Scarlet Letters

This has proven much more difficult to write than I anticipated, probably because this is the hardest decision I have ever had to make. Harder than the decision to leave Memphis and my career in the arts in order to pursue a life in journalism. Harder than the decision to divorce my first husband, the father of my child. And I'm not one to take a leap without considering all the options, so you'd best believe that I have discussed this with Jim, with my parents, with close friends, with mentors. Probably until they were tired of talking about it with me. I have dithered and stalled, because once I post this, it's final. It's real. I'm leaving the newspaper. With that decision ends 21 years in daily journalism. Wow, that was hard to type. And I haven't even done it yet. Please click here to check out my new site and all the details about this amazing new journey I'm about to take, and how you can be a part of it.

This blog is in danger of becoming all about food, but a) the writing stuff is in motion but still hush-hush, and b) the family sees each other so rarely right now that we don't even get much in the way of Snippets. That is, unless you could yesterday's endless snark of poor Jim on his 51st birthday, which I kept misremembering as 61 with a big ol' grin. And yet he married me. If you're curious what's going on, you can catch up with the Literary Underworld crew at its site ; with my professional photography and newstuff at Donald Media ; and of course my Facebook and Twitter . I promise there's going to be very big changes soon. In the meantime, our observance of Memorial Day means the family gets to spend a few days actually in each other's company. Not Friday, as Boy had rehearsal for Beauty and the Beast  and I had the night shift. And not tonight (Sunday night), because Jim has a night shift and Boy is seeing one of his friends in a play. (In case...

A Return to the Roots: A Hero for Today’s Readers and Times By Stephen Zimmer In general, there has been a turn toward anti-heroes within the stories told in today’s speculative fiction, a time where there has been a proliferation of subgenres in the realms of fantasy, science fiction, horror and other primary genres.    Cross-genre fiction has also seen a sharp rise during this time, blending elements of many various genres into unique blends that open some fresh new territory for readers. All of these developments in genres and kinds of characters are welcome and needed.   They expand the possibilities in storytelling and character development, in addition to encouraging writers to take chances with their fiction.   Nevertheless, I also see a rising need in today’s fiction for characters like Ragnar Stormbringer or Rayden Valkyrie in an increasingly complex and troubled world.   They are bonafide heroes who dwell within stories that fall in...

The science fiction world lost another great one tonight, as Victor Milan left us. Pneumonia as a complication of myeloma. Dammit. Active since the late 1970s, Vic has  an impressive bibliography  under his own and several other names in a career spanning more than 90 books and 43 years. Winner of the Prometheus Award, Vic divided his time between media tie-ins and original fiction, writing both Star Trek  and dinosaurs, romance and BattleTech. In his own words, he was a cowboy, semi-pro actor, a radio DJ, pizza deliverer, tech support, and oh yeah, a writer. For some reason, I have no problem imagining Vic as a cowboy, and a much harder time imagining him as a pizza boy. He was well-known as a gracious and passionate writer, a gentleman of the first order. He lived in Albuquerque, but returned to our region every year as the perennial emcee of the Archon masquerade - a role he has held as long as I can remember. Faced with cosplay of all kinds and skits both terri...

Our house is more than a century old, and sometimes that shows in weird little design quirks. And I'm not talking about the ghost. Sure, we have electricity, central heat and air (pretty much - holy Hera it's been cold). But most of that stuff was added on much later, and not always in the most logical fashion. For example: There are no overhead lights in the foyer or living room. There's a switch in the foyer, but it turns on the porch light. There is no switch in the living room at all; we use a floor lamp in the corner behind Jim's chair to light the living room. That means when you enter the house after dark, you stand a good chance of walking through darkness for a minute. See, in a normal house you walk in to a foyer, you hit the light switch, the foyer light comes on, and you can proceed from there. In our house, you walk in and fall into a black hole. There's not much in the way of streetlights on our block - which makes me much happier than living und...