Columns

7 Tips for Donating Old Books Without Being A Jerk

March 27th, 2017

I work at two places that accept donations of used books: a library and a bookstore that serves as a front for a non-profit. Okay, the bookstore funds the non-profit. It’s not a “front.” But “front” sounds more crime-y and thrilling.

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Let's Get Political: 10 Tactics for Writing Resistance Fiction

March 27th, 2017

In 2011, when I was in grad school, I was working on a novel about drought, wildfire, and radical activism in the West. A novel exploring the implications of the so-called Patriot Act, which essentailly allows the US government to target environmental activists as terrorists.

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Horror and Crime: A Writer's Education

March 24th, 2017

The education of a writer begins with reading. I was never much of a gamer and never really got into comics because books took over pretty early on in my teens. Books were IT for me, and I was happy with that. I'm still happy with that.

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Writing the Crime Scene: 5 Fictional Female Detectives of Note

March 24th, 2017

Grab a pen and paper and write out a list of ten crime authors you enjoy reading. Take your time. When you finish the list, quickly write down the first ten fictional detectives that come to mind. I did this exercise for the purpose of writing a different column and noticed something very strange. While the majority of authors on my first list were women, there were very few female detectives on my second. I had no explanation. Surely there were more female detectives I'd read about than Miss Marple and Nancy Drew. It was time to expand the diversity of my reading list.

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Don't Call It a Comback: Peter David's Supergirl is Finally Getting Collected

March 23rd, 2017

The concept of Supergirl is pretty simple, right? Kara Zor-El, the teenage cousin of Superman, is rocketed away from the planet of Krypton as it’s about to explode. She’s lost in space and arrives on Earth only to find her baby cousin is now a grown man, and the greatest superhero of all time to boot. She follows his lead, adopting a secret identity as Linda Lee Danvers, and a crime fighting persona as Supergirl. Her powers are identical to her male counterpart, including super strength, vision, hearing, and flight.

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8 Reasons to Avoid the Novel and Focus on Short Stories

March 23rd, 2017

I was twenty when I started writing seriously. “Seriously,” as in I wanted to write, publish, and get paid for it. In my mind, monetary compensation was the dividing line between this being a hobby and a career. So, I did what I assumed was the next natural step in being a writer and wrote a book. Man oh man, was that a huge mistake. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Concepts like basic story structure and character development were barely familiar to me.

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9 Imaginary Gizmos For Writers Someone Needs To Hurry Up And Invent Already

March 22nd, 2017

Most writers are of the opinion that the last thing we need is another gizmo. Another screen, another device, another drain on our time. But I think most writers are being a tad narrow-minded. I think they'd be apt to embrace technology if it offered us some things we could actually use.  The Consumer-Level Self-Publishing Machine It's 2017. We have consumer-level 3D printers! This was something that I couldn't have ever imagined being possible. Now I can process and extrude materials to make a pile of crap at home!

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Storyville: Writing Contemporary Magical Realism

March 21st, 2017

Today I’m going to talk about magical realism as a genre (or sub-genre) and how I define it. There are a lot of different influences as far as this voice, but I want to focus on contemporary examples and ways that I think you can incorporate magical realism into your writing. DEFINED A literary genre or style (associated especially with Latin America) that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction.

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The Dos and Don'ts of Book Tour: An Author's Survival Guide

March 21st, 2017

Authors don't seem to talk about this sort of thing very much. The survival thing. We like to talk about craft and meaning. Inspiration. Lofty goals. We post pictures of ourselves at events. We humble brag. We try to look cool. Act cool. Be cool. Sometimes being an author is like being stuck in that dream where you're endlessly walking down a crowded hallway and you can't find your classroom. Sometimes, it's like being in high school. And if you're an author yourself, I think you know exactly what I mean by that.

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Hack Dad’s Revenge: Boredom

March 20th, 2017

Originally, this month’s column was supposed to be about earning money as a stay-at-home parent/writer. But, the thing is I’m pretty much doing everything on spec these days and I’ve pitched two articles, submitted a novelette, and a short satirical article to a humor website over the last six weeks, but I haven’t heard anything back from any of them. This is what happens when you’re not under contract, though. You spend a lot of time writing and hoping someone will buy some of it.

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