Columns

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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Other Words for Dark: 10 Horror, Crime, and Thriller Novels in Translation for 2021

July 21st, 2021

There’s a Czech proverb that says, “You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once.” At least, that’s what the internet tells me. I don’t speak Czech in order to verify this for myself, which rather proves the point. We may not all be fortunate enough to live multiple lives, as the proverb suggests, but translations give us access to ideas, places, and authors that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to enjoy.

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Book Cover Trends: Skulls!

July 20th, 2021

The cover of a book is so important. It's the introduction; the first impression. The reader engages with the cover before they read the synopsis or maybe even read the title or the author's name. That picture, that artwork, the font, the design...it tells its own story right there in a manner of seconds. "Never judge a book by its cover" might be great advice as it pertains to people, but when it comes to books, readers should one hundred percent judge that cover. If it looks like someone phoned it in, perhaps the contents were as well?

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Everything Is Permitted When It Comes To Submissions

July 15th, 2021

Original image by Rodnae Productions "Nothing is true, everything is permitted," Nietzsche (and then, more importantly, Meat Loaf) said, so at the risk of destroying all credibility right out of the gate, or even worse, running the risk of stating the obvious, the best advice for writers is still ignoring most writing advice. Boy, that was fast! Thanks for stopping by [credits roll].

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Christine Morgan: A Leading Voice in Extreme Horror

July 14th, 2021

Photo via author Twitter Everyone watched it happen. Friends, family, peers, readers, and fans tuned in to the Splatterpunk Awards ceremony live as part of Killercon’s 2020 virtual convention. Deserving authors, editors, and publishers were overwhelmed and gracious as they won awards honoring work in extreme horror.

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Storyville: Story Dissection — "In His House"

July 13th, 2021

Today we’re going to be dissecting one of my short stories, “In His House,” which was published in The Nightside Codex (Silent Motorist Media) in 2020. It was edited by Justin Burnett, and was my first time alongside Brian Evenson! It also included work by Stephen Graham Jones, Philip Fracassi, and Nadia Bulkin. So, the first thing you need to do is read the story, which is about 2,000 words. I hope you enjoy it! IN HIS HOUSE Hello my friend,

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The First Date Book Walkout Question

July 12th, 2021

"You're on a first date with someone, and they tell you the name of their favorite book. You immediately leave. What's the book?" - @ogbrenna. It’s the question that kicked off a storm of tweets. The question was solid, but the answers were liquid. Or stupid. Is stupid the opposite of solid? Is liquid the opposite of smart? You know what? The answers were shitty. The answers I saw were stupid, liquid shit.

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A Leigh Bardugo Fangirl on Her Belated Obsession with Netflix's "Shadow and Bone"

July 9th, 2021

I didn’t wait to watch Shadow and Bone, the epic Netflix adaptation of an epic YA world created by Leigh Bardugo, because I wasn’t interested. In fact, I’ve been a huge fan of Leigh’s worlds since I stumbled across Six of Crows back in 2016 and utterly devoured that duology in a few breathless days, consuming the books in my room, in my living room, on the train to work, thinking about them constantly.

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