Erotica, fantasy, and horror writer.

Most commented posts

  1. The Worm Ouroboros
    [Reading Challenge 2018]
    — 7 comments
  2. The Lady of the Green Kirtle (Part I) — 5 comments
  3. The Wild Lands of the North
    (and a bit about Giants)
    — 4 comments
  4. All Things Charn (Part I) — 4 comments
  5. Worldbuilding Wednesday 8/30/17: Mundane Fare — 3 comments

Author's posts

Passing Obsessions 5-25

Fluffy Summer supplement insert for The Chicago Times contains a list of books generated by ChatGPT, and only two of them are real! Among them, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s (writer of Daisy Jones and the Six) fake novel The Collector’s Piece, about “a reclusive art collector and the journalist determined to uncover the truth behind his …

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A Court of Tiddies and Ass

So I was reading A Court of Tiddies and Ass, and I absolutely hated every dreadful second of it. Should I read the follow-up, A Court of Dongs and Thongs? To be clear, I just hated the first book on every level; the characters, the story, the prose, even the font on the cover of …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 5/28/2025: Let’s Talk About Batman Villains (Harley Quinn)

The more I got into last week’s Worldbuilding Wednesday post the more I realized how convoluted the history of Harley Quinn really is. For one thing, she wasn’t the Joker’s first female sidekick. That honor belongs to Duela Dent, who originated in 1976. She claimed to be the Joker’s daughter and wanted to join the …

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Prehistoric Planet, Seasons 1 and 2 [Review]

If you like dinosaurs, or any other type of monster, Prehistoric Planet is the series for you. Airing on Apple+ in the U.S. but made in Great Britain, by the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, it utilizes the latest and greatest CGI technology to bring these creatures back to life. It also employs the most …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 5/21/2025: Let’s Talk About Batman Villains

In this post I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for a while: analyze Batman villain names. Batman has been all over the place for the past three decades, and plenty of folks have seen the shows, the movies, the parodies, the comicsĀ  (which comprise only a small part of the franchise now), …

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Monty Python and the Holy Grail Turns 50: Some Reflections

Wow, I feel old! Fifty years has passed since this cheeky film was released in 1975. It’s hard to explain, now, the effect this movie had on late Baby Boomer and Gen X geeks. It wasn’t apparent at the time of its release, which I remember was quick and quiet and certainly didn’t stick around …

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Dungies and Dragons

I saw someone wearing a tshirt with this design and thought it was hilarious! The “dungie” refers to the Dungeness crab at the lower left, which are renowned as a delicacy in the Pacific Northwest. The artist’s name is Ray Troll. He’s a native Alaskan known for his unique style and scientific accuracy of the …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 5/12/25: Chicken Breeds

“To a know a dinosaur, you must first know a chicken.” These common farmyard birds, developed from Asian junglefowl around 8,000 years ago, show many of the same characteristics of the prehistoric creatures they are descended from. They strut about on two legs, have plumage, scaled, robust clawed feet, are warm-blooded, and lay eggs, They …

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