Who are the Melungeons, and where did they come from?

My upcoming novel The Hum and the Shiver posits a secret, isolated race of people living in the middle of modern-day Appalachia.  They have a distinctive physical look, very different from those around them.  They hide in plain sight, using the standard Southern tactics of politeness and misdirection to deflect queries about themselves.  I call them the Tufa.  They’re entirely, totally … Read More

The Strange Case of the Inadvertent Exorcism

It’s no secret that The Sword-Edged Blonde, the first Eddie LaCrosse novel (and my first novel, period), was inspired in part by the Fleetwood Mac song “Rhiannon.”  I was twelve when the song was released, and since I grew up in the era of rock-oriented FM radio, I heard it a lot.  And it never failed to captivate me.  Remember, … Read More

Meg Coburn, the forgotten action heroine

I love action heroines.  I’ve even put one in my next Eddie LaCrosse novel, Wake of the Bloody Angel.  But my standards require, if not strict adherence, at least lip service to the laws of the natural world.  That negates the whole concept of the “ass-kicking sprite,” wherein a tiny female character suddenly has the ability to overpower people (usually … Read More

Love, revenge, and Conan: what’s my motivation?

So there’s a new Conan the Barbarian movie.  And, if the previews are any indication, Conan spends the movie on a quest for revenge against the villain(s) who destroyed his village and murdered his family. I won’t go into how many ways this deviates from the original Robert E. Howard character (short answer: a lot). Instead, it got me thinking … Read More

Torchwood: For grownups, but not by them

[frame align=”left”] Captain Jack Harkness, who is VERY pleased to meet you. [/frame] As part of our immersion into the universe of Doctor Who, the management staff at Chez Bledsoe has been watching the first season of Torchwood. Basically an English (well, Welsh) version of The X-Files, it’s about a super-secret team who deal with otherworldly and paranormal dangers that beset contemporary … Read More

Genre respect and the NYT

It’s an ongoing issue that genre fiction–mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror–is somehow less important than so-called “literary” fiction. That involves forgetting that in many cases the disposable genre fiction of yesterday (Jules Verne, HG Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, Louis L’Amour, Jack London, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler) has become the acknowledged classics of today. Still, it’s frustrating to … Read More

Age ain’t nothin’ but a…problem

In a recent Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Alter talked about the dangers of having your literary characters, especially detectives, age in real time. She cites several examples of authors allowing their characters to develop the infirmities and declines that come with advancing years, as well as those who freeze their heroes in time so that while the world changes, they … Read More