I have been a voracious reader since my preschool days. A friend whom I first met in that preschool likes to tell the story nowadays about our kindergarten teacher’s strategy for picking up a bit of extra break time: she would recruit me to read the storybook to the rest of the class while she went off to spend a few minutes recovering from our high-spirited antics. (If memory serves, my favorite book had to do with a large and growly bear….)
Dragon® Magazine
I was still reading at that pace twenty years later, which is how I fell into my first professional writing gig. Among my chosen reading matter was Dragon® Magazine, the D&D gamer’s equivalent of Golf Digest. As my reading list also included large piles of fantasy and SF novels, it seemed logical to inquire with Dragon‘s editors about the prospects of writing reviews of the books. After several exchanges of material, they said “yes”, and from 1984 to 1996, I wrote “The Role of Books”, running in Dragon more or less in alternate months.
Amazing Stories
Amazing has been one of the SF genre’s most long-lived magazines — although its recent history has been something of a roller-coaster ride. I’ve reviewed for the three most recent incarnations of the magazine — in the early 1990s for the TSR version, as part of a triumvirate with Chuq von Rospach and John Betancourt, several years later as sole columnist for the version published by Wizards of the Coast, and then in 2004-05 as one of a sizeable stable of reviewers for Paizo Publications’ re-invented magazine. If the pattern holds, the next iteration of the magazine should appear in a couple of years, and I hope to be on board when it rises from the dead yet again.
Other Venues
I’ve also reviewed for several Oregon newspapers, for the print and online versions of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Tangent, and for Publishers’ Weekly.
Authors and publishers take note: E-mail me for information on where to send material to be considered for review.
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I might add that although I read a great deal of fantasy and SF, my interests are by no means limited to that genre. I also enjoy mysteries, history (particularly ancient history, various medieval and Elizabethan topics, and that of the Pacific Northwest), mythology (particularly Native American), and books about stage magic.