Author Archives: admin

A Visit to Seattle

Posted on August 17, 2025 by admin

Donna and I have done the math, and it seems that we’ve traveled to more countries than U.S. states. So in an effort to at least equalize this lopsided record of sojourns, we decided to visit the West Coast. Seattle … Continue reading →

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Happy 50th Birthday to Jaws

Posted on July 17, 2025 by admin

Jaws is one of the films that changed my life. No surprise, as it changed cinema itself, became the world’s first blockbuster, and launched the career of Steven Spielberg. JAWS AT 50 is a captivating look at how the classic … Continue reading →

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Why are sequels and prequels usually so terrible?

Posted on June 17, 2025 by admin

Speculative fiction is replete with spinoffs. It’s not a new phenomenon; when King Kong took the world by storm in 1933, the studio cranked out a Part II the very next year. In literature, sequels go back at least to … Continue reading →

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Mad Max and the Art of Worldbuilding

Posted on May 25, 2025 by admin

Characters don’t exist in a void; they live in and are products of a specific world. It could be sixteenth century Venice, a space station perched on the edge of a black hole, Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, 221B … Continue reading →

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Return of the Dire Wolf?

Posted on April 25, 2025 by admin

There are several ironies in this “dire wolf de-extinction” story of recent headlines. The first is that no, we didn’t bring the dire wolf back from extinction.  The scientists at Colossal Biosciences retrieved dire wolf DNA from a pair of … Continue reading →

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A Visit to the Land of Pharaohs

Posted on March 10, 2025 by admin

“Cairo! City of the living!” My first day in the current capital of Egypt has been joy incarnate. Egyptians are super-friendly, helpful, good-humored, and are possibly the best drivers on the planet–traffic rules in Cairo are little more than a … Continue reading →

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H.G. Wells, Knives, and David Lynch

Posted on February 10, 2025 by admin

In September’s post, I announced the sale of a new story for the Shapers of Worlds anthology Volume 5. Today, my contributor copies arrived, containing my story “The Beasts at the End of the World.” This one is a sequel … Continue reading →

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AI and the Efficient Apocalypse

Posted on January 10, 2025 by admin

I just bought my first new computer in a decade, and as I opened up Word to work on a story, a little icon appeared by every paragraph… like a goddam Elder Sign. It was for Microsoft’s AI named Copilot. … Continue reading →

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2024 Year in Review

Posted on December 5, 2024 by admin

In 2024, I spent time in Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and New York. I rode a steamboat on the mighty Mississippi, explored New Orleans from gator swamps to jazz clubs, and stood atop the 14,000-foot summit of Pike’s Peak to watch fights … Continue reading →

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Perdition’s Storm Coming Out from Baen Books

Posted on November 5, 2024 by admin

A couple years ago, I was contracted to write a short story set in John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising zombie universe. That story was “Descent into the Underworld,” and gave a glimpse at what was happening in Italy during the … Continue reading →

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