Jena Brown

3 weeks ago | theportalist.com | Jena Brown

Thirty years ago, Gregory Maguire released Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. The green-skinned villain had haunted many children’s nightmares for decades prior, but in this version, she has a name: Elphaba. Starting at her birth, we learn that perhaps Dorothy’s version of events wasn’t the whole story. That maybe, Oz was far more complicated than we ever imagined. Since the book’s initial release, Wicked has bewitched audiences all across the globe.

1 month ago | murder-mayhem.com | Jena Brown

Catherine Aird was the penname for Kinn Hamilton McIntosh. Her first novel was published in 1966, where she introduced the world to Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan and his bumbling sidekick, Detective Constable Crosby. Over the course of her career she wrote over twenty novels with these two characters investigating crime in the small English village of Calleshire. In addition to her beloved Chronicles of Callenshire, she penned dozens of short stories set both in that world and beyond.

1 month ago | the-line-up.com | Jena Brown

Spring is usually seen as the season of rebirth. We transition away from the dark and dreary winter nights, into longer days and warmer weather. We’re finally able to envision a summer of campfires and lazy days on the beach. If this were a horror flick, it’s right when everything would start to go wrong and the real fun would begin. Of course, you don’t need actual blood and guts to embrace the mayhem of horror.

1 month ago | theportalist.com | Jena Brown

It's no surprise that speculative fiction often cherishes the science above all else. So, it makes sense that often, the characters at the center of these stories are scientists. Even in Mary Shelley’s novel, the book many argue was one of the first science fiction stories ever, Dr. Frankenstein’s scientific endeavors to overcome death were the entire focus of the premise. As our understanding of science has evolved, so have the fictional scientists written in our stories.

2 months ago | theportalist.com | Jena Brown |Clifford D. Simak

Born in Millville, Wisconsin in 1904, Clifford Simak grew up developed a love of science fiction after reading H.G. Wells. In 1931, he published a short story, “The World of the Red Sun,” in the December issue of Wonder Stories. A year later, he had successfully placed four more short stories in various publications. Though his work is most well-known in the genre of science fiction, he only had one sci-fi story published between 1932 and 1938.