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Christmas came early for me this year! Many thanks to Ms. Oline Cogdill and the good folks at the Sun-Sentinel for putting Twice the Trouble on their Best Mystery Fiction Books of 2024 list! I am very honored.
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One of the coolest classes I took at U.F. was Intro To Astronomy, taught by a funny old German guy named Heinrich Eichorn who, I later learned, was Chair of the Astronomy Department. (Yes, this was back in those quaint old days when top-notch professors had to actually, you know, teach class. And not just…
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Like all great rock bands, U2 has always has always had the ability to reinvent itself. Just when you think it’s completely washed out and finished, the members come up with another great album. They did it in 1991 with Achtung Baby and again in 1994 with How to Assemble an Atomic Bomb. The best…
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Author’s Note: A few days ago I saw that a remake of the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet is in the works. So, I thought I’d repost a short essay I wrote about it some years back on my old blog, Bakhtin’s Cigarettes. Enjoy! The first DVD I bought was Blade Runner. The second was Forbidden Planet. This latter…
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I have a theory about horror novels. The secret to a good horror novel, I think, is not gore, or violence, or even suspense. The secret is empathy. The empathy we, as readers, form for the main characters, and the empathy the main characters feel for each other. This should be obvious, but it’s not.…
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One of my favorite films of all time is Michael Mann’s first feature, 1981’s Thief. That movie was not only the beginning of my life-long love of Mann’s movies, but also with the soundscapes of the German band Tangerine Dream, who composed the score. When I saw the movie, I had never heard of Tangerine…
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Many, many thanks to my friend and fellow mystery writer Alex Kenna for posting this today. It thrilled my heart.
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If you were to ask a music lover to name the most iconic pop band of the 1970s, their answer would probably be The Bee Gees. And they’d be right–mostly. For about three years, The Bee Gees bestrode the world like a collosus, leading the musical and cultural era that was disco. But, for my…
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When I was a public school kid back in the 1980s, I used to spend hours at the bookstore, mostly looking at science fiction books. It wasn’t just the stories themselves that interested me, but the cover art. Back then, before the internet gave one an endless supply of great sci-fi concept art of any…
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Thanks to Ben Fox of Shepherd.com for inviting me to list my favorite three books that I read in 2024 (well, a chunk of 2023 and most 2024).
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Ash Clifton, Writer 