Assume for the moment that the following is true:   Hillary’s quote demonstrates the feminist belief that being left alone, without a man in your life, is a fate worse than death.   But what is the natural result of increased feminism? Increasing numbers of unmarried spinsters. Therefore, women have...

A few weeks back I had the misfortune of writing an honest review for a book that I really wanted to like.  The author is a great guy, and his book hit a lot of the right notes, but just didn’t work.  I was concerned that my rationalizing the...

The Rabid Puppies are the best thing to happen to the Hugo Awards in decades. Five years ago, nobody in the mainstream media was talking about the Hugos.  It was considered a niche of a niche market.  Maaaybe you’d see a couple of column inches discussing the results, but...

It’s nomination time for the 2017 Panetary Awards.  (Hat tip to Cirsova for alerting me.)  There are only two categories: Shorter story (under 40,000 words/160 paperback pages)My nomination: Images of the Goddess, by Schuyler Hernstrom, published in Cirsova Magazine #2 Gift of the Ob-Men was a nice little regression to...

We’re still beating up on Laurie Gough and her contention that bypassing the gatekeepers who live east of the Hudson River hurts written words. No caption necessary. When I pointed out that we’re all gatekeepers now, Jeff Duntemann (author of the excellent Ten Gentle Opportunities) responded by pointing out:...

Look at this thing from HuffPo: It would be easy to go after the low-hanging fruit here.  This woman you’ve never heard of has written three memoirs.  Three.  Because her life is just that interesting.  She is a “journalist”. Because writing a blog on HuffPo counts.  The obvious self-contradiction...

Even my wargames are pulp.This rocket ship was built for15mm sci-fi miniature battles. If you direct your eyes to the left, over there on the sidebar, you can spot a tag in the cloud called, “wargame related“. It’s no secret that I’m an avid wargamer from way back. I played D&D...

If you liked this project,you’ll love 2017’s project. Completing Castle Meatgrinder, a large wargaming project from start to as-near-to-finished-as-any-wargame-project-ever-gets, was the least of my 2016 successes. Over the course of last year, my fire adopted a number of new irons, and by the time the Holiday season rolled around...

The kids were kind enough to playtest Castle Meatgrinder over the holiday break, and we found that it needs some serious work.  They had a good time, but I wasn’t satisfied with the amount of action, the speed of play, or the organization of my notes.  Most important, I...

After writing up my last post, it occurred to me that I do have a box of odds and ends that might be perfect for Castle Meatgrinder’s heavy hitters.  Here are two of them.  (There are a few more that we’ll leave in our back pocket for surprises).  Here’s...