Mythic Storytelling: An Interview with Christine Emmert

I’m delighted today to interview Christine Emmert, author of Lilith and The Nun’s Dragon. Christine Emmert joins a group of contemporary fantasy authors who engage with mythic or religious themes. While writers like Holly McDowell (King Solomon’s Wives) apply elements from religious narratives to a range of historical contexts, others, like The Zombie Bible‘s Stant […]

2013: The Year in Reading

Here are some of my favorite books read in 2013. As usual, I devoured a lot of fantasy, with Neil Gaiman’s darkly beautiful fictionalized memoir The Ocean at the End of the Lane at the top of my list. I loved Rachel Hartman’s dragon-themed Seraphina and seriously cannot wait for the sequel. Holly Black’s much-anticipated […]

Bleak Midwinter, Happy New Year

In my last post, written in December, I used the phrase “ludicrously cold” to describe a brisk day in Colorado. That was perhaps a mistake, since I subsequently spent New Year’s Eve (and much of the week that followed) in northern Minnesota, where wind chills reached a bitter -50F for three nights in a row. […]

Snow for the Holidays

It’s ludicrously cold this week, and the robins eating our berries are fatter than ever. I’ve been coping with the chilly weather by knitting hats for holiday gifts. This particular hat is definitely not for Dulcinea. The storms came through and made everything beautiful. We had brunch at Chautauqua’s old dining hall, arriving in the […]

Bodrum, Turkey

Our Turkish journey ended in Bodrum, a beautiful city on the Carian coast. The Castle of St. Peter looks out over the harbor, which holds so many gulets and sailing boats, it looks like a 19th century port town. Lots of gulets! In fact, there was a bit of a traffic jam waiting for us […]