Author Archives: Jeff Xilon

The Jazz Chain – Link 2: Sabu Martinez

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It’s time to forge the second link in our jazz chain. What’s this ‘jazz chain’ you ask? Well, I’m taking a tour through the history of jazz, one album at a time, and each week’s album will be linked to the previous week’s selection by a common artist.

For example: last week the chain started with Art Blakey’s Orgy in Rhythm. One of the musicians from that album was Sabu Martinez who played percussion and provided the vocals for three of it’s tracks. This week we’re looking at Sabu Martinez’s album Sorcery!. Next week’s album will be lead by one of the the other musicians playing on Sorcery!.1I’ve already chosen the artist and album for next week, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Sorcery! – Sabu Martinez – 1958

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The Jazz Chain – Link 1: Art Blakey

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Today I’m starting a new weekly series. When I created this website I called it “Looking for a Rabbit Hole” for a reason. Along with being a place to showcase some of my writing it was also supposed to be a place for me to talk about all the various bits of entertainment I like to lose myself in. I love stories in all the forms stories take, and I love music, and I love talking about stories and music. To that end I’m working up some on-going features I’d like to have here on the blog where I talk about the “Rabbit Holes” of story and music I’m losing myself in whether new, new-to-me, or old favorites.

This series then, “The Jazz Chain”, will be the first of these projects. Continue reading →

Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup 10

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The Roundup hits it’s 10th installment! Five stories again this week. We have some darkness, some fun, some serious looks at both the evil in our history and our potential future (but with a side of hope), and lots of weird! Continue reading →

Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup 9

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It’s time for another Fiction Rec Roundup! It’s been on a mini hiatus as I took a step back from social media and other things (locking down my Twitter account with privacy settings and staying off Mastodon) for reasons of stress and focusing on job hunting. It only took two weeks for me to realize the steps I was taking weren’t really reducing my stress, so I’ve returned to business as usual.

This week I have five stories I’d like to share with you. We got aliens, time travel, undead, a lot of love and relationships (not all of which work out), goldfish, and a wonderful (if also difficult and painful at times) tribute to the power of stories and books. Continue reading →

Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup 8

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It’s time for another Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup! I came across a two new online magazines in my reading-wandering this week, and one of them is all flash length fiction. Now, as I’m very much into flash and micro fiction this got my attention, so I’m recommending two of their stories this week (a Roundup first!). I think there’s a nice broad group of stories this week. As usual, I hope you’ll find something you enjoy. And if you do, I hope you’ll share it with others! Continue reading →

Book Recommendation: The Bloodprint by Ausma Zehanat Khan

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*Note: While I try to avoid giving specific spoilers I also wouldn’t necessarily call this spoiler free, especially as different people have different feelings about what constitutes a spoiler. In particular, the last paragraph talks about the feeling and general nature of the ending of The Bloodprint. Proceed with caution (or not at all) if you’d rather avoid such things

 

One of my favorite words is synchronicity, the idea of “meaningful coincidences”, and I couldn’t think of it as being anything other than a moment of synchronicity when today I both read an article on Tor.com about magical weapons and finished reading Ausma Zehanat Khan’s The Bloodprint. Continue reading →