"Blue is the Warmest Color" is a groundbreaking movie that should be seen by anyone with an interest in new ways of telling stories through film.
The movie's primary innovation is its absolute commitment to the faces of its characters. I've read reviews criticizing this as a "preoccupation with closeups," as if this were a lack of directorial balance, but that's ridiculous.… [more]
When I was in high school, I memorized "The Waste Land" and recited it to my English class over the course of two class periods. It was my favorite long poem until I discovered Eliot's "Four Quartets" in college. Shortly after that, however, I was introduced to Basil Bunting's "Briggflatts," and it quickly became – and has remained – my new favorite.… [more]
Review: The Dazzle of Day, by Molly Gloss
This is my Favorite Science Fiction Novel, no contest, but it's an odd creation. It's like a historical fiction about a Quaker farming community, except that the community exists inside a multi-generational colony ship many centuries into a journey to a possible habitable world in a distant solar system. Oh, and each chapter begins with a quote from Walt Whitman.… [more]
I've just self published my novelization of the life of Joan of Arc!
It's gotten a couple of good reviews so far.
Tim Wynne-Jones, author of the Horn Book Award winning YA novel Blink & Caution, called it "An intimate meditation, textured and ingenious," while Kirkus Reviews described it as "An engrossing religious and historical account…"
You can read more about it and order copies at www.JoanNovel.com… [more]
An excerpt from my work in progress, The Death of Arthur. (A sequel to The Light of the Grail, which I'll probably be self-publishing some time soon after I self-publish Joan, my novelization of the life of Joan of Arc.)
In this passage, Elaine, the daughter of King Pelles of Carbonek, describes to her servant Brisen her visit in disguise to her homeland, where she finds her father incapacitated and the land made barren as suggested by rumors that had reached her in the kingdom of Arthur.
I've decided to self publish my novelization of the life of Joan of Arc in Summer of 2014. Help me build up my mailing list in preparation for the big release and win signed copies of the book! Enter the Voices For Joan contest here.
All the Gospel plays for the Fall quarter are now available for download from the Wineskin Project website.… [more]
A poem for the 4th. (The day Thomas Jefferson died, in 1826, on the 50th birthday of the nation.)… [more]
I recently self-published a collection of my best haiku from the first year of my daily haiku writing experiment, Haiku Diem, through CreateSpace, the Amazon.com affiliated print-on-demand service (see the FAQ below if you don't know what print-on-demand is) and have been asked by friends what the experience was like and whether I'd recommend CreateSpace for similar book projects of theirs.… [more]
The Pull
Bodies of every size falling
at the same rate, no one
more or less anxious
to achieve the finality
of ground, all
equally compliant
or ineffectively resistant
to gravity's
slippery slope.… [more]
First, read this courageous comment on the bombing and shooting in Norway.
We had our own "Oslo moment" here in the U.S., of course: the 9/11 attacks. In the aftermath, there was a lot of talk about tightening national security even at the cost of compromising our freedoms. A point that was often made in defense of more, and more extreme, measures was that no matter how strong our security was already, the terrorists would only need to find one crack in the wall, and they'd be in again.… [more]
