David Lee Summers's Blog, page 68

The Department of Curiosities

Today, I would like to welcome my friend Karen J. Carlisle to the blog. Our works have appeared together in three different steampunk anthologies: Denizens of Steam, Den of Antiquity, and DeadSteam: A Chilling Collection of Dreadpunk Tales. Karen has a new novel coming out tomorrow and she has agreed to share an excerpt from it. So, without further ado, I will turn the floor over to Karen.

Good morning everyone and thank you to David for allowing me to guest post on his blog.

So far on this...

Phoenix Fan Fusion

From Thursday, May 23 through Sunday, May 26, I will be at Phoenix Fan Fusion in Phoenix, Arizona. It is a major pop culture event featuring numerous celebrity guests from television and the movies including such folks as Jeff Goldblum, Paul Reubens, Nichelle Nichols, Catherine Tate and many more. There are also numerous writers and artists from the comic industry, many writers from Arizona and beyond, and a huge dealer floor where you can find toys, videos, comics, books, and much more. You...

The Vampire Lovers

In my story “Fountains of Blood” that appears in the anthology Straight Outta Tombstone, the vampire Marcella hands the protagonist, Billy, a copy of J. Sheridan LeFanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla to help him understand what vampires are. I used Carmilla partly because the story my story is centered around the 1896 Albert Fountain disappearance and Dracula was still a year away from publication. I also chose it because I thought this story of a female vampire would resonate well with my vampire c...

Tending to Busy-ness

I read an interesting article on the New York Times website about a week and a half ago that suggested that being perpetually busy has become something of a status symbol. I can see that. I know a lot of successful and ambitious people and judging from our conversations and their social media feeds, they are in demand and on the go and they like to talk about how they are in demand and on the go. The article also suggests that there’s a danger in people becoming too busy, that we need to allo...

Troubleshooting

My friend Darla Hallmark sells buttons that say, “The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble often shoots back.” In my job operating telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory, I often get to see the truth of that statement. Here I am in my natural habitat at the control station of the WIYN telescope.

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My actual title at Kitt Peak is “Senior Observing Associate” and my job is more than being a telescope driver. I see myself as the person whose job it is to make sure the astronomers wh...

Dracula: A Toy Theatre

Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, worked as the manager of London’s Lyceum Theatre for some 27 years. By the accounts I read, Stoker fell in love with the theatre during his childhood days when he would watch pantomime performances in Dublin. Because of his close association with the theater, it’s perhaps no surprise that Dracula adapts well to stage. In fact, famous film Draculas, Bela Lugosi and Frank Langella, both performed the role on stage before they performed the role on film.

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Lang...

The Spirit of Rebellion

This past week, I received my signed copy of the latest Boston Metaphysical Society graphic novel, entitled “The Spirit of Rebellion.” The Boston Metaphysical Society is the brainchild of Madeleine Holly-Rosing and it’s a comic and story series set in an alternate 1895 where there are already rudimentary airships and computers, but where society has not progressed as much as it did in our world. The “Great States of America” are dominated by Great Houses and people in the lower and middle cla...

Guest Post: Gender Swapping Characters

Today, I’d like to welcome author Deby Fredericks to my blog. I’ve had the honor of editing her novels The Grimhold Wolf and Seven Exalted Orders. I enjoy her writing and she has a new book out called The Tower in the Mist. In it, she presents a group of non-traditional warriors. Presenting characters in non-traditional gender roles is something I have done as well, and I thought it would be interesting to hear Deby’s take on this subject. Without further ado, I’ll turn it over to Deby.

When...

The Backbeat of the Universe

This past week, I’ve been helping to re-commission the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory and commission the first components of the new DESI spectrograph that we’ve been installing. In nautical terms, you can think of this as being like a shakedown cruise. We’re making sure the telescope is primed for taking scientific data and we want to assure we’ve worked out all the kinks from the telescope sitting idle for a year while it was rebuilt. We’re also making sure the c...

An Apocalypse Ends

In 2016, I discovered the comic book Scooby Apocalypse. It was part of the Hanna-Barbera Beyond initiative, in which various Hanna-Barbera animated characters were imagined on the pages of DC Comics in darker, edgier situations than the original cartoons. In Scooby Apocalypse, the gang from Scooby-Doo Where Are You? found themselves trapped in a hellish world where a nanite plague has swept the world, turning most people into horrific monsters. Most books in the Hanna-Barbera Beyond series la...