The parties are over, and the lights have come down. Winter has settled over the land (at least in this hemisphere), bringing cold weather and the wasteland of television’s midseason hiatus. Now that mid-January is upon us, let us remember fonder, brighter times. Specifically, the 2016 Christmas specials of Doctor Who and Sense8. Rather than […]

Tanya, Charlie, April, Ram, Miss Quill Coal Hill Academy. If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you might remember the name. Or you might not. Coal Hill is the school where Doctor Who first began in 1963. It was the opening setting for “An Unearthly Child,” which featured the Doctor’s granddaughter (!!), Susan, as a student. […]

Stephen King is a man who needs no introduction from someone as lowly as me.  Everybody’s heard of him.  Almost everybody’s read his work or watched a movie based on one of his many, many novels or short stories.  I cannot claim to have read all of his work (nowhere close at this point), but […]

Welcome back to Sound Off!, a semi-regular column where members of Speculative Chic gather together to chat about the latest BIG THING in entertainment. This time, we’ve participated in the space race in order to discuss Hidden Figures, which premiered in the United States on Friday, January 6, 2017. Sound Off! is meant to be a […]

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, a weekly column where we gab about the greatest in geek. This week we have an addictive Star Wars video game, a wonderful book for fans of magical libraries, […]

Dear Sherry, I’ve been working hard on edits on my novel. I sent it out to my beta readers, and I now have all their feedback, which is great. The problem is that I have a bunch of conflicting comments, and I don’t know how to resolve them. Sometimes it is easy. If one suggestion clearly […]

Booksellers get a lot of questions on a daily basis. Where can I find this book? Who wrote this book? When was this book published? Is this in paperback? When will this author’s next book be available? Most of these questions are pretty typical (and normal), but there are still plenty of things that a […]

So if you’re following along in the rewatch, I really hope you skipped this one.  This is going to be a scrambled review because Retribution broke my brain and left me sputtering feebly.  I have come up with a rule of thumb for measuring the quality of these movies: how good they are depends on […]

The Star Wars franchise is finally centralizing women in its storylines, as evidenced by last year’s The Force Awakens and this winter’s smash Rogue One. This got me thinking about all the SF/F television series I’ve enjoyed whose stories are driven by and/or created for women. In no particular order: Bionic Woman. Wonder Woman. Buffy. […]

Dear Sherry, I want to be a writer. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’m writing short stories and thinking about submitting them, but I’m worried they’re not good enough. I’m worried that I’m not good enough. I haven’t taken any classes or workshops, and I don’t have a degree in creative writing like […]

Seveneves (2015) Written by: Neal Stephenson Genre: Science Fiction Pages: 744 (Nook) Series: Stand Alone Publisher: William Morrow Why I Chose It: Title was selected as a part of the Speculative Chic retrospective on the titles nominated for a Hugo. I’m quite possibly the only person on earth who actively liked the Librarian info-dumps Snow Crash, […]

Welcome back to Sound Off!, a semi-regular column where members of Speculative Chic gather together to chat about the latest BIG THING in entertainment. This time, we’re busting through the shackles to chat about Suicide Squad, which premiered in the U.S. on Friday, August 5, 2016. Sound Off! is meant to be a group of reactions, […]

Even though I wrote my first short story in the third grade, my journey as a writer actually started 10 years ago. I was a 24-year-old recent college graduate who had majored in English and minored in journalism, but I had no idea what the word “genre” meant. I had spent the last two years […]

Indeed, welcome to the bookstore, where I will be your humble bookselling guide to all things books, publishing, and the world of the book business. As a bookseller and manager of nearly 10 years, I can safely say that no, we don’t sell trumpets, Charles Dickens doesn’t have any new releases because he’s dead, and if […]