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Sources of Inspiration: Someone Else

There’s nothing quite like sharing my ideas with another person, especially someone who’ll listen and respond to what I say. Someone who offers not only positive reinforcement but interest. I get a charge of energy being around such people. More ideas pop into my head as we talk, concepts for potential stories, blogs, all kinds of projects. People are a source of creative vitality like nothing else for me. I doubt I would have gotten as far as I have as a writer if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have such people, encouraging me at various times in my life. … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Dust

Sometimes the most insane acts of destruction render a beautiful rebirth in its place. Not often, but every once in a while. In the great whirling dance of the cosmos, we find that beauty the most. R Aquarii just showed us a magnificent one. This binary system has been documented as far back as 1073 CE by Korean astronomers, when the pair lit up with a massive solar jet arced out into its surrounding hourglass nebula. This duo has an extremely complex relationship, the white dwarf stealing mass from the red giant, a greedy cannibalism accompanied by a spectacular light … Read more

Rambling Through the Year—Jeff Baker, Boogieman In Lavender

                        Some End-Of-the-Year Rambling By Jeff Baker   The end-of-the year is a time for reflections. On the year, on life, on history. Maybe on the future.  A few weeks ago, we saw “J.F.K.: Reckless Youth,” a mini-series from the 1990s. Watching it made us remember how young the boys were who went off to fight World War Two. And that John F. Kennedy, still to many a symbol of youth and vigor, was born in 1917 while World War One was still going on. World War One, now … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Awesome

I have a personal opinion about Hell, if Hell exists, and it’s a floor stretching out for eternity. Covered in Lego. Yeah. That’s my definite version of Hell. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Lego. Those little blocks make for hours of a frustrating good time and these days come in some wild builds. The Space Shuttle build is my kidlet’s favorite. And that brings me to the point of this whole little ramble: kidlets and Lego. Every parent’s worst child-related fears come with some version of them swallowing a foreign object. How long until it passes? Will it … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Opposites

opposites - pixabay

One of my favorite books, Something Wicked This Way Comes, derives a measure of energy from two of its protagonists being opposites. Jim Nightshade is brash, adventurous, seeking danger, half in love with the dark promise of the autumn carnival. Will Halloway is thoughtful, sensitive to the danger in the air, yet somehow more innocent because of it. All of this is expressed in exquisite, visual prose which fires the imagination, much of which might be lost to modern edits. Opposites were depicted in a very different way in Naruto, a pair of contrasting characters I became quite obsessed with. Uzumaki … Read more

The Last “Wilde Stories” Reviewed – Boogieman in Lavender

                          “Wilde Stories 2018” reviewed. By Jeff Baker Author’s note: My full-fledged, full-length review of “Wilde Stories 2018” will be appearing in Lambda Literary, so here is a truncated variation on the theme. ——jb The final “Wilde Stories” is out, and is well worth the price. There are delights for LGBT readers, readers of gay-themed literature or just plain readers of speculative fiction. (Groups whose readership does not seem to overlap, laments editor Steve Berman in a reflective Afterward.) The authors include names like Matthew Bright (whose stories … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Food for Imagination

We’re in the middle of my favorite month, a time of brilliant fall colors and my favorite grapes. It’s also the month of Halloween. If there’s a holiday I love writing fiction about, it’s this one. Vampires, ghosts, and witches are among my favorite subject matter all year around. Halloween celebrates the gothic. It’s a holiday associated with ancient crypts filled with secrets or creatures waiting to be released within banks of mist in which the undead could be waiting. Grinning pumpkin illuminate the darkness, drawing attention to smiles that are a little disturbing. All of this imagery is food … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Hoax

The science side of humanities was rocked this month by the exposure of three hoaxers. I won’t publish their conclusions or anything, because that’s not really the point of this post, but you can find their nonsense here. The whole impetuous for their shenanigans was bullshit, from start to finish, in my opinion. What basically happened was these three found out about a study they didn’t like. In an effort to undermine the field that study came out of, as well as undermine the humanities in general, these hoaxers put out 20 fake papers to academic journals to see if … Read more

The Picture of Jonathan Collins; a Queer Horror for Halloween – Boogieman In Lavender

catalog books

By Jeff Baker Some reading for Halloween, now. First I’ll open a can of worms and recommend a queer-themed story by a straight author, something a lot of readers or LGBT fiction won’t touch on principle, but this one’s good; “The Picture of Jonathan Collins,” by Karl Edward Wagner first appeared in the 1995 anthology “Forbidden Acts,” (edited by Collins, Greenberg and Kramer) which is where I first encountered it. Collins is suffering from amnesia of a sort after his house is bombed during the London blitz. Some fifty years earlier, and he hasn’t aged a day since, and can’t … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Ideas

For me, sources of inspiration are closely linked with ideas. Much of my inspiration comes from one that pops into my head. I mull it over, allowing it to take form. I start writing about it, allowing it grow and spread across the piece of paper or file. Before long, I have a scene, a paragraph, a segment of dialogue. I start thinking about the circumstances which led to that dialogue, writing it down. Before too long, I have a story. Ideas can lead to other creative works as well, like blog posts or interviews. An idea allowed Quartz, not … Read more