Columns
Showing 3539 Columns
UPDATED WITH WINNER - LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: March Edition
March 29th, 2013
Flash fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity. Welcome to LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown, a monthly bout of writing prowess. For this edition, we are going to alter the rules a bit to keep it fresh. You now get 25 words and 2 sentences. How It Works We give you inspiration in the form of a picture, poem, video, or similar. You write a flash fiction piece, using the inspiration we gave you. Put your entry in the comments section. One winner will be picked and awarded a prize.
Read Column →Shotgun Do Your Stuff: A Joe R. Lansdale Primer
March 29th, 2013
I’m from East Texas, a quaint land of pine trees and picket fences and more churches per capita than any other region in the world (don’t check my math on that). Have you seen Bernie? Bernie got it right. Like this guy:
Read Column →'Good Sex, Great Prayers': A Journey in Publication (Part 4: Spinning Plates)
March 28th, 2013
PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS
Read Column →Why The F*ck Aren't You Reading Bonnie Jo Campbell?
March 27th, 2013
Why The F*ck Aren't You Reading? is a new feature where the columnist spotlights a writer who has a dedicated following and is well known within the writing community, but hasn't achieved the elephant-in-the-room style success of a Stephen King or Gillian Flynn—But they deserve to, dammit! Hopefully the column will help gain the author featured a few more well deserved readers.
Read Column →Nothing New Under The Sun: The Origins of 5 Common Literary Allusions
March 27th, 2013
Allusions Do you ever get the feeling that you’ve read something before? Well, you have—maybe even hundreds or thousands of times. Writers are, at best, great mimics, and, at worst, sneaky thieves. They love to steal the words of the writers who have come before them. Did I say steal? I meant allude to the words of their fore-authors. According to An Introduction to Poetry, 9th Edition, an allusion is
Read Column →Three Books About...The Road
March 26th, 2013
Books can be about anything – elephants, antimacassars, milk cartons – but generally they are not. Books tend to cluster around certain subjects, old favorites cropping up time and time again, like regulars at a bar. But unlike barflies, who all seem to have learned the same hard luck story by rote, writers (good writers) can take the same base material and make it into something entirely original. Contrast three writers on the same subject and what you end up with is not just interesting—what you end up with is inspiration.
Read Column →Quirky Works in Indie Publishing
March 26th, 2013
Last Saturday I had the privilege of spending the afternoon with some of my favorite authors, all of them indie published. Will Hertling is the author of Avogadro Corporation, a fabulous story about an AI that starts out as an email search algorithm, similar to those currently used by Google. Ernie Lindsey is the author of several great works of fiction, including the best selling Sara's Game, and my personal favorite Going Shogun, which is a future dystopian comedy a la Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Read Column →The 10 Books That Taught Me Everything I Know About Sex
March 22nd, 2013
This column contains language of a frank and sexual nature. You have been warned.
Read Column →Book vs. Film: A Clockwork Orange
March 22nd, 2013
Anthony Burgess’ dismissal of the Stanley Kubrick adaptation of his novel A Clockwork Orange is one for the ages. It wasn’t the last time one of Kubrick’s notoriously devastating films pissed off the author of the source material – Stephen King once said that The Shining is the only one of his book adaptations he can remember hating – but Burgess’ ire is certainly the most memorable, renouncing his own book after having seen the movie it spawned:
Read Column →
