Author Archives: Gene Stewart

About Gene Stewart

Born 7 Feb 1958 Altoona, PA, USA Married 1980 Three sons, grown Have lived in Japan, Germany, all over US Currently in Nebraska I write, paint, play guitar Read widely Wide taste in music, movies Wide range of interests Hate god yap Humanist, Rationalist, Fortean Love the eerie

A Ficta Mystica Rumination

I’m glad to have discovered my Ficta Mystica sub-strata as the basis of most of what I write because it frees me to trope from dark to light without changing my approach to fiction. Encountering the Other and blundering into … Continue reading

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The Scope and Structure of Our Ignorance

Please go read the introduction to Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon, whence these excerpts that may be useful or interesting to writers are taken. Reading any and all Pynchon fiction is important, too. /// “…Our common nightmare The Bomb … … Continue reading

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A Montage of Familiar Images

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN is not a fantasy, it is a deconstruction of and commentary on Medieval High Fantasy and contains layered referents from fiction and history, including Norse, Celtic, and Arabic myth, Elizabeth Bathory, Joan of Arc, Tolkien, … Continue reading

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Hurt Cut Bone

I am very hard to get along with regardless who you are in my life. Including me. I am not often as hard on others as I have been on you. Long term, though, perhaps others would disagree. When you … Continue reading

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Our Neighbor Committed Mass Murder The Other Day

Recently Neil Gaiman spoke of hiving a swarm of bees. He wrote with justifiable pride and a sweet gentleness. Not too many days ago my youngest son and I witnessed a swarm. It formed a cylinder perhaps sixty feet high. … Continue reading

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re: HOUSE Series Ending

What if Sherlock Holmes post Reichenbach Falls was all in Watson’s head? “When the cancer gets too bad…” “Cancer’s boring.” Don’t let reality intrude on Kerouac’s unwinding road. Like Pirsig, just maintain. Seize the day. Ars longa, vita brevis. Memento … Continue reading

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Art’s Value

Our uncultured society places a low value on culture and art. We pay CEOs millions to remove jobs from America and strip us of everything worth a penny but we grouse at having to pay for a story, a song, … Continue reading

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Speak Carefully, It May Be Forever

Carl Sagan wrote, “What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind … Continue reading

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A Beltane Witching

A slender young woman with pale skin and autumnal hair lit a candle in a dark room. Nude, she shivered and lit four more candles. She walked around the five candles three times counterclockwise. As she did so, she whispered … Continue reading

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Ebook Bashing, Bashed

Gatekeepers mean nothing but control of extruded fiction product. Are you shocked that most self-published stuff is crap? Why do you ignore the fact that most publisher crap is crap, too. Sturgeon’s Law, which merely rephrases the Bell Curve. Publishers … Continue reading

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