ecause no one is unbiased these days, please allow me to introduce myself. My actual name is Maureen, but the registration system informed me I’m not the only person with that name. (My shocked expression is a little rusty with disuse.) So, my simple, modest plan foiled, I went straight for an amalgam of my present status as a Master of Arts and my former, online persona. In addition to being one of the many overeducated escapees of academia (who may soon return and holds few grudges), I have and continue to work with the University of Nebraska Press. While … Continue reading From Inside the Press, a New Voice

Are You a Ted Head? Love our Pulitzer Prize winning Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, but can’t think of a way to share your love with the world?  How about a t-shirt?  A Ted Head t-shirt.  That’ll be pretty cool.  A Ted Head t-shirt in small, medium, large, extra large or extra-extra large? That’ll be great, wouldn’t it? Then get your Ted Head t-shirt from the University of Nebraska Press today!  Follow this link to the ordering page and display your fandom to the world! Continue reading

he word terrorist, in the past few years, has become about as commonplace in our country as Barbies and rice krispie treats.  We toss it around in polite conversation, can’t escape the latest exploits of these semi-mythical terrorists on the evening news, and even find ourselves–against our politically correct leanings–making jokes about them.  (If Duffy’s doesn’t have Boulevard Wheat on tap tonight, then the terrorists have won!)  In fact, more than ever, it is acceptable and encouraged to not only consider ourselves experts on the terrorists and their tactics, but to gaze cautiously at every suspicious character on our Omaha … Continue reading Algeria Redux

here is a legend among comic books.  The legend goes that sometime in the early sixties Jack Liebowitz, publisher of DC Comics, and Martin Goodman, publisher of Marvel Comics had a game of golf. At this time DC Comics was doing well but Marvel Comics was on the verge of bankruptcy.  Liebowitz was telling Goodman how well they were doing with a title called Justice League of America which featured Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Aquaman, along with others to fight crime.  Goodman went back to the office and told his editor, Stan Lee, to create an ensemble comic.  (Did … Continue reading Misfits and Mavericks

o begin with, I wasn’t sure how often the Press would want me posting here.  Others seemed to be sporadic and usually about books.  So I finally emailed and asked, saying, you know, usually blogs are posted to rather often.  They said go ahead.  So, as last week was an indication, I’ll be checking in more often. 

And since this isn’t all book review format anymore, I should tell you some things that the press is coming out with.  That’s part of what a press blog is for, isn’t it?  So here it is, new in May:

The 2nd edition of Mary Shelley’s The Last Man.  I already have my hot little hands on it.  It was the
 
first thing I requested when they told me they’d give me books.  So expect a discussion on it later.  Perhaps a bit later.  Shelley is dense reading. This is not the sort of book you take to a beach.  It is the sort of book you curl up in bed with while a thunderstorm rages around you and you can feel the emotions and torment of the romantic poets.

Continue reading “May Science Fiction Releases”

t one point I was a writer for a television pilot.  I got into a heated discussion with the producer regarding whether the bay doors of the space shuttle would rip off if they were opened while the shuttle was moving in space. I contended there was no need to be aerodynamic in an environment with no air. He said the door would rip off just like if you drove your car with the hood up.  "Basic physics really," he told me. The argument only ended when another writer said we could worry about the science details later.  (This was … Continue reading Science for Science Fiction

y husband and I married under slightly false pretenses.  Yes, he already knew I was a science geek.  Our first conversation had included the Shoemaker-Levy comet and the dust it kicked up on Jupiter.  And he already knew I read science fiction.  In an example of how pathetic geeks in love can be, we wound up at a bookstore on one of our first dates, where we held hands and perused the sf section pointing out favorites and exclaiming about overlaps in our reading lists.  (well, hey, dinner and a movie is pretty dull too.)  And he knew I liked … Continue reading Gone Gaming

The Fortune Teller’s Kiss by Brenda Serotte “The Fortune Teller’s Kiss is an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of stories, giving us  permission to enter a private territory and offering the limitless interpretations to which a good memoir lends itself.” —Tara Kai, Sun-Sentinel (May 14) "Poet Serotte relives a childhood cataclysm in this culture-rich, affecting memoir, part of the American Lives literary nonfiction series. In 1954 she contracted polio, mere months before Jonas Salk perfected his vaccine-a coincidence that struck her Sephardic Jewish household as especially cruel. . . . She explores the identity that confounds her: first, her … Continue reading

Writing Brave and Free by Ted Kooser and Steve Cox “If you’ve yearned for the courage to put pen to paper, or hands to keyboard, after reading Writing Brave and Free, you probably will.”—Marge Pellegrino, Tucson Weekly (May 25) “What a treasure to have a second how-to book of this caliber enter the world for developing writers. . . . [T]his is a practical, down-to-earth, advice-driven collection of smart, unpretentious chapters on the work of becoming a writer. . . . The section on self-publishing and electronic publishing will be especially important to today’s younger writers. . . . The … Continue reading