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The AI Novel Is Pointless
November 14th, 2022
Compared to Judgment Day, during which intelligent machines will bomb humanity down to a pile of charred skeletons, I guess an AI writing a novel seems like a pretty benign thing. I mean, what if I have an ugly skeleton? I have no idea what my skeleton looks like, and maybe it looks all weird and all the surviving robots will make fun of it. Unlike Judgment Day, the AI-written novel is coming. Much like the intro to this column, the AI novel will be confusing, silly, and utterly without purpose.
Read Column →Writing with Chronic Pain
November 11th, 2022
Photo via Towfiqu Barbhuiya One quick perusal of the sad garage sale that is Writer Twitter and you’ll inevitably come across a bio or pinned tweet where the writing advice is some form of “just do the damn thing!” Besides being dumb, that advice also lacks a lot of nuance, especially if you’re a writer with chronic pain.
Read Column →The Rising Price of Everything and What it Means for Publishing
November 10th, 2022
“Inflation” isn’t an alluring word, but it’s one that’s been generously sprinkled throughout many conversations this year, from the grocery store to the gas pump. We’ve all seen the opinion pieces and heard the constant churn of news stories. Consumer prices are climbing to the fastest pace of increase in four decades, with annual inflation reaching its highest levels in the US since 1981.
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What Makes a Good Retelling?
November 4th, 2022
I recently caught up on the new Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds. The show is great, much more in the vein of the original with Kirk and Spock. The stories feel like the kind of thing Gene Rodenberry would have written… with one notable exception. Episode six, “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach,” is a rip-off of another story. Not a retelling, a rip-off. Let me explain.
Read Column →10 NaNoWriMo Tips for Success from Editors and Agents
November 2nd, 2022
Header illustration by Raúl Gil for Reedsy NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is right around the corner — starting annually on November 1. Though the concept of writing 50,000 words in one frenzied month sounds utterly insane, hundreds of thousands of writers attempt it every year, relying on the sense of camaraderie, accountability, and group momentum of the NaNo community.
Read Column →Anthropodermic Bibliopegy: Books Bound In Human Skin
November 1st, 2022
Why Bind A Book In Human Skin? The history of books bound in human skin is pretty fascinating, in a macabre sort of way. What? When it’s Halloween, you put skeletons on your front lawn, pose in front of your coffin bookshelves, but a book bound in human skin is too far?
Read Column →Storyville: My Favorite Horror Stories Available to Read Online Right Now
October 28th, 2022
Today, in the spirit of horror and Halloween, I thought I’d give you a list of some of my favorite horror stories that you can read online RIGHT NOW. Here you go.
Read Column →10 Scary Children’s Books that Might Still Keep You Up at Night
October 27th, 2022
My personal poison as a child was R.L. Stine. I loved his books, but I couldn’t handle them. My parents wouldn't buy them for me, so I convinced my grandmother to secretly read me The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight, and it kept me up for weeks (proving my parents completely right for keeping it away from me). There’s nothing more lastingly creepy than books with the ability to scar your early childhood, and what brings joy to some in the early years can be interpreted as abject horror to others.
Read Column →Why We'll Never Stop Talking About Frankenstein
October 24th, 2022
Because I’m a very cool guy with lots on my social calendar, I was browsing a free database of dissertations the other day. I tried REALLY hard to come up with a way to intro this column that made me sound badass, and that was the best I could do. Yes, there were several, far worse versions of that intro. What surprised me about that database is how many dissertations, theses (heh), and academic papers are still coming out today about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
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