Columns

Timeless Advice: Truths Too Good for TikToks and Tweets

July 21st, 2023

Imagine Ray Bradbury drunk flame trolling on Twitter. J.R.R. Tolkien stitching a TikTok video to dunk on a reviewer that one-star reviewed The Silmarillion. Agatha Christie starting a private Discord Server just to make fun of industry professionals.  We have set the bar really low these days. 

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The Novels of Warhammer 40,000: Where to Begin?

July 20th, 2023

Maybe you’ve seen a rad space marine figurine on a friend’s desk, or stumbled across one of the many books featuring the massive armored warriors on the cover, and your curiosity has been sparked. What is Warhammer 40,000? What are these giants fighting about? You want to know more, and I’m here to tell you there is a lot more to know.

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B.S. Johnson Deserves Better Than Being Forgotten

July 19th, 2023

Photos by Peter Derk When this column started, it was mostly about the unusual formats B.S. Johnson used to tell stories: cut-outs mid-story, shuffled chapters, and other oddities. This was an idea I pitched before I knew Johnson died by suicide. Whenever you look into a writer who died by suicide, when you know how the writer’s story ended, you look at his work through his ghost, a barely-there image that hovers over each page.

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Storyville: Stop Pulling on Threads

July 14th, 2023

One of the most destructive things you can do when working on a short story (or novel, which is even worse) is to continuously pick at your work, pulling on threads that eventually cause your story to come undone. Don’t do that—obviously. So, what do I mean by this, what does that look like, and then how the hell are we supposed to edit our work, Richard? I have some thoughts. Maybe it’ll help.

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So You've Decided To Attend A Professional Conference: An On-The-Ground Report Of Stokercon 2023 (Part 2)

July 12th, 2023

Photos via the author Previously, I talked about three things for those new to the whole professional conference game. 1: Remember that everyone’s an introvert, 2: the aphorism cons really happen at bars is true, and 3: FOMO is bullshit.  Before I wrap this up, I did want to explain the difference between professional conferences and other cons. 

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Fears and Voices: "The Screaming Child"

July 10th, 2023

My new novel, The Screaming Child, published by Ghoulish Books, is a novel that mixes mystery with horror. It’s a story told from the point of view of a woman named Eleanor, a mother trying to go on with her life after her 12-year-old son has vanished. Perhaps he was murdered, perhaps kidnapped. The police are investigating. To keep herself busy, Eleanor leaves the city for a distant rural area to finish a book she is writing about an explorer.

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Shark Reads! 5 Books to Satisfy your Beach-Reads-Shark-Week-Summer-Loving Self

July 7th, 2023

Original header image by Brian Jiz It’s almost mid-July, the absolute peak of summer, and the traditional time to hit the beach with a book in your bag. Whether you’re digging out a paperback sticky with sunscreen or doing your best to keep sand off your e-reader, odds are you’re delving into a "beach read." Just as summer is the time for popcorn blockbusters, a certain type of book tends to lend itself to beating the heat.

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MyHouse.wad: Doom, House of Leaves, and the Pinnacle of Ergodic Lit

July 6th, 2023

header image and other screenshots used with permission from Power Pak There's a lot to cover here, kind of an endless staircase that leads down, always getting darker, always more frightening. And because there's so much, I can only waste three lines on an intro. Today, we're talking MyHouse.wad, a Doom mod that slams a fresh, new, Hell On Earth style of storytelling down on the table.

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So You've Decided To Attend A Professional Conference: An On-The-Ground Report Of Stokercon 2023 (Part 1)

July 5th, 2023

Photos via the author For me, Stokercon 2023 kicks off with a severe case of FOMO on Wednesday night, the day before the conference actually begins, and ends with me singing “Happy Birthday” with thirty-plus other people at Brian Keene’s Bram Stoker Awards afterparty on Saturday night to Cynthia Pelayo’s child.

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9 American Dystopian Books for Independence Day

July 4th, 2023

Original image by Dan Cristian Pădureț It feels like it’s easier than ever to imagine the end of the world. Disastrous futures that change the landscape of society. But what about the more subtle changes? The ones where governments change laws and corporations control policies? That’s what makes dystopian fiction different from the post-apocalyptic end-of-the-world stories.

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