Lorina Stephens's Blog, page 10

Appearing at Assorted Nonsense

Fellow author Joe Mahoney has been kind enough to host me on his website, Assorted Nonsense. This is the second stop in my blog tour for Dreams of the Moon. As always I offer the introduction to the collection of short stories, and also for each guest appearance I offer some insight into one of the stories: how the story came to be.

Joe Mahoney is the author of the time travel novel A Time and a Place.

His short fiction has been published in Canada, Australia and Greece, and he’s been nominated three times for an Aurora Award, one of Canada’s top awards for science fiction and fantasy, for his work on CBC Radio. He is a member of SF Canada, Canada’s National Association of Speculative Fiction Professionals.

He has also worked as a story editor on multiple radio, television and film projects including CBC Radio’s Steve the First and Steve the Second, both seasons of Canadia: 2056, Canadian author and filmmaker Susan Rodger’s feature film Still the Water, and more.

He currently works full-time for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where, for over more than three decades, he has worked in several roles including recording engineer, producer, and several operational management roles.

His second book, a collection of seven short stories entitled Other Times and Places, was published by Donovan Street Press in January 2020.

He lives in Whitby, Ontario with his wife and two daughters, and their golden retriever and Siberian forest cat.

He can be reached at ilanderz@gmail.com

Blog tour with David Perlmutter

So very pleased to be a guest today at fellow author, David Perlmutter’s website, where I talk about my latest collection of short stories, Dreams of the Moon.

This is the first stop in a multi-blog tour occurring over the next few weeks. You’ll be able to read about the genesis of the stories in Dreams of the Moon where I’m being hosted. You’ll also have an opportunity to meet some wonderful Canadian spec-fic authors here — all part of the dynamic of a blog tour.

Featuring David PerlmutterTAKING A FUNNY THING SERIOUSLY

By David Perlmutter

I want to tell you about my favorite personal interest and ruling passion as a scholar, the thing I find it hard to live without.

Television animation.

You should know something about me first. I was diagnosed very young with Asperger’s Syndrome, which is considered to be on the high end of the Autism spectrum. People with Asperger’s can function well by themselves and amongst friends and family, and work well when given tasks that they can do, but find it very difficult communicating to others if they don’t know how to, or if they have never met or interacted with someone before. They find it particularly difficult understanding language if it is of a non-verbal nature, and can embarrass themselves in public in consequence of this.

From an early age, I was attracted to animation on television because the majority of the characters were the opposite of who I was. Gregarious, speaking at top volume all the time, easily enraged over things I consider then and now to be trivial. Certain supporting characters came to show me what was considered to be “normal” behavior in society, contrasted with the humorous antics of the lead characters, who deliberately stood out from that “normality” on purpose. So it was a lesson both in how to be “normal”, and how not to, that I needed to have.

And, of course, there was and is a great level of body language and facial expression in animated films, which is enormously useful for anyone deficient in those arts to study. There are limits- nobody actually turns as a red as a beet, for example, when they get mad in real life. But a great deal of what I know now about emotions like sadness, anger and joy was taught to me through the physicality of television animation in particular, and it still teaches me about it as I watch it now. Again, something needed that I can’t get anywhere else.

My parents, to their credit, never denigrated animation to my face, the way many parents before them had, so they let me keep watching. And, as television animation hit a glorious peak of creativity in the 1990s and 2000s, I was extremely grateful for that.

Still, my Asperger’s, coupled with youthful fear of embarrassment, prevented me from speaking much about it to others until I got to university. There, majoring in history, I was encouraged to explore the history of animation and the whole history of the world in which it interacted and continue to interact with through my term papers. And then, to my surprised happiness, I was able to write my MA thesis on the history of television animation — from which my first book on the topic emerged. Hopefully one of many as the years go by.

Yet I discovered television animation, which I admire so much, was not as universally beloved as I thought. Certain individual series and characters were well known, but others were (sometimes unjustly) neglected in the academic world in which I had participated. And the entire genre was sometimes written off as a waste of time, which I still disagree with now.

Why was that?

Because, in spite of the odd “straight” action series floating around, television animation has chiefly thought of as a comic, humorous venture. Therefore, not to be taken seriously, as most things comic in nature are wrongly thought to be.

