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Train Sounds has been many years in the making. Like most novels, it has passed through many different incarnations, some captured on paper, others never leaving the author’s mind. It started out as a regular young adult story. There would be intrigue, questions about origins, parental secrets, and a grand finale. Maybe it could have been an after school special, or a Hallmark film where everyone would be sobbing at the end. I decided that Train Sounds was not meant to follow such a traditional arc. I just didn’t know how it would be different, until a frank discussion with one of my children led me to an epiphany. I tossed away all the soap opera elements and turned my coming of age into a story with more grit. I came to the realization that my main character was gay. When that came into focus, the rest of the novel was quick to fall into place. How difficult would it be for a gay child to grow up in a conservative area under the horrifying darkness of AIDS? This was a time when health care workers knew very few solid facts about the disease. It was considered a gay illness, making homosexual people even more of a target. Ignorance was rampant and there was an assumption that if someone were gay, they eventually would become ill. This became the world my main character was to grow up in. From the moment I was admitted into UTEP’s Creative Writing MFA program, I knew Train Sounds would be my thesis. As it came together, I knew I’d made the right decision. Despite this knowledge, one worry remains and I believe it will continue to push back despite the passage of time. Writing a gay character, especially a teenager, is tantamount to watching a bunch of folks walk along the edge of a cliff, knowing I could inadvertently give one a shove. I don’t want my work to hurt anyone. Because of this, I spoke with several queer folks to get their opinions. I wanted to know how they felt about a straight person writing a queer character, not even an ancillary character but a main character. I found that the reactions I received heavily depended on their age. Older folks seemed good with it. One gentleman considered it an honor. Another, himself a writer, thought life would be boring if we all wrote only what we knew, besides, he wrote straight characters, so it only seemed fair. Another bluntly told me he didn’t give a f**k, either way. I found that promising, even amusing in the context. On the other end of the spectrum, however, I concluded that younger people were more skeptical. They couldn’t see how someone like me could do someone like them justice, which is understandable. My teenage expert explained it to me in this way: LGBTQ kids of today are more demanding. They’re growing up in an age where they are readily seen and their voices heard, even if they’re still marginalized. They’re pushing back against the status quo. As a result, their stories need be relatable, and not full of pretense or assumptions. Older people are less exacting because they grew up in a time where those kinds of demands couldn’t be made. This insight seemed fair, if not disheartening to me, so much that I almost stopped the project. I ruminated long and hard on how I could write Mason in another vein, and even attempted to write a few CHAPTERs, but it lacked the bite I was looking for. I decided to plow ahead, hoping my research, and my position as an ally could justify making this choice. Now, all I can do is hope I’ve handled Mason’s story with empathy, compassion, and a deep thread of sincerity. If I screwed up, I hope I will be forgiven. After all, we are all very much human.

Pigeons from Hell (Publisher: Dark Horse Books) Original Story: Robert E. Howard Writer: Joe R. Lansdale Artist: Nathan Fox The Southern States of the United States of America are a bastion of Gothic horror. Soon after, but not soon enough for this reviewer, the group becomes embroiled in the horror that lives in the heart of the house, a mystery that leads back to its pre-Civil War roots, slavery and, of course, voodoo.

The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) has announced its selections for the 2014 Reading List as well as the short lists and read-alikes. Established in 2007 by the CODES section of RUSA, The Reading List seeks to highlight outstanding genre fiction that merit special attention by general adult readers and the librarians who work with them. The 2014 winners are listed in the article.

The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) has announced its selections for the 2016 Reading List as well as the short lists and read-alikes. Established in 2007 by the CODES section of RUSA, The Reading List seeks to highlight outstanding genre fiction that merit special attention by general adult readers and the librarians who work with them.

[...]they do not have careers or even steady jobs. At times, they work in the flower fields of East Texas or the offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, do simple construction and home repair jobs, or take on other nonprofessional work that normally does not lend itself to suspense, mystery, and detection. According to their well-considered analysis, film noir often is recognizable by \"moods of claustrophobia, paranoia, despair and nihilism ... designed to unsettle, jar, and disorient the viewer in correlation with the disorientation felt by the noir heroes\" (Place and Peterson, qtd. in Abbott 132). (344) Here Burke places Robicheaux in a black-and-white film from an earlier era of movie memories: \"moonlight ... the color of pewter,\" \"dead cypress,\" \"burning sugarcane,\" \"hazy\" smoky air like \"burnt cinnamon,\" a \"ruffling of moonlight on the bayou's surface,\" and a \"black silhouette\" of a cypress.

A collection of seven short stories focusing on issues of reality and unreality, particularly such issues as they arise in America, both as a political ideal and a manifest nation. The collection uses genre fiction as a means to illuminate these issues in new and relevant ways.

In 1954 Richard Matheson sold his third novel, I Am Legend, to Gold Medal Publishing. This thesis establishes I Am Legend's place in the evolution of the vampire narrative and horror genre by analyzing the novel both separately and in parallel with the three recognized film adaptations, The Last Man on Earth (1957), The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007). The adaptations show the mutable qualities of the novel. The ideas contained within I Am Legend easily find a place in modern society. True success of the book remains the spark of creation it provides: a new biological interpretation of the vampire. This interpretation lends itself to re-discovery in every era. With the exception of the eighties, a version of I Am Legend has been under development in each decade since the novel was published in 1954. Producers have visited and re-visited I Am Legend for over fifty-years. This thesis examines the variations of the protagonist, Robert Neville, as they are adapted to their unique era environment and deal with survival, science, music, companionship, and women. This thesis also provides a brief biography of the classic and continues with the necessary biological differences among the I Am Legend vampires. An analysis between good and evil among the varied protagonists culminates with an examination into whether I Am Legend falls under apocalypse or evolution.