Archive for November, 2006
Here’s to Gideon, and Gideon, and…his son Gideon..
A Cautionary Tale…
by David Niall Wilson
I used to read books that began with elegant, extravagant endpapers featuring maps, family trees, historical anecdotes, journal entries, or other bits and pieces of the fictional lives of the characters involved. I always enjoyed going over the maps, reading the odd lineage charts and trying as I read [...]
The Peace Of Wild Things
By
Richard Steinberg (pinch hitter deluxe) for Dick Hill
Dick Hill is deeply enwrapped within the preparations for, and the recording of, Thomas Pynchon’s new novel: Against The Day – and rather unwisely has allowed me to fill in for him.
As a writer, not as a reader, so relax; Pynchon’s in great hands. As [...]
Committed
If you write for money, you know what it’s like waiting for the check to arrive. Show of hands from you professionals out there: how many of you are waiting for checks that are very, very late?
Don’t lie, Rick.
I tell you this, if all the cashish that publishers owe me were to arrive in tomorrow’s [...]
Legion
By
Richard Steinberg
“I have no stories to tell but mine own. I am, however, so many characters that I fear it will take many works to tell it,” J.M. Barrie
Do places have a soul?
Is there – within brick and mortar, iron and steel – a divine spark that grants good or evil (whatever they are) [...]
Sprinting, Catching Your Breath, and Further Ruminations on Genre
These words (or at least some of them) are being written somewhere over Oklahoma. 35000 feet or so over Oklahoma, to be precise, but at a certain point, there’s no real point to being picky.
This piece was supposed to be written a week ago. Or possibly two weeks. Maybe a month, if you [...]
Who Will Tell the Children
by Janet Berliner
A few months ago, I promised to write about the story behind the story of CRICHTON-ON-CRICHTON. Since then, after a decade of work and promises, I have received a message via the doctor’s agent: “Michael says he no longer has any interest in the book.” Before writing anything further about it, [...]
What’s What . . .
CAVEAT: I do not ordinarily use profanity in my writing, even as I am a former soldier who well-understands that in certain coarse segments of society, the “F” word is considered the most versatile tool in the English language, capably performing the functions of almost every part of speech. Nor do I intentionally offend any [...]
Hitting the Wall
Yesterday afternoon as I sat down to write today’s Storyteller’s Unplugged, a bit about tenacity and perseverance, I finally hit the wall. This was not unexpected, I’ve felt myself nearing it for a while now. My energy, patience, attention span, and enthusiasm have hit a low they’ve not seen in a long time, [...]
Mysterious Butterflies
By
Richard Steinberg
“The human mind is not capable of grasping the universe. We are like a child entering a huge library . . . The child knows that someone must have written all those books. It does not know who or how,” Albert Einstein
Among the vast dark matter plains of space, galaxies are [...]
Sense of Place
By Jeff Mariotte
I tend to be drawn to fiction with a highly developed sense of place. I want to read authors who can write convincingly about a certain locale or locales, and probably as a result tend to favor those with strong regional associations. Stephen King on Maine (and more recently, John Connolly [...]
