On Skipping Stones

About three miles from the house is the Liberty Reservoir. It’s an artificial lake that provides water to Baltimore. It being a pretty day–clear blue sky, temperature around eighty-five–I packed a bag with notebook and pens, grabbed a towel, and drove out to the reservoir. I wanted to get some writing done while communing withContinue reading “On Skipping Stones”

On Weird Concepts

So an idea came to me. An alternate history novel. An alternate history novel about the Beatles. There have been a few Beatles alternate histories. Larry Kirwan’s Liverpool Fantasy comes quickly to mind, as does Stephen Baxter’s “The Twelfth Album” and Ian McLeod’s “Snodgrass.” The concept is doable. It’s something that conceivably could have happened.Continue reading “On Weird Concepts”

On Research Avenues

Sometimes research will lead one down strange alleys. I spent the afternoon doing some research into the Aristotlean and Ptolemaic conceptions of the geocentric universe. In so doing I discovered an unusual belief held by ancient Mesopotamian and Greek cultures (and written about by Plato in the Epinomis), that Saturn was a star like theContinue reading “On Research Avenues”

On Automatic Silliness

I saw this on several friends’ LiveJournals: a short story generator. Most everyone used it to create bad Star Trek fanfic, but I decided to be different. I’d create Doctor Who fanfic. So, with much ado, I give you… The Cat Princess The Doctor was walking through a turgid meadow, laughing at the butterflies flittingContinue reading “On Automatic Silliness”