Columns

"Star Trek: Picard" is Having Too Much Fun

March 31st, 2020

Jean-Luc Picard has always been my captain. He was my TV dad, teaching me more about the difference between right and wrong than eighteen years of church. When faced with a moral quandary, I ask myself “What would JL do?” I have watched just about every minute of Star Trek that exists, and loved them all in their own special ways, but it was Picard that turned me from a casual rerun viewer into the hardcore fan I am today. So Star Trek: Picard promised to be the show I’d been asking Santa Clause for every Christmas the last twenty-six years.

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5 Comfort Reads to Remind You of the World’s Resilience

March 30th, 2020

Photo by Lisa Fotios One of my favorite types of library service to offer is bibliotherapy. Yes, that’s a real thing. And it’s exactly what it sounds like—a reading list to help you process trauma, grief, and other difficult emotions when your world has turned upside down. And since our whole world is upside down right now, it seems imperative to me that the prescription would be for the big picture books, characters against the circumstances of the world, good people fighting the good fight. 

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Big-Time Author Bucket List

March 27th, 2020

Millionaire authors and billionaire authors and famous authors: It’s too late for you. Everyone else: Hear me out. Now is the time to make a list of things you want to do on the off chance you become rich and famous. It’s clear that once you become rich and famous, you lose perspective. You won’t have great ideas. You just spend your time trying to maintain your riches and fame. Or making mosquito nets. Like netting has ever helped tens of thousands of people...

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Would You Please Read This? How to Get Book Blurbs

March 26th, 2020

You wrote the book and then edited the book. Then you found someone interested in publishing it and edited the whole thing again. Now you have to write copy for the back and, if you don't have a publisher that takes care of it, get some blurbs.

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12 Indie Publishers Producing Fresh, Hot, Horror Fiction

March 25th, 2020

1. Death's Head Press Friends, Jarod Barbee and Patri

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Overcoming Self-Hype Block

March 24th, 2020

It feels kind of dumb writing about this when there is a pandemic going on, but I pitched this last month, and in dire times we turn to art. So fuck it, let’s talk about self-hype block. First, I want to say that hyping/branding and selling yourself has nothing to do with creating art. Existentially, if I could just write books and music for myself, I’d still do it. It would be less fun and probably less enjoyable, but the act itself is always worth doing.

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Is The Novel Dead?

March 23rd, 2020

Lately I’ve been keeping these columns short. Buuuut I figured you all might be in the mood to think about something other than death. Human death, anyway. And I figured you might have some time to kill, whether that’s because you’re sitting at home and getting paid or sitting at home because you’re laid off. Let’s think about something else for a bit.

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Why I'm Writing Poetry Again: A Celebration of National Poetry Day

March 20th, 2020

Photo by Karis Rogerson I’ve been a poet almost as long as I’ve been a person who breathes. Not an acclaimed poet; not even a published poet; but a poet nonetheless, someone who finds solace and freedom in playing with words, in language too pretty for prose, in different structures and stanzas and formats.

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How To Help Out Writers During A Pandemic (and How Writers Can Help Themselves)

March 19th, 2020

One may assume that us writers have it the easiest during a nationwide pandemic that calls for social distancing and working from home. To a degree, we are lucky, given that our careers require nothing more that click-clacking away on computers or typewriters all day, and so many of us are introverts anyway, that don't socialize even when there isn't a virulent upper-respiratory infection sweeping across the world.

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The Strange Case of Hazel Drew

March 18th, 2020

Hazel Drew’s lifeless body was found floating in Teal’s Pond in Sand Lake, NY, on July 11th, 1908. She was young, attractive, and her violent demise baffled many. Over a century later her murder is still unsolved. All that remains is her gravestone at the Brookside Cemetery in Barberville, NY, not far from the scene of the crime. The autopsy revealed the cause of death to be repeated blunt trauma to the back of the head.

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