Columns

Engineering the Perfect Campfire Tale

August 27th, 2014

August and September are some of the best months of the year for camping. The bugs have died down, and the weather’s cooler and drier than in July. For thousands of years, camping has held an intimate connection with storytelling. Wherever humans gather around food and a fire, there are guaranteed to be tales of monsters and heroic deeds, of faraway lands and strange cultures.

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Can We Build It?: 5 DIY Bookshelves

August 26th, 2014

More than anything, the advance of Pinterest has provided me with a deep understanding of just how shabby my life is. Never before was I aware of all the custom wooden blocks that hold wine bottles at decadent angles. How chalkboards fill people's lives with motivational slogans. How there's nothing that can't be improved with a painted-on ship's anchor. Every food is cooked on a wooden plank, and every drink is quaffed from an embellished Ball jar. Bamboo is the new hardwood, concrete the new granite.

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6 YA Novels That Deal With Mental Health

August 25th, 2014

Young Adult novels have never shied away from tough subjects, and when it comes to mental health, there’s a wealth of novels that treat the topic with the gravitas and sincerity necessary to open a larger dialogue. From a quirky look at obsessive compulsive disorder, to the very raw and traumatic experience of post traumatic stress disorder, these six novels explore the rocky terrain of mental health.

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Let's Talk Literature: 6 Books That Are Great Conversation Starters

August 25th, 2014

I was seventeen and reading The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson at a café near my New Jersey home, expecting a quiet afternoon to myself. Instead, I was interrupted mid-chapter. A fellow leaned over and asked me how I liked the book so far. We began talking about it, and pretty soon we were talking about other books we liked, films we liked, and soon, just about our lives in general. I didn’t finish the book that day as I had planned, but I did engage in a really surprising, delightful conversation.

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On Tom Cruise and Time Travel Stories

August 22nd, 2014

Thing is, this is all Tom Cruise’s fault. His last two movies were science fiction and so I kinda had to see them. To be fair, I saw Edge of Tomorrow first. Based on the Japanese light novel, All You Need is Kill, the movie took the central conceit of Groundhog Day (the endless time loop) and grafted it onto the backdrop of Starship Troopers. It was good — funny, smart, entertaining. 

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What Ever Happened To The Oscar-Nominated Horror Film?

August 22nd, 2014

Let me get this column started by stating I don't actually put much stock into the Academy Awards as a true barometer of cinematic quality, at least in terms of the big winners every year. More often than not, the "losers" of the evening are far better than the winners. But it is an honor to be acknowledged for your efforts, no matter who's doing the acknowledging, and the Oscars continue to be a big deal.

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The Strange Death of Eugene Izzi

August 21st, 2014

On December 7th, 1996, crime author Eugene Izzi was discovered hanging fourteen stories above Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. One end of the rope was tied around his neck, and the other end was connected to his desk in his office. It appeared to be a suicide upon first glance, but investigators started to suspect foul play once they realized Izzi was wearing a bulletproof vest.

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So You Want to Write A Book: Part 0 — Ready, Set, Don't Go Yet

August 21st, 2014

So, you want to write a book, eh? Did I hear that right? I bet I did. After all, you did click the link to this article.

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5 More Quick, Easy Ways to Promote Yourself in Your Underwear

August 20th, 2014

In June, we talked about some Tips, Tricks and Tweaks you can use to promote yourself on the interweb.The title's been changed from promoting a book to promoting yourself, because all writers, and even that sub-species of writers—people—can use the methods listed below to help establish a solid web presence. This includes everything from announcing your latest blog posts and upcoming events to networking with other movers and shakers in the field.

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How Technology Affects the Way We Write

August 20th, 2014

Photo: Original manuscript for Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, typewritten manuscript for Ellison' s The Invisible Man and the foreward to A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition by Ernest Hemingway [Scribner] Technology has done a lot for us, from improving the way we live to lengthening our lives to making communication across the world instantaneous. Every moment of our day is affected by developments from the last few hundred years.

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