storyfires

 Tomorrow is the first day of LTUE (Life, the Universe, and Everything), a Conference for Sci-Fi and Fantasy writers. Yep, the crazies. Like me.  Extra fun because... 1. At least one friend is speaking (Bree Despain). 2. I just finished Diana Wynne Jones's book Deep Secret, which makes hilarious fun of Sci-Fi/Fantasy conferences, all while creating an exceptional fantasy story with multi-verses and magic. Incredibly creative. She always astonishes me. And the book put me in the mood. I like fantasy people. 3. It's cheap. You don't get much better than twenty bucks for a writers' conference. 4. It's close to my house. Are you going? I'll see you there. If not, you're probably hard at work, unlike the rest of us slackers who are spending the next three days talking about our work instead of doing it. Write like the wind!

I for got I meant to post this lovely poem for Valentine's Day. My disgust with February doesn't extend to romantic poetry as long as it's truly lovely. As usual, I use the Emily Dickinson standard for judging: you feel it takes the top of your head off. This one did for me.  Here it is, a day late. On The Origins Of Things by Troy Jollimore Everyone knows that the moon started out as a renegade fragment of the sun, a solar flare that fled that hellish furnace and congealed into a flat frozen pond suspended between the planets. But did you know that anger began as music, played too often and too loudly by drunken performers at weddings and garden parties? Or that turtles evolved from knuckles, ice from tears, and darkness from misunderstanding? As for the dominant thesis regarding the origin of love, I abstain from comment, nor will I allow myself to address the idea that dance began as a kiss, that happiness was an accidenta...