Review of Moranthology

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed UK writer Caitlin Moran's "How To Be a Woman," I've recommended it to friends, comparing it to Tina Fey's best-selling "Bossypants," another mostly humorous but deeply felt book about the experiences of being a woman. I started following Moran on Twitter and have certainly gotten more than my money's worth.

Someone must have been listening to my raves, because I received Moran's latest book, "Moranthology," as a Christmas gift. It is a collection of her old and not-so-old columns for The Times, each introduced with a retrospective comment about why she picked that topic or how the essay was received.

Moran specializes in writing little jewels of hilarity, perfect for bedtime reading. Laugh, laugh, laugh, zzzz....

My favorite essay was an interview with Keith Richards and review of his recent autobiography, "Life." A former rock and roll critic and radio show host, she got an advance copy of the book, which she devoured and boiled down to its essence in the interview with the flamboyant Richards. It's like watching a Jon Stewart interview: so good you don't need to read the hefty book he's waving around for the camera--he already did it for you.

I also shared Moran's infatuation (along with the whole of Great Britain) for Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, in the Steven Moffat ("Dr. Who") BBC reboot of "Sherlock Holmes."

Whether it's the Stones or some other inexplicably weird thing the Brits are into, you're in for a good time with Caitlin.

Sweet dreams.



Coming Shortly: My First Novella

"Erenarch Academy: Under the Dragon Banner," from World Castle Publishing, is scheduled for wide release April 15. It's an all-ages space opera, the first in a series of books set in the fictional world of Dragon Stead, the solar system surrounding Sigma Draconis. It'll be in both print (available now) and ebook.

Free Stuff and Feminism (Alliteration)

I've put a bit more free stuff out there in web form, including the lead stories of three of Third Flatiron's anthologies:

Quarantine, by Edward H. Parks - Universe Horribilis anthology

Of Men and Gods, by T.A. Branom - Origins: Colliding Causalities anthology

The Man Who Couldn't Die, by David L. Felts - A High Shrill Thump: War
Stories anthology

People can get these stories free anyway, if they are sampling the anthologies on Smashwords or Amazon, so I hope this makes it easier for folks who stop by my blog to get samples this way.

I've also put one of my own flash fiction stories, "Jam Night," on my author website at julianarew.com.

The new anthology, "Universe Horribilis" is selling a little better than the previous one, but it is a tough slog to get reviews or readers. I've raised the author pay rate in hopes of attracting more good writers and working our way up to pro rates. But I have to say the ones I've found so far are quite good! Please buy them! We've got some great female authors, like Sarina Dorie and Robina Williams!

Speaking of Reviews

I would encourage everyone to get on over to the Lady Business website to see Renay's (I guess she just goes by Renay?) analysis of a randomly selected set of SF book bloggers and whether there is sex bias in what gets reviewed. Of course there is. She counted the number of reviews of authors that were female as compared to the reviews of authors that are male. The results:

    Group blogs: 25% women
    Female bloggers: 58% women
    Male bloggers: 19% women

Even I, a purported feminist, suffer from a tendency to skew toward reading (and reviewing) stuff with a male name on it. Probably that's why I read Julian May, James Tiptree Jr., Andre Norton, and . . . Oh, wait.

Universe Horribilis is Out!

We're pleased to report that "Universe Horribilis" from Third Flatiron Anthologies is out. This is one of our "darker" issues, with some adult themes, but there's plenty of quirky humor in there too. We point you to the cover story, "Concerning That Whole God Thing," by Curtis James McConnell, and "If You Were the Last Man on Earth..." by prolific reviewer and rising star Sheryl Normandeau, as cases in point.

We've rolled "Universe Horribilis" out on Smashwords and Amazon and are hoping somebody will be wise enough to buy it. "Universe Horribilis" is also available on Kobo, and Barnes and Noble, and should be on iTunes soon.

We're still working to find out how to get our books in front of more readers. We took out an ad last month in Locus Online, sent our books to Locus Online , Big Al's Books and Pals, and SF Signal in hopes of generating some reviews. I'm trying to spend a little time every day at what I call "Daily Marketing" activities, hanging out at forums, checking out book bloggers, etc.

