James Pyles's Blog, page 56
April 15, 2021
Big Announcement for Saturday the 17th
This one has been in the works for months, and the story involved has been edited again and again. I think you’ll like the final result. It will become available Saturday. I still can’t talk about it and have no promotional materials to offer, but I can share an excerpt to whet your appetite. Toto […]
April 5, 2021
There’s Still Time
Still time to pre-order it at Amazon.com. Will be released May 11, 2021.
March 31, 2021
WordPress Did It Again (Darn Them)
Months back, the free version of WordPress took away what they now call the Classic Editor used to write and edit blog posts and replaced it with something that for me is almost unusable; Gutenberg. I tried to work with it at first, but it was (and is) terrifically awkward. Then I discovered that if […]
March 28, 2021
G. Scott Huggins Wins 2021 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Contest
Just wanted to say a quick congratulations to G. Scott Huggins for being named the 2021 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Contest Winner. A few years back, I somehow started following him on Facebook and more recently twitter, so I’ve known about this for a few days. The really cool thing according to Baen is: […]
March 25, 2021
Review of “Mara’s Awakening”
Disclosure, I was asked by the author via email to review his short novelette Mara’s Awakening. Interestingly enough, when I tried to post a review on Amazon, I received a notice that it wasn’t eligible to be reviewed. I have no idea why. I did manage to post a review on Goodreads. I had a […]
March 24, 2021
Where Are the Families in Science Fiction?
Not long ago, I read a blog post by Caroline Furlong called Why Science Fiction Lacks Mothers and Fathers – and Why This Trend Needs to Change. At the time, I didn’t notice it was first published in July of 2018, but that doesn’t really matter. Caroline lamented the abysmal lack of supportive parental characters, […]
March 22, 2021
Book Review of “On Basilisk Station”
In my continued effort to review Baen Publications, I’ve just finished reading the first novel in David Weber‘s “Honor Harrington” series On Basilisk Station. It was kind of hard to get into. Weber has a tendency to lapse into long pages of dense exposition, which tends to put the reader into one person’s head (more […]
Comic Books, Television, and Who Are Our Heroes?
So I happened to read Cora Buhlert’s review of the first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier called Marvel’s “New World Order” – Some Thoughts on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (spoilers) expecting something light and entertaining. Not exactly what happened. First of all, let me say that I haven’t seen any […]
March 21, 2021
My Interview About “The Haunted Detective”
Once upon a time, I wrote a story about a private detective named Margie Potter. She lived and worked in San Francisco in the year 1947. The original story was really “adult oriented” and “gritty” but the people who wanted to publish it wanted something more “Young Adult” themed. That, plus the word count restriction, […]
Standing Up Against the Bullies
A couple of days ago, I posted a commentary about COVID and vaccines and I took great pains to shield the source of my conversation. But when I woke up this morning and checked in on twitter, I found that the “haters” had discovered my commentary and decided to call me a bunch of names. […]
