(The title quote is from Frank Lloyd Wright.) Recently I’ve read two books that put me in a surprising critical and moral quandary. Both were well-written, clever novels in the “urban fantasy/paranormal romance” genre. Both featured assorted supernatural creatures (vampires, werewolves, ghosts, etc.) with which the female protagonist was emotionally and physically involved. Both involved the triumph of good over evil … Read More
Review: Heart of Iron
Ekaterina Sedia’s Heart of Iron is the latest from a novelist who embraces genre–in this case both steampunk and alternate history–but brings a full-on literary sensibility to them. This, her fifth novel, posits a Russia where the 1825 Decembrist revolution succeeded (read about that history here) and the new emperor sets about modernizing Russia with a vengeance. But people … Read More
The return of Sir Francis Colby
For Halloween, I thought I’d tell you the story behind my latest foray in the horror genre. When I decided to write my first vampire novel, Blood Groove, I had a problem. Its name was Count Dracula. As the gold standard of vampires, his cape cast a very long shadow. Every literary vampire, from Lestat to Edward Cullen, is measured … Read More
Guest blog: Alana Joli Abbott
Today’s post is by Alana Joli Abbott, a fellow contributor to Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror. Here she talks about the origin of her story, “Missing Molly.” *** One of my jobs, when I worked at the reference desk at my local public library, was to scan the local newspapers for articles about our town to clip and put … Read More
Interview: Tim Hall, writer of The Last Mortician
Recently Tor.com premiered The Last Mortician, a comic written by my friend Tim Hall (author of Half Empty; see my review here) and illustrated by Dean Haspiel. You can learn more about its creation in this video, but I wanted to ask Tim some specific things about the story, which will involve spoilers. So we’ll wait while you go read … Read More
Guest blog: Dale Short on the music of the South
Dale Short is the author of Turbo’s Very Life and The Shining Shining Path, and the host of “Music from Home,” which airs on Oldies 101.5 in Jasper, AL and is archived here. I was born in the middle of the woods near a coal-mining town in northern Alabama, and I grew up in church. Literally. Seeing as everyone in … 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
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
A free market of idiots
I’m enough of an ex-journalist that I’ve read with interest about Britain’s scandal-plagued scandal sheet News of the World. Short version: to feed its tabloid readership, the paper hacked into the e-mails, phones and private records of politicians and celebrities, to great financial success. So far so good, but then they broke into the voice mail of a murdered teenage … Read More