Michael Janairo

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Author: Michael Janairo

  • Broad Universe Wikipedia Project

    What a great idea!

    K. A. Laity

    Hey kids! Want to help raise the visibility of women writers of the fantastic? With trumpet’s blare, let me unveil:

    broadspectrumA Broad Universe Project for Women’s History Month: Women Authors on Wikipedia!

    Women artists made a concerted effort recently to get more of them written into history.  More people turn to Wikipedia than to any other source. Women are still largely missing unless they are the few really big names in history. Here’s Mary Shelley’s page. It’s fairly comprehensive, but there aren’t enough 20th C women with the same detail. Comprehensive is great, but every little bit helps.

    Only 2% of the users edit Wikipedia. A huge percentage of them are male. And as time goes on fewer people are doing any editing, so diversity is bound to be an issue.

    This is a great way for members who want to be more active in promoting ALL…

    View original post 146 more words

  • February 2014 Story of the Month

    Vote for The Duck! Do so before the poll closes on March 2, 2014.

    Bartleby Snopes Story of the Month

    The voting for the February 2014 Story of the Month is now open. Read all of the February stories and then vote for your favorite. Voting will close on March 2nd. Please only vote once.

    The winning story will earn an automatic spot in the 12th Issue of our semi-annual magazine due out in July 2014.

    View original post

  • Early reviews of ‘The Duck’ are in

    “Really enjoyed it!”

    — Professor Gina Occhiogrosso

    “It’s a great short story.”

    — Amy Biancolli, arts and culture writer

    “It’s got my vote.”

    — Tracy Ormsbee, senior editor for features at the Times Union

    “It’s a good story.”

    — my dad

    Read “The Duck” here: http://bartlebysnopes.com/theduck.htm

    Vote for “The Duck” as the Story of the Month by March 2, 2014, here: http://bartlebysnopesstoryofthemonth.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/february-2014-story-of-the-month/

  • Update: The Duck on Bartleby Snopes now live

    Screen Shot 2014-02-22 at 12.43.38 PM

    UPDATE: Fresh new fiction from yours truly now live on Bartleby Snopes http://www.bartlebysnopes.com/theduck.htm

    I just got a note from the editor of the online journal Bartleby Snopes that my short story, The Duck, will be going live online next week at http://bartlebysnopes.com.

    So be on the lookout for the story AND be sure to stay tuned, because the story will be in competition for Story of the Month, with voting done online by readers just like you.

    I’ll have links to the story and to the voting site when they go live.

  • Travels in Guatemala: Chichicastenango

    The landscape north of Antigua, as seen from the Pan-American highway.
    The landscape north of Antigua, as seen from the Pan-American highway.
    chi2014-01-23 06.25.23 1-23-2014
    Walter’s van

    I spent most of my visit to Guatemala in Antigua, which you can see and read about here, but I also took trips to other parts of the country.

    All these trips were put together Walter, the owner of the Don Quijote Travel Agency in Antiuga Guatemala.

    Here’s Walter’s van to the right. Our trip from Antigua to Chichicastenango took about three hours, which included stopping for breakfast at a place high in the mountains. Though the roads we traveled on included the four-way Pan-American highway, it also included going though plenty of towns and villages and mountain passes, where the roads are twisty and traffic is controlled by speed bumps. Lots of speed bumps.

    Crit and Walter.
    Crit and Walter.

    Walter is the best kind of travel guide — he knows where he’s going, he explains things clearly and he has a great sense of humor. On the morning of our trip to Chichi — as the town was called — I sat up front in the van with him, my camera on my lap. He pulled over now and then as we drove along so I could get shots, such as the one of the volcano/mountain landscape with thick fog in the valley at the top of this post, and (after I turned around) of him and Crit in the early morning sun. (more…)

  • Review: The Colorado Kid by Stephen King

    The Colorado Kid
    The Colorado Kid by Stephen King
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    The TV show Haven brought me to this tale, which was more of a story about stories — a kind of using fiction to figure out a kind of aesthetic — that makes a clever distinction between stories that are good for the news media (ones that have only one thing strange about them and that can be summed up easily) versus stories that don’t work in the news media, that is stories that are too strange or unresolved or have too many points in them to be easily summed up.
    (more…)

  • That was fun

    Today is my last day as a newspaperman.

    When I was a kid, I was a paperboy.

    When I was a college student, I was a journalism major.

    As an adult, I’ve done lots of different things (teach English in Japan, teach college writing courses), but for more than 15 years, I’ve been working in newspapers, with most of that time spent at the Times Union.

    Things change — and soon I will be the Assistant Director for Engagement at the Tang Museum.

  • Review: The Dispossessed

    The Dispossessed
    The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Awesome. Wonderful. Confounding. Clever. Brilliant.

    A coworker handed me her copy of this great Ursula K. Le Guin novel when she heard that I hadn’t read it yet. The book requires attention, and it wasn’t until I had long stretches of time was I able to get into it. New names. New places. Conflicts between people for reasons that aren’t clear at first. It is a testament to Le Guin’s world-building — the completeness a reader can feel of the places she creates on the planet Urras and the moon Annares — that I and I’m sure many other readers enjoy the process of moving through the novel and learning what things mentioned earlier mean.
    (more…)

  • New on Goodreads: Veterans of the Future Wars

    VFWCoversmAn anthology of military sci-fi that I am in — Veterans of the Future Wars — has just been added to Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20691034-vfw.

    If you haven’t already seen it, go check it out today. It is being put together by Martinus Publishing.

    Here’s what’s cool about the anthology:

    It’s military sci-fi about veterans, to honor veterans, and several of these stories were written by actual veterans. Read these tales to share in the adventure, the triumphs and tragedies, and if you like your freedom thank those who have served to protect it. 10% of all profits will be donated to Disabled American Veterans.

    Thanks!