Columns

Black Friday: Buy Nothing and Opt Outside!

November 16th, 2018

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Black Friday was a single shopping day that had some good deals. It was a way to kickstart the holiday shopping season, for both vendors and shoppers. Shops put their Christmas finery on display and lit their trees and suddenly the month transitioned from fall harvest to winter wonderland. It was a busy day at the mall, sure, but maybe you were able to get those winter boots for your kid at a great price.

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Good Oral: Telling Stories Out Loud

November 15th, 2018

Early this fall I did one of those live storytelling things. You know the type. You get up on a stage, you get ten minutes or so, you tell a story from memory, and if you’re lucky, people clap at the end. In my case, you tell a story about your cat, mostly avoid crying, and wind up feeling pretty good about the whole endeavor. 

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Three Exercises for Improved Character Development

November 13th, 2018

I recently started teaching fiction writing at an MFA program. The gig forced me to test everything I knew. I had to read/reread material in order to teach it. Writing is one thing, but teaching others to write is a different beast. During that process, I realized there were exercises I no longer do because I've developed a system that works for me, which basically boils down to letting characters live in my head for weeks before bringing them to life on paper.

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Upon My Death: What Happens To An Author's Unfinished Work?

November 8th, 2018

I have a birthday coming up, so of course that's got me thinking about my death. For me, and for a lot of writers, what I'll leave behind mostly amounts to a pile of papers and manuscripts and journals and stuff jotted on a Jimmy Johns wrapper that seemed very important at the time. Which is why I decided to look into my options. What can be done with my work after I die? What have some of my betters done?

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Daredevil Season 3: Reconstruction

November 6th, 2018

Superheroes are always reinventing themselves. Eventually, they all take on an enemy or challenge that is far beyond anything they have ever faced. They are defeated, or emerge barely victorious, at a very high cost. Our hero may have survived, but they are not the same—this harrowing ordeal has fundamentally changed them, and now they must rediscover what kind of hero he is going to be. It happened to Captain America after he was assassinated in the Civil War comics, and Thor went through a similar revival after Asgard was destroyed in Ragnarok.

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Exploring the Real Town Behind Silent Hill

November 5th, 2018

For over a decade, Centralia, Pennsylvania has been dubbed ‘the real-life Silent Hill’. And it’s easy to see why, with its history ripe for horror. Roads abruptly end, poisonous gases leak from cracks in the concrete, children are sucked into sinkholes, spouses murder each other. But the more I’ve researched Centralia, the more I’ve realised that, like all good horror stories, this one is more of a tragedy.

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No, You’re Freaking Out About Your New Book!

November 1st, 2018

Listen, writing is the greatest gig in the world. It really is. I wouldn’t change it for anything. Some of the best people I’ve met and the coolest places I’ve been to have entered my life because of books. That said, some parts of it are…well, there’s a reason why most authors are slightly insane. In my case, I write because I have stories to tell, things to say, messages to deliver, imaginary people to kill, magic to explore, and a vision of identity, Otherness, violence, crime, and syncretism I want to share with the world.

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Ranking 20 Literary Monsters

October 31st, 2018

Here, I present to you, a ranking of literary monsters. They’re ranked from worst to best. So if you want to find the best monsters, skip to the end. If you want to start with the worst, you’re in the right spot, and you’ll get to hear all about why the Jabberwock sucks.

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How a Community and a War Spawned a Collection

October 30th, 2018

2011… My first campaign as a novelist was a success, insofar as I had accumulated a lot of words and pages, generated characters and plots, and had a basic beginning and end. It was stuffed with all manner of crazy, carefully crafted ephemera as well: fake magazine and newspaper clippings, court reports, and handwritten letters that took me as long to create as the novel took to write. It was a tome about false identity and missing lovers and the narcotic draw of Hollywood.

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Engage Your Readers By Putting Them To Work

October 29th, 2018

We all know that writers put a lot of work into their stories, but we don’t often enough consider the work readers put into reading them. This might be because few of us think of reading, especially reading fiction, as work, but rather as a pleasure, an escape, an inspiration. It is work, though, even if it’s not work we think too much about. And without that work, reading wouldn’t be nearly so rewarding. As writers, then, we want to ask our readers to do the right kind of work, the kind that helps them engage with our stories as much as possible.

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