Columns

Rejection Letters Deciphered: 5 Common Reasons Agents Give for Rejecting Novels (And What They Really Mean)

November 12th, 2015

By the time you submitted your novel to literary agents, you'd put it through a whole lot of revisions. You'd run it by trusted critique partners. And your query was good enough to get you the coveted partial-manuscript request—or the even more coveted full-manuscript request. So what's up with these rejection letters? Like nearly everything associated with publishing, much of this is simply a numbers game—agents receive a huge number of queries every year, and they can only accept so many clients.

Read Column →

5 Uses For Your Unfinished NaNoWriMo Manuscript

November 11th, 2015

It was mid-October when I realized I wasn't going to complete NaNoWriMo this year. I looked at my work calendar for the next month, did some quick word count calculations, and knew the jig was up before it began. At the moment, I'm a sad 2,000 words deep and falling further behind every day. 

Read Column →

Why You're Going To Love AMC's 'Preacher'

November 10th, 2015

You've got a few months to catch up on Preacher's run of comics from the mid-90's before the series premiere on AMC. Or you could just read this column. Let's take a look. And I promise, no spoilers that wouldn't be found in the show's trailer, that trailer's description, or in the description for the first volume of comics. This is a really great series, and part of what makes it great is the surprise. I swear, I'll do my best to preserve the element of surprise here.

Read Column →

The Word Is Mightier Than ‘the Pen’: 5 Imprisoned Writers

November 9th, 2015

What with the release of the film Trumbo on November 6 and the upcoming Day of the Imprisoned Writer on November 15, it's the season of persecution as far as writers are concerned. I'm not talking about self-persecution — the nasty little voices inside us who remind us that we're essentially worthless, talentless hacks. No, I'm referring to the jackboot kind of persecution — the type that involves shackles and handcuffs, judges' gavels pounding and cell doors clanking shut. The hopeless type.

Read Column →

5 Storytelling Lessons You Can Learn From James Bond

November 6th, 2015

This week sees the release of Spectre, the latest James Bond film. Bond films have really run the gamut from the release of Dr. No in 1962, switching actors and styles as the times demanded. Some of them (A View to a Kill, for example) are awful, but there are lessons, real storytelling lessons, to be learned from the Bond films, particularly the most recent ones. Whether or not Spectre lives up to them remains to be seen.

Read Column →

11 Reasons You Should Not Get A Degree In Library Science

November 6th, 2015

I should probably start with the giant poop story. Giant poops speak volumes. This could be a very short column that makes one very oversized, brown, awful, compelling point. Instead, I'll start with this: I've been a library worker for over 11 years, and a librarian for about 8 of those years. It's my chosen profession, and there are things about it I love.

Read Column →

LitReactor Community Spotlight: November 2015

November 6th, 2015

Are any of you gamers? If so, you know November is going to be a particularly tough month for us. You see, I'm the sort of gamer that when I admit I'm a gamer, I feel a little shame about it. It has nothing to do with a belief that video games are a guilty pleasure. Rather, I just engage in video games to an extent that I realize I could be doing more productive things. Yet, in the space of a few short weeks, we're getting hit with a new Star Wars game, Halo 5, and my most feared nemesis, Fallout 4. It's going to eat me alive.

Read Column →

Blood and Cigarettes: Charlie Huston's Use of Time in the Joe Pitt Casebooks

November 5th, 2015

Charlie Huston has a talent of grabbing the reader and not letting go. This aptitude for immediacy is best demonstrated in the Joe Pitt Casebooks, five novels about the eponymous vampyre (Huston's spelling) hard case. Released between 2005 and 2009, these New York City-set throwbacks to 1970s crime fiction are told in first-person perspective present tense, a storytelling method Huston used with his first five published books. What's unique is Huston never cheats, having the reader experience the world as Pitt does.

Read Column →

Dalton Trumbo: Who He Was And Why We Should Care

November 5th, 2015

If you have even a passing knowledge of cinema history, you know about the Hollywood Ten—a group of creatives who refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (or HUAC, an organization lead by J. Parnell Thomas) against fellow members of the Communist Party. The ten were subsequently blacklisted and barred from working on motion pictures, as well as imprisoned for one year for contempt of court.

Read Column →

Storyville: How to Write Flash Fiction

November 4th, 2015

So you want to write flash fiction but don’t know where to start. Here are some tips and trick for writing excellent flash fiction. It’s not easy, somewhere between prose poetry and a short story, but it can certainly pack a wallop.

Read Column →