#Authors born on February 18 include Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek), André Breton (Nadja), Wallace Stegner (Angle of Repose), Len Deighton (The Ipcress File), Gahan Wilson (Eddy Deco’s Last Caper), Toni Morrison (Beloved), Jane M. Auel (The Clan of the Cave Bear), 1/2

#Authors born on February 17 include Margaret St. Clair (Agent of the Unknown), Andre Norton (Witch World), Ruth Rendell (A Fatal Inversion), Chaim Potok (The Chosen), Johnny Hart (The Wizard of Id), Susan Beth Pfeffer (Life as We Knew It), and Hiroaki Samura (Blade of the Immortal). #booksky

#Authors born on February 16 include Henry Adams (The Education of Henry Adams), Ross Thomas (The Cold War Swap), Richard Ford (Independence Day), Iain M. Banks (The Wasp Factory), Natalie Angier (Woman: An Intimate Geography), and Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan). #booksky

#Authors born on February 15: Sax Rohmer (Dr. Fu Manchu), Ian Ballantine, Gregory McDonald (Fletch), Jo Clayton (Diadem), Jack Dann (Da Vinci Rising), Douglas Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach), Art Spiegelman (Maus), Elizabeth Knox (The Vintner’s Luck), and Matt Groening (The Simpsons). #booksky

#Authors born on February 14 include Frederick Douglass, Frank Harris (My Life and Loves), Dorothy Langley (Mr. Bremble’s Buttons), Robert Shea (Illuminatus!), Carl Bernstein (All the President’s Men), and Gwyneth Jones (Bold as Love). #booksky

#Authors born on February 13 include Eleanor Farjeon (Morning Has Broken), Georges Simenon (The Snow was Dirty), Simms Taback (There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly), H.F. Saint (Memoirs of an Invisible Man), Walter Wangerin, Jr. (The Book of the Dun Cow), 1/2

It's Hugo and Locus nomination time and I'd like to ask that you consider reading this story of mine and see if it's worthy of a nod. Thanks!

#Authors born on Feb 12: Abraham Lincoln (The Gettysburg Address), Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species), George Meredith, Charles Van Doren, Donald Kingsbury (Courtship Rite), Juanita Coulson, Judy Blume, Terry Bisson (Bears Discover Fire), Ray Kurzweil, and Judd Winick (Pedro and Me). #booksky

#Authors born on February 11 include Lydia Maria Child (Hilda Silfverling), Patrick Leigh Fermor (A Time of Gifts), Sidney Sheldon (Redhead), Gordon Lish, Maryse Condé (Crossing the Mangrove), Jane Yolen (Lost Girls), Joy Williams (State of Grace), 1/2

#Authors born on February 10 include Eliza Lynn Linton (Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg), Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago), Bertolt Brecht (The Threepenny Opera), Joan G. Robinson (When Marnie Was There), Alex Comfort (The Joy of Sex), Robert P. Mills, E.L. Konigsburg (The View from Saturday), 1/2

#Authors born on February 9 include Anthony Hope (The Prisoner of Zenda), Natsume Soseki (I Am a Cat), Amy Lowell, J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace), Alice Walker (The Color Purple), Timothy Truman (Scout), and David Simons (Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets). #booksky

#Authors born on February 8 include Jules Verne (Around the World in Eighty Days), Kate Chopin (The Awakening), Fred Gipson (Old Yeller), Robin Wayne Bailey, John Grisham (A Time to Kill), Malorie Blackman (Noughts and Crosses), and Mary Robinette Kowal (The Calculating Stars). #booksky

#Authors born on February 7 include Sir Thomas More (Utopia), Charles Dickens, Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt), Gay Talese, Crawford Kilian (Redmagic), Alan Grant (Judge Dredd), Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club), Patrick McGrath (Asylum), Steven Gould (Jumper), Ashok K. Banker, 1/2

#Authors born on February 6 include Gerard K. O’Neill (The High Frontier), Henry Petroski (To Engineer is Human), Eric Flint, and Michael Pollan (The Botany of Desire). #booksky

#Authors born on February 5 include William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Margaret Millar (Beast in View), Basil Copper, and Andrew M. Greeley (The Cardinal Sins). #booksky

#Authors born on February 4 include Russell Hoban (Riddley Walker), Robert Coover, Ted White, Hugh Lamb, Stewart O’Nan, and Neal Asher (Gridlinked). #booksky

My January reading stats: TOTAL FICTION: 872,863 words TOTAL NONFICTION: 248,481 words GRAND TOTAL: 1,121,344 words Highlights include an interview with Stephen Sondheim, lots of Dungeon Crawler Carl, and flash fiction from the current Codex contest.

