The journal

May 15, 2018 · 273 words

Grumbling

So my innards are grumbling, and I expect the next few hours won’t be any fun at all. I’m doing my prep for tomorrow’s colonoscopy. You have my permission not to envy me. I’m mentioning this not to elicit sympathy— because there is none on the Internet— but to remind those of you of a […]

May 14, 2018 · 29 words

A Mythical Beast

A statue of a unicorn eating a lily, across the road from the James Thurber House. Here’s a link to the story, in case you’ve never read it.

May 10, 2018 · 319 words

Hello, Columbus

I am in Columbus. The one in Ohio, not the one in New Mexico that Pancho Villa attacked, or the one in Indiana, or the one in Georgia; and certainly not the Columbus City in Iowa, or the Columbus City in Alabama. (If Columbus founded any more cities in North America, I’m unaware of them.) […]

May 7, 2018 · 526 words

Archivum Secretum

The Vatican Secret Archives houses 53 linear miles of documents going back 12 centuries, much of it handwritten in Latin using archaic script. It’s not Secret, exactly, it’s just inaccessible, because in order to look at one of the documents you actually have to be there, in the Vatican, along with your knowledge of La

May 4, 2018 · 28 words

Ice Flows

A video taken a couple weeks ago in my home town of Duluth. Kind of hypnotic, no? I remember stuff like this from when I was a kid.

May 4, 2018 · 172 words

Crawling

I few nights ago, I woke from a really scary nightmare. I don’t remember the dream at all, which is a shame, because judging from my reaction to it, it would have made an excellent premise for a fright film. At any rate, I woke very suddenly, with my heart pounding and my eyes wide […]

April 29, 2018 · 1,061 words

Something About Cabell

I have lately been revisiting the works of James Branch Cabell. (rhymes, by the way, with “rabble”) Insofar as Cabell is remembered these days, it’s as a writer of fantasy fiction. The best of his fantasies were reprinted in the Sixties as part of Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy Series, which is where I found him when [&hel

April 26, 2018 · 83 words

Double News Day

So a big box of proofs for The Accidental War arrived on my doorstep today. Looks very action-y, doesn’t it? The Accidental War will be released in September, but it’s already available for preorder at your favorite book venue. Since I got a whole box of them, I’ll probably be running a contest shortly. Stay tuned. Els

April 25, 2018 · 0 words

Stuff I Found in the Sky Tonight

April 21, 2018 · 403 words

No Dreck

Some days you get lucky, and you turn on the TV and find something you’ve absolutely always wanted to see. This happened to me on Wednesday, when I watched the second episode of Season Three of The Expanse. The episode was written by James S.A. Corey themselves, and the climax featured a space battle between Rocinante

April 18, 2018 · 139 words

Artificial Reality

Here’s tonight’s crescent moon, with Venus in the lower right corner. Venus is red because she’s close to the horizon. This is actually Photoshopped. The reason it’s Photoshopped is that my new Canon hardly ever manages to focus properly on a distant object sitting in the sky. If only I could focus manually . . [&helli

April 17, 2018 · 535 words

News from the North

Last year’s discovery of a tomb beneath the restored Church of St. Nicholas in Demre, Turkey, may yet produce the body of St. Nick himself, and settle whether Santa is buried in Turkey, or in Ireland (which claims it), or in Italy, where Venice and Bari both claim his body,(or maybe just parts thereof). But this [&hell