Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • A quick hello during a busy season

    I am sorry to have been so silent. In between summer travels with family, all my projects have been in construction phases, and I don’t like vague-posting. But, news. I have several author events scheduled for this fall. You can find me at: The Fredericksburg Independent Book Festival, Fredericksburg, VA, Sat Sep 23 YABBAFest, Warrenton,…

  • Hello Florida Supercon – goodbye wonderful Raleigh!

    Hope to see you this coming weekend, July 27-30, at Florida Supercon in Fort Lauderdale, FL. I’ll be at the Bard’s Tower booth all four days of the con with Kevin J. Anderson, Josh Vogt, Kevin Ikenberry, Keith DeCandido, and J Scott Savage. I have one scheduled panel, on using real world experiences in fiction, at…

  • Hello Connecticon 2017 – and thanks!

    Tonight I fly north to Hartford, CT, to join the Bard’s Tower booth opening Friday at Connecticon. It’s the first of three cons I’m doing in July at Bard’s Tower, with other fantastic writers. Cons are intense, by design, and they’re also long days standing on concrete. Three cons in four weekends is a heavy…

  • New Demon trading cards!

    New Demon trading cards!

    As a promotion on social media for The Demon in Business Class, I created a virtual trading card deck. For cons, I printed card versions of the nine character pictures. They were done as a last-minute inspiration, made by shoving the cards’ original Instagram proportions into a business card template on Moo.com, the excellent online…

  • The Inner Loop reading series

    I had a great evening under twilit stars – and frequent, seemingly aimless helicopters –  with The Inner Loop, a monthly DC reading series for poetry, fiction and non-fiction writers, at Colony Club. The headliner was Jennifer Atkinson, a poet drawn to human disaster, with readings by Joel Goldberg, Matthew Moniz, Alyssa Oursler, Alex Aronovich,…

  • Washington DC reading! April 23 2017

    If you’re in the DC/MD/VA area, come to my Sunday April 23 book talk and reading at Soapstone Market in northwest DC! It’s a benefit for the local DC news site ForestHillsConnection.com – and the venue has fine coffee and good beer. Here’s the flyer –

  • Moorcock’s heir, Gregory D Little (review)

    It’s an article of nerd faith that, before Peter Jackson filmed it with pretty people, the weird kids read The Lord of the Rings. I was a weird kid, to be sure, and I read it. Half. I bogged down at the Ents, skipped ahead to Shelob, and then straight to Mount Doom. None of…

  • Sexual tension in fiction

    My guest post for the Fictorians, a site on writing fiction, discusses sexual tension and its different roles in different stories. It’s part of the Fictorians’ month-long Tension series. Read it at:  http://www.fictorians.com/2017/02/24/sexual-tension-in-fiction/

  • Sticking to my knitting (opinions)

    As Facebook gently reminded me — my professional media have been stale. It was less a writer’s block than a blind alley. Perhaps others will find my thinking instructive. Like everybody, I have opinions about the world, and in these contentious times, it’s very tempting to share them. Everyone else is, and I talk prettier than…

  • Love your pile of words (first drafts)

    I love my current first draft. This is a shocking and unfashionable thing to say. Everyone laments their first draft. It is the shoals of mediocrity on which our dreams founder, or at least so tells every clickbait online writing workshop. Complaining about the horror of that first draft is required. Even really successful and…

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