It seems that Life is getting the better of all of us these days and it's apparent that it's gotten the better of me from this blog. So... What's been going on. With Covid raging, grad school was a quick no-go. With all the time and money spent on trying to get in on top of the current crisis, that means that it's probably "two strikes and you're out" for me. That doesn't mean that I won't eventually have to do an M.A. as part of a career change, but the grand dream of a Phd. is out. That means I've ended up job-hunting in the middle of a pandemic with a wife whose job has moved online and requires additional child care. Right now, that's me. Oh, and I got parasites and ended up floored for five weeks and ended up having them blasted out of my guts with antibiotics that were almost as bad as the disease. Somewhere in there, my wife experienced a carjacking. The police caught the thieves, but not before they totaled her car crashing it into a police cruiser. Thanks to family and stimulus checks, she's finally getting a nicer replacement car this week. Oh, and baby is very healthy and curious except that she doesn't sleep. Did I mention Life seems to have gotten the better of us? Anyhow, that's why things have been slow around here. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of you, especially those who've had a worse time of it than we have.
I needed a break from A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (too many authors and too many styles coming in too fast) so I decided to turn back to an author whose work I've enjoyed exploring: Robert E. Howard. This time, however, I decided to skip over Howard's famous Conan yarns and instead take a look at one of his earlier creations, Solomon Kane. The idea of a puritan occult detective was too intriguing to pass up. I have the whole collection of Kane's tales and I do intend to blog them all. Right now, my little literary detour has only encompassed the first two short stories so I'm going to record my thoughts on them right away and get back to the rest as I have time. Skulls in the Stars Solomon Kane makes his debut with this classic bit of English Gothic including a haunted moor, a vengeful ghost, and a solitary miser. Howard's Kane fits the portrait of the archetypal puritan: grim, principled, metaphysical, with an iron sense of right and wrong. I h...
Comments
But also... you have a baby?! Congratulations!