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Heads Up!!! For today only, Twice the Trouble will be on sale for $1.99 on Amazon Kindle!!! Yes, you read that correctly. $1.99!!! Not even 2 bucks! Cheap!!! Buy it for your ma! Buy it for your pa! Buy it for your Significant Other! Buy it for your ex! Buy it for your Significant Other’s
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I’ve been meaning to post this for a while (sorry, I’m a flake). Marshal Zeringue has (another) really cool web site called The Page 69 Test, where he invites writers to turn to page 69 of their latest book and write about it. It’s actually a lot of fun! Here is my entry (for which
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The 1990s gave us two great, new genres in popular music. The first was Grunge, and the second was Big Beat. I’ve written a lot about the first but hardly anything on the second, even though it represented some of my favorite electronic bands like The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. So, as a small
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I really enjoyed The Hunger Games movies when they came out. Not only were they great examples of dystopian science fiction, but they served as a refresher course in the nature of fascism. The main baddie in the films was, of course, President Snow, played with great menace and understatement by the great Donald Sutherland.
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People love tag-teams. It’s in our nature. Have you noticed that almost every work of epic literature across the world has not one but two main heroes. The Gilgamesh epic has Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The Iliad has Achilles and Odysseus. The Authurian legends have Arthur and Lancelot. DC has Superman and Batman. In all of
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How often do you see a mainstream, broadcast news interview that covers so many nerd-worthy topics? This one has astronomy professor Janna Levin discussing Dyson Spheres, alien civilizations, sci-fi writer Olaf Stapledon, and Freeman Dyson himself. Very few writers in history have had as big an influence on my imagination as Freeman Dyson. Not only
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When I was an English major at the University of Florida, one of the best classes I took was a Survey of Science Fiction Literature course. It covered a lot of famous American and British SF, some of which I had already read as a teenager and some of which were new to me. Looking
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I just watched a great inteview by Rick Beato of Ed Roland, the lead singer and mastermind of Collective Soul. I enjoyed the interview so much that I decided to re-post an essay I wrote on my old blog some years ago for my on-going “Battle of the Bands” series. Enjoy…! The 1990s were a
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Once again, the title of this series, “Friday Night Rock-Out” is a total misnomer. This week, it’s a Friday Night Rap-Out. Or, more accurately (but more awkwardly), a Friday Night Hip-Hop. Hip-hop is, of course, the musical genre most closely associated with the African-American, inner-city youth experience. But a lot of great hip-hop comes from
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In the past decade or so, it’s become fashionable to talk about creativity as the result of freedom, relaxation, and “flow”—that ineffable point where the artist connects with the sources of inspiration deep within the human soul. I, for one, believe in this idea. Art is really about connecting with the spiritual subconscious, and all
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Ash Clifton, Writer 