Columns

What Good Are Sex Scenes in Fiction?

February 3rd, 2021

I’m not here to talk about bad sex. Okay, maybe just a little. Fiction has some terrible sex in it. There’s even a Bad Sex Award, which was sadly not presented in 2020, but you still want a highlight from 2019, right? Highlight:

Read Column →

24 Hour Writing Challenge: Livestreaming a Full Day of Writing on Twitch

February 2nd, 2021

On January 15, 2021, I turned on the livestream for my Twitch channel as soon as I woke up and I started writing. That was my only goal that day, the only thing on my list of things to do. I was going to see how many short stories I could write before midnight that night, all live in front of whoever wanted to watch for as long as they wanted to watch.

Read Column →

5 Hauntingly Brilliant Women You Need to Read

February 1st, 2021

February is Women in Horror Month (WiHM), and while we should be celebrating women in the horror industry all year long, this is a time of extra visibility and encouragement, and as such, I want to share some of my favorite contemporary authors with you, as well as tell you a little story about my own journey working and reading in the horror industry.

Read Column →

Displeasing, Offensive, and Bad: Three Tiers of Crappy Books

January 28th, 2021

Amateurs finish a book, and if it sucks, they say it sucks, and they leave it there. Real readers go further. They figure out why it sucked. Partially because they’re curious. But mostly, and most importantly, because figuring out why you disliked a book helps you avoid reading another pile of shit just like it. Writers do the same thing. You can’t finish a book and say, “Well, that sucked,” and expect to learn anything. Let’s say you finish a lousy book. What’s the next step? Buckets.

Read Column →

10 Things I Learned Editing an Anthology in Three Weeks

January 27th, 2021

I'm always thinking about putting anthologies together. I love them. I want to edit an anthology of body horror stories about parasites. I want to edit an anthology of stories inspired by the photographic work of the great Weegee. I want to edit an anthology of stories inspired by the music of Tom Waits. I want to edit an anthology of stories celebrating the World Weekly News aesthetic. I want to edit an anthology of found footage stories (actually kinda working on making this one happen right now...). Anyway, you get the point.

Read Column →

Foreign Terror-tories: 8 Translated Tales to Terrify

January 26th, 2021

Last year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded the Best Picture Oscar Award to Parasite, the first non-English language film to win that award. Parasite is a Korean thriller/black comedy that teeters on the brink of gothic horror. Just an aside, it's also the last movie my husband and I watched in a movie theater since the COVID-19 global pandemic. I absolutely loved it. I thought the movie was smart, compelling, and suspenseful. The climax blew my mind! 

Read Column →

The Best of the DC Animated Universe

January 25th, 2021

The characters and stories of DC Comics have inspired a lot of animation over the years. Marvel may rule the box office with its big budget sci-fi action comedies, but DC makes the best cartoons. Once Bruce Timm and company produced the timeless classic Batman: The Animated Series, they were given the keys to the toy chest and allowed to run wild. In addition to other iconic series like Superman and Justice League Unlimited, they started pumping out tons of short animated features for home video viewing. Unsurprisingly, most of them feature Batman.

Read Column →

The Existential Horror of Making an Author Website

January 21st, 2021

There’s nothing more existential than a writer building a website for themselves. It’s even more challenging than writing a book in a way. Hell, it’s even harder than writing the back copy of a book, because you’re the literal back copy up there on the screen.

Read Column →

Writers on Writers

January 20th, 2021

Whenever a renowned writer turns their quill on the behind scenes of a fellow penpusher, the results are often a mixed bag depending on the motivations of the author. Revenge or jealousy may be the ignoble impetus, or a devotion so deep that the prose dips into an undigestible worship. Here are four examples of writers who wrote it right—A.E. Hotchner, Eileen Simpson, Salman Rushdie, and Martin Amis—and their balanced memoirs that slip us satisfyingly behind the curtain without antipathy or idolatry.

Read Column →

Politics, Cash Grabs, and Hair: The End of the Trump Parody Book

January 20th, 2021

If you haven’t sold off your Trump parody book by now, you’re screwed. It was a fun ride and all, but it’s over. I know, I know, impeachment, yadda, yadda. Trust me. Once the dude is de-White-House-ed, one of two things happens:

Read Column →