Columns

6 Stephen King Villains Who Were Ridiculously Easy to Defeat

May 1st, 2017

Header image via Simon & Schuster Dark Tower box set CONTAINS SPOILERS: Stephen King has proliferated the cultural landscape with monsters, killers, and ghosts of all varieties throughout his abundant body of work, but when you’ve knocked out over sixty novels and countless short stories, sometimes the villain pool gets a little shallow.

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It's Faerie Season!

May 1st, 2017

Image via Fae Magazine Back in January, I was pretending to be a proactive parent and sticking interesting community events on my calendar for the year, because last year, I heard about all the cool things two days after they happened. Anyway, I noticed what I thought was a curious and local tradition called the "Tulip Fairy & Elf Festival" here in my relatively new town of Boulder, CO. What on earth was this?

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5 Bands/Musicians Who Might Actually Write Crime Fiction

April 27th, 2017

Crime is cool and awesome. If you disagree, you’re probably an undercover cop. You have to tell me if you are, you know. It’s the law. If you’re a cop, please stop reading this article. There is nothing for you here.

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The Food Pyramid for Writers

April 26th, 2017

Writing professionally can be really hard, but dieting and losing weight is so much harder. I’ve done a lot of writing and editing in the last five years, but the trade off has been gaining 40 pounds, and none of it muscle. I tried exercising, portion control, but none of it worked. If I managed to lose a few pounds, I felt miserable, like I was starving. I’d last two weeks at most, and then give in to overeating. It’s been incredibly frustrating.

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The Five Be's to Being a Better Beta Buddy

April 25th, 2017

Beta Readers. Beta Buddies. The words can strike fear into a writer's heart. They've written a novel, yes. Poured their heart and soul into it, yes. But now it's time to put their words out into the world, out into a small, controlled environment, populated by friends. Colleagues. And yes, occasionally, their mom.

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50 Signs You’re In Love With A Writer

April 24th, 2017

Image: "Book & Love" by Pradyumna Prabhu When I came up with a Jeff-Foxworthy-style “Signs You’re in Love with a Writer” post for LitReactor, I knew one thing for sure: infinite internet brains would be better than mine alone. So I took to the social media streets (Facebook and Twitter) asking writers and lovers of writers to offer their own one-liners using the hashtag #InLoveWithAWriter. The examples I gave of signs you’re in love with a writer:

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Storyville: Leaving Room for the Reader in Your Fiction

April 24th, 2017

I was talking to a few of my favorite authors, Stephen Graham Jones and Brian Evenson, when they stopped by my Contemporary Dark Fiction class, and in both conversations the idea of “leaving room for the reader” came up. I think this is something that is crucial, as an author, and I’d like to talk about it a bit here today, to try and elaborate and explain what I mean, and how you might do that yourself.

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10 New Female Authors That Should Be On Your Radar

April 21st, 2017

A ton of books are published every day, and many of them are by women. However, sometimes it's easy to overlook or simply miss new talent because there is just too much out there. Because some of these authors deserve all the attention they can get, I decided to put together a list of the best new voices. How did I decided which ones are "new"? Well, I went with authors with only one book published. Here they are. Go read their words.

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Oni Press 20 Years Later: 'Blue Monday' and the Pros and Cons of Colorizing Black and White Comic Books

April 21st, 2017

Oni Press is an independent comic book publishing company formed in 1997. It made a name for itself in the early days by having a punk rock attitude, with books like Jen Van Meter’s Hopeless Savages, Brian Wood’s Pounded and Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim, with room for exceptions like Greg Rucka’s Whiteout. But its distinctive alternative edge came from the fact that they published almost entirely black and white books.

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What I Learned Being Mandy De Sandra

April 20th, 2017

About 3 and a half years ago, two college students started churning out kindle singles about women having sex with dinosaurs. I found their success a little depressing but also fascinating. Eventually, my curiosity overpowered my snobbery and I was one of the first people to interview one of the dino-erotica girls. I interviewed Alara Brawnen and my literary worldview was forever changed.

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