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'Game of Thrones' and the Power of Resolution
April 11th, 2014
NOTE: This column is chock-full of spoilers, not just for Game of Thrones, but for one other television show as well. I'll try to warn you ahead of the really, really big spoilers, but bear in mind that if I do this for the small spoilers too, half of all words used will likely be "spoiler." So just consider this your pre-warning for the latter.
Read Column →Book Trailers...Definitely NOT The Wave Of The Future
April 11th, 2014
I just spent the weekend watching a slew of book trailers on Youtube, all in the hopes of answering the gripping question “Are Book Trailers Worthless?” After I gouge my eyes out (gimme a second) I can firmly tell you that with a few shining and awesome exceptions, book trailers are indeed mostly worthless. However, watching so many was a good tutorial on what works and why, and I’ll talk about that below, as well as what to avoid doing if you insist on making one of your own.
Read Column →How Stress Assassinates Creativity
April 10th, 2014
Is writer's block real? The answer depends on how you define "writer's block." So long as we don't assume it is some mythological disease out to damn poor writers, we can find reasonable definitions and solid answers on where writer's block comes from. The simple truth is that some situations make creativity more likely, while others make it almost impossible. The worst enemy of creativity is found in stress.
Read Column →10 Social Media Words That Need to DIE!
April 10th, 2014
Like all bad (and good) trends, there comes a point when people continue to use social media buzzwords long after the recommended expiration date. Here are a few that need to be cleaned out of the lexicographical fridge. 1. Bestie What does it mean? Bestie is short for “best friend” as in: My 14-year-old cousin spends hours on her iPhone texting her bestie, Fran. Why it should die:
Read Column →9 Great Poop Reads: Taking Literary Structures From Classroom To Bathroom
April 9th, 2014
My junior high English teacher measured reading assignments in something he called Poop Reads. I had an interesting education. Ask me about it sometime. Buy me a drink first and you'll hear some stuff. There's a story about a speech and debate teacher's pregnancy that's still hard to tell without slipping back into the voice of an embarrassed 8th grader.
Read Column →Storyville: Putting Your Life in Your Fiction
April 8th, 2014
There is really no way to avoid letting your real life experiences seep into your writing. I mean, think about it. The emotions, they are your own. The experiences, the ones that really ring true, probably come from actual moments. But I’ll assume here that most of us have not killed a man, or been to Mars, or chased fireflies off a cliff, or lived in a stone tower making tiny mechanical birds. So how do you insert your real life experience into your fiction? Here are some tips on how to do that.
Read Column →Library Love: America’s Athenaeums
April 7th, 2014
Several months ago, I was wandering around Portsmouth, New Hampshire when I walked by a brick building with its doors swung open to visitors. Deciding to look inside, I discovered one of the most beautiful libraries I’d ever seen. The books on the shelves were bound in old leather, and covered topics from botany to nautical lore. Portraits lined the walls, and the smell of parchment permeated the air. Not a bad find for what started out as a Starbucks run.
Read Column →Footnotes: The Weird, Horrific Birthplace of 'True Detective'
April 3rd, 2014
Marty Hart and Rust Cohle are the new poster boys for many things: obsession, nihilism, turning empty beer cans into little aluminum creeper men. If you look up, they're even poster boys for this column, surely the most significant accomplishment yet for these backwoods Louisiana cops. Among all other things, however, Marty Hart and Rust Cohle — as well as True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto and the dark, twisted fantasy he created for HBO — are the new poster boys for the weird and the horrific.
Read Column →Tom Spanbauer: A Primer, and A Review Of His Latest Novel, 'I Loved You More'
April 2nd, 2014
I've been planning to write this for months, and I've done everything I could to put it off. The reason for that is because I am afraid to write it. No matter what I write, I'll never get across the thing about Tom Spanbauer's writing that touches me so deeply. The sensation of reading his books is that, while you're reading them, it's like he's placed his hand on your chest, the warmth and pressure and intimacy of it reassuring you that you are alive, and you are not alone.
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