Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,174 entries, all of them here in full.
June 13, 2023 · 134 words
Kanteles
Five kanteles! Four players! Lots of gorgeous harmony! Tonight’s diversion was Kardemimmit (“Cardamom,” I think), a four-girl ensemble from Finland. They began playing together around the age of 10, when the head of their music academy suggested they start a band, and now 23 years later they come to New Mexico. (Doubtl
Read entry →June 12, 2023 · 824 words
Akragas
Leaving the Bougainville in the harbor of Porto Empedocle, we headed up the hill to Agrigento, which in its heyday was known as Akragas, after one of the rivers that ran past the town. In Akragas’ glory years in the 5th Century BCE, the city gobbled its neighbors, controlled the middle section of Sicily, held […
Read entry →June 10, 2023 · 154 words
Price Rise Coming
On June 20, Amazon is raising the fees they charge for putting books in print. Which means that, if I want to continue making my pittance on print books, I’ll have to raise my retail price on the four books I have in print from Amazon: Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind, Angel Station, and Investments […]
Read entry →June 6, 2023 · 755 words
Ponant
So there came the morning when Kathy tested positive for COVID, followed by a frantic hour that resulted in our separation for nearly two weeks. I went off on the trip without her, and she was condemned to days and days of coughing, confinement, and hotel food. My digs were rather more posh, and the […]
Read entry →May 31, 2023 · 604 words
Gastronomy
There are a surprisingly large number of Michelin-starred restaurants on Malta. Despite my devotion to gastronomy, I’d never eaten at a restaurant with a Michelin star, and I thought it was about time I did. So even though I knew that Kathy and I were going to be facing a week of very large and […]
Read entry →May 30, 2023 · 85 words
Launch Day!
A new audiobook launches today! The Praxis Triad consists of all the short fiction from my Praxis series, read by the dulcet Stefan Rudnicki. Because the stories were published by different publishers they’ll never be together in print, but here they are together in audio format. And Impersonations isn’t even short fic
Read entry →May 29, 2023 · 868 words
The Beginning of History
So now we get to the chief reason I wanted to go to Malta in the first place: to view the gigantic stone monuments found on the island. There is nothing like them anywhere else. They were built out of the local limestone roughly 3500-2500 BCE— before the Pyramids, before Stonehenge. They are right smack […
Read entry →May 27, 2023 · 582 words
Co-Cathedral
A sight of St. John’s cathedral in Valetta is enough to sear the eyes right out of your skull. The style adopted for the interior was Go-For-Baroque, with enough gold, marble, and brilliant color to rival a fever dream of John of Patmos (as opposed to John the Baptist, for whom the cathedral is actually […]
Read entry →May 26, 2023 · 815 words
Behind the Walls
First, an update. Kathy’s finally come home after 13 days in COVID jail in a hotel room in Malta. And I’ve got a cold, which tests insist isn’t COVID, so two cheers for me. But enough of the depressing stuff. Let’s talk about the good things. We spent a few days on Malta before Kathy […]
Read entry →May 25, 2023 · 111 words
Well Damn
The world has lost Tina Turner. She had a career that lasted over 50 years and even in the new millennium she was still one of the hardest-working acts in the business. (She danced for how many hours? And in those heels?) Here she is at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, […]
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