From “Black Women are the mules of the Earth” to Thriving and Refreshed (Video and commentary)“In this empowering video, we challenge the narrative that has long portrayed Black women as the "mules of the Earth.” We explore the rich, vibrant lives of Black women who are thriving, not just surviving. Join us as we share inspiring stories, celebrate resilience, and discuss the importance of self-love, community support, and unapologetic joy. Together, we can shift the dialogue and uplift each…

Gail Simone and company's story from the Summer of Supergirl anthology—which was collected in Supergirl Vol. 2: Hometown Horrors, a trade I reviewed in this column—was about the first meeting of the current version of Supergirl and the current version of Mary Marvel. Reading it made me curious about a previous story about the first meeting of a different version of Supergirl and a different version of Mary Marvel, 1997's Supergirl Plus. There weren't all that many Plus books, but I thought they…

{We continue with our fortnightly serial epic of the early years of the Beaten Generation. Please enjoy responsibly if at all…}They came to the end of the hall and to a door on which was painted in cursive gilt letters: W.C.Livingston pushed open the door and gestured for Harry to go first, and Harry did, entering a spacious lavatory of marble and granite, porcelain and dark wood, and at the head of a row of sinks to the left a tiny old Negro man in a white jacket sat on a stool reading a…

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. ***I think we all remember the joke that went, "Mississippi is a very long word but can you spell it?"And we never needed that joke more than we did, this week in 1976.That's because seizing the top spot on the UK singles chart was none other than Mississippi by Pussycat. How well I remember the video that went with that one.But what of the accompanying album chart?Its pinnacle was still…

What was it? A short story entitled “Alien Animal Encounters,” which I sold to Strange Horizons magazine, and which they published on this day in 2001. Prior to this story, I had never submitted a short story of any sort (much less a science fiction short story) to any publication. I had written short stories in high school and one in college (although that one was actually half written in high school, finished in college), and then after that there was a long dry spell for years until this…

Not gonna lie: I’m jealous of Kurt’s new stereo system.

After reading one of H. Bedford-Jones‘s series dealing with a Denis Burke in a volume from Steeger Books titled Invitation to a Crime, I read a series dealing with another Denis Burke: Buccaneer Blood. Unlike the first one, this one is set around 1702 and deals mainly with buccaneers (or pirates) in the Caribbean. Oh, […]

The heraldry section now has a complete transcription of Gerard Legh’s Accedence of Armorie, the 1597 edition, from the title page to the colophon. All 308 of its woodcut coats of arms are reproduced alongside the text. It is the longest single primary source on the site, and it took a good deal longer than I expected to get it there. The title page of the 1597 edition, set within an allegorical border. What the book is The Accedence of Armorie is Gerard Legh’s only work, and by J. P. Cooper’s…

You know, as you do. The article is a list of science fiction monster novels (or at least, science fiction novels with monsters in them), staring with the early 19th century and going through to earlier this year. Yes, I tried to do a full survey of the science fictional landscape with this one. Some of them are significant, some of them are ones I like, and at least one of them is a novel I don’t necessarily think is great, but is a hell of a vibe. If you go over to read the article (that’s a…

Inventing the Renaissance was my “big book” of the year, ⊕ [Note: Some other Big Books I enjoyed: “The Power Broker” (2015, before I was regularly writing about them), The Three Body Problem series (2017), The Dawn of Everything (2021, closest to “Inventing the Renaissance” in message and style), Goedel, Escher, Bach (2022), and Ada Palmer’s own Terra Ignota series (2024-25). ] and I could not have picked a worse time to start it: changing jobs, moving accross country, an infant at home. It is…

At the recent Letterheads meet in Amsterdam I interviewed Morgane Côme about her Letterform Archive book, Lettres Décoratives. Those in attendance were also treated to a sneak peak of her second book, La peinture en lettres, Histoire & Renouveau (Sign Painting: History & Revival). As her personal ‘Tour de France’ (Le Festival) to celebrate the book’s publication continues, Morgane took some time out to talk to me about her journey bringing it to fruition.Morgane Côme talking about Lettres…

A messenger came to Lady of Rain on behalf of the Children. The Wasting Slumber also affected all other Children’s People. The messenger asked for Lady of Rain to gather some of her folk. Then they should travel from whence they first came down from the Only Mountain. At the First Meal’s site they would all gather and share a meal once again. All Children must come except Hand and Knife, the villain they must discuss. Lady of Rain took some people with her. They journeyed to the mountain. She…

★★★☆: Loved the premise, enjoyed the execution. Fight scenes felt long and too beholden to the rhythm of attack-rebuttal-etc. But it moved along nicely and certainly kept the audience on their toes. First half was stronger than the second. FYI: My reviews are scored out of 4. Also, thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed and supporting the indie web!

“Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire?” | Marcellus the Octopus, Remarkably Bright Creatures Marcellus has a collection of beautiful observations about humans in this well-told story. This was one of my favorites.

upsilon The Greek alphabet grid series continues with upsilon. You don't really see this letter used much, and I could see how it would get confused for epsilon. But every letter in the alphabet has its place, popularity aside. Give this puzzle a solve, and enjoy!