#Authors born on February 3 include Gertrude Stein (The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas), James A. Michener (Tales of the South Pacific), Paul Auster (City of Glass), Shawna McCarthy, and Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children). #booksky

#Authors born on February 2 include Havelock Ellis (Psychology of Sex), James Joyce (Ulysses), Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead), Everett Freeman (My Man Godfrey), James Dickey (Deliverance), and Thomas M. Disch (The Brave Little Toaster). #booksky

#Authors born on February 1 include Langston Hughes (The Ways of White Folks), S.J. Perelman (Eastward Ha!), Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), Terry Jones (Monty Python and the Holy Grail), and Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries). #booksky

#Authors born on January 31 include Zane Grey (Riders of the Purple Sage), John O’Hara (BUtterfield 8), Norman Mailer (The Executioner’s Song), Kenzaburo Oe (The Silent Cry), Laura Lippman (Sugar House), Grant Morrison (Supergods), and Will McIntosh (Bridesicle). #booksky

#Author birthdays for 30 January include Rena Vale (The Red Court), Barbara W. Tuchman (A Distant Mirror), Lloyd Alexander (The Black Cauldron), Shirley Hazzard (The Great Fire), Richard Brautigan (Trout Fishing in America), Gregory Benford (Timescape), and Judith Tarr (Epona). #booksky

#Authors born on January 29 include Anton Chekhov (The Cherry Orchard), Paddy Chayefsky (Altered States), Edward Abbey (The Monkey Wrench Gang), Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch), and Monte Cook. #booksky

#Authors born on January 28 include Sabine Baring-Gould (Curious Myths of the Middle Ages), Colette (Gigi), Parke Godwin (The Fire When It Comes), David Lodge (Small World), Ismail Kadare (The General of the Dead Army), and Carrie Vaughn (Bannerless). #booksky

#Authors born on January 27 include Lewis Carroll, Mordecai Richler (Barney’s Version), D.M. Thomas (The White Hotel), Michaela Roessner (Walkabout Woman), K.D. Wentworth, Steve Leialoha, Frank Miller (Sin City), Joe Bob Briggs, Patton Oswalt, and Irene Gallo. #booksky

My latest publication is out today! The Mass Market and the Madness of Crowds is a cozy tale about crowds of aliens. Read it here: breakingintothecraft.com/2026/01/27/t...

#Authors born on January 26: Mary Mapes Dodge (Hans Brinker), Philip José Farmer (Riverworld), Jules Feiffer, M.J. Engh (Arslan), Judy-Lynn del Rey, Jonathan Carroll (Bones of the Moon), Steven Levy (Insanely Great), Yoon Ha Lee (Ninefox Gambit), and Brian McClellan (The Powder Mage). #booksky

#Authors born on January 25 include Robert Burns (To a Mouse), W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage), Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse), Margery Sharp (The Rescuers), Gloria Naylor (The Women of Brewster Place), Peter Watts (Blindsight), Gina Koch (Touched by an Alien), 1/2

#Authors born on January 24 include E.T.A. Hoffman (The Nutcracker), Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth), C.L. Moore (Jirel of Joiry), René Barjavel, Aaron Elkins (Old Bones), David Gerrold (The Trouble with Tribbles), and Aimée Carter (The Goddess Test). #booksky

#Authors born on January 23 include Stendhal (The Red and the Black), Anya Seton (Green Darkness), Walter M. Miller, Jr. (A Canticle for Leibowitz), Tom Reamy (Blind Voices), Greg and Tim Hildebrandt (Urshurak), and Andrew S. Fuller. #booksky

Authors born on Jan 22: Francis Bacon, John Donne, Lord George Gordon Byron, August Strindberg, Robert E. Howard, Katherine MacLean (The Missing Man), Joseph Wambaugh (The Onion Field), Marshall Rogers, Michael Scott Rohan (The Spiral), Alex Ross, and Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indians).

#Authors born on January 21 include Judith Merril (That Only a Mother), Alice Denham (My Darling from the Lions), and Louis Menand (The Metaphysical Club). #booksky

#Authors born on January 20 include A. Merritt (The Moon Pool), Robert Olen Butler (A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain), Nancy Kress (Beggars in Spain), R.A. Salvatore (Forgotten Realms), Tami Hoag, Kij Johnson (Ponies), and Geoffrey Thorne. #booksky

#Authors born on January 19 include Edgar Allan Poe (The Tell, Tale Heart), Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending), William Messner-Loebs (Journey), Allen Steele (The Emperor of Mars), and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (The Witching Hour). #booksky

