I am trying my hand at producing videos for YouTube to promote my podcast, Beyond Barbarossa. For an upcoming episode, I recorded a Zoom interview with Roger Moorhouse, author of seven books on the Second World War. We talked about one of them, The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939–1941, and about its subject, […]
You know I have a lot more ideas for stories than I’ll ever have time to write. So I’ve been thinking, during idle times like going to the grocery store or walking the dog: maybe I need a new way to write long fiction. One that acknowledges that we’re distracted all the time, that our […]
What a summer. And now, it’s over. It’s almost like it never happened. What with forest fires around the world, smoky skies, floods, oppressive heat and this hernia, I didn’t get to do all the outdoor stuff I like to do. I guess I didn’t tell you all this before, but I suffered a hernia […]
News for 1 April 2023 I have something amazing to report. After doing my own extensive research on the Internets, that proves Graham Hancock’s theory of an ancient civilization is wrong. In fact, it’s just repackaging of stories by fantasy writers like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. Ardia: our extraterrestrial origin My research, conducted […]
I mean, just look at it. Pure, clean snow. Covering everything. For at least a short time, hiding all our sins and failings. Not just visually. Walking in fresh-fallen and still falling snow is quiet. The only sounds are the susurration of the wind and the slight squeak or crunch of my boots on […]
It’s something you just cannot avoid or escape. It’s everywhere, and no matter how much you struggle against it, eventually you have to give in. Here it is, New Year’s Day, 2023. So I have to tell you my resolutions. Or plans. So here we go. The podcast As you know, I launched Beyond Barbarossa, […]
Author, IT specialist and peripatetic This is a very special post: a conversation with Ivan Baidak, author of Invisible and five other books. Invisible has recently been published in English by Canadian publisher Guernica Editions of Hamilton, Ontario. I met Ivan five years ago on a trip to California for a writer’s conference in Russian […]
As winter teases us here in Ottawa, snowing and freezing and then treating us to warm sunshine, followed by freezing rain, I think of the looming winter in Ukraine. People there facing sub-zero temperatures without electricity, gas, or even running water. Yet the Ukrainian people continue to defy the Russian invasion. They’re committed to resisting, […]
COVID. War. Totalitarianism. Pandemic. Climate change. Terrorism. Nuclear war. Judging from hyperbole in social media, we are out-and-out terrified of these things. Just consider the rhetoric around the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Will he? Won’t he? Should we? The job of writers of fantasy and speculative fiction is to reflect our audience’s fears back […]
Protesters against vaccines in Ottawa are walking on Parliament Hill, screaming “freedom” in a pathetic imitation of Mel Gibson’s overdone portrayal of William Wallace. What does “freedom” mean? It means responsibility. You can do the things you want to do, go where you want, say what you want. It also means you have to take […]