Causal Realism and Jared Leto’s Joker
Ever since those first stills of his character design, Jared Leto’s Joker has left many of us scratching our heads, trying to figure out why the portrayal seems so wrong. […]
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Pokémon Go: An App for the Modern Flâneur
Pokémon Go has created a new class of urban pedestrians, and as I watch them walking to hatch eggs or loitering around lured PokéStops, I have one overwhelming impression: Nineteenth-century […]
The Measure of an Alien
It’s a curiosity that Star Wars and Star Trek are so often grouped together when they’re so patently different in themes, appearance, and format. The differences can be obvious or […]
Haircuts: A Tale of Katz and Valya
My discussion of fictional haircuts leaves out one possibly pertinent fact: I included a dramatic haircut in my own novel Among the Red Stars. So I’m going to talk about […]
The Significance of Haircuts
For most of us, a haircut is a periodic necessity, but in fiction, haircuts only happen to make a statement. Being an appearance-related story element, the use and connotations of […]
WASPs at Arlington in Historical Context
The war ended 70 years ago, but the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) have only just won their final battle: On Friday, Congress passed a law finally allowing them to […]
Award Arithmetic
Many people in the YA community were less than enthused when the Locus Awards announced their 2016 finalists. The YA finalists were all men, one of whom was nominated twice, […]
The Big News
It is my great pleasure to announce that my debut novel, Among the Red Stars, will be released by HarperTeen in fall 2017. Among the Red Stars tells the story […]
The Full Story on Inkitt (2016)
ETA #2: Since the writing, Inkitt has rebranded itself as a Wattpad-style online publishing platform. This post will remain up as a reminder of the deceptive and predatory marketing tactics […]
Reconsidering Badass Historical Women
As it does every year, International Women’s Month brought a flurry of posts and tweets about people’s favorite historical women, and as always, one appellation appeared more than any other: […]