Columns

Hoax! 4 Truly (or Falsely) Great Literary Frauds

September 1st, 2016

As forgeries go, literary fraud seems fairly harmless. Novelists are already liars; they make things up and pretend they’re true. And the extent to which we believe their lies determines the novel’s success. If nobody thinks the lies are even plausible, the novel usually fails. Crafting an intricate lie is the novelist’s goal, and we praise them when they get away with it.

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6 Ways Non-Writerly Spouses Help Improve Your Craft

August 31st, 2016

I have had relationships with many writers. An underlying commonality of these was the ripping apart of each others’ work. Nothing was ever sacred; there was never a project too close to my heart. And no wonder: We as writers must take a critical eye to each others’ stories, and that can complicate a writer-on-writer relationship.

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The Substance of Magic in Fiction

August 31st, 2016

What is magic? A working general definition goes something like this: “the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.”

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My Favorite Reads Of 2016 So Far

August 30th, 2016

As all of you know, the publishing industry never stops. Big, small, and macro presses are constantly churning out new books week-after-week for public consumption. And week-after-week, publishers send out hundreds, sometimes thousands of books to clowns like me in hopes that we’ll feature one or ten of them in a review. As a reviewer, the sheer mass of books I’m sent is staggering. On average I receive anywhere between two and fifteen books a week, and as much as I would love to review all of them, I kind of like doing other things like sleeping and eating.

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6 Podcast Episodes That Will Make You a Better Writer

August 29th, 2016

Why read a self-help book about writing when you can just listen to a bunch of cool podcasts? Also, let’s face it, why even read this intro when you can just skip straight to the first entry? Surely you’ve read the article’s title, which tells you all you need to know about what you’re about to get into. So let’s just get on with it.

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Swipe left: Seven Sick Literary Hook-ups

August 26th, 2016

I met my husband at a bar. He was wearing his ex-girlfriend’s tweed jacket, and I asked him to dance. Two kids and a mortgage later, we’re still dancing, but that’s not always the way it works. Even with dating apps, it’s tough to find a match in the real world, unlike in fiction, where the characters have us, right? Like real life, only better. Or is it?

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Teenage Wasteland: Please, No More Teenage Superheroes

August 25th, 2016

Look at this. The image above these words is the cover to Ms. Marvel #007. Selfies with Wolverine. Ridiculous. I'm old. I don't want to see teens anywhere, but there are two places I ESPECIALLY don't want to see them: on my lawn and in my comics. They're screwing up both. And it seems like there are so many teen heroes now. Kamala Khan, new Ms. Marvel, is in high school. Miles Morales, new Ultimate Spider-Man, was 13 when he started showing up in comics. Riri Williams, the new Iron Man, is 15.

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What Works & What Doesn't: 'Forrest Gump'

August 24th, 2016

Welcome back to What Works & What Doesn't, where we deconstruct the screenplays of famous films and determine just what the title suggests—what works, and what doesn't work. 

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ADA and the Modern Writer

August 24th, 2016

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is legislation that was passed in 1990 that, for the first time in American history, prohibited discrimination against individuals with disabilities and sought to provide equal opportunities for those individuals. Signed in 1990 and amended and expanded in 2008, it is as remarkable a piece of legislation as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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The Use of Derogatory Language in Period Pieces

August 23rd, 2016

Language is always evolving, and that’s never more evident than with the written word. Dialogue that was once tolerable, if not risqué, does not fly today, hence the repeated controversies over the likes of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the classroom. But when stories written today are period pieces, should a writer portray the language of the time with 100% authenticity in terms of hate speech?

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