Columns

Library Lightning Round

September 14th, 2021

Because I worked in libraries for a long (long, long...dear god, so long) time, I figure I'm the right person to answer some common questions about libraries. The idea here is to answer the questions pretty quickly, so please excuse me for being a jerk. It’s jerkiness of brevity, not true assholery. For true assholery, please see, well, anything else I’ve ever written.

Read Column →

A Brief Stroll Down the Corridors of Dark Academia and Its Romantic Roots

September 13th, 2021

I’m not exactly sure why or how it happened, and this may be an excruciatingly niche observation, but my YouTube recommendations have undergone a slow transformation over the past few months.

Read Column →

DYI Horror: 10 Haunted Fixer-Uppers

September 10th, 2021

So many fans of horror love a good haunted house story. You can Google "Best Haunted House Books" and find a bajillion lists with countless recommendations. This list is for books with a trope within the haunted house trope.  The fixer-upper.

Read Column →

10 Years of LitReactor News: A Followup

September 9th, 2021

2011. Wall Street was being occupied. Sharper Image was getting into the eReader game with the worst tablet ever made. Fifty Shades of Grey was shocking soccer moms with its dirty, dirty, dirtiness and shocking the rest of us with its inexplicable success. And of course, a plucky little lit website called LitReactor was there to talk about it all.

Read Column →

Film vs. Film: "Suicide Squad" vs. "The Suicide Squad"

September 7th, 2021

I’ve been writing these "versus" articles for quite a while now, but I am rarely afforded a chance to make this direct a comparison. Two movies with the same premise, same goal, and even the same name, but with two very different results. The first was mostly forgettable when it wasn’t terrible, but its successor seems to have learned from those mistakes. The second film improves upon its predecessor so completely that it feels like a second or third draft of what we saw five years ago.

Read Column →

The Raw Emotion of Aaron Dries

September 2nd, 2021

Author photo via official website Aaron Dries is a talented artist and writer. He is also one of the most affable people you could ever meet in horror, the writing industry, or the world. On two trips to the States from his home in Australia, I got the opportunity to meet him and hang out at various conventions.

Read Column →

Taking Yourself Seriously Is Killing Your Writing

August 26th, 2021

Here’s the best advice I’ve ever received from someone who starred in Robocop 3: Take what you do seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously. These are the wise words of Jeff Garlin, who you might know from Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Goldbergs or from his role as “Donut Jerk” in Robocop 3 (Garlin's description of the movie's place in the trilogy: “Y’know, the good one.”). Why am I bringing this up here?

Read Column →

Dispatch from the Querying Trenches

August 24th, 2021

Image by Arun Thomas The past five months have been, in one specific area of my life, absolutely interminable. See, in mid-March 2021 I sent out the first of a new batch of queries for the novel I had been working on since 2017. Four years of drafting, revising, re-drafting, revising again and again and I finally thought the book was ready. In a way, I still think the book was ready. In another, five months of querying have sent my confidence spiraling to the depths.

Read Column →

Storyville: How to Ask For, and Give, Book Blurbs

August 20th, 2021

Do you have a book, short story collection, or anthology coming out sometime soon? Would you like to get a ton of excellent blurbs for your project? Not sure how to go about it? I have some thoughts. Also, have you had some success, and now people are asking you for blurbs? How do you give one? What’s to be expected? I have thoughts about that as well.

Read Column →

The Loss of Joe McKinney

August 19th, 2021

Photo via author's website For readers, fans, fellow writers, publishers, and the entire horror community, the death of author and San Antonio police officer Joe McKinney was shocking and heartbreaking. He was barely into his fifties, and aside from a couple comments online by fellow officers who said he died of liver failure, there was no cause of death officially released anywhere I could find. I was heartbroken at the loss for a variety of personal reasons.

Read Column →