I am the father of a 14 year old, and it is wild. We have our good days and our bad ones, and the lockdown was hard for all of us, but I learn new stuff from my kid every single day.
Iāve been writing about the intersection of parenting and my kidās digital life since she was two years old, and from the start, Iāve been clear on one thing: itās impossible to completely control how my kid uses digital tech, and so the best I can hope for is to teach her to be as safe as possible, and to cultivate a trusting relationship with her so that when (not if) she gets in over her head, sheāll come to me so I can help her figure it out.
What if knowing the exact date of your death was a luxuryĀ good?
James Kennedyās debut novel Order of the Odd-Fish ran like a very successful of dares between the author and himselfāāāKennedy just kept ratcheting up the weirdness in the book, piling up the comic and surreal, to the point where the book should, by all rights, have collapsed beneath its own silliness. But it didnāt!
Instead, Kennedy produced a tale of magic. As I wrote in my review, āThis is what Harry Potter would be if its magic world was truly wondrous and magnificent, as opposed to plain reality with broomsticks and funny robes.ā
Hereās how I ended that review: āAn epic novel of exotic pie, GƶtterdƤmmerung, mutants, evil, crime, and musical theater, Odd-Fish is a truly odd fish, as mannered and crazy as an eel in a tuxedo dropped down your trousers during a performance of The Ring Cycle.ā
Kathryn Judgeās debut book is a hymn to short supply chains.
Back in 2007, I published my second short story collection, Overclocked. I was elated; not just because Iād published another book (the thrill of a new book has yet to pale even today, after dozens of books), but because it was a short-story collection, the kind of book Iād devoured as a kid, the mainstay of writers Iād worshiped, from Harlan Ellison to Spider Robinson to Kate Wilhelm. The publisher was Avalon, which had recently acquired Four Walls Eight Windows, the small press that had published my first short story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More. Selling a book to Four Walls had been its own thrill, as they were publisher to Abbie Hoffman, another writer Iād grown up on.