I was trained in college with 'The Classics' - those being the canon of books deemed worthy of study in 'Literature' courses for university by some all-knowing body back in the 60s. They're good books for the most part, but they're not all stellar like my professors tried to convince me. They're also missing a lot of books on their list that aren't on there because of their 'genre' classification. Some slim few slip through the cracks, though, because of their subtlety or good marketing.

I'm sure many of you are wondering about the massive delay on the magazine. My apologies for the delay in my explanation.

1. As pointed out by Deven D Atkinson on her blog, we've had some issues not only with our printer by my layout person. I'm working on getting a replacement of the later.

2. I'm in serious need of a business partner more administratively-minded than I. There are a lot of things left undone that I'm continually having to go back and fix after I realize I've messed up.

I'm sure many of you have noticed the lack of an Issue #2 on the site. It will be up shortly. We're just waiting on contracts to get back. Issue #3 may be a bit delayed, as well, as we've had a pretty small selection to pick from where stories are concerned. We hope to get a few more before the end of the year to allow us to put Issue #3 together quickly.

The folks at Mundane SF are at it again with their derision. Here is my response to the post that was made about Sarah Hall, the winner of UK's John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

You were building up to something that I would have agreed with before you made your massively hasty generalization about "Science Fiction" as a collective unit.

So I tried diligently at NaNo this year, having completed it successfully last year, and I am throwing in the towel. That's not to say that I've stopped writing; I just know that I won't be able to write 25,000 words by the end of the month. I still have a substantial piece of work done, though, and that is always nice.

In other news . . .

Mark Chadbourn over at Jack of Ravens posted a comment about the "lack of a fantasy community."

The forums over at National Novel Writing Month are alive with chatter as people gear up for writing the next great novel . . . or in most cases, fifty-thousands words only 300 of which truly come out as spectacular. It's never really an exercise in brilliant writing, so much as a task to keep you singularly focused on one project for a month. It helps tremendously in turning off the "inner editor" that so many writers dread. I have a somewhat dualistic approach to writing, so many times I'm able to turn that off. But I'm rambling.

This site has been bugging me for a long time, but this particular post really rubs me the wrong way, mostly because of the titular question that is posed: Why do science fiction writers make stuff up?

After an embarrassingly long time without any print copies, things have been worked out with our printer, and I will be getting Volume 1, Issue 1 out here over the next few days. If you have not received yours yet, please email me as soon as possible.

Volume 1, Issue 2 is still forthcoming, as we were waiting for two contracts to come back, and they have not, so we will have to end up moving forward and perhaps publish them later. So with that in mind, here is the Table of Contents for the second Issue of Staffs & Starships magazine.

Bloodshrikes - Steve Goble

Throughout my years at university, I was plagued by the notion that there is a "Literary Elite" who dictate what is important to read and what isn't. It still bothers a lot of writers within the genre world because the vast majority of them don't fit into what those scholars, critics, curriculum writers, et al deem as important literature.