I was listening to a lecture on linguistics and the subject was Proto-Indo-European, (PIE) the prehistoric ancestor of English and many other languages. Words in the PIE language are derived from comparative analysis of all known existing and historical languages in a … Continue reading
You never think it will happen, but it happened to me. I just finished a chapter for my new novel, I’m reading it over, and bink! the screen goes black. The computer is dead as a stone. I push the … Continue reading
In this classic sci-fi adventure from the 1960’s, two warring groups, the Rangers and the Wardens, fight each other in various places and times over the centuries. Time tunnels were built in some distant future that allowed these tribes to … Continue reading
Pathetic though it is, my favorite part of the day is to check my log of words written on my current novel. I don’t count words written on emails, book reviews, blog posts, edits, and miscellaneous sketches that I write … Continue reading
I was convinced by this biographical and literary study, of three things. One, Virginia Woolf was sexually abused by her half-brother, George Duckworth, and two, that her alleged madness was a depressed and confused reaction to that childhood trauma (along … Continue reading
Between the World and Me is a brief autobiography, from the author’s early childhood to present-day adulthood, although it is marketed as a series of letters to his fifteen-year-old son about race in America. That’s a brilliant device, for it … Continue reading
I haven’t read any sci-fi since the 1960’s. After high school, I focused on non-fiction for 40 years to support my career. Now I’m exploring the genre again and Eon was one of the “catch-up” books on my list of … Continue reading
I recently reviewed on this site, Palahniuk’s Rant: An Oral History of Buster Casey, which I liked enough to consider nominating it for group study, but I hesitated because it’s so vulgar: both puerile and prurient. A long-running joke, repeated … Continue reading
Funny, Imaginative, and Vulgar This is my first Palahniuk novel, and to my surprise, I enjoyed it. Surprised because it’s not the sort of thing I normally like, a hodge-podge of urban punk, violent, humorous, sci-fi, horror of an experimental thing. … Continue reading
I’m happy to announce that my characters are awake again and chattering like children in a playground. I knocked out a short chapter and now I sit at 41K words, just past dead center. One reason I was able to … Continue reading