Columns

Storyville: 101 Ways to Make 2017 Your Best Year as a Writer Yet

January 16th, 2017

Ready, set, GO! Set some goals, and go after them. If it’s write every day, do it. If it’s write one story a month, do it. Just take it seriously and go after your dreams. Join some Open Call groups on Facebook. There are several, and they’ll help you find some anthologies and calls you may not hear of otherwise. Join Duotrope. It’s worth the $50 a year, honest.

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Your Lips To Google's Ears: Voice Typing On Google Docs

January 16th, 2017

Let me tell you about this notebook I've got. The notebook itself is nothing special. A Mead 5-Star, college-ruled notebook. What's special about it is that it's full of one-sentence story ideas. Ideas I've written down for the last ten years or so. This isn't a brag. For the most part, the ideas are terrible (one is some illegible nonsense about a geode), unwritable (an entry that simple says "Oak Park") or SUPER terrible ("Journals of Lewis And Clark except L&K are total dicks").

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The 10 Best Book Covers of 2016

January 13th, 2017

It's that time of the year. Time to argue about what the best books were—what was good, what was bad, but most importantly, which ones were the most good looking. 

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It Could Be Worse: Five Nightmare Dystopias

January 12th, 2017

Dystopian fiction always peaks in popularity around an election year. It’s something of tradition to imagine how the opposition will completely ruin the world if they win, one that has only become more popular during the rise of exaggerated partisan journalism. Although it makes for an entertaining narrative, it’s not very likely that the person you didn’t vote for will destroy the world, if only for the fact that they have to live on it, too.

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Writing the Crime Scene: Gunshot Wounds

January 11th, 2017

Perhaps your crime novel opens with a veteran patrol officer being shot in the thigh during a routine traffic stop. Or maybe the rookie detective in your short story takes a bullet to the shoulder to save a little girl from a drug-dealing biker. How long will each character survive without medical attention? Would they be able to walk away from their respective crime scenes? Would they suffer loss of motor control in their damaged limb? Would it hurt so badly that they’d scream in agony? Or would they go into shock and feel nothing at all?

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7 Tools for Keeping Your Writing Resolutions

January 9th, 2017

The new year is off to a rocking start, and you’ve no doubt had a chance to sit down and hammer out some writing resolutions that are sure to make 2017 your most prolific writing year yet. You’ve got the drive and the lofty goals, and we’ve got some tools to help you reach them. If you’re looking to make the most of your writing time, try a tool or two listed below to amp up the momentum and guarantee that you keep every resolution you make.

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10 Things Every Reader Should Do in 2017

January 6th, 2017

Everywhere you look, there's someone trying to give authors advice. What to do, what not to do, how to behave, how to use social media, the best way to engage readers, etc. However, all of that only works if someone is reading your books. Simply put, there is no writer without readers. Sure, you can write your novels and get them published, but if no one's reading them, you might as well become best friends with that famous tree that keeps falling in the forest when there's no one around to hear it crash.

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The Book as the Most Powerful Object of Our Time

January 5th, 2017

Are books still relevant? This is the question that has been asked since the dawn of the 21st century, and perhaps even before that. With technology delivering content to be “consumed” rather than engaged with in a thoughtful manner, it’s hard to see a future wherein the book has a resurgence. I wrote about this recently with my article “Google Made Me Stupid.

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7 Books on Finance to Start Your Year Off Right

January 4th, 2017

If there is one thing we all have in common, it's the fact that the New Year starts with feeling spent. All the sparkle and warmth of the holiday season is gone, and we're left with a brittle and crumbling tree, lawn ornaments that look sad and trashy, and piles of dirty snow. And typically many, many regrettable financial decisions that we now have to pay for. Thanks, credit cards, for allowing me to give so much "fancy" peppermint bark to my friends and family! If this feels like you, then read on.

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10 Politically Subversive Novels Veiled in Absurdism

January 4th, 2017

There are politically or sociologically-charged novels that come right out and say what they mean, with varying degrees of heavy-handedness. And then there are novels that make sweeping critiques of government and society through gross (in both senses of the word) surrealism and absurdity, often doing so via subversive means. 

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