Columns

10 Big-Time Literary Druggies

April 5th, 2013

In the early 1970s, an anti-drug propaganda piece hit the airwaves: a grim-faced fellow displayed a hideous painting purportedly created by someone on acid. It was a violent work, one that appeared to have been painted with barbed wire instead of a brush, and if memory serves, the color palette was limited to black, grey, and a particularly nauseating blood red.

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Six Types Of Poems To Banish Writers Block

April 4th, 2013

April is National Soft Pretzel Month in the U.S. It’s also National Jazz Appreciation Month, National Welding Month, and National Poetry Month. And while we have absolutely nothing against soft pretzels, jazz, or welding, we figured a column pertaining to National Poetry Month would be most relevant to your interests. If we’re wrong, perhaps you could eat a soft pretzel while you read this.

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On Writer's Constipation, The Sophomore Slump and Zombies

April 3rd, 2013

Before I started work on Plague Nation, the second book in my Ashley Parker series, I'd heard fellow writers discuss the Sophomore Slump with varying degrees of emotion from grumbling to near-psychotic ranting, complete with the kind of laughter that generally follows statements like "And they all said I was mad.  MAD, I say!"   At the time, I'd had three or four books published in various genres.

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Cut!: 4 Strategies for Trimming Your Content

April 3rd, 2013

A deluge of unnecessary content or verbiage can destroy your work. When it's time to revise your over-written piece, how can you make cuts that avoid castrating it? Take it from a chronic over-writer: Making cuts isn't an easy process. However, there are some helpful techniques. Here are four strategies I use when revising my own work. 1) Be goal-oriented

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Storyville: Dissecting "Fireflies"

April 2nd, 2013

This week I’ll be dissecting another of my stories, “Fireflies.” It was originally published in Polluto and later online at Circa Review. It’s been a while since I did this, and I’m excited to dig into this story for a number of reasons. First, this was one of my first attempts to write magical realism. It was also one of my first attempts in recent memory to write a short story that had a positive core, a center that was built around love, romance, and nostalgia.

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Defying Decomposition: The Enduring Zombie

April 2nd, 2013

Easter just came (and went) and call me blasphemous, but the holiday always makes me think of zombies. I mean, sure, Jesus came back all intact and full of wisdom, but not everyone does. In the majority of cases, when someone comes back from the dead, they come back rotting and mindless and with a hunger for brains.

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Ask The Agent: A Review of When to Query Agents

April 1st, 2013

Navigating the rough terrain of today’s publishing industry shouldn’t be a solo event. This week in Ask the Agent, I’ll explore and dissect one of the biggest of the industry’s mysteries, straight from the shoulder. This week I was asked several times, "When should I query agents with my manuscript?" "Does my manuscript have to be complete when I query or are a few sample chapters fine?"

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Recap: Game of Thrones 3.01 - Valar Dohaeris

April 1st, 2013

This is going to contain spoilers for this episode, and also for the books. I won't tell you what happens in the fifth book, or what I think is going to happen in the next episode, but I will talk about differences between the book and the show thus far. Deal with it. 

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Game of Shows: George R. R. Martin's Future Television Prospects

March 29th, 2013

Winter is just about leaving and that means it’s time for a new season of the hit HBO series, Game of Thrones. In fact, the show is such a hit that HBO has signed creator George R. R. Martin to a two year deal to help develop more series for them. As a Martin fan I’m all for that, but so far there’s not a lot of information on what George is planning to do as a result. Which is where this column comes in. Speculation. On what form the series may take, looking at work by Martin (and others) that’s already out there.

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Comic Books and the Reverse Adaptation

March 29th, 2013

Comics have long been a breeding ground for material to adapt into film and television projects, a practice which has only increased in recent years. For example: Steve Niles famously turned his screenplay 30 Days of Night into a comic after the script was summarily rejected. Once it became popular as a comic book (with art by Ben Templesmith), Hollywood came knocking and it became a major motion picture in 2007.

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