When it comes to many of today’s epidemics, perhaps, as FDR warned during the height of the Great Depression, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” This is the message epidemiologist Philip Alcabes examines in his recent book, Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu.

Horror authors Christopher Leppek and Emanuel “Mani” Isler never thought chaos” would stalk them. Or come for their blood. Literally. The Denver-based duo recently launched a Web site, www.chaosicon.com, from which they hope to sell the remaining copies of their first collaborative novel at a bargain price … and autographed in their blood.

A friend once called me and, before I had a chance to say hello, asked rapidly, “What one thing would you want if stranded on a desert island?” My reply was as automatic as it was predictable. “Duh. Tweezers.” As if she had to ask. It’s not likely I could ever be stranded, well, anywhere, without a pair or two nearby.

In the mid-1300s, the “Great Mortality” decimated nearly one-third of Europe’s population. One of every three or four individuals was stricken with the “pestilence,” a mysterious illness that began with a headache, fever and swollen lymph glands. … Death came quickly and painfully for approximately 25 million between 1347 and 1351, and those who escaped or survived infection were left with a fear of the Black Death (aka bubonic plague) that, in many ways, can still be felt today.

American sportswriter Red Smith once said, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.” Two Denver-based horror novelists have done away with the metaphor and are literally mixing their blood with ink, selling copies of their book, Chaosicon, signed in the ghastly concoction.

Sometimes I feel like a humorless Jerry Seinfeld, asking a not-nearly-drunk-enough crowd “What is with the” dot dot dot. … Pricking my thumbs these days is the fourth installment of Indiana Jones, Steven Speilberg’s and George Lucas’ archaeologist of old (who, despite spending little time in his career actually doing what archaeologists do best, has at least managed to dig up an ex-girlfriend this time around).

In his essay, A Writer’s Credo, Edward Abbey wrote: “It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. … Far better silence than the written word used to shore up the wrong, the false, the ugly, the evil” (1988, p. 161). InsertComma is a home for such critics.