As a reward to myself, I allow myself to write stories and shop them around to semipro and pro markets. No luck so far in the pro markets, but I did get a couple of recent acceptances from Song Stories Press (for my story, "Love Is In Your Future") and  Bards and Sages Quarterly (for my story, "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid," queued up for the July issue). I keep a writing log on my author website, julianarew.com.

Amour Review

I was shaken (and stirred) by the French film, "Amour," starring
Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. Georges and Anne are a
well-to-do elderly Parisian couple who are prominent in the classical
music world. Then Anne suffers a stroke, and the idyllic life they've
known comes to an end.

I've seen all of this before in real life. My grandmother suffered a
series of strokes and spent her last few years in my aunt's nursing
home, wasting away while her heart kept beating. My husband's father
spent his final years unhappily away from his wife of 50 years in a
nursing home. Other friends and family members have suffered
depression and debilitating illness. The thought that a movie needs to
show people what it's like to have a sick person in the family at
first seems disingenuous.

Yet, it's true that our society tends to gloss over the heartbreak,
fear, and pain of the end of life. It's all right to briefly mention
an illness, but everyone really would rather not hear about it right
now. It's too heavy, man. But the emotions are real, and you can't
really rationalize them, even though you can accept them intellectually.

Anne and George try to hide their plight as much as possible, from
their illustrious students, their neighbors, and even their
daughter. Anne is terrified of hospitals and of losing her
independence. If you're middle-aged, you might have heard your parents
blithely announce they were in the hospital last month, but they're
fine now. They keep it a secret as long as possible, since they feel
it's a weakness to admit to weakness. Or at the very least sad, and we
wouldn't want anyone to be sad, would we?

Although rich enough to afford in-home nursing care, Georges is
frustrated by what he thinks is the insensitive care the nurses are
giving his beloved wife (she keeps murmuring "mal"--it hurts). Yet he
himself succumbs to anger and slaps his wife when she refuses to
eat. Then he gets to live with the guilt. Love hurts.

Even though "Amour" measures itself at a seeming snail's pace, the
stress buildup is incredible. My blood pressure and pulse were
surely elevated for days after viewing it. As with all horror movies,
"Amour" is not for the faint of heart.

Universe Horribilis Lineup

Need something new for your e-Reader?

Yup, Third Flatiron Anthologies (please bookmark or like us!) is working on its fourth e-anthology of SF short stories. On March 1, we'll be putting out "Universe Horribilis" on Smashwords and Amazon (with other distributors to follow). Congrats to the following authors, who have concocted a tasty stew of stories about how the universe is out to kill us. We appreciate the help in reading submissions by Andrew Cairns and the great cover by Keely Rew!

Contents
Quarantine, Edward H. Parks
Concerning That Whole God Thing, Curtis James McConnell
Master Donne, Robin Wyatt Dunn
The Reading, James S. Dorr
Kernels of Hope, Sarina Dorie
Freedom As Commodity, Marilyn K. Martin
Not Enough Hairspray, Siobhan Gallagher
Whimper, Jennifer R. Povey
...If You Were the Last Man on Earth, Sheryl Normandeau
Sannakji, Jack M. Horne
The Labyrinth of Space, James H. Zorn
The Eleanor Effect, Rich Larson
Princess Thirty-Nine, Clare L. Deming
The Prison Rose, David Luntz

Whither Journalism?

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Well, it's time to reminisce about my J-School days in the 70s. We all smoked, drank, and typed on clunky old Remingtons. We were fast, accurate typists, because backspace wasn't the same as erase. The profs told us the school was on the ragged edge of being disaccredited, because it often failed to meet the university's academic standards. So, they were going to flog us until the School of Journalism was back in its good graces. It worked.

We learned to cover the courts, review music and movies, and write features. We learned about the great journalists and freedom of the press. My favorite journalist was E.B. White, the "Sage of Emporia." Never cared much for "Charlotte's Web," though. Too scary, like "Alice in Wonderland." We learned about history. I knew why Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves before Spielberg made the movie. Did you? We learned we could get out of jury duty simply by saying we were journalists. We learned to copy-edit, and committed Strunk and White and Fowler to memory. They told us not to get cocky about being writers--journalism was a trade, not a profession. A low-paying one, at that. We got jobs with the local newspapers and drove around collecting ads for the supermarkets and buying beer for the typesetters as they put the paper to bed. I still cherish a Linotype slug that Marlon tossed me. I caught it without thinking. Aiyee--hot lead.