This was an attitude taken by both the public and academic criticism. Television itself as a whole wasn’t considered to be a serious topic for academic study until the 1970s. Even then, it tended to focus on how people reacted to and interpreted what they saw on the screen (as in Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media) rather than trying to analyze each program independently, with the methods of literary and film criticism, which is more the case now.

Scholars of the effect school were particularly concerned with how children interacted with television, as they feared negative consequences on children’s behavior. Such as if they were behaving in a “violent” fashion. By this time, television animation had largely been stereotyped as a medium for children alone, and was aired at times and places only they cared about, such as Saturday mornings. It wasn’t the people doing the studies. For most of the 1970s and 1980s, this led to a heavily restricted form of censorship imposed on television animation — and only television animation — which destroyed a great amount of its creative integrity.

Even with the great creative advances in television animation that would be made in the 1990s and 2000s, the violence purge still has had its lasting effects. Programs of that time, such as The Simpsons and The Powerpuff Girls, have produced memorable episodes grappling with the continually fluctuating concepts of “violence” and “censorship”, and where the overzealous use of both ideas has vast, unforeseen consequences for those who employ them as tactics.

Another aspect of the problem I have discovered, trying to write as both a fan and a scholar of television animation, is that it is hard to try to write serious scholarship about something that’s overwhelmingly about humor. We human beings seem to have a bit of an odd relationship with humor. We all enjoy laughing, but sometimes at different things, rather than the same ones. One person’s belly laugh is another person’s head-scratcher. And the least enjoyable thing about jokes is trying to explain them to people who don’t understand.

Then there are the same sort of ambivalent passive-aggressive relations we have with television and animation on their own. It’s never been entirely fashionable to say that you enjoy watching the “boob tube”, or that you are an “adult” who enjoys an entertainment medium that was supposedly made for “children” only. In the first case, mass communication has often been the target of elitist snobs who want to control “culture”, and television is a prime example of their disdain because it was probably the most “mass” form of communication before the Internet. And because children are denied the right to vote and other forms of citizenship, the things they “want” and “understand” are often decided in absentia for them, without their input. Which explains a few things about the media that is directed squarely at them, at least sometimes.

What I am trying to say by these examples is that television animation is often judged on a prejudicial basis, with people “assuming” they know what it is about, based on second or third-hand knowledge or receding childhood memories, in a way that prevents a meaningful analysis of both historical and contemporary trends from occurring.

Which I find distasteful.

Meaningful, objective analysis of any form of entertainment, which transcends partisanship and bias in both the past and present, is a key step in helping it develop the kind of “respectability” which will allow it to be both studied in the academic realm and preserved positively in the public media memory. Without this kind of analysis, an art form’s worth and value can easily be dismissed, and, therefore, it can be reduced to the status of forgettable ephemera. With the exception, of course, of those who love and care for it, and are willing to prove to those who don’t understand it that it does matter and should be taken seriously.

My position on television animation is different from others chiefly because a) I am a “fan” who has followed and continues to follow television animation avidly and b) I am an author who has written scholarship about the field[1] and will likely continue to do so in the future. In both roles, I am convinced you can only “know” what is going on about these programs by watching them closely and examining the historical literature related to them. You have to be able to sit down through whole episodes to get an understanding of what they’re all about.

 

And while it isn’t always an easy job, it can be a rewarding one as well.

For starters, if you actually involve yourself in the stories instead of trying to keep track of acts of “violence” or other presumed violations of your sense of “taste”, they can be pretty interesting things.

Clever tales of heroes and villains locked in mortal combat, friendships and family bonds broken and remade over and over again, extremely ticklish allusions and references to real life and media events and things, made in the most unlikely and unexpected of ways. Totally likeable and enjoyable creatures, the kind of people you would want to have as brothers, sisters, friends or lovers, regardless of whether they be humans, animals or other supernatural creatures. And no judgements cast based on race, gender, class etc.- unless you happen to be an evil villain, in which case you’re on your own, buddy.

The kicker is that most of these events are conducted in ways that defy realism rather than accept it, and reinforce the belief that the world would be a better place if these things were real. Animals talk. Children are wise and profound beings, and adults incredibly stupid and short-sighted. All things related to the supernatural and science fiction are frequently accepted as fact rather than denied. And the more of these things that can be played for as many laughs as possible, the better. The worlds created by the animators seem cleaner and fresher than ours in any number of ways, physical and moral.

