I am haunted by geese. Anyone who’s ever been to my alma mater, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, knows that the deer and the geese own the campus and we just borrow it from them. You aren’t a true member of the SIUE family until you’ve been chased by an angry goose. For the freshmen, that…
Tag: patreon
Wait, where is February going?
Happy almost Valentine’s Day! Somehow I blinked, and it was Feb. 11 and I hadn’t sent out a newsletter yet. Who’s running this show? Those responsible will be sacked – oh yeah, that was me. As you can tell by the seriously-delayed newsletter, the semester is rolling. Three of my four classes are working on…
2025 in review
Hey look! It’s another rundown of books and movies from 2025! I know, we’re all thoroughly sick of these lists. But I find it helpful to look back over a year and consider what was good and not-so-good, even in a year as variegated as this one. Let’s start with the books… Fiction: • Probably…
It’s beginning to look a lot like December!
December is always a blessing. The semester is coming to an end and the light at the end of the tunnel may or may not be an oncoming train. I decided to make it a light holiday season and only booked one signing for December. There’s always plenty to be done: digging out the office,…
October-November Linkspam
October was a blast, or at least it must have been, because I hardly remember it! Somehow each year there’s a month that just sort of disappears in a melee of overbookedness, and it’s usually October. That’s why you’re getting two months’ worth of schtuff at once! This is my favorite time of the year. I…
February 2025 Linkspam: Are ya feeling WEIRD?
You know what’s fun? Spending an hour writing your newsletter copy, only for a glitch to eat the whole thing. That kind of fits with how things are going these days, doesn’t it? Pretty WEIRD… I know the world is burning down and reading your Facebook feed is enough to leave you hyperventilating into…
September Linkspam: It’s in the syllabus
Holy late newsletters, Batman! Remember when I told you folks that I was a tad overcommitted for the fall? I wasn’t kidding. I ended up with nine classes at three universities for the fall, and that’s at least three to four more classes than any sane person should try to teach and four to five…
June 2024 Linkspam
With the spring conferences done and the summer tour looming, it’s been kind of quiet here in the Tower. I’ve enjoyed this uncharacteristic spell of Not Traveling, being able to settle in and bake things and write things and… cough my lungs out? Stupid bronchitis. This is why we can’t have nice things. Fortunately that’s…
March 2024 Linkspam: Return to the swamp
In the late 2000s, I wrote a media tie-in novel titled Dreadmire. It was a dark fantasy adventure tied to a d20 RPG published by Spellbinder Games, sourcebook by Randy Richards. The medievalesque high fantasy Randy created was inspired by the ecology and culture of the Louisiana bayous, and I found it a fascinating setting. I…
September 2023 linkspam
The image above was a sign on the wall of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta, one of the five host hotels for Dragoncon. I was delighted to return to Dragoncon after an absence of eight years, which was just long enough to remember where the food court is, and completely forget which level you…