Columns

Celebrate Horror 2021 with Mother Horror

May 26th, 2021

Last year around March 15th is when our family made a personal choice to stay home due to the rising cases of COVID-19. March 23rd is when Gov. Jay Inslee issued Washington state's first stay home order. It was in place for two months. Stay home unless absolutely necessary. Only essential businesses will stay open.

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ADD Creators: Revisited

May 25th, 2021

The struggles of ADD are often on my mind, at least while I'm not distracted by something shiny. The way my brain is configured has defined both the best and worst parts of my life, and its mixed relationship to creativity has been a challenge to navigate.

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Storyville: Writing for the Ideal Reader

May 24th, 2021

So today we’re going to talk about writing to your ideal reader. I’m sure you’ve head of this concept before. Let’s dig in to some ideas on what that means, and how I think you can approach this concept. I think it can help you out quite a bit, but maybe not in the ways you might expect.

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Viable Alternative Platforms with Potential for Author Income

May 21st, 2021

The model for authors is simple and straightforward. You self-publish your book on Amazon and wait for millions of dollars to roll in. Or you land a publisher, they publish your book, maybe they get it in stores, they definitely put it up on Amazon, and you wait for millions of dollars to roll in. You can also get an agent who negotiates with a publisher, does all the stuff above, puts it on Amazon, and waits with you for millions to roll in.

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The Obsolescence of The Hero's Journey

May 20th, 2021

Hero's Journey via Wikipedia Commons, public domain Last January, my late-onset agoraphobia took a plunge — I joined a weekly Friday night online group for outsider and transgressive authors to share and critique one another’s raw work. Having little idea what to expect, I was initially on edge; only to be warmly welcomed by some of the most sincere and humble/humbled people I’d met in some time.

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The Poetry of Wicked Mercy

May 18th, 2021

The fourth poem in my debut full-length poetry collection, Salamat sa Intersectionality, describes a specific scene in Nevada, my half-home state (the other half being California). Nevada’s vast expanses of wilderness, its stretches of mountains, and its shifting tones of dirt aren’t foreign subjects to me, as I’ve reflected on these idyllic aspects of the state in many other pieces. However, in this poem, simply titled “Nevada,” I explore a different sense of love entangled with what I believe is an act of mercy.

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Telling the Story of a Pandemic and the Future of Now

May 17th, 2021

Header image by Jernej Furman A little over a year ago, Stephen King sat down with NPR to reflect on writing horror during a time when reality was as frightening as one of his novels. He made note of how difficult it was to set fiction in the year 2020, a time when many normal activities abruptly became impossible.

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10 Books For the Flight to Mars

May 14th, 2021

Image free for use from Pixabay Between the exploits of SpaceX making regular news, the successful landing of NASA’s Perseverance rover a few months ago, and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter becoming the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet, it&#

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Video Games as Literature: A Defense of the Medium

May 13th, 2021

The whole "video games can be art" argument has been done to death. Despite this, the medium is still looked down on and its capabilities are often disregarded. Whether you're a literature enthusiast or a writer yourself, viewing games as a form of literature can crack open a new world of stories. This is not merely because games can present book-like stories between gameplay segments: The medium can do a great deal that other mediums simply can't.

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'The Falcon and The Winter Soldier' Fumbles at the Finish Line

May 12th, 2021

Let me make this clear from the top: The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is not a bad show. That’s not what I’m saying. It is five and a half really great episodes of polished MCU action with an underwhelming finale. While that isn’t enough to sour the whole experience, it is a curiously middling end to an otherwise well-crafted adventure.

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