That’s probably one of the main reasons why I keep coming back. There are people and ways of thinking there that we don’t have here, and which we could most certainly use.

If only real life problems could be dealt with that easily, or real life people that easy to understand. As someone challenged with Asperger’s syndrome, I frequently find truth harder to deal with than fiction- which is why I’m glad that fiction of this kind exists.

But some people still try to doubt its value, or treat it in a schizophrenic way. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has been giving worthy animated shows Emmys for years, but you’d never know it watching the telecast these days. The animated Emmys are stuck in the hell of the technical (pardon me, “Creative Arts”) ceremony right now, so a lot of viewers would never even know they exist. Out of sight, out of mind. So how would they even know about them?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. It goes a lot deeper than that.

Back in the 1950s, people actually thought television was like a drug, that nobody could possibly free itself from the desire to constantly watch, regardless of what was on. And what was the supposed entry point for children into this “addiction”? You guessed it. “Cartoons” (a label that now sounds something like a racist slur to me) got the blame. Granted, there wasn’t a lot of original television animation to begin with in those days, but the label stuck.

But this was also the period when the nascent Hanna-Barbera studio was at its peak, with the antics of Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, and, later, the Flintstones. And let’s not forget Jay Ward and his brilliant crew responsible for Rocky and Bullwinkle, which, over time, has become probably the most influential series of its kind, within the genre and the wider world as well.

Still, few were willing to give it much credit for what it accomplished.

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, it got worse. A lot of people who didn’t know a damn thing about what they were talking about accused television animation of being too “violent”. This was ridiculous, considering how it actually was at the time- there were numerous live-action gun-toters then blasting away in prime time, while animation only intended to be funny and exciting without consequence. Yet animation, because it was falsely assumed to be appreciated by children and children only, got blamed. It was forced to go through the artistic equivalent of chemical castration by draconian censorship at the hands of the misnamed “Standards and Practices” department, which turned much of the animation under their watch into a parody of itself simply because it could. No cable or Internet in those days, so if you wanted to produce animation for television then, you had to play by the network’s rules. And, if they wanted it bland and unthreatening, then, by God, you made it so.

Not that nothing of value came out of that time. Lou Scheimer’s Filmation produced much of its greatest work during this time, including its collaboration with Bill Cosby, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which brought new demographics and new storytelling strategies to television animation that continue to reverberate. If ever there was an underrated company doing a yeoman job in this field, it was Filmation.

In the ‘80s, television animation got flack for being part of the rampant consumerism of the time. Somehow, it was thought that basing a show around toys, video games or greeting card characters was too “commercial” for a genre that had been reduced more to edification than entertainment. It is true that some of the shows of the time were like that, but, again, cutting all the chaff away reveals some rather nice wheat hiding there in the shadows.

Again, Filmation thrived, reaping considerable rewards for going off boldly into the new realm of syndication to escape network tyranny, creating the boldly original action-adventure hits He-Man and She-Ra. Alas, the studio fell victim to another kind of tyranny- international corporate politics- when its parent company abruptly closed it down without notice, and it never produced another series.

Finally, in the ‘90s, television animation began fighting back.

The Simpsons came along and fired the first warning shot, and then nothing was the same again.

Nobody expected much of it, it being originally a filler piece on a variety show on a shoestring network with an uncertain identity. But it transcended everyone’s expectations, and became not only a hit prime time program, but a major cultural force. It was highly unusual then for a “mere” animated program to do this, and almost immediately the role and function of animation in television began to change, largely for the better. Opportunities came about, and were seized with great success.

The major shift came when the networks slowly began to abandon television animation and other “children’s” programming, mainly due to declining financial profits, and ceded the field to the cable giants which now largely run the television animation industry- Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Disney.

It had been accepted in live-action television since the 1970s that it was both creatively and financially feasible to allow skilled writers, producers and directors to produce programming without corporate interference. Beginning in the mid-1990s with Cartoon Network, and spreading to the others as well, this mode of production now became the dominant one, with the result being the felicitous mode of production which has produced innumerable classics, too many to be fully discussed here.  Finally, after quite a long struggle, people in the television animation were able to produce the kind of shows they wanted to make, what they felt was much more worthy of the attention of the audience than anything that preceded it. It not only expected that kind of attention- it demanded it. And, given how people loved what they made then and still do now, it truly was worthy of that attention.

