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There is a tendency for writing about the Bible to fall into two disjoint camps: there are the literalists who take the naïve view that the text is to be read without concern for its original context or creation, who end up reducing Biblical studies to an absurdity since the literal reading is untenable, not […]

I’d heard of Karen Armstrong here and there and about this book, so I was curious to read a bit more about what she had to say. Alas, what I found was a lot of squishy theology of the all-religions-are-one variety. Having read God is not One a couple years ago, it’s clear that not only are […]

Invisible to Whom?: Black Fiction Writers on Craft and the White Gaze I had a long list of potential Saturday at 9a panels and realized that part of the reason that it was so long was that I wasn’t really excited about any of the options so I decided that this would be a good […]

I had originally penciled in a panel entitled, “You Sent us What?” on what readers and submission editors look for, but I decided to skip it because really, how many ways can they say, “send us your best work”? Instead, I spent some time revising one of my stories set in Los Angeles to submit […]

Showing Up I discovered that my hotel’s breakfast was far from adequate, but knowing downtown L.A., I knew that there was a Denny’s between the 7th/Metro subway stop and the convention center so I stopped there for breakfast and a chapter of the novel I’ve been reading before facing the crowds. I expected to be […]

So here I am, an exile returned to Los Angeles. While I’m Chicago born and raised, I’ve lived a big chunk of my adult life in L.A. and it’s very much home to me. Perhaps because my time in L.A. has been very much outside “industry” circles (which is not to deny that, like many […]

Continuing my goal of last year to diversify my reading, I’ve boosted the goals for reading women writers and non-white writers. My statistics improved in both categories, with women accounting for 51.4% of my reading (compared to 39.6% last year and a target of 50%) and non-white authors accounting for 14.8% of my writing (compared […]

My submissions in 2015 dipped somewhat as did the favorable-ish rate which dropped from 27% last year to 24% this year with just one acceptance which was a hangover from my 2014 submissions. I’m closing the year with 20 pending submissions with the oldest having gone out on 5 May. I also, per my goals […]

It was the name on the spine that caught my attention. I discovered the writing of Waugh’s grandfather, Evelyn Waugh when I was in college after encountering a mention of him in Graham Greene’s Ways of Escape. The elder Waugh, like Greene, was notable as an author who had converted to Catholicism and who had […]