Columns

Reality in Fiction: The Invisible Signature of Your Favorite Authors

September 10th, 2019

Andalusia Farm image by Stephen Matthew Milligan At the end of Flannery O’Connor’s story, “Good Country People,” a young woman with a wooden leg and a fatal heart condition gets seduced by a traveling Bible salesman. Cynical, well-read, and wise beyond her years, she lets her guard down to this simple, salt of the earth, "good country boy"—who is hiding whiskey and cards in one of his Bibles and using a fake name.

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Ten Problems Only Booksharks Have

September 9th, 2019

Shark image by GEORGE DESIPRIS Let's get the obvious question out of the way. Booksharks is a term I created after getting tired of seeing readers referred to as bookworms. We read ferociously. We never stop. We hunt exciting narratives. We discuss books aggressively. We move through bookstores with purpose and killer instinct. We are predators, and "bookworm" just doesn't cut it anymore. We're fucking booksharks. 

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Sell Books, Get Noticed: Google Analytics for Authors

September 6th, 2019

This is some seriously unsexy stuff. Buckle up. We all know that Google, Facebook, what have you, all of them are doing some weird, creepy data tracking. And it’s probably no coincidence that the outlets doing the most data tracking are also tremendously successful. Data is power. Data is currency. They own your ass, is what I’m saying. This leaves you, the average Joe, with two options: Rage against the machine -or- Use the machine

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7 Podcast Adaptations You Should Know About

September 5th, 2019

You probably already know that not all television shows and feature films are entirely original. Indeed, many are adapted from existing material — most commonly, well, books. (Game of Thrones, anyone?) But now that we're in 2019, technology’s given rise to another source of inspiration: podcasts.

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In Honor Of Back To School, Let’s Talk About Romeo And Juliet’s Idiocy

September 3rd, 2019

Junior highs and high schools across America go back into session in August, and that means millions of teens will get their first taste of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the story of "star-crossed lovers" from two warring families who would rather die than be apart. If students these days are anything like kids back in my day, some members of this new class will likely think it’s really romantic that Romeo and Juliet commit suicide, and some of their teachers might very well echo this sentiment.

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#FollowFriday and #WritersLift: Don’t Just Follow, Engage!

August 30th, 2019

If you follow members of the writing community, odds are you’ve noticed #FollowFriday or #ff trending at the end of every workweek. The tradition started with a tweet from entrepreneur Micah Baldwin back in 2009 and, even though Twitter has grown exponentially and its landscape has changed dramatically over the last ten years, it’s still going strong.

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Donald Maas and The Emotional Craft of Fiction Writing

August 29th, 2019

In The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface, Donald Mass reminds us that our writing puts readers on an emotional journey. We all know about showing versus telling, but sometimes there are important things a writer needs to tell their readers. As writers, we have to move the story along, and sometimes this includes cueing the reader in to what the characters are feeling, and developing an environment that will allow the reader to share those feelings, without explicitly stating what those feelings are. 

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Snitches, Gangsters, and Private Dicks: Why We Love and Hate Them

August 29th, 2019

Photo by Vijay Putra When I ask my friends why we like to watch and read about private investigators, the answer is pretty consistent: because they’re fucking awesome. They are, right? They work outside the law—or, rather, adjacent to the law—but they think like criminals. Many of them WERE criminals, maintaining a connection to the underworld via confidential informants.

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Comics vs. Television: "The Boys"

August 28th, 2019

I have written quite a few of these articles over the years, and it's still uncommon for me to encounter a perfect adaptation—that rare show or movie that not only seamlessly translates a story from page to screen, but also improves upon its source material on every level. Amazon’s The Boys is one such triumph. The show is more than just another dark and violent take on superheroes—it is also a withering satire of the genre’s tropes and philosophy. The tone often vacillates between absurdly serious and seriously absurd.

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Tales From the Crust: Pizza My Skull

August 27th, 2019

Photos courtesy of David James Keaton Is it just me or is turbulence getting worse? It was inevitable that Little Debbie Oatmeal Crème Pies shrunk from hubcap to half-dollar size and taste more like sugary ashtrays every day, and any boomboxes still around sound like cell phone speakers in mayonnaise jars.

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