Sometimes, being late to the party is a good thing. Those who know me know the last few months have been a struggle, and that struggle has created a longing for comfort; to return to familiar places and stories long… Read More ›
Book Reviews
Early Reviews are trickling in for WAY OF THE LASER: FUTURE CRIME STORIES
Howdy to all you folks staying safe and social distancing and doing the best you can. The first thing I saw was an advance look at the ALA Booklist review coming out in June. “It’s an entertaining collection featuring a… Read More ›
Paul Jessup’s Short Story Roundup for May 2020
Anyone who knows me knows I love short fiction. I love reading it, I love writing it, it just feels so perfect. Novels have their place, don’t get me wrong, but when it comes to just sitting down and reading… Read More ›
Occult Detective Magazine #6
Sometimes being chased around a graveyard is exactly what you need. Life in lockdown has hit in surprisingly unusual ways for me, affecting what I choose to read and sending life skittering away, the off axis torque of the pandemic… Read More ›
A Journey into Strangeness, DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP by C.S.E. Cooney
The world is three petals of a single flower. On one petal, humans live and work and mine and struggle. In another petal, the dreamy realm of dangerous fae-like gentry lives just under the skin of the world. Beneath that,… Read More ›
The Strange Beauty of Simon Stalenhag’s Tales from the Loop and Amazon’s new series
The opening scenes of Amazon’s new sci-fi series, Tales from the Loop, are subtle, but the images will stick with you. Lampposts shaped like mechanical feet appear ready to stomp on workers filing into an industrial building on a cold… Read More ›
Guest Review: Paul Jessup reviews the Weird Dream Society’s Anthology in support of RAICES
Weird Dream Society: An Anthology in Support of RAICES Edited by Julie C. Day With stories by: Nathan Ballingrud, Carina Bissett, Gregory Norman Bossert, Karen Bovenmyer, Christopher Brown, Emily Cataneo, Julie C. Day, Michael J Deluca, Gemma Files, A.T. Greenblatt,… Read More ›
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa and the end of the world
I finished this odd, sad, magical book just a day before the reality of Covid-19 struck, and when I went to return the book to the library, the library was closed for precaution. It is perhaps not the best book… Read More ›
Archetypes and Prophecy in The Burning White by Brent Weeks
Apparently, I love Brent Weeks. I don’t remember preordering The Burning White, but when it appeared in my eReader, I pushed aside any review copies I had lying around and started to escape. The final book in The lightbringer Series,… Read More ›
“The Pale King” Revisited
“Abstruse dullness is actually a much more effective shield than is secrecy. For the great disadvantage of secrecy is that it’s interesting.” ― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King Tax season is upon us. Already, forms are arriving in the mail, and… Read More ›