Columns

6 Festive Thanksgiving Romances

November 25th, 2015

November is well known to be a month for family gatherings and counting your blessings, but did you know it's also the perfect month for falling in love? There’s just something about the cooler temperatures and feelings of camaraderie and well-being that somehow light the fire for romance. Authors from Rachel Harris to Janet Evanovich are celebrating the Fall season and all of the charm that goes with it, with Thanksgiving-themed romances that are sure to warm your heart and set the mood for the coming  holiday season. 

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There Is No Spoon: 7 Books For a Nihilist Thanksgiving

November 25th, 2015

The holidays are a marvelous time to contemplate the futility of existence. Albert Camus, Brett Easton Ellis, and old Will Shakespeare might be able to offer some comfort at the stuffing bowl if you're not quite feeling the joy of the upcoming season. If the stuffing bowl is even really there, that is.

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What Comedy Central’s ‘Review’ Can Teach Us About Experimental Narratives

November 24th, 2015

At first glance, Comedy Central’s Review is nothing more than another episodic sketch show. Andy Daly plays Forrest MacNeil, host of his own show, also called Review. In Review, MacNeil reviews life experiences at the request of his viewers. For instance, a reviewer might request to know what it’s like to be racist, or what it’s like to steal something, or maybe even what it’s like to eat fifteen pancakes. Whatever the request is, MacNeil is game.

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David Foster Wallace reviews 'List of the Lost' by Morrissey

November 24th, 2015

I heard about the book a couple of days ago. Shelley mentioned it to Auden over the dinner table in one of those whispers you use when you want people to hear you. Have you finished with it yet Wysten? he hissed, loud enough to make the teacups tinkle. Auden gave him a we can’t talk about that here look and motioned him away to a corner so they could mutter and giggle together like the High School girls they are. Fuck them I thought, but my interest was aroused.

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'American Horror Story: Hotel' and Why Hotel Horror Works

November 23rd, 2015

It’s no secret that Ryan Murphy’s popular horror anthology TV series, American Horror Story, is a mixed bag, from the beautifully grotesque second season, Asylum, to the consistently disappointing third, Coven. Still, as a huge fan of hotel horror and for the most-part the American Horror Story series, I had high hopes going into this season. Hopes that haven’t quite been met, but perhaps like last year’s outing, Freak Show, it will get better as the ‘story’ progresses.

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Turkey Coma: Five Times Screenwriters Put Characters Conveniently to Sleep

November 20th, 2015

The coma as catalyst is old hat, popping up in such classics as Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle”, and consequently has made its way, unbeknownst, into many a writer's bag of tricks. More often than not this results in the convenient coma, when a character is put to sleep in order to drive the plot forward, usually with others fighting to wake them up. This is a tried and true plot device of the screenwriter, so much so that it has its own page on the All the Tropes Wiki.

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13 Ways to Live And Write Like Kurt Vonnegut

November 20th, 2015

Kurt Vonnegut would have been 93 this month. If we were lucky enough to live in a world where people like Kurt Vonnegut lived to be 93.  The dude is one of those writers who's well-liked and popular, but still underrated somehow. How it is that The Sirens Of Titan isn't an all-time classic I do now know or understand, and frankly it's part of what makes me feel like our society is nothing but wreckage.

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What Works & What Doesn't: 'Repo Man'

November 19th, 2015

Welcome once again to What Works & What Doesn't, a monthly column dedicated to the craft of screenwriting.

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Primer: The Work of Tom Piccirilli

November 18th, 2015

Tom Piccirilli passed away this July and the literary world lost one of its most intense and passionate authors. Like many of his friends and acquaintances wrote in their tributes earlier this year, Tom was a great, talented guy. He was always down to talk writing and publishing with people he barely knew (like me!). I have an email lingering in my account from him, which still sits there to this day. I asked to interview him back in 2009, but the magazine I was working with at the time shut down unexpectedly, so the interview never happened. I never got back to him about it.

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Library Love: A Rough Timeline of Lost Libraries

November 17th, 2015

Not everyone loves books. For centuries, despotic governments and rulers have feared the power of the written word and its influence on the masses; enough to destroy the most hallowed sanctuaries of bibliophiles across the globe—libraries. From Iraq to Los Angeles, countless libraries have been lost to war, fire, and “progress.” 

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