Authors Electric

Imagine a duel of titans:    Harpo Marx vs.    A creature who looks both like that and like this:                                                 The concept still rings my bells after all these years. Halley's Comet, in 1986, sends a trainload of passengers scream-rolling back in time to 1906 San Francisco--the year of the Great Quake.  And I had some cool tricks to go with it: 1) Also on the train is a new kind of vampire. Austin Blacke looks like the Sundance Kid...but can also transform to a hyena or python--and even change his face. Blacke goes into immediate 'blood shock', desperately needing the blood of his day. 2) Unaware they're being stalked, the passengers face other perils. They're quickly 'made' as  strangers   because of their money, clothes and speech. A few adapt clever disguises--including the h...

There are so many faces of the Buddha that it's more than a bit silly when somebody gets in your face about one: the beaming, Christ-like pacifist. And when critics condemn works of art that are false to the face they prefer...things grow worse. For the Buddha has so many faces. Second only to the PPS (Perfectly Passive Saint) is the PPA (Playful Party Animal). There are also images of the Angry Buddha, reminding us that Christ himself flew into a rage at one temple: Even the Buddha acknowledged the humanity of anger: And it should be obvious that not all Buddhists are Perfectly Passive, as this image attests: And these: Recently, though, I was taken to task for a short but graphic passage in my first piece of flash fiction. My antihero had learned just enough martial arts to deal with a thug on the street--ultimately learning that he knew a lot more than he thought. The short-short was character-driven, with an inevitable path to the end. Yet a dear ...