Columns

Writing the Crime Scene: Blood

April 4th, 2018

A rookie cop nurses a busted nose after a dust-up with a drunken thug. The veteran detective squats down to examine crimson stains on the kitchen floor. A forensic specialist tests a blood-stained jacket for the suspect's DNA. Blood is a common element in every crime or horror novel. Each of our characters has roughly one to one-and-a-half gallons of blood in their fictional veins. So when you see horror movies where there is a firehose of scarlet shooting out of a severed limb, it isn’t really accurate.

Read Column →

How I Revitalized my Reading Life Through Structure and Rules

April 3rd, 2018

My reading life was a little stale at the beginning of last fall. I’d sit down to read, and even if it was a book I was dying to dig into, I’d shut it after mere minutes. I was unfocused, unable to keep my eyes on the page, unsure where to fit reading into my busy life. And this was a problem, because I was just starting to have publishers send me ARCs of upcoming releases for review, and I felt it would be unconscionably rude to accept the books and never actually read them.

Read Column →

How 'The Westing Game' Inspired 'Ready Player One' Thirty Years Later

March 30th, 2018

Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game turns thirty this year. That's three decades of inspiring later books and younger authors with its cheeky clues, cast of wildly diverse weirdos, and ever-twisting plot. And no book seems as directly inspired by The Westing Game as Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, the big-budget adaptation of which is hitting theaters today, directed by a little nobody named Steven Spielberg.

Read Column →

Research Isn't Writing

March 28th, 2018

I used to hate research. I'd sit down to write a story and if I felt like I didn't know the topic well enough, I'd scrap it. I didn't want to be a historian, I wanted to be a writer. Of course, that was a ridiculous and harmful approach to writing, and I've since learned my lesson. I've learned that I actually don't know a damn thing, and I should be researching almost everything I write. But I've also learned that research can be incredibly fun, enveloping me in more information that I could possibly process. 

Read Column →

8 Cliché Narratives I Want More Of

March 27th, 2018

"Avoid clichés at all costs!"   It seems like that line appears in 90-95% of writing articles. In fact, I've been known to implore writers not to create plots about detectives going back home to deal with weird murders or stories about white saviors. That being said, there are certain narratives that work for me, that I enjoy most of the time. Narratives I think writers should keep banging out, because the occasional gem is worth having to wade through a bunch of novels with the same underlying elements.

Read Column →

10 Literary Holidays We Desperately Need

March 26th, 2018

Take a look at the calendar. Come up with your top three complaints about it.  Here are mine:

Read Column →

Flannery O'Connor's Greatest Hits

March 23rd, 2018

Image via Georgia Humanities Flannery O’Connor is one of those names you hear a lot, but folks who aren’t interested in writing and short stories don’t know a lot about her.

Read Column →

3 Things Critique Groups Are Great For (and 3 Things They Really Aren't)

March 23rd, 2018

Whether you’re new to writing or a seasoned pro, a good critique group is, if not a necessity, a pretty damned good idea. How else are you going to get out of your own head—and out of your own way—so you can see your work the way a reader will? And how else are you going to get your work in shape to submit?

Read Column →

5 Reasons to Study Creative Writing in School

March 22nd, 2018

There’s no One True Way to be a writer. Instead, everybody has their own path to success, their own process, their own stories to tell. Some writers write every day at 4 a.m. with a cup of coffee and the mighty roar of a powerful grizzly bear. Good on them. Others write for a full day in a frenzy of inspiration and activity, lay back and slip into a catatonic state for weeks, and repeat. And there’s so many in between.

Read Column →

Writing: All It Takes Is Guts

March 22nd, 2018

4 years ago I was sweating bullets, sitting in the bright sunlight of Cross Plains, Texas during Barbarian Days. Now let me answer your first two questions: One: Cross Plains is a small, oilfield town that the Texas highways left behind a long time ago.

Read Column →