Mining the Public Domain

As you may have heard, because of a 1998 revision to U.S. copyright law, January 1, 2019 marked the first time in more than 20 years that any copyrighted work entered the public domain. And while we all rush to download legal copies of works by Robert Frost and Edith...

Chilling Tales from Living Catholic Writers

Ask any group of reasonably well-read Catholics to name a living Catholic horror writer, and, since the death of William Peter Blatty early last year, the only one they can usually come up with is Dean Koontz. (I should know. I’ve made the experiment on multiple...

What Was In Lady Vivienne’s Poison

I almost never post the kinds of things fans seem to want from an author: short story spinoffs of novels, cut scenes, behind-the-novel glimpses into how a story evolved. I suppose it’s because I’m not a very good fan myself. I want to read a book (or watch a movie,...

Reading Without Pictures

For the past eight years, my husband and I have been enveloped in the world of communication disorders because both of our children have difficulty comprehending language. However, it is only in recent weeks that a particular symptom was brought to the forefront as a...

Black Bottle Man

Black Bottle Man by Craig Russell Great Plains Teen Fiction, 2010; 176 pages Gold Medal, Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards, Young Adult Fantasy/ Sci-Fi, 2011 What do you do when your two childless aunts sell their souls to become pregnant? According to Black Bottle Man,...