Ancient Logic

In Gilead, the transcendent novel by Marilynn Robinson, a 76 year old man confronts his impending mortality and the sense he cannot provide for his young son after he is gone. He had not expected to meet his son's mother in the twilight of his life, not expected to have a son. If he had, he tells his son in a lengthy letter forming the substance of Robinson's novel, he might have set something by for him. Some sort of savings or investment. It pains him to think that when he is gone, all that he can leave are a few words. What words. As mentioned in a previous post, I set myself on the task (is that really the right word here? maybe endeavor would be better) to read as many of the 'great novels' of this young century as I could. After reading Hillary Mantel's "Wolf Hall-" which was also fantastic by the way - I made my way to Gilead. One of the many quietly strange things about this novel is that it's actually the second novel from Robinson. Her fi...

A new chapter is available for "Agent Shield and Spaceman." In this chapter, Agent Shield decides that he would rather not watch Frankie Two-eyes die in a pit-fight and follows an employee of Thulewaite pharmaceuticals to discover the source of the Burmese Tiger Snake venom. I hope you enjoy the new chapter and feel free to comment or ask a question through this blog.

My web fiction, "Agent Shield and Spaceman" is now listed on Web Fiction Guide , a community-run listing of online fiction. In addition to providing a platform for stories, Web Fiction also features reviews of work. If you have a spare second and you've read a few chapters, please consider adding a review (good, bad, whatever) to the site. As I reach my last week of summer vacation I'm attempting to get as much basic revision done as possible so I can keep this going into the fall. Keep checking back here and on " Agent Shield and Spaceman ," to catch updates! Thanks for reading! Web Fiction Guide (online novels, reviews) Novels Online

I really don't want to spend much more time thinking about this election but with both conventions wrapped up, the moment calls for some comment. I'm voting for Hillary. I doubt this will come as surprise to anyone who's met me or read much of this blog but this isn't even close. I hear those who feel as though they cannot vote for Hillary because their views conflict with hers or they don't trust her or whatever. I find such arguments utterly unmoving. As Bernie himself once said, "On her worst day, Hillary is 1000 times better than Trump." By now, the truth of those words must be obvious to anyone willing to look at the situation with clear eyes. The man has no shame, no sense of decency, and no ability to change. He is what he is. If that was it, and his opponent was some random Democrat I would relish the chance to vote against him. I consider that act to be a powerful affirmation of everything I want this country to be and stand for. But af...

The eleventh chapter is now available over on "Agent Shield and Spaceman." I update this serialized espionage thriller two to three times a week. In today's installment, Frankie Two-Eyes meets with his handler and learns the Section Starfire mission is an offer he cannot refuse. The world of politics is blowing up! Movies are blowing up! There are some many good television shows and they are all blowing up! I'm having trouble prioritizing today and I really do have some work to get done so I'm going to try an inoculate myself with a blog post on...POLITICS! First off, the one thing I was willing to cede to Trump was that he knows how to put on a show. I figured that with his years of monetizing spectacles, he would know how to create an epic convention for himself. I resigned myself to a massive post-convention bump that would send all of the talking heads scurrying for a thesaurus to find different ways of writing "Clinton Campaign in Trouble." ...

The next chapter for my ongoing web fiction "Agent Shield and Spaceman" is now available . I am currently reading Alastair Reynold's "Chasm City," a follow-up to "Revelation Space," a cyberpunk space opera I enjoyed very much when I read it nearly a decade ago. I'm also enjoying "Chasm City," as it contains much of what I suspect earned Reynold's his reputation. Although he paints on a very large canvas, he is very economical in his writing. He skillfully focuses on the perspective of a single highly motivated character, for example, rather than rope in a large number of extra characters right of the bat. He also employs an interesting technique to get some other perspectives in what is essentially a first person perspective: infectious spiritual memories. Lastly, knowing what I do about the hellscape the book is ultimately destined to describe, I respect the patient and methodical approach Reynold uses in world building. No concept...

The fourth chapter of "Agent Shield and Spaceman" is now available ! If you are just discovering this web fiction, you can start the story at the beginning, here . The basic idea for this story comes from a role-playing campaign I wrapped up nearly a decade ago. The novel itself bears some resemblance to the first story arc of that campaign, which my friends and I referred to as simply, "Super Spies," but it has enough differences that I wouldn't describe it as a play report or anything like that. Initially, I wanted to release this story as a kind of podcast but ran out of free time once I got my current day job, working as a history teacher. After discovering the original manuscript at the bottom recesses of my hard-drive, so to speak, I decided it deserved a chance to find a few readers. I will confess to some conflicting feelings regarding this project. I believe in the work and feel proud of what I was able to achieve back then. I also think this piec...

The third chapter of Agent Shield and Spaceman is now available! The action now shifts to Marcus Delacroix, AKA Agent Shield as he scrambles to defuse an explosive situation.  Currently listening to the incredible new Swans album: The Glowing Man. If you are any kind of fan of this band, you need to pick this one up. So good!  I am honestly very surprised by Brexit. I'm not sure I have any other wisdom to add to the situation other than to agree with Mr. Trump. He owes his own improbable rise to the same broad forces that just ejected Britain from the EU: nationalism, ignorance, and fear. Unfortunately for The Donald, I think these are emotions that are a lot easier to summon AGAINST something than FOR something. 

For the past two months, Sarah Koenig, a journalist who works on the NPR program, “This American Life,” has produced a weekly radio non-fiction exploration of a single murder case called Serial .  The case centers on the murder of a young woman named Have Li occurred in 1999, and the eventual conviction for murder of one Adnan Syed. The format, an ongoing podcast, collects information from the original case, details the ways the Adnan’s defense was bungled or made more difficult by the stubborn refusal of the facts of the murder to cohere into one definitive shape. As new information came to the attention of Koenig she would plug that back into the unraveling story. Serial has created a mini universe of its own, people listening, straining to figure out the whos and whats of the case, spinning off their own theories. Really the closest another work came to the sheer complexity and involvement of Serial this year was True Detective, another sprawling murder mystery that seemed to a...