I thought I could relax. My next book, The Demon's Peace, releases on 27 October. Then I showed the cover to people, and they hated it. They hought it looked like a romance novel, when it’s anything but. Here's the old one: I commissioned a new cover with a dark fantasy focus. Darkness, I emphasized. People must be able to look at it and immediately know it’s a dark fantasy book! And here it is below.... What do you think? And what's it about? I've been pitching it as Ride or Die, with demons,…

My Mom (Daisy Schwartz Burk, 1919-1981) had a lot of first cousins because both of her parents had a lot of brothers and sisters. On her Schwartz side, one of her first cousins in New York was Burton S. Wirtschafter (1914-1966), who sadly was lost to cancer on this day 60 years ago. Burton was the only son of Mary Schwartz Wirtschafter and Edward Avram Wirtschafter. He was a respected leader in the American handbag industry and very active in community affairs.Redoing my newspaper research, I…

Very pleased to announce three new titles from Materials, now available for pre-order from http://material-s.blogspot.com/.They are: —The Eye and the Night, by Abdellatif Laâbi, translated and with a foreword by Howard Slater, with an introduction by scholar Khalid Lyamlahy, a glossary, and Abdellatif Laâbi’s original afterword to the 1982 edition. (We’ve been working on this book, Abdellatif Laâbi’s “literary birth certificate”, for the past three years, so I’m especially pleased to announce…

Published a new Digital Snippet for AV Club: Human-instrument control surfaces

Translated from Japanese into Dutch by Luk Van Haute. It's not available in English yet, but I'm sure it's coming some day soon! The Dutch title, literally translated, would be 'to birth and to murder'. I wonder what the English title will be. The Birth Murder? Birth and Murder? Murderous Birth? Imagine a world where you could commit murder legally. Simply birth ten living children and you'll gain the right to murder anyone you'd like, fully state-sponsored and without any consequences. Or…

My recent piece for the I newspaper I’ve read hundreds of books about the royals – these are the 11 best has been tremendously productive for the blog. It led me to find out more about Barbara Cartland, producing two more posts and huge interest from my lovely readers. It was generally a most enjoyable project, though as I was keeping up with the latest royal news, the King and Diana’s brother having the same name, Charles obv, was occasionally confusing in the reading. Bad planning. The list…

When you’re in a relationship with someone, treating sex as a hobby that you enjoy together is a fabulous way to maintain connection and keep things interesting – I believe this very strongly and I know I bang on about it a lot here. Rarely do I get such a perfect, horny, beautiful example of […] The post Guest blog: Why I write porn for my wife appeared first on Girl on the Net.

As we go into our Club weeks, I always have a pile of possibles drawn from the TBR which I hope to choose from for my reading. However, despite having many, many options, I realised when looking through online lists of books published in 1949 that there was a title by a particular favourite of mine which I didn’t actually own… The ones of his which are missing from my collection can often be quite expensive, so I had a nervous browse online, and to my delight I was able to find a reasonably…

On several occasions in recent months, I’ve looked at the aesthetic side of Japanese literature during the interwar period, but as some of you may know, a very different style of writing also rose to prominence at this time. The years between 1925 and 1935 were known as the ‘red decade’, with proletarian literature rising gloriously before being brutally stamped out as the country turned once again towards militarism. Out of all the writers engaged in this endeavour, one man stood out, and one…

It might seem a little early to be reading a Christmas-set mystery, but I figured it might be useful to share my thoughts on this book (especially given how good it is) ahead of the Christmas season, so folks have time to buy it. I have a few more Christmas-set mysteries coming up in November for my Patreon supporters, so by the end of that month I will have a few more titles to add to my ever-growing ranked list of Christmas mysteries. I really enjoyed the other title that I read by Jonathan…

We think Titus Lucretius Carus died on this date, October 15, in 55 B.C. at roughly age forty-four. We know he wrote the philosophical poem De rerum natura, usually translated On the Nature of Things. Though read less often than other Roman poets, Lucretius can be traced in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, George Santayana, Wallace Stevens and Guy Davenport. I’ve stumbled on him again while reading The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology, ed b Primo Levi…

14 Lady | INDEX | 16 Gangly Self-imposed constraint: Use the letters of the prompt word inside a 2-inch square to illustrate its meaning. Hongdian Black Forest fountain pen, EF, black ink on 120 gsm paper.

The Melburys – Bill, Susan, and their mother – have been living in a crowded London flat until Mrs. Melbury’s Cousin Fay dies and unexpectedly leaves her a cottage in Cumberland, in the Lake District. There’s a catch: they must live there for five years running or it will be sold and Fay’s son would get the proceeds. Bill has just made his school’s second team (Rugby? Cricket?) but swallows his disappointment, and he and Susan encourage their mother to make the move, which happens quickly. Read…

In my last post, I described some of my prep for a Chronicles of Darkness / Fate Core game about ghosts, necromancers, and the use of history for political ends. The players gave me permission to share their notes, so here they are. I'm not sure how much sense they'll make to you, but maybe you can reconstruct something between the notes, the prep, and the posts associated with it? At least, maybe you'll be able to extract something useful for your own games. Source: Massimiliano Sarno, 2022…

As my long time readers might recall, I’m a Boris Karloff fan, and lately I’ve been rewatching Colonel March of Scotland Yard (1955-56), an old British TV series starring Karloff as Colonel March. The other night, I got to the episode “Present Tense.” In the episode, Colonel March comes to check on his widowed niece, Emily, whose late husband died in a plane crash right before her eyes. But Emily doesn’t seem to believe that husband Ernest is gone, going so far as to talk about him in the…