Jun 22, 2022 | Interviews Features and Reviews
AI software like LaMDA is pretty impressive but we’ve been using AI for years without even realizing it. One perfect example of this is OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tools that let us digitize printed documents. While there’s something to be said...
Jun 16, 2022 | Random Musings
In case you missed the news, a Google engineer called Blake Lemoine believes that LaMDA, the company’s AI, has already achieved sentience. Lemoine has since been fired from Google for going public with his belief, thus violating the company’s...
Jun 6, 2022 | Fun Historical Facts
This blog usually deals with Medieval or ancient history, but I’m also interested in more recent history. While researching an article, I recently came across some facts about Ferrari, the legendary sports car brand created by Enzo Ferrari. I hope you’ll...
Jun 1, 2022 | Fun Historical Facts, Quora
Bradford McCormick, a reader of this blog, mentioned Helen of Troy in a comment and got me thinking. What did happen to that crazy lass after Troy fell? Well, turns out the answer, as told by Steve Theodore on Quora, is both complicated and fascinating. A Happy Ending...
May 30, 2022 | Fun Historical Facts, Quora
Plenty of ancient resources mention medical procedures such as surgery. The early Chinese surgeon Hua Tuo (c. 140-208) is credited with being the first recorded person to use cannabis as an anesthetic. He reduced the plant to powder and mixed it with wine for...
May 16, 2022 | Fun Historical Facts, Quora
One thing I inherited from my late father is a small house in Evia, an island off of Athens. When I first visited the place, it had been closed for a couple of years, with no one visiting. What struck me was how rusted everything was, including even nickel faucets and...
May 14, 2022 | Fun Historical Facts
Many of you write romance that includes scenes that range from explicit to implicit. For you, I have this little nugget I came across the other day on Quora, which you may particularly enjoy if your romance takes place in the 19th century. During the 19th century,...
May 10, 2022 | My Publications, Writing
I have been quietly working on a pet project, a picture book for toddlers, in collaboration with the very talented Thanasis Psarros. Here is a sneak preview: My experience with the wee one has shown me just how essential picture books are for young readers. They are...
May 4, 2022 | Random Musings
If you’re anything like me, you may have started your fascination with fantasy thanks to games. World of Warcraft (WoW) is probably the best-known one, letting you play online with your friends, form factions, and fight both other players and non-player...
Apr 22, 2022 | Random Musings
Having gone from posting once every other day to twice a month, you may be excused for wondering if I’m turning increasingly lazy or if something worse has happened. Thankfully, all is well but I do confess to being somewhat exhausted. Between writing and...
Apr 5, 2022 | Interviews Features and Reviews
This is a guest post by Rayne Hall. You may know Rayne from her successful Writer’s Craft series. And you may remember how we wrote together Copywriting: Get Paid to Write Promotional Texts. Rayne is also the author of Storm Dancer, one of the finest fantasy...
Mar 30, 2022 | Publishing
This is a guest post by Junaid Ali, a full-time blogger at The Character Counter. He has successfully grown organic revenue by 74% in 5 months through better analysis of the website and SEO Activities. To grow your website, you can contact him at...
Feb 25, 2022 | Random Musings
War has once again broken out. And Mike Elgan has an excellent report on what makes this one so different from all previous ones. As he points out, when the US invaded Iraq twenty years ago with the intention of removing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and installing a...
Feb 16, 2022 | Writing
I came across a great thread on Facebook the other day and it got me thinking. A (male) writer was asking the following question: I have a female character looking at herself in the mirror. First naked then in a white nightdress which shows her figure. She is a very...
Feb 7, 2022 | Writing
Author Anne R. Allen published yesterday a great post titled, 10 Dangerous Critiques: Beware Misguided Writing Advice. In it, she explains how trying to please everybody who beta-reads or critiques your WIP can turn a novel into a kind of jackalope of unrelated parts....
Feb 3, 2022 | Interviews Features and Reviews
Remember my interview with Pamela Turner, one of the authors of Among the Headstones, an anthology of Gothic horror stories? Today, I’m interviewing Tylluan Penry, another one of the anthology’s authors. Interview with Tylluan Penry Hi Tylluan, it’s great...
Jan 29, 2022 | Writing
No, I’m not talking about non-verbal communication, i.e. shrugs, facial expressions, etc. I’m talking about emojis and, specifically, a new form of communication: “fake typing.” As Mike Elgan explains in his newsletter (which I highly recommend to anyone...
Jan 12, 2022 | Random Musings
I am multilingual and consider myself a native Greek and English speaker. People like Ziad Fazah, born in Liberia, famously speak a total of 59 world languages. Can other creatures share that ability, though? Specifically, can dogs understand more than one language?...
Jan 7, 2022 | Interviews Features and Reviews
You may remember Rayne Hall from our recent collaboration: we wrote together a book on Copy Writing. Now, Rayne has edited an anthology of graveyard tales called, appropriately enough, Among The Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard. For today’s post, I...
Dec 31, 2021 | Events and Giveaways
2021 is almost over but 2020 casts a long shadow: So, you are excused if you feel that 2021 was a bit of a bummer with nothing much to show for it. Thankfully, The Happy Broadcast and Modern Met have got you covered. Illustrator Mauro Gatti is happy to balance things...
