The Worst Part of Being a Bibliophile (or, Why James Rollins Needs to Write More)

I am an unabashed fan of James Rollins‘ thrillers.  Partly because they’re half a world away from my own work, and partly because I’ve met James Rollins and talked with him, and he’s actually a pretty interesting guy.  Also a nice guy – though admittedly I’m speaking from ten minutes’ experience and not any real understanding. Mostly, though, his novels just rock. He’s also a fairly prolific writer, all things considered, which is both a benefit and a drawback.  The benefit?  There’s quite a bit out there to read.  The drawback?  It made him the target for this post.  (Note:

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The Bermuda Quadrilateral: A Horror Story

Once upon a time, there was a writer.  Not me, but someone exactly like me living in a universe just like this one, in a house of the same color with the same street number and geographic location. Now this writer – we’ll call her…me…had a very bad lawn.  Not just bad, or moderately bad – we’re talking the kind of bad that makes a six year-old turn to his three year-old brother and say “when you get big, don’t ever let your lawn look like that.”  The kind that makes the neighbors refer to you as “That House.” Yeah,

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Across the Stream (and through the woods…) to gunpowder mills we go.

Today’s interesting but (largely) useless fact of note comes to us courtesy of Jack Kelly’s Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards & Pyrotechnics: the History of the Explosive that Changed the World.* The Du Pont gunpowder works in Delaware (est. 1802) were constructed on the banks of the Brandywine River for two important reasons.  First, because the powder grinders were operated by water-driven milling technology (high-tech at the time).  Second, because of the unusual construction of the buildings themselves.  They were made of stone on three sides, but the wall facing the river was constructed of wood and other flimsy materials.  An explosion

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Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of Spanns and snarks and things.

Welcome to the blog. If every journey begins with a single step, and every blog with a tired cliche, then it looks like my work is done here. Not that either of those tell you much about me, so let’s give that a whirl. When the rest of the website goes live (and I know you’re living your lives in anticipation of that moment) the “about” page will tell you approximately the following: “Susan Spann lives in Northern California with her husband, teenage son, and three cats (though one of them is large enough that it should really count as

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Shiny Dinglehoppers

A new category, with an explanation attached. In the Disney film The Little Mermaid*, Ariel discovers a fork under the sea.  Upon asking the “highly knowledgeable” seagull about its purpose, she’s informed it is a shiny dinglehopper – used for styling hair. In the much more popular online MMO World of Warcraft, a “shiny dinglehopper” is an item (pickpocketed from the mermaid-like naga) which has no useful purpose – except to those of us who spend part of our time gathering collections of items without any useful purpose.  (Which I do.  Sort of like real life.) A few of you

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The Articles Under Which We Sail

During the golden age of piracy, every pirate had a vote.  Buccaneers the same.  A man could say yes or he could say no – with the caveat that saying no could mean watching the ship disappear over the horizon, taking his share of the sparklies with it. At the outset of every voyage, pirates and buccaneers had to sign the articles of agreement, promising to abide by them for the duration of the voyage. Guess what?  Not much has changed.  This is my ship, and these are the articles under which she sails.  By reading or commenting here, you’re

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