Surfacing here for just a bit after a busy trip to Houston for the Day Job for training (woo woo) and a busy weekend of catching up with the fam (watching "Deadwood" on DVD for the most part!). Haven't hit my stride yet with the novel rewrites. I'm hoping to fix that tomorrow morning, 'round 4:45 a.m. Ouch.

Now that I'm starting to get settled into the new job and learning the ropes, I'm looking forward to getting a good schedule going, and continue with the reading (at night) and writing (in the morning) thing while balancing family and work and all the other things in life. Never an easy chore.

But the main reason I wanted to write this entry was due to my local newspaper, The Raleigh News and Observer, and their Books page. While many papers across the country are giving up on their book-related pages in their Lifestyles or Arts & Entertainment sections, the N&O's Books pages just got a nifty upgrade. Their pages now include a piece of micro-fiction, 2-3 medium-sized reviews, a shorter snippet of review and sometimes news, the unnecessary Best Sellers list from the NY Times (um, we can read that stuff on the Times' site!), and a revolving series of columns by local writers and reviewers.

Yesterday's column was called "THE SCI FI FILES" (yeah, I know, UGH), and it was written by Gabriel Morgan. It's a fine introduction to "speculative fiction" for people who hurry past the Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror sections in the book stores and libraries across the country.

Here's a link to the column. Check it out. Especially if your only experience with non-realistic fiction is at the movies on the the awful Sci Fi Channel (I hate the term "sci fi" for those reasons -- it calls to mind bad movies about robots gone bad or giant snakes). I can relate to the term "speculative fiction" -- it's what I like to read and what I like to write:

There are other virtues of speculative fiction that are particular to the genre. Truly fine science fiction can teach us about the world we live in, and the worlds we might live in, while satisfying the reader in the traditional ways. Great fabulism can have us reeling from the scope and power of the human imagination. Horror can shine a light on our collective nightmares.

But speculative fiction is, in the end, fiction. It struggles with the same issues, has many of the same goals, grants many of the same rewards. It can be funny, exhilarating, poignant, beautiful. The best of speculative fiction is, like the best of fiction, exactly why you read.

So if you liked or appreciated the article, why don't you shoot an email to the editor at the N&O, Marcy Smith? She's also got Lewis Shiner doing columns about graphic novels, which is just an awesome thing. Let's support the folks that are supporting the kind of fiction we love. They even have an interview with cyberpunk legend William Gibson!

Just ignore the typo that is John Kessel's name at the bottom of the column... Later!