#Authors born on January 18 include Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws), A.A. Milne (The House at Pooh Corner), Arthur Ransome (Swallows and Amazons), Robert Anton Wilson (Illuminatus), D.F. Lewis, and Pamela Dean (Tam Lin). #booksky

#Authors born on Jan 17: Benjamin Franklin, Anne Brontë (Agnes Grey), May Gibbs, Compton Mackenzie (Whisky Galore), Nevil Shute (On the Beach), Robert Cormier (I Am the Cheese), Paul O. Williams, John Bellairs (The Face in the Frost), Ted Conover (Rolling Nowhere), and Rand Miller (Myst). #booksky

#Authors born on January 16 include Robert W. Service (The Cremation of Sam McGee), Christine Brooke-Rose (Such), Susan Sontag (On Photography), Russell Letson, Graham Masterton, William Browning Spencer (Zod Wallop), and Garth Ennis (The Boys). #booksky (oops, missed posting this yesterday!)

#Authors born on January 15 include Lucius Apuleius (The Golden Ass), Moliêre (Tartuffe), Beatrice Sparks (Go Ask Alice), Martin Luther King, Jr. (Why We Can’t Wait), Robert Silverberg (A Time of Changes), Christopher Stasheff (A Warlock in Spite of Himself), 1/2

#Authors born on Jan 14: Hugh Lofting (Dr. Doolittle), John Dos Passos, Kenneth Bulmer (Dray Prescot), Yukio Mishima (The Sailor Who Feel from Grace with the Sea), Richard Laymon (Funland), Lawrence Kasden (The Big Chill), and Arthur Byron Cover (The Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists). #booksky

#Authors born on January 13 include Matteo Palmieri (On Civic Life), Clark Ashton Smith (Zothique), Michael Bond (A Bear Called Paddington), Ron Goulart, Edmund White (A Boy’s Own Story), Roger Elwood, Joy Chant (Red Moon and Black Mountain), 1/2

#Authors born on January 12 include Charles Perrault (fairy tales), Jack London (The Call of the Wild), Geoffrey Hoyle (Fifth Planet), Tim Underwood, Haruki Murakami (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World), Rush Limbaugh (big fat idiot), Walter Mosley (Easy Rawlins), 1/2

#Authors born on January 11 include Alexander Hamilton (The Federalist Papers), Alan Paton (Cry, the Beloved Country), John Myers Myers (Silverlock), Robert C. O’Brien (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH), Jerome Bixby (“It’s a Good Life”), William Johnston (The Marriage Cage), 1/2

#Authors born on January 10 include George Alec Effinger (What Entropy Means to Me), James Lapine (Sunday in the Park with George), and James Alan Gardner (All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault). #booksky

#Authors born on Jan 9: Walter R. Brooks (Mr. Ed), Karel Čapek (R.U.R.), Barbara Euphan Todd (Worzel Gummidge), Simone de Beauvoir, Algis Budrys (Rogue Moon), Wilbur Smith (River God), Anne Rivers Siddons (The House Next Door), Stuart Woods, and Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl). #booksky

#Authors born on Jan 8: Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone), Dennis Wheatley, Niel Hancock (Squaring the Circle), Graham Chapman (A Liar’s Autobiography), Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time), Richard Bowes (“If Angels Fight”), Terry Brooks (Sword of Shannara), Jack Womack (Terraplane), 1/2

Greenland is a distraction. Making a military move on it would prompt NATO response and WW III. The real goal is Cuba. It's now cut off from both Russia and Venezuala, the two countries that provided aid to it. Will it be an "internal" coup or another heavy-handed US military action?

#Authors born on January 7 include Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God), Charles Addams, Gerald Durrell (My Family and Other Animals), William Peter Blatty (The Exorcist), Karen Haber, and Nicholson Baker (The Mezzanine). #booksky

#Authors born on January 6 include S. Fowler Wright (The Amphibians), Carl Sandburg (“Fog”), Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet), Stella Benson (Goodbye, Stranger), Eric Frank Russell (Three to Conquer), Robert Stallman (Book of the Beast), E.L. Doctorow (Ragtime), Allen Appel (Time After Time), 1/2

#Authors born on January 5: Humbert Wolfe (The Uncelestial City), Stella Gibbons (Cold Comfort Farm), Gilbert Ralston (Willard), Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose), Michael O’Donoghue, Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away), Tananarive Due (Ghost Summer), and Seanan McGuire (Every Heart a Doorway). #booksky

TIL the title of Bob Shaw's classic SF short story "Light of Other Days" came from a poem by Thomas Moore with a similar title and theme, "The Light of Other Days." Name another SF classic that took its title from a poem.