For the last month I’ve been drafting a blog post about the organization called Romance Writers of America. I keep having to add new stuff. So I’ll get this out there now. A month ago I would have told you “The RWA (Romance Writers of America) is a storied professional organization with a lot of…
Read More The RWA MeltdownNeal Peart is dead. On January 7, of glioblastoma. He’d been ill for three-and-a-half years. He and the close-knit Rush band family kept it quiet. When I found out, I cried. I’ve been a Rush fan since my brothers introduced me to the band’s unique music forty-five years ago. Every record…nearly every song…was a marker…
Read More Wallflowers and Warrior PoetsI just learned that my long-time mentor and art representative Bill Stewart passed last month. It’s sad news. I’m having difficulty processing it, then I feel guilty, because far closer folks to Bill have the full weight of that grief on them. So I’m going to celebrate what Bill and his wife Vicky mean to…
Read More In Memoriam: William ‘Bill’ StewartI lost a brother yesterday morning in a terrible car accident. The usual problem with rural New Mexico roads: impaired people howling 80+ miles per hour down a two-mile slope, no brakes, just plowing into my brother who was only 300 feet from his house. My brother died instantly, or nearly. The kid who hit…
Read More A requiemNineteen years ago I moved into the lower-rent end of a pricey Phoenix subdivision, courtesy of dual incomes and the dot-com bubble bursting at just the right time. The backyard went from Bermuda grass and gum trees to a minimalist sweep of gravel, Indonesian statues, and oleander. It’s always been the stepping stone to something…
Read More New Walls, New WindowsI’ve been so busy with art and a new manufacturing job that I have completely neglected the Blue Night blog. Sorry, folks, I’ll try to carve some time out for bloggy stuff. In the meantime, I really love my job. First, a PSA: If you know someone going through a traumatic and dangerous breakup/divorce/etc, make…
Read More Rants from a neglected blogHow many times have we heard ‘Money doesn’t buy happiness’? At best that’s a warning to value the non-financial things in life. At worst, it’s a ploy to convince poor people to be content with their lot. Money *can* buy opportunity, or the chance to maximize opportunity. It can buy time. Fox mouthpieces mocked Alexandra…
Read More Art On A Kitchen TableMatthew Whitaker, the new Acting Attorney General, may act on his threat to stop the Mueller investigation by bleeding off its funding. Whitaker has been chasing a state judicial appointment since Trump got into office, and doing it by dangling himself coyly on TV and social media so that The Orange One will ‘notice’ him…
Read More A GoFundMe For Mueller?On an amble through an Arizona art cooperative, I found an emerging artist’s gallery offering hand-embroidered clothing. ‘Cool!’ I thought, stepping close enough to see details. I am a sucker for embroidered clothes. ‘Awww, dammit,’ I thought next. The stitches were large and roughly spaced, an effect probably meant to be charming and rustic to…
Read More Economics and Hand-embroideryWhat a month it has been, my readers. First: the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the direction of the current Saudi crown prince. I’m no big fan of the Turkish government, and I know they have blood on their hands as well. But they are at least keeping the Saudi government reeling off-balance and…
Read More Free Press, Gaslighting, and FearThis falls under ‘book arts and text-based art’, so I’m including it here. It’s one of the loveliest and most wistful art pieces I’ve seen recently. It also launches me into an art rant, so be forewarned. Irish fabric artist and writer Heather Richardson memorializes Kathleen Hutchinson, the aunt she never met, who died as a…
Read More A Dress For Kathleen: a stitched memorialAll five of these little beasts are done: pages sewn together, accordion folds sewn into place, covers attached, and flannel-lined storage bags completed. I discuss these books more here. Each ended up when closed 7.25×5.25″, about the size of a paperback book. They open to 7.25×50″. There are over sixty patriotic fabric appliques sewn into…
Read More ‘The Truth Remains’: finished!In truth, nonbinary characters and relationships already abound in science fiction and fantasy. Even really graphic ones. It’s just that authors who wrote this stuff were largely relegated to more literary fare in the late 60s-early 70s ‘New Wave’ or 2000s-era small-press erotic romance publishers. If they wanted to publish with Tor, Daw, Del-Rey, Ace,…
Read More Male/Male SFF Grows the F**k UpDue to an abysmal stroke of bad luck, I’ve lost two motor vehicles in the last week. The first is the Subaru above, which was rear-ended and pushed into another vehicle last week. I love this car but I may not be able to raise the $4K to fix it. The second is my friend’s…
Read More Wheels For Dialysis Patient (fundraiser)Now in its natural habitat! I have a dear friend who has to endure dialysis three times a week. This sucks on many levels. One injurious indignity involves a theoretically-padded chair that is just on the more-padded side of a cheapass emergency-room waiting room metal bench. No one should have to spend ten minutes in…
Read More The Supercomfy Non Skid Chair PadBack in 2002, I made this book: ‘The Truth Remains’, for the San Francisco Public Library’s ‘Reversing Vandalism’ project. That was a one-of-a-kind fiber art piece about silencing marginalized populations, but the text continued to resonate with me years later. In December of 2017, my own high school went through a school shooting that left…
Read More First look: ‘The Truth Remains 2.0’I’ve been following this thing since late February, when someone I know on Twitter made ominous subtweets about a catfishing scandal (yet again) in the world of male/male romance publishing. This link from The Salt Miners gives a better overview and details. Riptide, one of the most outwardly prestigious publishers in the genre, got caught with…
Read More Diversity, Catfishing, and the Santino Hassell disaster2018 is shaping up to be an interesting year for two of the most venerated (and often controversial) Science Fiction and Fantasy awards: the Hugos and the Nebulas. Here’s a Wikia page about 2018 Hugo Awards nominations, if you are eligible to nominate stories (or just want to see what’s already nominated.) Here’s a handy…
Read More It’s Hugo (and Nebula) Award Season againWhat a year, gang. We’ve seen political upheavals mingled with newly energized activism. Lazy intellects, desperate anger, slick marketing, and pathological distrust of expertise resulted in everything from Trump’s election, Brexit, serious Flat Earth conspiracies, anti-vaccination movements, pseudoscience, and the disastrous return of Lysenkoism to Russia. We’ve seen brave, fierce scientists, journalists, and ordinary people…
Read More 2017 in reviewAs I write this at 6am on a Wednesday morning, several major news organizations have called the Alabama Senate special election for Democrat Doug Jones. The Republican candidate, the odious Roy Moore, has yet to concede. This is a big deal for American politics. Early exit polls and anecdotal evidence suggests this is more a…
Read More Doug Jones and the Republican Soul