2024 has been one heck of a year. It’s gone by blazingly fast, because I’ve been busier than I could imagine. Major things happened, new avenues opened while others permanently closed. Seems like a good time to stop and take stock. It has been my intention to check back in here every month or so to keep a running tab of updates. But as I moved into the summer months all my best-laid plans got scrambled. For the first eight…
I had a mixed bag in April, when it comes to posts on The Weird Blog . . . and also when it comes to just about everything else, too. My ongoing book review work continues. However, I prefer to blog about books and share their reviews in themed groups of three to five. I didn’t have neatly themed groups of much of anything in April. Book review topics were only one category of “hodgepodge” in April. I’m also transitioning…
I promised to return with more book reviews in March. With my time as crunched as it has been lately, I’ve started creating a monthly review of the posts I ran on The Weird Blog of Weird Sisters Publishing. Yes, it’s an aggregation and not completely original, but I hope you’ll enjoy my “digest” posts in lieu of no posts at all. I Hope You Give Graphic Books a Closer Look I began the month’s posts by highlighting Three Graphic…
By Jan S. Gephardt We rarely think to ask a fundamental question: what should police do? What part should they play in a multicultural, representational democracy? The ubiquity of police forces around the world argues that many societies believe police do have a role in civilized life. But what – exactly – should it be? As a novelist whose primary characters are science fictional detectives, I am in an unusual position, both to ask and to answer this question. But…
By Jan S. Gephardt and Lynette M. Burrows A note from Jan to her readers: My longtime friend Lynette M. Burrows and I belong to some of the same writers’ groups, and first met through the Kansas City Science Fiction & Fantasy Society (KaCSFFS). We bonded over (among other things) our interest in writing, and we’ve been friends literally for decades. We regularly check in with each other to “talk shop” or be each others’ cheerleaders. Earlier this summer, I…
By Jan S. Gephardt I love both real and fictional space stations. Anyone who’s read my books, or the blog posts I’ve devoted to this topic will probably roll their eyes and say, “No. Really?” Yeah, really. You got me. I love the whole idea, and I’m endlessly fascinated by the many visions of what a space station—or space habitat—could be. Why? I’ve enjoyed science fiction for decades. When I was a kid I thought of sf books as “the…
By Jan S. Gephardt To quote Red Leader Garven Dreis, we’re almost there! In this case, I mean we’re almost to the point where A Bone to Pick is available and ready to read. Almost. We’re close enough that I can at last announce a presale offer on Amazon, in both the US and the UK. I’m also almost to the point where Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) are ready to go out as review copies. I’ll send them to my…
They say first impressions are important. As a writer, I’d say that goes for the first lines of stories, too. Lots of great books and stories open with ho-hum first lines. But I deeply admire a great opening line. I often kick off a new month with a collection of illustrated quotations. This month, I’ve put my own spin on a related idea that I got from a friend, Lynette M. Burrows. Her excellent blog regularly features great opening lines…
Since our prehistory, humans have focused on creating a calendar, then using it to keep time. We’ve based calendars on the seasons, the sun, and the moon. We’ve scratched symbols into clay, bone or stone, dug sequences of pits, erected poles, or even dragged enormous stones for fabulous distances, all to get a handle on “WHEN are we? But creating a calendar that’s accurate over a long period of time is a harder thing to do on Earth than one…
In last week’s post I promised to talk about politics on Rana Station this week. As I said in that post, I built the Station’s system on ideas garnered from decades of teaching, studying history, and observing our contemporary society. Those experiences inspired the guiding question, What kind of environment would allow ALL of my students to reach their full potential? I’ve spent most of my career teaching both urban and rural students from lower-income areas. I knew our current…