Piers Morgan has a point

I'm not a big fan of Piers Morgan but this ridiculous call for his deportation in the wake of his statements about gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings makes me want to deport myself to somewhere where people can talk about the subject without going non-linear. Read his piece on the subject on the Daily Mail site.

Not everything is online.

Every day of last year, I went looking for a new short story to post on the 365 Short Story a Day challenge. I had decided that I would only post one story per writer and that I would not post a story that another participant had posted. Two of us posted Evan Hunter's "The Last Spin" and I think there was an overlap on one of Thomas Pluck's stories, but the only time I broke my self-imposed rule on purpose was the day Ray Bradbury died. I had already posted his "Small Assassin" story but on that day I posted "A Sound of Thunder," which is one of my all-time favorite time travel stories. Jimmy Callaway's "Night Train to Mondo Fine," is probably second on the list, with Brian Trent's "Down Memory Line" third.
But I digress.
One of the stories that was posted early on was Lord Dunsany's "Two Bottles of Relish" and visitors to the 365 site were consistently lured there by the story post. I've been looking at those posts for a year and saying to myself, "I must read that story."

Maybe next year....

This time last year I enthusiastically signed on to Benoit Lelievre's Smoth Criminals fiction challenge.  The idea was to read seven books in various genres--a hardboiled classic, for instance, and a book with a psychopath at the center. (I was going to read Dexter Darkly Dreaming, the first in a series of novels on which the cable series is based.) Alas, I did not complete even one of the books I'd planned to read. But having been presented with the challenge, I now have my reading cut out for me next year.

I did however, take part in Brian Lindenmuth's 365 short story a day challenge. Four more days...I've actually read ahead, so I only have two more to read and write up. I made a decision to only feature one story per writer, which forced me out of my comfort zone. (I could have posted 365 stories just by Stephen King and Ray Bradbury.) I read some tremendous stories. The two that stood out for me were W.D. County's "Plastic Soldiers" and Ken Liu's "Paper Menagerie." Both stories are about children and they couldn't be more different.

Call yourself a reader? Publisher's Weekly picks the "10 Most Difficult Books"

Of course James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is on the list. smack dab in the middle as it happens. I've read it, but all I really remember is Molly Bloom's soliloquy and the only reason I remember that is I saw Fionnula Flanagan's fabulous one-woman show, James Joyce's Women. Also  on the list--Virginia Woolf's To a Lighthouse, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen, and Women and Men by Joseph McElroy, a book I've never heard of that PW dubs "a post-modern meganovel." You can see the whole list here.

Alice Rivlin is my heroine

Sometimes in Hollywood it seems like women become irrelevant the moment they hit 40. By 50, they are invisible, with the exception of Meryl Streep. In Washington, though, a woman is just hitting her stride in her 50s. And they don't have a mandatory sell-by date. A smart woman can work forever and be taken seriously, and be listened to. Alice Rivlin will be 82 in March and there she is on MSNBC explaining her take on the fiscal cliff. Once an advisor to President Clinton, she's now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of President Obama's debt commission. In another generation, Ms. Rivlin would have been sitting on a front porch somewhere crocheting a comforter. Now she's trying to fix the economy. I love living in the 21st century. I look forward to being 82 and still having a voice. 

Help Dennis Lehane find his dog...

And he'll name a character after you.
Get the 411  here on TMZ.

Ellen Datlow needs your help!

She's raising money for her next anthology, Fearful Symmetries, via a Kickstarter campaign. She wants to raise $25,000 and she's a little over a third of the way done with 13 days remaining. She's offering terrific rewards at all levels of the campaign, and you can support this project for as little as $5.
If you read short stories--particularly in the speculative fiction/science fiction/fantasy/horror genres--you have read  one or more of the anthologies edited by Datlow. Her birthday is next Monday (New Year's Eve), so why not give her an early birthday preesent and pledge a little cash?
Watch Datlow talk about the project here.