Of course, now, television is not what it used to be. Instead of trying to unite us, it has become part of the problem, breaking us all up into separate audience components. How can television animation, or any TV genre worth its salt nowadays, try to compete with the blizzard of online offerings stealing away the people who used to be loyal towards it?

I, for one, think it will endure. For this reason….

If the diverse group of characters in television animation have anything single thing in common, it is  their ability to fight back, physically and/or verbally, against any sort of threat confronting them, for they know this is the only way to overcome any sort of evil in their path. Their creators, and their cable television landlords, are no less formidable in similar circumstances. And outside media competition would just be another obstacle to most of them.

If you understand this, you will know why, while most of mainstream TV is now battered and bloodied, television animation is still standing.

David Perlmutter

David Perlmutter is a freelance writer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is the author of America Toons In: A History of Television Animation (McFarland and Co.),  The Singular Adventures Of Jefferson Ball (Amazon Kindle/Smashwords), The Pups (Booklocker.com), Certain Private Conversations and Other Stories (Aurora Publishing), Honey and Salt (Scarlet Leaf Publishing), Orthicon; or, the History of a Bad Idea (Linkville Press, forthcoming), and The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows (Rowman and Littlefield) . His short stories can be read on Curious Fictions at Curious Fictions/David Perlmutter. He can be reached on Facebook at David Perlmutter-Writer, Twitter at @DKPLJW1, and Tumblr at The Musings of David Perlmutter (yesdavidperlmutterfan).

[1] Examples: My book America ‘Toons In: A History of Television Animation (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., 2014) and The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018.)

From here to where?

Fingers in pies

As usual, I’m flitting back and forth between projects, especially now it’s again summer. Mostly my time is taken up with the vegetable and perennial gardens, or just enjoying the bucolic nature of this village, and our home. I suppose summer is when I recharge, gain perspective and insight, which then becomes the well from which I draw throughout the winter. However, there are moments I do spend in front of the computer, pursuing creative endeavours of the the cerebral kind rather than the physical.

So, at the moment I have a short story about an horologist in the works. That’s going slowly, because as usual I’ve become distracted about the history of Windsor Castle, and the history of clocks. Such an awful lot of extraneous research for one short story. How very typical.

 

I’m also continuing to craft my historical novel set around 1000CE at the site of L’Anse aux Meadows. And, like the short story, I’ve been waylaid by a remarkable and huge tome of research by Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm. This is a remarkable history of the Vikings, and I think it behooves me to absorb it in order to add yet another layer of veritas to my novel, Hekja’s Lament. Just as when I wrote Shadow Song, I want this novel to ring with truth while also telling an engaging, perhaps even insightful, story about a slave who became part of that settlement which now haunts us as a ruin in Newfoundland.

And what else is a person to do when two paths of research have waylaid writing, but to wade into a decades old manuscript and decide it’s worth revising. This one’s a speculative fiction, Brogan’s Folly, which deals with a religious tyrant and subjugation based upon gender. It also deals with some pretty cool desert panthers which can shape and time shift.

So, yeah, that’s what’s going on at the Old Stone House.

In the meantime, you can always pick up a copy of any of my books in print, ebook and a few in audiobook, and leave a review, or just enjoy.

Happy summer, folks! Stay safe. Be well, Get your vaccine if you haven’t already. And laugh, because that’s the best medicine of all.

Review: The Green Road, by Anne Enright

The Green Road by Anne Enright
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Green Road, by Anne Enright, is an introspective, remarkable, often poignant story about the four siblings of the Madigan family, and their mercurial, often tempestuous, aging mother, Rosaleen. Set primarily in Enright’s native country of Ireland, the narratives of the four children sometimes wander from that green island to America and Mali, carrying with them the subterranean influences of their mother’s influence.

This is a story about acceptance: of each other, of ourselves, of the places we inhabit. This could be anyone’s story, and because of that Enright has succeeded in making a very specific story a common and relatable one.

