The beginning of 2024 feels like forever ago. Without true seasons to mark time, days blend together in a way that sometimes stretches and sometimes compresses years. If this year has a theme, the one I give it is stories. The stories we tell ourselves and the stories I tell others (or will one day […]
Holy Week encompasses extreme lows as we remember Jesus was beaten and crucified, and the brightest, incomprehensible joys in His resurrection. Herein also lies a fissure between the reality of Jesus and the expectations of humanity. Jesus’ life is well chronicles in the Bible. His humble, miraculous birth to a virgin is told in our […]
SPOILERS ABOUND WITHIN THIS ARTICLE It might be said that one of the reasons Dune is so well loved is that there are enough elements to the story that readers with different interests can enjoy the same story. Director Denis Villeneuve focuses on a number of things in his films including Paul’s reluctance to ascend to power, […]
From time to time a brouhaha stirs up around the idea of what qualifies as a YA book. Generally this begins with the insistence that a true YA book is written for a teen audience, which would seem self-evident. The genre, after all, is Young Adult. And yet… if it were so simple there wouldn’t […]
So, I have done the unexpected, the unconventional, perhaps the unwise but it’s done regardless. I have (sort of) rewritten Tattered Heart. The Long Version (There’s a Short Version you can skip down to, if you don’t want to read all this) Years ago, I mean YEARS ago, I bought a compilation of The Lyra […]
It’s hard to know what to say with Shadow and Bone. Are these lessons in writing? Are they lessons in adaptation? I think they must be a bit of both since there’s only 8 episodes to work with, a popular book to draw from and all sorts of things to say. **there’s like spoilers everywhere […]
Timeless is one of those shows that I misjudged, badly. I saw the previews when it debuted on NBC and didn’t think it looked that interesting or that the characters seemed that compelling. If they’d advertised the auspices of the show I’d probably have given the pilot a chance since I like Shawn Ryan and Eric Kripke […]
NoVaTeen is a book festival put on every year in the DC area by One More Page Books and a couple of county libraries (there’s several counties all clustered together around here). The focus is on YA books and authors and every year it’s a great blend of interesting, serious topics with lighthearted, frivolous fun. […]
The first three minutes of the original Roswell pilot are some of my favorite moments on tv, ever. One scene in BSG also makes the top 5 list, but this is about Roswell. That haunting Sarah McLachlan song, the urgency and intimacy of it all was absolutely captivating when it first aired and it’s never […]
I need to lay some groundwork for The Helion Chronicles because my “science” is probably going to shock some people. There is a great deal of the science in these stories that is absolutely made up. They are science fiction set thousands of years in the future so I didn’t feel the need to make […]