Former late-night talk show host, Jon Stewart stuck his foot in a puddle the other day and tried to retrieve it without getting his trousers wet. He said he was riffing with friends on his podcast, The Problem with Jon Stewart when he joked that the goblins at Gringotts’s Bank in th

Forty-five years had passed before a former student emailed me.  His first remark didn’t come as a surprise. I’d heard versions of it before. “I’ve always thought of you as a maiden lady rather than an old maid.”  When I made no reply, the man prodded. “A maiden lady is

Politicians, celebrities, political groups, influence groups, and the media are doing their best to mess with reality, whatever that is. I ask, why bother? Since science began to study the issue of the blue dress that is simultaneously gold,  I’m not sure reality is real anymore. I

The Harry Potter gang has had a falling out over the definition of woman. Daniel Radcliffe one of the stars of the famous Hogwarts series says a transgender woman is a woman.  His creator, so to speak, J. K Rowling thinks otherwise. “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attra

J. K. Rowling’s criticism of Donald Trump is raising hackles on the internet. His loyal fans, once her loyal fans, are behaving like jilted lovers and threatening to burn their Harry Potter books in retaliation. Rowling says, “Go ahead. I’ve still got your money.” (Click)  Pr

In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne imagined deep water submarines.  In I, Robot, Isaac Asimov dreamed of machines with personalities.  J. K. Rowling envisioned an invisibility cloak in Harry Potter.  Why take note of this?  Because, so often, fiction imagines po

In “Hollywood and Divine,” James Wolcott ruminates on the pluses and minuses of giving television fans what they want. (Vanity Fair, June 2014, pgs. 68-73.)  While considering the question, he explores some of the more popular programs since Twin Peaks and the X-File — stor

To be a writer is to court two things: a) rejection and b) people who want to sell you promotion services. As sure as dead bodies attract blow flies, both encounters are inescapable.  Believe me, no one knows a sure way to shatter the glass barrier between wannabe authors and top sel

I was having coffee with a friend, recently, Peter Kasting, a fellow author who, sadly, has stopped writing. His last book, written several years ago, was a work of science fiction: Journey of a Thousand Miles. In it, cities had mysteriously become poisoned wastelands, forcing survivo

I love it when my blog readers send me articles. One I received, recently, was in reference to my remarks about J.K. Rowling’s new mystery, The Cuckoo’s Calling, which she wrote under the pen name, Robert Galbraith. (Aug 6, 2013) The book sold 1500 copies before the identity of th