The prose, while easy and straightforward, somehow is also quite precise and lush. She weaves description through the narrative with a deft hand, so that the reader is transported.

But the reader should be aware this isn’t the sort of novel which immediately grabs you and hauls you into a consuming read. Rather, this is the type of novel to be read carefully, with commitment, working through the opening chapters with complete faith the author knows what’s she’s about, and will eventually have you quite absorbed and preoccupied with the world she’s created.

Definitely a novel worthy of the literary accolades it’s been accorded, and definitely a novel worthy of your time.

View all my reviews

Review: A Brightness Long Ago, by Guy Gavriel Kay

A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It would be a stretch of the truth to say Guy Gavriel Kay is anything but an accomplished story-teller. He crafts his work with elegance, passion, and detail. You would think with that praise I would rate his work higher than I do, for certainly there is much here to engage the reader.

However, having read almost all of Kay’s canon of literary works, I have come to recognize there is formula to what he writes. There is always the femme fatale. There is always the dashing rogue. There is always the clash against the immutable forces of political or religious power. It’s the same story, different cover, different title, and while each novel is definitely immersive, wonderful escapist literature, it also is endlessly formulaic.

And then there’s the historical influence in each of Kay’s stories. In this novel it’s very much the history of the Italian city states during the powerful influence of the Medici, and the warring dukes and mercenary captains of the period.

It is the same with all of his other works. Change the names and do a bit of liberal interpretation, you still end up with a pseudo-history of China, or Spain, or Byzantium, or France. Given the considerable research Kay has undertaken to write about these empires and their places in history, one wonders why he just didn’t write historical novels. Certainly there is little to no magic in any of his work, so the stories cannot be considered fantasy. It’s all alternate history with a twist, and with similar characters placed upon the boards.

Given all that, A Brightness Long Ago remains firmly in the genre of entertaining alternate history, rather than elevating to something quite beyond and memorable, even haunting. Thus a rating of three stars for me, rather than four or five.

If you’re looking for escapist reading: A Brightness Long Ago may be just your next go-to. However, if you’re looking for more than a snack, you may want to give it a pass.

View all my reviews

Review: In the Skin of a Lion, by Michael Ondaatje

In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There is no disputing the literary skill of Michael Ondaatje. His works have been captivating readers for decades. However, it would be unreasonable for anyone to expect every work any artist creates to be extraordinary. And such is the case, in my opinion, with In the Skin of a Lion.

It is an ambitious novel which encompasses the lives of several immigrant workers in Toronto, Ontario, Canada during the early 20th century, in particular those involved in the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct, and the Harris Water Treatment plant. From a purely historical perspective it is fascinating, because Ondaatje reveals a few of the true stories from the era, such as a disappearance of Ambrose Small, a nun falling from a bridge, the murder of labour union organizers, and other such events of the era.

From a literary perspective, the novel doesn’t hold up against much of Ondaatje’s other work. Because of the scope of the subject matter, stories are somehow incomplete, leaping from one to the next without any comfortable connection or segue. The prose remains gorgeous, drawing in the reader so that events lift off the page. But there is a sense of disconnect and disorientation as Ondaatje abruptly moves from one character’s life to another.

My comments, however, pale in the face of the fact the novel was shortlisted for the 1987 Governor General’s Award.

Is the novel worth reading? Absolutely, if for no other reason than to explore some of Toronto’s history.

View all my reviews

Review and book launch video for Dreams of the Moon

So much news!

Author and artist, Swati Chavda, offered this review of Dreams of the Moon on Goodreads:

DELICATELY WOVEN SURREAL STORIES WITH LUMINOUS PROSE

The cover of this book—with its stark mountainous landscape and a lone girl gazing with wonder at the moon-jellyfish chimera floating shimmering in the sky—promised me a unique experience that would take me out of my pandemic-induced limbo.

The stories surpassed that promise, taking me through a dreamy, surreal experience full of wonder in strange, magical worlds and alternate realities.

You don’t want to rush through these stories. Each one is meant to be savoured sip by sip, like fine wine. Each time I finished reading a story, its resonance lingered for the next few days such that I was reluctant to move on to the next one. The characters within these pages took me along on a journey, revealing the pangs of mortality, or stasis of immortality, and also the nature of un-death.

