Why should I write about a Local Author Fair? The Kansas City Metro area may not seem like a literary hub to people from other parts of the world, but this town is just crawling with writers. I encountered that fact again when I attended the Mid-Continent Public Library’s Story Center Local Author Fair, on November 15, 2025. I’ve tried to offer a glimpse of it in this post. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in the United States…
I had a great time at Archon 48. I stayed super-busy, and that’s how I prefer it. As I normally do, I displayed artwork in this convention’s excellent Art Show – and also brought selections from my late sister and brother-in-law’s art collection to display in the Resale Gallery. I had a full programming schedule. That meant it was a good thing I also had an excellent partner, K. R. Gastreich, to help share the duties at our dealers’ table!…
Recently, I’ve been fascinated by the ways in which new uses of technology are speaking for the dead. Some are more striking than others. But over the last few months I’ve been noticing, and collecting, what are for me some interesting and provocative examples. They also have directly inspired a scene early in my current work-in-progress, Bones for the Children. In my last blog post I talked about the need to find out what happened to people who disappeared. This…
Here at Weird Sisters Publishing, new visions keep popping up. Sometimes They are literal visions, AKA illustrations, of the sort I shared a few weeks ago in the post about a new way of approaching Warren C. Norwood’s adventure-filled Windhover Tetralogy. One of the new visions I’ll share for the first time in this post has been seven months in the making. Another came into being quite suddenly. And at the end of the post I’ll talk about a convention…
Our latest Weird Sisters Publishing project has turned into a series of illustrated books. Yes, my novel Bone of Contention is the next publication in the lineup as I write this (pub date: September 24, 2024). There’s still work to do for that one, but the XK9 “Bones” Trilogy isn’t the series I want to talk about in this post. It’s The Windhover Tetralogy. We’ve had plans to reissue some of my late brother-in-law Warren C. Norwood’s books since before…
By Jan S. Gephardt A whole cluster of holidays happen during what is for the Northern Hemisphere a season of harvest and winter’s onset. The common thread that weaves through them all is dealing with death. I’ve written about Halloween/Samhain, Día de los Muertos, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day on my “Artdog Adventures” blog in the past. Indeed, my “Virtual Ofrenda” is one of my most enduringly popular posts. Through them all, I’ve kept coming back around to…
By Jan S. Gephardt Last week I wrote about the artists. Now it’s time to write about the authors of Archon 44. Followers of this blog know that I recently attended Archon 44. As the “44” at the end indicates, this is a science fiction convention with a long history in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Their most recent venue is the Gateway Convention Center in Collinsville, IL. My focus at conventions is mostly split between artists and authors. I…
By Jan S. Gephardt and Lynette M. Burrows A note from Jan to her readers: My longtime friend Lynette M. Burrows and I belong to some of the same writers’ groups, and first met through the Kansas City Science Fiction & Fantasy Society (KaCSFFS). We bonded over (among other things) our interest in writing, and we’ve been friends literally for decades. We regularly check in with each other to “talk shop” or be each others’ cheerleaders. Earlier this summer, I…
By Jan S. Gephardt I feel as if I’ve been on the road to Release Day for most of this summer, but at last it’s here! We made it! A Bone to Pick should now be available in print and ebook formats through a wide variety of outlets! What’s it about? In case you’re new to this blog, here’s the book description. for A Bone to Pick: XK9 Rex is a dog who knows too much. Now his past is…
By Jan S. Gephardt Call me irresponsible if you will, but I spent the day writing. Writing fiction, that is, not a blog post. Even though it was “Blog-or-Die Day.” Even though I had scheduled and set aside time to work on a blog post. Yes, even though I hate, hate, hate missing deadlines. The journalist/commercial graphic designer in me detests missing deadlines. But instead of blogging like I was supposed to, I spent this week’s designated blogging day writing…