Columns

Literature Is Not Innocent: On Georges Bataille's "Literature and Evil"

August 13th, 2021

Image via Wikipedia Commons I first discovered Georges Bataille – the French philosopher who would help define transgressive literature – through Story of the Eye, his groundbreaking 1928 novel that explored teenage eroticism, mental illness, and eggs, among other things. Reading Bataille, enriching as it is, often makes one’s head hurt, as if he’s dealt a blow to your brain that causes it to swell.

Read Column →

Why the Term "Literary Fiction" Doesn't Work Anymore

August 12th, 2021

Literary fiction is one of the most misleading terms in the writing world, and I think we need to retire it. Some people use “literary” as a reference to quality. Others use it as a description of the content of a work of fiction without judging how good that work is. In the end this means that a group of people who are purportedly very concerned with words—writers and readers—are using them badly. This causes confusion, pretension, and even an odd separation of groups of young writers. It’s about time we knock it off. 

Read Column →

Write an Author Newsletter That Sells

August 11th, 2021

For a lot of writers, marketing a book can be an intimidating process. The industry is constantly changing, and keeping up with promotional trends is daunting to say the least. Luckily for you, some techniques are time tested and proven to work. Author newsletters have been one of the most effective marketing tools available to writers for a long time. Most of us think of newsletters as spam, but I'm here to tell you, that isn't true. When utilized correctly, an author newsletter can be a beacon of hope for those struggling for exposure in a saturated market.

Read Column →

On the Stressful Joy of Rereading Favorite Books

August 10th, 2021

Three and a half years ago, I was in the zone with rereading books. I reread the whole To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series by Jenny Han (in honor of the release of the first movie); I reread parts of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series; I was rediscovering books I’d loved years before and finding that I still loved them. Then came a new job, an overnight schedule, a deepening depression, and a years-long reading slump. It was all I could do to read new books I was anticipating, much less check in with past favorites.

Read Column →

Surviving a Decade as a Full-time Author No One Has Heard Of

August 9th, 2021

Original image via Baihaki Hine To be accurate, I’ve been a full-time author for a little over eight-and-a-half years, and a few people know who I am. If I don’t make it another year-and-a-half or if I become world famous, I’ll issue a retraction.

Read Column →

Five Things You Always Wanted to Know About "The Bridge" But Were Afraid to Ask

August 6th, 2021

Photo courtesy of the author 1 - You adapted this novel from a short story. What were you thinking? A good idea is hard to find, right? So when you come up with something that has legs, you need to corral that sucker and milk it for all it’s worth. I had written a story about a cult run by an evil mastermind called The Father, who engineers females that are part AI, part human.

Read Column →

The World’s Biggest Books: Everything Is a Measuring Contest

August 5th, 2021

Header image of a facsimile of the Codex Gigas by Michal Maňas. Inserted image of the Klencke Atlas is public domain. While writing about tiny books a few months ago, I discovered that people can be pretty possessive about superlatives, even when it’s a race to create something so small that it can’t be seen by the naked eye.

Read Column →

Goodreads: A History of Where It All Went Wrong

August 3rd, 2021

The right person will tell you Goodreads is like a digital coffee shop where people can chat over books. A different, also right person will tell you Goodreads is the world’s biggest hellhole, pretending to be a literate, high-society book salon when it’s really just an excellent place to absorb abuse for having an opinion on a book (or, god forbid, for writing one). What happened? Who’s right? Where did it all go wrong?

Read Column →

On Missing Women: Abandon All Hope

August 2nd, 2021

The first time I realized that "missing women" was both a phenomenon and a genre, I was in a creative writing workshop at Bowling Green State University run by June Spence, and I’d recently tracked down her collection Missing Women and Others.

Read Column →

10 Best Books to Get Your Travel Back On

July 30th, 2021

Whether you’re already planning hardcore post-pandemic journeys or you’re just keen to see the outdoors again, nothing beats the joy of vicariously exploring a new place — especially after a year in lockdown! A good travel book is the perfect remedy to take our isolated imaginations hundreds of miles away and inspire us to go further in our own ventures, both big and small.

Read Column →