Author Archives: Jeff Xilon

“Next Time On…” aka The Series I Can’t Wait to Read More Of

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I’ve always intended this place to be partly fro talking about the various rabbit holes I’ve fallen down. The stories and media that have sucked me into their worlds, set up a little home for themselves in my consciousness, and made me love them.

Unfortunately, sharing stories I love is just one of the many things I haven’t been doing around here with much consistency. So today I thought I’d do a little mental housekeeping and tell you about some of the things I’ve been reading (some recently, some less so) that I not only enjoyed, but that have more coming down the line for their continuing series.

If you haven’t read these things yet they get my strongest personal recommendation. Go get them, read them, and join me in jittery anticipation waiting for the next fix these authors have lined up for us.

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Hello 2016!

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Hello, hello, hello.

2016 is here; 2015 is dead and decomposing out back. I’m here to bury that beast and lay out some solid plans for moving forward.

Last week I read a post by Troy L. Wiggins over at his blog afrofantasy.net entitled: “Set it Off: My Writing Goals for 2016”.  Inspired by that I decided I needed to codify my own goals and purposes for 2016. Because I have to say, my handling of 2015 was not good.

Strangely enough 2015 was both the best and worst year of my short writing career so far. Two pieces of mine were published by a couple of serious, pro, real-deal fiction markets.

  • “H” was published by Daily Science Fiction
  • “All of Our Days” was published by Fireside Fiction.

They are both free to read, so I hope you will.

That was the public face of my writing career, and hey – it was awesome. Unfortunately, behind the scenes I was doing little to progress my skills or career. I had the same few stories that I continue to believe in and send out on submissions and I wrote exactly 2 new pieces. One was finished in the summer and received an amazing personal rejection from it’s first market and is out there now, trying to find a home. The other was written on New Year’s Eve. Well, I had 300 words written and a couple weeks of thinking about it before NYE, but come noon on NYE day that’s all I had and a midnight PST deadline I wanted to meet before the story’s target market closed for submissions. Continue reading →

Reading Old Comics: Dime Comics #1

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Note: This was supposed to be a Canada Day edition of reading old comics. Unfortunately, it’s coming out a day late. Still, Canada is a pretty cool place, worthy of appreciation on any day, and most days people read this post probably won’t be Canada Day anyway, so we’re going with it.

When looking for an old comic to read on a Wednesday that also happened to be Canada Day I knew I wanted some Canadian content. Enter Dime Comics and Johnny Canuck (thanks to the Digital Comics Museum)!

So Dime Comics was one of the comics published by Bell Features up here in Canada during World War II. In Dime Comics#1 they introduced the public to three new adventuresome heroes: Scotty MacDonald “Super British Agent”, Rex Baxter “an adventurous young soldier of fortune”, and Johnny Canuck “Arch Enemy of Nazis and Facists” – and later to be known as Canada’s Super Hero. A hero that eventually found his way into the Library and Archives of Canada’s Guardians of the North collection.

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