• The Seer’s Stone
  • The Dodo Dragon and other stories
  • About Sheila Crosby
  • A Breathtaking Window on the Universe

An Interview with Hank Quense

Today for a change, we have an interview with another author. Hank Quense is, an American author of humorous and satiric fantasy and scifi stories. We’ll be discussing Fool’s Gold, his novel about the Rhinegold myth. Tell us a bit about yourself. I was born a long time ago, married my wife, she gave birth to two daughters. I left my day job to write stories, my daughters gave birth…

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The Santa Maria

Replica of Columbus’s Santa Maria in Santa Cruz de la Palma Back when I worked for the observatory, we ocassionally gave visiting astronomers a lift up to the mountaintop. I always enjoyed detouring past the replica of Christopher Columbus’s ship, the Santa Maria, partly to see the visitor’s reaction. Astronomer: “What on earth is that!?” Me: It’s a concrete ship in the middle of the road. What’s it look like?”…

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Happy birthday Helen

We hosted my friend Helen’s party last night, because they could sleep at our house, but we couldn’t sleep at theirs. So I cooked quiches and they bought sausage rolls, and we ordered a cake. I thought the cake sounded a bit expensive, but what the heck, it was a special occasion. When I collected it, I found out why. I’d asked for a cake for 5, but the phone…

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Ferrets on La Palma

Ferrets are a common pet here. They’re mostly used for hunting wild rabbits, which are plentiful. The trouble is that occasionally they escape. Since there are plenty of wild rabbits, they do rather well, so we also have a population of wild ferrets. In fact, it’s just been confirmed that La Palma is the island with the highest number of wild ferrets in the Canaries. The scientists say that, “the…

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Ferrets on La Palma

Ferrets are a common pet here. They’re mostly used for hunting wild rabbits, which are plentiful. The trouble is that occasionally they escape. Since there are plenty of wild rabbits, they do rather well, so we also have a population of wild ferrets. In fact, it’s just been confirmed that La Palma is the island with the highest number of wild ferrets in the Canaries. The scientists say that, “the…

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Underpants

They’ve just switched off the analogue TV here, so of course there’s been a scramble to get digital TV going, in spite of the fact that we were all warned about this months ago. My husband installed an old lady’s Digibox, and told her that the beer and nibbles she provided where payment enough. So she went out and bought us presents. Our son got some underpants. Here’s the fun…

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