Columns

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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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Big Bugs and Dead Astronauts: The Joys of a Non-Human Narrator

July 29th, 2021

A couple years ago, I had the idea to write a novel from the perspective of a sentient, sarcastic parasite living in the gut of a corrupt public health inspector. I figured a non-human narrator would have some interesting things to say about humanity. The final product, Absolute Unit, is a combination of body horror and crime fiction; the parasite gets tired of living on scraps and decides to use its budding telekinetic powers to conquer the world.

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How to Write Authentic Fiction

July 28th, 2021

Image via Brett Jordan Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. — Philip K. Dick If you want to write something good, it needs to be real.

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Freelance Copywriting Nearly Killed My Voice as A Writer

July 27th, 2021

Original photo via Andrea Piacquadio I spent the years after graduation in awful office jobs with none of my novels finished and a pile of unpublished short stories. I would troll through Duotrope on my lunch break and try to find journals and lit magazines to submit to after each fresh rejection.

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Storyville: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scene Breaks

July 26th, 2021

Over the years I’ve noticed that my students sometimes break their stories in strange places, so I thought I’d write up my thoughts on when, where, how, and why to insert scene breaks into your stories.

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Things Casual Readers Don't Care About

July 23rd, 2021

Original Header image by Toa Heftiba, via Unsplash Let’s talk casual and abnormal readers. Casual readers get in a couple books every year. Maybe more if they’re in a book club. They unwrap a book on Christmas, but they don’t get a book from EVERYONE they know. They might stop at a landmark bookstore on a trip, but they aren’t packing an almost-empty suitcase for their book haul.

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Five Agents Tell You What You’re Doing Wrong... And How To Do It Right

July 22nd, 2021

Header images via cottonbro & William Mattey I've written about agents before. I've also heard every thought and opinion on agents out there. That said, the extremely complicated agent discussion can be boiled down to this: landing The Agent can change your life forever.

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