Status Updates

Future Earth Volume Four is very near release, but being an issue for tributes is a two-handed engine of Janus proportions, and we need the face smiling out at both readers and contributors. The previous three issues, including the extra-long third volume are still available free from the site and various other torrent and direct-download sources.

The Summer Edition of Florida Review features brand new Travis Hedge Coke type fiction. "Alien in Nature" is a They walk among us! tale, featuring a retiree who realizes his wife is not his wife, everyone is in danger, but what can you do when everyone else is oblivious without seeming nuts or just very petty?

The September issue of Sequential Daze opens with an article they solicited from me, called "How to Make it Work", where I tell you Frank Miller was right, everyone makes mistakes, and other controversial assertions. Mostly, it's concerned with the resuscitation of racist characters in corporate-owned comics, though, and what responsibility the artists, writers, editors and such might have in perpetuating those trademarks.

Oberon's Children may still be coming out from Pazzaria Productions, someday. It will still be a multimedia YA story featuring prose, illustrations, music and other exciting illuminating elements. It will probably cost something after a few tasters set out to entice you. The toymaker will still be designing weapons for a greedy king, the kids will still break every rule they can, an their god is still a micromanaging bogeyman. If you ever wondered what Robin Hood would be like if Robin was played by Grace Jones as a college dropout, this will give you some idea.

And, when I told you Hello, I told you all I know. If it isn't specified here, I'm the wrong person to ask. When I know more, I'll pass it on.

Thanks for the support, everyone.

Well, Why Not?

My publisher and good friend, Daniel Rappaport talks Toy to the World and Pazzaria at Blue Fuss, asking elliptically (on the nose) some questions I hope the will be covered when Toy to the World and Pazzaria launches in the coming days.

Is it really damaging to children if two of their favorite characters of the same gender have a romance?

To have a governing body be manipulative and wrong... no matter how old, tall, or bearded those governors (Gandalf cough Dumbledore cough hack wheeze) happen to be.

To get political?

And, on the flipside, how bad is the classist, stereotype-reinforcing, middle class, faux-sentimentalism of major swathes of Young Adult and youth-friendly entertainment? How tiresome are I'm the boss of you/No, I'm the boss of me! arguments? Wealthy power-imbued beloved uber-jocks who have the cuties hanging around them endlessly, portrayed with a pretense of being picked on and downtrodden because they slept on an uncomfortable bed once and their parents were murdered? Petty revenge as an honorable - and just - and hilarious - element? Or, poor picked on pop stars, to have to lie to the world and their friends... because it makes their (fabulous super-wealthy popstar) life easier? Magical creatures used as metaphors for nonwhite ethnicities, non-het sexualities, or political factions?

They do this, not just for children, swapping in a monster for an oppressed or (perceived) nonstandard group. As though there is a sensible throughline of any functionality or moral lesson, in substituting vampires or werewolves for, say, nonwhites moving into the neighborhood. And the fear is almost always validated, usually with a knowing wink and some parental cognizance (see Wizards of Waverly Place's emphasis on not dating outside your kind, which means, apparently, being a jerk because your date has a back-end you don't like (in this case, a horse-end). When this is sold to adults as meaningful and intellectual, one can't help but feel the audience is supposed to have their critical faculties blinded by the sheer novelty of metaphor. The heck with that!

I can't tell you exactly what Pazzaria will be doing or how, but I can promise you I'm doing my best to make sure no one is having their intelligence insulted and that everyone is entertained.