…to this day. I was, in the parlance of children, eight-and-a-half. Apollo 8 had left Earth’s orbit and was the first crewed spaceflight to fly to the Moon. They orbited 10 times. What I remember the most, though, was their travel to “the backside” of the Moon. Their signal would cut out. The first time it happened, no one knew if they would make it back into signal range. Or at least, no one—according to my memory of 56 years ago. My parents always had the TV on. Always. If they were awake (and there was something on the air), the TV was on. Which meant I watched the Apollo 8 mission start to ..read more

…to writing this particular novella. I’m not even sure it was supposed to be a novella. (I kinda doubt it.) A book editor of mine, Lou Anders, asked me to take part in an anthology of his. Sideways in Crime is a really good anthology of alternate history crime stories. I was writing something else at the time, under deadline, that was eating my brain. I suspect it was a Smokey Dalton novel, because those take a lot of concentration. I figured I had maybe three days to write a story for Lou, but it had to be historical and well thought out and logical and about a crime. So I told Dean at lunch ..read more

I learned something a bit startling late last year. I was putting together the reading list for my in-person science fiction mystery class, and I realized that most of the books I wanted my students to read were out of print—and there was no electronic edition. Most of them were anthologies that came out in the mid-2000s (or earlier) and no one apparently saw or understood the reprint possibilities. One—my very favorite—was published by a publishing house that is now gone. The editor has retired, and there were only a few thousand copies in the first place. On the resale market, I could find&n ..read more

In our time, Benjamin Franklin helped Thomas Paine emigrate to the colonies, where the two helped shape the creation of the United States of America. But what if Paine had never made it to the colonies? What fate would he have met if he remained in England? In this alternate history story by Sidewise Award-winner Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Paine learns that one person can make a tremendous difference—but not necessarily the difference he expects. “Common Sense,” by international bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch, is free on this website for one week only. The story’s also available a ..read more

When an African-American woman arrives whipped and tortured at the Club on Lake Superior, she interrupts a meeting of powerbrokers setting up the 1924 senate election. Russell hoped to use the meeting to garner support for his candidate, Joe Stanislawski. But the interruption disrupts Russell’s plans. When Joe rushes to the woods where the woman says the men who beat her are still beating her husband, Russell follows. But what Joe does next surprises everyone involved. “Fighting Bob,” by international bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch, is free on this website for one wee ..read more

I taught a workshop, and spent a lot of January reading stories in manuscript. (I still have a lot to go because of a stupidly busy February.) I ended up reading a novel that was awful. The writing was good; the situation implausible; the characters all dumber than rocks. But I couldn’t figure out how this traditionally published author got to his ending. So I kept going…and found out that the book had no ending. No climax, no validation, just characters doing something they should have done in Chapter 3. If I had a fireplace, this novel would have gone in it. Unfortunately, because I was read ..read more

The acclaimed short story that inspired the award-winning novel, The Enemy Within. February, 1964: Two men die in a squalid alley in a bad neighborhood. New York Homicide Detective Seamus O’Reilly receives the shock of his life when he looks at the men’s identification: J. Edgar Hoover, the famous, tyrannical director of the FBI, and his number one assistant, Clyde Tolson. O’Reilly teams up with FBI agent Frank Bryce to solve the high-level assassination before the murders unleash even greater consequences. In our world, Hoover kept his secrets until long after his death. In Seamus O’Reilly’s ..read more

February got away from me. I was working on a deadline and dealing with several other things. Plus a nightmare course at school that I eventually dropped. (The course was cursed; the original prof had left the university suddenly, so they substituted a woman whose Spanish was as good as mine [which is to say, not great]. All the native speakers dropped out. It was a business class and she didn’t know business either, and then the department decided to use the class to test professor candidates. Maybe if I needed the course to get my degree in 4 years, I would have stayed. No matter what, thoug ..read more

It’s been an interesting reading month. I started reading a book on West Side Story, which looked truly interesting. It was unbelievably boring, but I finished it anyway. I’m not usually that completist. I think it simply points out how tired I am and how unwilling I was to look for something new. I read a lot of court cases and stuff in Spanish. I read a few novels that are so forgettable that I can’t even find them, let alone remember what they are. I also worked on a massive short story collection that I’ve been reading all year. I’m not going to recommend the book, although I might at time ..read more

In an alternate post-Civil War Chicago, the citizens still remember the day the Gondolas sent by the South died and the city burned—again. Lou, a Pinkerton detective, uses magic to hunt down the Gondola pilots, now called Gondola widows. She thought she caught them all. But when evidence comes to light that one last widow hides in the most public of places, Lou must find a way to stop her—for good. “The Last Surviving Gondola Widow,” by New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch is free on this website for one week only. The story’s also available as an ebook throu ..read more