The author is clearly adept at weaving sentences in a delicate lace, building nuance upon nuance until a pattern emerges that makes you sit up and gasp in recognition and wonder.

I’m going to look for longer works from this author, for this lovely collection has left me wanting even more.

And then there’s this:

Richard Graeme Cameron, publisher of Polar Borealis, and Joe Mahoney, author of A Time and a Place, were kind enough to host, record, and edit my encore book launch for Dreams of the Moon on Tuesday, June 8. The video is appended below. Hope you enjoy.

Encore book launch for Dreams of the Moon

It would seem I’m having an encore book launch for Dreams of the Moon, once again graciously hosted by Graeme Cameron, publisher of Polar Borealis Magazine, and MCed by Joe Mahoney.

The details:

Richard Graeme Cameron is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: SF Canada Zoom Meeting & Lorina Stephens book launch
Time: Jun 8, 2021 04:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) 7:00PM Eastern.

Meeting will begin at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Tentatively scheduled, at 6:00 p.m. PDT, 9:00 p.m. Eastern, Joe Mahoney will take over as host to run Lorina’s book Launch. At least an hour will be devoted to the launch. No doubt conversation inspired by the launch will last longer. In any case the meeting will continue till 9:00 p.m. PDT, midnight Eastern, participants willing.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83475737519?pwd=TzZwclAwMEVLUGZrUklUVzNGRWhVZz09

Meeting ID: 834 7573 7519
Passcode: 321877

Any bombers will be summarily evicted. But if you’re not a bomber, would be lovely to meet you on Tuesday where you can not only get to know some of the members of SFCanada, but find out about my new collection of short stories, Dreams of the Moon, which is available in trade paperback and ebook from this website, and your favourite online bookseller or library service.

 

 

Dreams of the Moon now live

Anywhere you want to shop

My new collection of short stories, Dreams of the Moon, is now available in print and ebook for preorder on all your favourite sites. It releases June 1, 2021. Why not preorder your copy today?

Amazon, Indigo, Google, Smashwords, Target, Apple, McNally Robinson, Barnes and Noble, and a plethora of others worldwide. If you are near a bookstore with an Espresso Book Machine service, you can also order it through that system. Once the collection releases, you can also borrow it through most of the online ebook libraries. Conversely, you can bug your local bookseller or library to bring in a copy.

And just as a teaser

Richard Graeme Cameron has written a simply stunning review for his weekly column at Amazing Stories. I am quite astonished and gratified.

The full review is here.

He’s said wonderful things as in his statement about the short story Wendy:

Writers take note. This is how you inject fresh meaning and insight into old tropes. Very ingenious and extraordinarily humane. Not utopian SF, but definitely a refreshing contrast to the usual dire dystopian approach so common in the genre. Want to write positive science fiction? This is a splendid example. Gritty enough to be “real,” yet ultimately pleasantly reassuring and upbeat.

And then about the short story, Civil Liberties:

Again. Lorina utilizes up-close and-personal intimacy to comment on larger issues. No matter what the situation, her focus is always on the individuals involved. There are no essays here. Only people struggling to cope. This technique makes it easy for the reader to relate to what is going on and consider the implications. A window to contemplation and reflection.

And there’s more. Much more.

Virtual Book launch

Then, on June 3, 7:30 to 9:30 PM EDT, I’m having a virtual book launch, hosted by Richard Graeme Cameron, and moderated by Joe Mahoney. Details are on my Facebook announcement here.

And there we go. Lots of wonderful news, and hopefully for you, some wonderful reading.

Dreams of the Moon virtual book launch

I’m having a party!

Where: Zoom

When: Thursday, June 3, 2021, 7:30PM to 9:30PM EDT

Price: Free

Who can attend? Anyone, as long as you’re not a bomber.

So, looks like I’m having a virtual book launch for my new collection of short fiction, Dreams of the Moon.

Joe Mahoney, author of A Time and a Place, is master of ceremony during this entertaining evening in which I will read from Dreams of the Moon, talk about the stories, and engage in dialogue with attendees.

The event is kindly sponsored by Richard Graeme Cameron, publisher and editor of Polar Borealis.

Zoom details can be found on Five Rivers Publishing’s Facebook page.