Armadillocon 37 Schedule is Up

After many years of carefully crafting my panel attendance on this blog, I am simply putting up the link to the programming by names. There is also a programming grid. Life, Interrupted has seen the mountaintop.

Yes, there will be some books in the dealer's room, if Adventures in Crime & Space wants to sell them. I will be there at least Friday and Saturday. Give me incentive to show up Sunday!

During the convention there will be a sale on-line of Fires of Nuala. This precedes a Bookbub ad next week. Get your ebook for .99!

Susan Fraser King on Dragons and Shadows

Over on the Word Wenches blog, writer Susan Fraser King--who wrote her dissertation study on the iconography of St. George in medieval art--talks about St. George and those dragons. George is on horses, off horses, has patrons, goes it alone, saves princesses, saves villages--and always, there's a dragon.

"George was one of the few saints, perhaps the only one, to cross over into the truly secular arena. He was the movie star hero of his day, killing dragons and rescuing princesses for the sake of chivalry and adventure rather than religious fervor. Very likely the Saxon English responded to him early on because St. George reminded them of Beowulf and Grendel, and the various Viking and Germanic/Saxon tales that include dragons. They understood and enjoyed George, with his dragon and his princess and his many heroic deeds. Newly Christian Britain retained a pagan flavor in their beliefs (and that still exists today). There are plenty of classical ties too—Bellerophon and Chimera, and Perseus and Andromeda, that can be factored in to the mythic origins of this very old tale."

For me, the interest is the dragon.

But that's another story.