Columns

3 Times I Pirated Books And How I Feel About It

July 3rd, 2019

Let's you and me have a real discussion about book piracy. Let me just turn my chair around backwards, turn my hat backwards, and depending how many Kriss Kross albums I’ve been listening to, turn my pants backwards. Book piracy is real, and it’s a problem. Hardcore piracy enthusiasts are already loading their chambers with arguments about the benefits of piracy, but hold up a second. Because I’m not here to talk about how awful you are. I'm here to talk about how awful I am, which we can all get behind.

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So You Want to Write Women

July 2nd, 2019

Vaginas, breasts, and uteri; Oh my! Women are everywhere. It’s almost as if they make up half of the population or more. You know what else? Women are writing books and scrutinizing the way they are portrayed in movies, on television, and in music. We can blame the education system for this. Or maybe, just maybe there’s something to this perspective. Everyone loves a good heroine, or better, an evil woman who isn’t afraid to get her bitch on ─ but what is it about females that makes them so hard to get right?

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10 Tips to Slaughter Insecurity

July 1st, 2019

From a simple "I can't do it" to writer's block to elaborate excuses why you can't tackle the project at hand to stuff like imposter's syndrome— writers are some of the most insecure people out there. I'm one of them, so please don't think for a second I'm judging you or saying insecurity makes you weak. No, I'm here to try to help. I hate insecurity, so I've developed ways of coping with my own. I'll share them here in hopes they help you slaughter those nasty little self-doubting demons.

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Storyville: Living Vicariously Through Our Fiction

June 27th, 2019

As authors, we are required to make up stories and entertain our audience. Why do people read? Why do we write? I think people read for a wide range of reasons, but one of them is to escape—to get away from their boring lives, their difficult lives, lives that are filled with hard work, suffering, and repetition. As authors, we seek out a lot of the same things. So let’s talk about that.

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Is It Really Such A Bad Thing To Give The Audience What They Want?

June 26th, 2019

Lots of spoilers for numerous properties ahead... I know many of you are sick of hearing about it at this point, so I promise not to talk about Game of Thrones for very long, but remember when the fandom was more or less in a good place after the Battle of Winterfell in the season 8 episode "The Long Night"? Most everyone celebrated Arya's swooping in from the dark and slaying the Night King, effectively doing what Jon Snow only dreamt of doing for several seasons, as if it was nothing more than swatting a fly.

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The 3 Worst Duties I Performed As A Librarian

June 25th, 2019

This week is my last week as a librarian. After fifteen years working in the same building, I’m moving onto pastures. The usual phrase is “greener” pastures, but I’m not sure yet. Different pastures, for sure. But there’s some parts of my job that I’ll miss. For all the good that comes with change, I liked writing “librarian” in the Occupation field of my tax return every year. When someone cut my hair and asked, “So, what do you do?” I liked my answer.

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5 Horrifying Books Outside The Horror Genre

June 24th, 2019

Someone once told me, a monster is a god without followers, and I think about that often, because it means what we find horrifying is about perspective. A lot of popcorn thrillers would be horror movies if we showed people going into shock and bleeding out after being shot, people's bones breaking or flying out the windshield when they got hit in a car chase, or how people's lives were destroyed after the heroes blew up buildings. Zoom into a beautiful body, and you'll find grotesque processes going on inside the invisible dark underneath the skin.

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Fuck Your Panel on Diversity, What We Need are Diverse Panels

June 21st, 2019

Photo by Magda Ehlers Listen, we needed panels about diversity. We needed them because literature was stuck in the past and, to be honest, it was racist. We needed them because people of color, LGBTQIA folks, and women weren't being invited to speak at conferences. We needed them because diverse voices and experiences were required to expand literature's horizon and help readers feel represented. The list of reasons goes on and on.

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A Series of Small Circles: How "Endgame" Engineered an Effective Ending

June 20th, 2019

Endings are hard. Ask any author what the most difficult part of their job is, and I guarantee “writing endings” is the answer. It demands a perfect balancing act. Your ending must reflect the hero’s entire journey in microcosm and revisit the major themes without getting repetitive. It also has to be surprising yet plausible, so the audience doesn’t see it coming, but still accepts it as a reasonable conclusion. Never mind the cover—most readers will judge your book by its ending.

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Every Single Redwall Book—Ranked

June 19th, 2019

Pick up Redwall in any bookstore, and you might be bemused by the scene on its cover. After all, it’s a funny-looking mouse standing in front of a castle, waving a tiny sword in the air. But this is one book you shouldn’t judge by its cover — it’s the first installment in one of the greatest children’s series of all time.

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