I live in Trump’s America, and lies are the air we breathe here. I mean, the literal air in Seattle is literally not good for breathing because of wildfire smoke, but this is not what my post is about. This is about the last six months—no, it’s not about COVID-19 either—but about the novel I…
Category: Alternate History
Author Interview: James Emerson Loyd’s The Great War Won Trilogy
It’s early 1918 and the Great War has exhausted all the parties involved: from the Western Front, where resources are scarce, to the Eastern Front, where Russia has been engulfed in a bloody revolution. Having prevailed in the east, Germany could now try to crush France and Britain before the United States might intervene, or…
Our Borders: What’s in a Name?
Yesterday, the protagonist of my series Our Borders asked me to change his name on this website, for privacy reasons. It seemed like an easy thing to do, just Replace All in each of the ten blog posts I have written so far (including the comments), and I’d be done. An hour’s worth of work…
Fact or Fiction? Part 2 (Umberto Eco)
Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum and the rewriting of history Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco is one of my favorite novels. I read it first in high school, in Romanian, and then spent countless hours discussing it with my desk-mate and fellow-bookworm Iuliana. I read the novel again in English during my MFA program at…
Fact or Fiction? Part 1 (Jorge Luis Borges)
My one-month old baby doesn’t leave me much time to write, but she lets me read and reflect, at least once in a while. A few days ago I remembered some research I did during my MFA program regarding fiction writers whose work either altered the real world, or who toyed in their writing with…
Argo (2012 CE) and Kadesh (1275 BCE)
…and then, with the fury of Baal in his blood and the glory of Amun upon him, Rameses II went out alone on the battlefield in his two-horse chariot. He alone cut down Hittites by the thousands. He slashed limbs and heads. He hurled dead bodies into the waters of the Orontes until the river…