Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
Continuity in Narrative
I've been thinking lately about continuity in narrative, "continuity" rather in the sense it is used in film: what the author narrates to the reader in getting a character from one point in the plot to the next point. I imagine it's been on my mind since I recently finished a novel by an author […]
Best Seller: Worst Writing
As you know, aside from all the science books I write about here, I also read crime fiction, about which I write much less frequently. Last night I finished the collection of short stories called A New Omnibus of Crime, edited by Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert, contributing editors Sue Grafton and Jeffrey Deaver (Oxford […]
In: All, Books, Crime Fiction, Writing
Tortured, Opaque Prose
This morning I read a posting on a blog that began with this sentence. It's amazing how different some people like to perceive themselves as whilst maintaining an utterly normative attitude to life. I'm not attributing it because the author claims to be a writer.* Is it just me or is this about the most […]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Writing
On Not Reading Singh's Fermat's Enigma
For a few days recently I was reading Simon Singh's book, Fermat's Enigma : The Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem (New York : Walker and Company, 1997, 315 pages). However, I stopped reading after about 80 pages. The reason had nothing to do with the subject, which was interesting and developing reasonably […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science, Writing
Celebrating Poetry
Melanie has been reminding me that April in the US is celebrated–by the artsy-fartsy elite, at least–as National Poetry Month. I decided I could celebrate and accomplish some self-promotion at the same time. Now, let me admit that I have some issues–my own personal issues–with poetry. I don't always feel that poetry is my friend, […]
Science-Book Challenge
Melanie, who is a regular visitor here at Bearcastle Blog, writes about books and books that she's read and books that she's going to read at her blog, The Indextrious Reader. A common–shall we say, "characteristic"?–of book lover is excess. Visitors to our home will recognize that we keep what some people would consider and […]
Word Zen
There's one thing I was going to mention in my "Kinsey Report at 60" posting about my story, but I forgot. Sometime back we had a brief discussion about the "AutoSummarize" feature in Word, and how it could be used repeatedly to accomplish a certain poetic effect. Well, I did this with an early draft […]
The Kinsey Report at 60
It was on this date, 5 January in 1948, that W.B. Saunders Co., a medical-textbook publisher in Philadelphia, published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, by Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin. The cover price was $6.50. Exceeding all expectations, The Kinsey Report was a sensation, going through at least 11 […]
In: All, Books, Personal Notebook, Writing
Novel Characters
Last night Isaac and I watched "Farenheit 451", the film byFrançois Truffaut based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. It's a good film even if its attempt to look modern and futuristic looks dated. There has been a small kerfuffle lately with Bradbury saying (again) that the story is not about censorship but about the […]
Pascoe Snorts
I was quite pleased to discover on Monday night (typically "library night" around our house — more on that someday) that the Bowie Library had a copy on its shelves of the latest book by Reginald Hill, because I'm very fond of Reginald Hill's writing, particularly his decades-long series of Dalziel & Pascoe detective novels, […]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book, Writing
Illegal Depictions
Americans particularly seem, as a group, to be really freaky about sex. For some reason it makes them crazy in outrageous, nonlinear ways. Particularly in these days of heated conservatism and religious zealotry the hysteria can mount quickly. Think for a minute about how society responds right now to subjects like pedophilia, rape, and homosexuality, […]
Slather on the Clichés
By the way, when I get around to writing a novel, remind me not to use the word "slather". It always irritates me when I read it. I was reminded of this while reading Laura Lippman's No Good Deeds this morning — she had someone slather peanut butter on a pine cone (but to maintain […]
Researching Porn
I'm not quite sure how it came up — pardon the expression — but I had a conversation today about some of the research I've done for my short fiction. Recall that the stories I publish are directed at an audience of adult, gay men and you may wonder a moment about the type of […]
Lammy Finalists for 2006
The finalists for this year's Lambda Literary Foundation awards ("Lammys") were announced last week on 1 March; winners will be announced on 31 May. My chances of winning about 7% of a Lammy (again!) have increased, nearly doubled in fact, because this year I have stories in two nominated anthologies: my story "Duck Tails and […]
Another Year, Another Report
Here I am with another reason why I've not been writing so much here; it's the usual: I've been toying with your affections and writing elsewhere. This time I was working on the first ever annual report for Ars Hermeneutica, to celebrate our first full month (now two months) of tax-exempt status. The report is […]
In: All, Speaking of Science, Writing
Introducing Euclid
One of the things I was doing last week instead of writing here was writing elsewhere and taking care of some details for Science Besieged, the nascent online project of Ars Hermeneutica. There are a couple of things I might point out. First, Science Besieged has a new mascot: meet Euclid, the crow. I was […]
More Bright Earth
I think I mentioned before that I had recently been reading Philip Ball's Bright Earth : Art and the Invention of Color (New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). Regardless, I've been finishing up my processing of the book, checking my notes, and writing my book note — in this case a rather lengthy […]
Greyhound Tai Chi
The novel that I'm reading right now is Exiles in America, by Christopher Bram. It appears (from halfway through) to be a story about 2 couples composed of 3 men and 1 women, and how they all react when the two men who were not originally a couple have an affair with each other. Both […]
In: All, Books, Such Language!, Writing
His Spaceship
I write to congratulate my friend and former colleague# James Howard, who just had a short story published in the University of Baltimore's annual literary magazine Welter. I could send him a private note, but he's one of my four regular readers and this way everyone else gets to hear about the story. The story […]
Prairie Ayatollahs
This is almost breathtaking, coming* as it does from a small town in my home state of Kansas, a state that's been having some high-visibility troubles lately with religious extremists on its State Board of Education: it's an editorial in The Hutchinson [KS] News called "The Prairie Ayatollahs". It begins this way: Members of the […]