Steveawiggins

LATEST ARTICLES ( 4559 )

• Playing Authors

  

  My family looked at me funnily, but not for the first time.  With a holiday gift card I’d ordered a book on the card game Authors that I’d blogged about... Read more

  Posted on 19 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Spider Thoughts

  

  Spiders know.  Spiders are aware of when they’ve been seen.  I’ve been noticing this for some time now.  You can verify this yourself, but it may take some... Read more

  Posted on 18 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Demonic Night

  

  There’s a type of film—I don’t have the vocabulary for it—where the action is loud, brash, and in-your-face. Colors are often lurid and, in horror, gross... Read more

  Posted on 17 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Unusual Places

  

  I don’t recall how I first learned about Mitch Horowitz’s work. I read Occult America as soon as I found out about it—it helped as I was transitioning to writin... Read more

  Posted on 16 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Life Learning

  

  One thing a recovering academic must learn is that the vast majority of people don’t really care what drives the academy.  They aren’t too worried about larger... Read more

  Posted on 15 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Truthful Fiction

  

  Octavia E. Butler is a name I’ve known for some time. Various people, most of whom I don’t know, had recommended her books, particularly Parable of the Talents. Read more

  Posted on 14 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Tall and Slender

  

  At first I thought she was mistaken. A friend mentioned, in a litany of horror films, The Tall Man. I thought she meant The Slender Man. Then I saw an online... Read more

  Posted on 13 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• No Agency

  

  I’ve worked in publishing since 2006.  That seems like a goodly time, but the industry is a complex one.  I started trying to publish again around 2010—losing m... Read more

  Posted on 12 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Cinematic Demons

  

  It was because I read The Exorcist Effect. I realize that there are lots of movies that I could’ve watched for Nightmares with the Bible, but with limited... Read more

  Posted on 11 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Bugging Out

  

  There’s a scene in Disney’s Hercules where Thebes has just been through a bunch of unnatural disasters sent by Hades to lure Hercules into the open. Read more

  Posted on 10 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Salem Away

  

  I can’t help but think the term “witch hunt” has been cheapened in recent years as a prominent, wealthy white man has been claiming to be the victim of one. Read more

  Posted on 09 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Movies, Paused

  

  Technology breaks the world into bits.  It’s not just pixels, or 1s and 0s, it’s culture.  And we let it happen.  I was thinking this when I should’ve been... Read more

  Posted on 08 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Revisiting the Zone

  

  Like many people in the early eighties, I heard about the terrifying accident that killed Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le, and Renee Shin-Yi Chen during the filming... Read more

  Posted on 07 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Your Mystery

  

  Few things glaze the eyes of others like somebody else’s genealogy.  That’s not what this is, so unglaze those peepers!  As with most of my posts, there is... Read more

  Posted on 06 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Loving Vampires

  

  Vampires caught my attention early in life. I believe, apart from ghosts, that they were the first monsters I learned about. Apart from the fangs and perhaps... Read more

  Posted on 05 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• In Praise of Lecture

  

  As I look at our world and see divisions that certain politicians only make worse for their own gain, I wonder where we’ve jumped the rails.  I was just... Read more

  Posted on 04 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Christmas Monsters

  

  Gremlins holds up pretty well with the years. My renewed interest was sparked by holiday horror—I had last seen the movie in a theater in 1984, when it came out. Read more

  Posted on 03 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Ninth Day of

  

  I read Les Standiford’s The Man Who Invented Christmas back in 2017 and learned a lot from it then. Some of what I read on the bus, however, has faded a bit wit... Read more

  Posted on 02 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• A Year of Hope

  

  The older I get the more I appreciate New Year’s Day as a holiday.  Part of the reason is that, although I saw no hint of religion in it as a child, I have... Read more

  Posted on 01 January 2024 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Reading 2023

  

  As has become my tradition, I’ll end the year reflecting on the books I’ve read.  For a variety of reasons this is the first time in nine years that I haven’t... Read more

  Posted on 31 December 2023 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY