Why Baroque? Because it is set in the Baroque, and it IS baroque. Why Cycle? Because I am trying to avoid the T-word ('trilogy'). In my mind this work is something like 7 or 8 connected novels. These have been lumped together into three volumes because it is more convenient from a publishing standpoint, but they could just as well have been put all together in a single immense volume or separated into 7 or 8 separate volumes. So to slap the word 'trilogy' on it would be to saddle it with a designation that is essentially bogus. Having said that, I know everyone's going to call it a trilogy anyway.

In your high school geology class you probably were taught that all life on earth exists in a paper-thin shell called the biosphere, which is trapped between t…

Now, at the little southern black college where I went to school, we had no megadorms. We were cool at the right times and academic at the right times .... Bos…

I think visual literacy and media literacy is not without value, but I think plain old-fashioned text literacy and mathematical literacy are much more powerful…

It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expre…

'Bad books on writing and thoughtless English professors solemnly tell beginners to 'Write What You Know', which explains why so many mediocre novels are about…

England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give …