Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
Chandler on Speed Limits
A few nights ago Isaac and I had a treat and watched the film "Double Indemnity" again–our second time, although Isaac claims not to remember the first. I remembered liking it but I'd forgotten just how good I thought it was. You'll recall that this is Billy Wilder's trend-setting film noir, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred [...]
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Stories Old & New
Some of my stories have been published lately and I thought I'd mention them. Two of them are reprints; one has not been previously published. Let's start with Bi Guys: The Deliciousness of His Sex, R. Jackson, editor, just published by Lethe Press. In 2004 I wrote the story "Duck Tails [...]
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Philip Pullman, Happily Offensive
It seems that Philip Pullman has written a new book published with the title The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. In this short video, recorded at an event at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on 28 March 2010, he responds to a man in the audience who says that, as a christian he finds [...]
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Lammy Finalists for 2010
The finalists for this year's Lambda Literary Foundation awards ("Lammys"), the 22nd annual event, were announced recently; winners will be announced on 27 May. I am delighted to report that I am again nominated for about 7% of a Lammy. My memoir, "Tom Selleck's Mustache" (written under my usual nom de plume, Jay Neal), is [...]
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Don't "Build to a Crescendo"
While I'm feeling a little peevish about things publishable, I want to talk for a moment to all those authors who want to be dramatic and write that something "built to a crescendo" — and those editors who edit them. Don't write it. Ask your musician friends first what this musical term means. The "crescendo" [...]
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The Cubby House & "A Bedtime Story"
In February I was happy to report ("The Cubby House & 'A Returning Appetite' ") on a presentation in The Cubby House (their Facebook profile) podcast of an excellent reading of my earliest published story "A Returning Appetite" (by Jay Neal, my nom de porn). Well, I have more happiness to report. The cubs from [...]
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The Cubby House & "A Returning Appetite"
I"m very excited. Jay Neal, my fiction-writing alter-ego, has had his first radio-drama experience–sort of–and it's pretty cool. Near the beginning of the year I got an email from a new friend named Jack, who had the following to say: I am one of the creators from the podcast "The Cubby House". The Cubby House [...]
Share on FacebookWho Knows Your Car Best?
Here are two tips from a list of ten to help us get along with our cars better: 2) Learn your service schedule. The people who built your car know it best. 8) Listen for any strange sounds or vibrations. You know your vehicle better than anyone. [Trevor Traina, "Easy Ways to Get More from [...]
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On Reading Wood's How Fiction Works
I recently read How Fiction Works, by James Wood (Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, 265 pages). It was a surprisingly rewarding book to have read, so I wanted to tell you about it and quote a few passages. Like, I suspect, many writers of fiction do, I occasionally succumb to reading yet another book about [...]
Share on Facebook"Waking Up Bear"
A couple of days ago in the mail I got my two contributors' copies of the new anthology Bears, edited by Richard Labonté (Cleis Press, August 2008). Before you order your copy I'll remind you that this anthology is a collection of gay erotica, and the subject is bearish men, about whom I like to [...]
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Remembering a Story
A week ago I finished a short story, the first fiction I'd written since my father died late last December. The story is called "The Last Night at Nan's Han-N-Egger". Oddly, for me at least, there are no gay men in the story (so far as we know) and there is no sex. There is [...]
Share on FacebookContinuity 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 [...]
Share on FacebookBest 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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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, [...]
Share on FacebookScience-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 [...]
Share on FacebookWord 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 [...]
Share on FacebookThe 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 [...]
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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 [...]
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