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Thomas Tryon, Dark Secrets – Boogieman In Lavender

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egg-shaped skulls

by Jeff Baker The strangers find themselves in a small town in the country. A town where the older, quieter, simpler ways are important. A town where religion is important and the people are close to nature, to the land, to the tall, growing corn. By the end of the tale, the strangers realize (too late) that religion and the corn have blended in horrific ways. Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn,” right? No. Thomas Tryon’s 1973 novel “Harvest Home,” which predates King’s 1977 short story. Thomas Tryon broke into the literary scene with his novel “The Other,” in the … Read more

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

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Science finds stuff in weird places all the time. The nightmare creatures in the depths of the ocean. Sand rivers on Mars. Probable diamond storms on Neptune and Uranus. Living creatures in thermal vents, as well as the freezing vacuum of space. I have to say, this one made me giggle. Time crystals have been found in those rock-growing kits for children. Yes, I know what that sounds like. A material that has proven difficult to create in a lab setting is something that kids make on the regular to learn about crystals. Wild, right? It’s also presented some real … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Creativity vs. Practicality

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Too often, my desire to write, my creative impulse outstrips my ability to perform. My hands simply can’t move fast enough to put all the stories into words. Ideas come and go too quickly to transmuted into stories. I’ve got so many I’ve begun which I’ve put on hold, due to constraints of time or my own physical limits. I can only take sitting for so long. I have other things that need to get done. Many a practical concern awaits, ready to distract me from my manuscript. Practicalities often dictate what project I choose to focus. I need to … Read more

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

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Ah, another holy grail of science fiction and science has once again caught my eye and imagination in a interesting fashion. The culprit, this time, is time-travel. Sort of. Allow me to explain. It all starts with quantum physics. You know, that branch of science guilty of giving people headaches since it went mainstream with Schrödinger’s infamous half alive, half dead cat. Schrödinger thought it would be a grand idea to theorize about quantum entanglement with the great Einstein, even if it left him with a sour taste in his mouth. Well, some enterprising scientists went in another direction with … Read more

A Testament Against Hate; Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender

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I Am The Night; Rod Serling’s Testament Against Hatred By Jeff Baker The fifth season of the original Twilight Zone gets unjustly maligned. The show was showing its age and while there were some classics (“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”) there were some clunkers (“The Encounter”). One of those episodes deserves a re-examination. “I Am the Night, Color Me Black” aired March 27, 1964, and I have agreed with many that it is a heavy-handed and obvious diatribe against racial injustice and prejudice. Valid concerns in the country in 1964, but Zone had done it better earlier, for example in the … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Activity Inspires Activity

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April is coming. A month in which I do more writing than any other time of the year. First there’s Camp NaNoWriMo. I love this kind of creative, online camping where we share a cabin with a bunch of other writers, letting ourselves inspire each other, pushing ourselves forward. Camp works best for me if I combine it with a pragmatic goal, a submission goal, or a Work in Progress that requires attention. I haven’t always made my Camp goal. I always get some work done even if it’s only a few words. Not to mention there’s a positive rush … Read more

Shadows of the Night: Remembering “Dark Shadows” – Boogieman In Lavender

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It all started with a dream. A woman on a train on her way to a place unfamiliar and strange to her with the voiceover narration beginning with the words; “My name is Victoria Winters.” The understated beginning (from a dream by producer/creator Dan Curtis) of the cult T.V. series Dark Shadows which started out as a soap opera with gothic elements and morphed into something different, darker and some people insist, gayer. Remembered today as “the show with the vampire in it,” way before Twilight, Forever Knight or even Lestat and co., Dark Shadows added supernatural elements in a … Read more

U+(N/T)M*G: Edge

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Out in a lonely spot, somewhere around the vast Australian desert, there sits a little machine one might mistake for a shiny table. And that machine did something our most powerful telescopes couldn’t do. It found the first stars. The EDGES is a highly sensitive radio telescope with only one job, to find the faint frequency signal from the one-hit wonders at the beginning of stellar formation. The blue ones which burned hot and died young in glorious nova, and seeded the Universe with heavier atoms. The deaths of those first cosmic pioneers gave rise to what we needed for … Read more

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

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Sometimes, in the course of innocuous browsing for a topic, one comes across a cool bit of science and an unexpected tidbit pops up that really gets the muse going. This happened to me today. Almost two decades ago, NASA launched a little satellite whose mission was to study our magnetosphere. The neat little guy, IMAGE, sent us back a lot of real photographic gems of our little mudball and information that added to our scientific understanding of our world. It showed us the unique qualities of the protective, living shield our core generates, and how it interacts with our … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Shiny!

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  Lately, I’ve been overwhelmed. Trying to make deadlines. Finishing projects. Trying to market myself. Trying, trying, I’m so very trying. (rueful grin) I think I’ve been trying too hard. I need to find the fun again. After all, if I’m not having fun finishing my projects and marketing myself, how can I expect anyone else to appreciate my efforts? This is one of the reasons Quartz mouths off to on varied social media. We’re attempting to have a little fun while marketing…and venting. :) He expresses a lot of my own doubs and irritations about my journey as a … Read more