(By day Anthony Francis studies human and other minds to design intelligent machines and emotional robots; by night he writes fiction and draws comic books at the collision point of hard science and pure fantasy. He was inspired to study artificial...

Freedom With the scent of spring in the air my thoughts have turned toward freedom and escaping the doom and gloom of winter. I'm a homebody in winter. Hate the cold, hate the snow. Hate getting out in it. Period. But the last couple days have been...

Hey, Top Downers, please welcome Robin Cain to the convertible...and win!   As an author with a new book on the market, I find myself getting quite caught up in the whole “numbers” game. How many copies have I sold? What is my place on...

I love my romance columnist gig for BookPage because once a month I get a box of treats like this one...an advance copy of Nora Roberts latest book in her Bride Quartet (comes out in May). But more than the luscious cake caught my eye when I looked it...

A recent article in the Minneapolis StarTribune got me thinking about cultural words, utterances and expressions that I grew up hearing.  My mom is Scandinavian descent (Norwegian and Swedish) and my dad is German.  As kids we were quite proud to...