#FreeBooks! #Giveaways in Contemporary Upmarket Fiction and #NewReleases in #Fantasy

Okay, so I’m done, I’m absolutely, completely done with posting about Arkady Babchenko–for now. No doubt I’ll rant about it further again soon. Someone asked me if I felt personally betrayed or just upset by the situation, and I had to say: both. My personal acquaintance with Arkady is so slight that I certainly don’t […]

Art and Dissidence in Eastern Europe: #ArkadyBabchenko and #FreeSentsov

I wasn’t going to write about the circus surrounding Arkady Babchenko’s “murder” and sudden resurrection, which continues to unfold, but I can’t stop myself. It’s just too fascinating, and as far as I can tell the Western press has already moved back to the latest absurdity produced by Trump. So here we go: A bombshell […]

“Whatever I say is a half-truth”: Arkady #Babchenko and the Hybrid Truth of War Writing #BabchenkoAlive

As I posted yesterday, I’ve been caught up in the crazy, crazy, crazy story surrounding Russian writer Arkady Babchenko’s alleged murder and subsequent “resurrection,” , with the dramatic revelation at a press conference that the whole thing had been a sting operation and that Babchenko was still very much alive. Although I had not guessed in […]

Arkady Babchenko, One Soldier’s War, and Holy Fools

Arkady Babchenko As crazy fate would have it, today was the day that the article I co-wrote with WFU student Logan Stinson, “One Soldier’s War and the New Literary War Hero,” about the memoir by war correspondent and journalist Arkady Babchenko, was scheduled to come out. Crazy fate because yesterday afternoon a notification popped up […]

“Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic” by Pamela Weintraub

Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic Pamela Weintraub It’s hard to fathom, especially from the outside but also from the inside, the madness surrounding the Lyme epidemic. How could such a widespread, debilitating, and potentially deadly disease have been allowed to flourish not only unchecked but untreated and unresearched, even actively denied, for so many […]

Invoking the Muse: How to Get Inspiration You Can Use I: Hoodoo vs. Hard Work

Thus far I’ve been talking about obstacles to writing and how to get over them. I may revisit that topic–I’ve been thinking a lot about the problem of aiming low because you don’t feel like you deserve to have success and nice things, so that’s sure to come up soon–but for the moment I’m going […]

“Wildness” by Snow Patrol

Wildness Snow Patrol As you may or may not know, I’ve been a Snow Patrol fan for a number of years, with my fandom gradually gathering momentum like a slow-moving avalanche (you see what I did there?) ever since I heard “Called Out in the Dark” when it was first released. Before then, I’d had vaguely […]

“Footballers: Featuring Ultimate Lacrosse: The Mistress’s Tale” by CB Archer

Footballers: Featuring Ultimate Lacrosse (Tales of Gentalia Book 13) CB Archer “Footballers: Featuring Ultimate Lacrosse” is, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, one of the silliest things I’ve read all year. The only thing that even comes close to it for silliness are the other stories in the same series. Seriously. They’re […]

“The Winged Horse” by C.P. Lesley

The Winged Horse C.P. Lesley “The Winged Horse” starts up shortly after “The Golden Lynx” ends. This time it’s Ogodai, the dutiful older brother of spitfire Nasan, the heroine of the first book, whose story gets told. Ogodai, oldest son of the khan Bulat, has been betrothed to Firuza, daughter of a bey amongst the […]

“Everyone Loses” by Charap and Colton

Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia Samuel Charap and Timothy J. Colton When protest and then war broke out in 2013/14 in Ukraine, many people in the US couldn’t find Ukraine, much less the Crimea or the Donbass, on a map, and for most people that’s probably still the […]