This year, CU closed its Journalism school. Now Journalism's just a major in the Arts and Sciences School. Apparently accreditation was in danger again, and the school wasn't keeping up with rapid changes in the industry. One of the major Denver dailies had just closed. Whatever. Enrollment in the major is higher than ever.

This is not to say that journalism isn't experiencing hard times. Even if the Journalism School wasn't highly respected back in my school days, it was everyone's duty to stay well-informed. My Sociology Prof Howard Higman (founder of the Conference on World Affairs) required us to read Time Magazine cover to cover every week (Newsweek was kind of right wing for our tastes). Although I later moved to Newsweek, I kept the habit.

Now Newsweek has gone all-digital. I've read a couple of issues on my laptop, but it's not as convenient as having it delivered to my mailbox every week. The New Yorker ran an article, "NEWSWEEKLY," by Mark Singer, about a reunion of Newsweek staffers from the 70s and 80s, which they described as "more of an Irish wake than shivah." Things were better in the old days, all agreed, and they had expense accounts. In the same New Yorker spread, the Dept. of Cute featured a piece called "PUPPIES!" by Andrew Marantz, about how anchorman Brian Williams and his pretty daughter Allison (a star of HBO's "Girls") were taping a show on Animal Planet to be shown against the Super Bowl, called "Puppy Bowl IX." (Nine?!) A more blatant blurring of the line between news and infotainment I've ne'er seen.

NPR interviewed humorist Dave Barry last week, who's got a new book out, Insane Miami. He no longer writes a column for Miami's great daily, the Miami Herald, and observed that journalists were tweeting 53 one-liners rather than writing 800-word columns. Writing articles takes time, and who's got that? True, but I have to say I see Neil Gaiman chirping his head off, and he still manages to write books.

I face a dilemma. Which of my remaining hardcopy subscriptions am I going to read cover to cover now? The Atlantic? The New Yorker? Science News? Scientific American? Discover? Consumer Reports?  It probably won't be Newsweek.

Review of Katabasis by Robert Reed

I've started subscribing to Fantasy & Science Fiction again, which always was my premier SF mag. The November/December issue featured a novella by Robert Reed, called "Katabasis." I had to look up this Greek word, which means "a march from the interior of a country to the coast, as that of the 10,000 Greeks after their defeat and the death of Cyrus the Younger at Cunaxa."

Well. This is a story about a painful journey, although not literally the one in the definition. This is the first I've read of Reed's "Great Ship" universe of stories, in which a gigantic multi-world ship wanders the galaxy, picking up civilizations from all over.

Katabasis is one of the last of her species, rescued from extinction to join the many civilizations on the Great Ship by its human owners. Being extremely large and capable, though humanoid, she is employed as a porter for expeditions of humans who want to make the dangerous but memorable hike from one side to another. This is a future where no one dies, physical damage is easily repaired (presumably by nanobots), and if worse comes to worse, clients are carried out by their porters.  Humans can remember infinitely, as long as they have the money to pay for the onboard storage. Nonetheless, few make the journey without needing rescue.

The novella starts off slowly, with Katabasis reluctantly taking on a weak-looking human couple as clients for the trek. Along the way, they all suffer broken bones from the heavy gravity, as well as starvation and deprivation. She finds her clients strange at first, but slowly grows to like them for their spirit. We gradually learn that Katabasis has made this journey many times, but the first was on her home world, which was failing. She feels guilt for being the only survivor of her people's exodus in search of the Great Ship. After an earthquake wipes out several other expeditions, her group allows another human to join them, on condition he becomes a porter willing to carry food and equipment. There are some similarities to "Avatar," but these can be forgiven.

Though Katabasis's clients ultimately fail, the new human helps her bring them to safety and helps her overcome her guilt and sadness by sharing his equally devastating history. This was a lovely story of the value of forgetfulness and self-forgiveness.