category / Fiction
Welcome to the Bitch Bubble—Lauren Dixon’s debut short story collection—danced, stalked, frolicked, and spirited through my imagination like a burning yeti streaking through a forest. These sixteen stories gripped me with their kinetic energy and emotional range. Sheela-na-gig in a convent, a yeti wrestling with luchadors, an NFL running back with a...
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisen is an urban fantasy thrill-ride with big social justice heart and a plot that symbolically resonates with current events—the current occupant of the White House, alt-right, and Black Lives Matter. The City We Became is a wonderfully plotted, edge-of-your-seat page-turner. Brooklyn, Bronca, Padmini, and...
The Devourers by Indra Das engages on many levels and resists easy definition. You might read several different synopses of The Devourers and wonder if the reviewers hadn’t mistakenly read different novels; there’s good reason for this—Das’s novel is intricate, unpredictable, and complex. Layers of narrative peel back like an...
Nearly six months ago, I embarked on the most fantastic journey of my life: Clarion West—the intensive speculative writing program in Seattle. After six weeks of living with my fellow students and our instructors, I came home and began writing a blog about it. My first attempt was a summary...
WARNING: Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones is not just a novel about werewolves, it is an actual werewolf. You will see it resting placidly on a shelf at your local book pound. Sure it has sharp teeth, but they are smiling, no? The teeth are red, but you tell yourself...
Diversity panels at genre conventions have on occasion become flashpoints or provided fodder for later controversy, and I regret to say that I’ve read of more bad experiences at these panels than good ones. However, I believe this stems from our inherent nature not to comment on things when...
Medusa’s Web by Tim Powers is an intricately woven and intriguing tale in which Powers revisits time travel—a plot device he’d explored in The Anubis Gates. The time travel in this newer work, however, has no similarities to his previous novel. In fact, the time travel in Medusa’s Web is...
Lately I’ve been trying to map out all of the nearby trails that surround St. George; below is my trail map of the western segment of St. George. I’m at the point where I’ve hiked most of the main, marked and named trails and I’m off exploring “new” trails that...
It’s been an incredible couple of weeks! Workshop Director Neile Graham called to let me know I’ve been accepted into Clarion West Writers Workshop, Class of 2016. Stunning, earth-quaking news! When I got the call, Neile asked if I had any questions and I asked the first stupid practical thing...
