Recent content by Autumnal

Lord Dunsany towers over the field. To my taste, waiting on reading him is like postponing Shakespeare for a bunch of generic Jacobean revenge tragedies. I mean, there’s good bits in MacDonald, but nothing to compare to one of my favorite Dunsany lines: Italics in the original. Meanwhile, as...

I’m a very big believer in feeding your brain what it wants to read, within very broad limits. I’ve got times when one or more of my usual types just isn’t working, and trying to force it never seems to work out well. I wonder if historical fiction might split the difference?

We pause here to wave at Mr. Calvin Morris, the inexplicable cowboy in Dracula.

My caregiver comments, “The guy on the far right has a more complicated problem than the first two, though.”

Also a good take. Very few genres are exclusive, because they’re different kinds of things. They mostly look that way because shelves are mostly two-dimensional. Barring deep shelves with multiple layers of books, books stacked lying down, etc. :)

Best wishes on mending! And consider reporting on imaginary items with random links. :)

David Hartwell argued that horror isn’t a genre, but a mode in which you can write any gene. Thus mysteries that are horror and mysteries that aren’t, sf that’s horror and sf that isn’t, and so on. Works for me. I finished two books today. Sometimes things line up that way. Gods and Monsters...

There’s good and bad popcorn, and cotton candy, whipped Jello, whatever. Very nearly anything can be done well or badly, and writing really good junk food escapism takes as much work as writing anything else really well, I think.

I think there’s much to be said for that assumption. If the new post isn’t a direct response, make that very clear first thing or just take the quote out. I do that fairly often, when I find I’ve moved on to something else.

As Orchestral Maneuvres in the Dark put it (voice repeats in English after Chinese):

That’s very hard, Umbran. Deepest sympathy and condolences from here.

I like it. Thanks.