later in June or July, but for now they are a memory, a daydream, or a nightmare (our storms can be all three at once.) Anyone who has ever been through a desert thunderstorm knows the electric feel of the air,…

Read More ‘Rain Season’ beaded panels

Because I can’t stay away from fiber arts. These fabric masks have an outer shell of embroidered and beaded cloth, surgical cloth filters, and inner linings of copper-infused bamboo and cotton cloth. They can be washed and sterilized. They fit very well. Are they the equivalent of N95 masks? Hell, no. But they help with…

Read More Three Covid Masks

I could have simply pasted this notification into my old Fanfic Recommendations post. But. To hell with that, this is quarantine and we *need* approximately half a million words of fabulous fan fiction. Some treasures deserve to be showcased. Go here for ‘The Republic of Heaven Community Radio’. It’s the ‘Welcome to Night Vale’ meets…

Read More A Night Vale fanfic rec

The novel coronavirus (‘novel’ simply means this is a new strain in humans) has reached Arizona. As of Saturday, March 14, Arizona has twelve confirmed cases of Covid-19. Scary enough, many of those cases came from one family, and a health worker whose original Covid-19 exposure remains a mystery. We have large numbers of senior…

Read More Covid19 in Arizona

You should read R. B. Lemberg’s THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES from Tachyon Publications. You should also read their prequel novellette ‘Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds’ in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It would not be a bad thing to read their charming ‘The Desert Glassmaker and the Jeweler of Berevyar’ in Uncanny Magazine. Or their…wait. Stop. Just go…

Read More Review: THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES by R.B. Lemberg