Columns

What Joy Williams and Denis Johnson Can Teach Us About the Art of First Sentences

June 7th, 2019

Author photos: Curtis Brown, Cindy Johnson Human beings are shaped by their environments as much as they shape their environments. So, too, do the first sentences of short stories shape the stories themselves, as much as they are shaped by their stories.

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5 Lessons Fiction Writers Can Learn From Video Games

June 6th, 2019

Images via Jeshoots and rawpixel I’ve been playing video games about as long as I’ve been a writer, and for several years I was in the game industry — as a tester, designer, and writer.

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How I Did an Unintentional Book Tour Without a Budget

June 5th, 2019

I never thought I'd do anything even remotely resembling a book tour. I'm a broke writer published by a no-budget indie press. Then, somehow, I found myself on the road, despite my lack of funds. And it isn't over—I have a few more stops scheduled before then end of the year. Here are some tips for those of you wanting to do the same.

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8 Superb Books to Celebrate Rainbow Book Month

June 4th, 2019

In 2015, the American Library Association started GLBT Book Month: a nationwide celebration of authors and books that explore the experiences of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community. As of 2020, GLBT Book Month was renamed Rainbow Book Month™, in coordination with the Rainbow Round Table's name change in 2019.

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The Most Nonsensical Terms Used in Book Blurbs

June 3rd, 2019

In a big first for me, this column was inspired by something positive. I was browsing books, and I saw this blurb on the back of Dathan Auerbach’s Bad Man: Cleanup on aisle 9: Bad Man will make a mess of your daily life, will haunt your next trip to the grocery store. And then you’ll want to reread it, just to see how Dathan Auerbach did that. And you’ll be scared all over again. -Stephen Graham Jones

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The Importance of Work in Translation

May 31st, 2019

I love work in translation. I consider myself lucky because I can read in English and Spanish, opening the door to not one, but two amazing literary universes. From Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote to Bram Stoker's Dracula, I've been able to read classic works of literature in their original language. That said, my Portuguese is decent, but not decent enough to devour novels, and my Italian is that of a one-year old. I don't speak or read Russian or Japanese or Greek.

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Why I Love YA Rom Coms

May 31st, 2019

Being the guy who wrote Horror Film Poems, most people would think my go-to genre for books and movies would be horror. They’d be right, but a close second would be young adult romantic comedies—hell, rom coms in general—but YA especially. I guess I just really like seeing young people get killed or fall in love, or if it’s a dramedy—both.

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Summer Reading for Writers

May 30th, 2019

Photo by Laura Stanley Summer reading is always associated with relaxation and fun: beach reads, vacation reads—none of those epithets imply a lot of work or effort. But for a writer, reading is never just fun (though it’s that too), it’s an opportunity to learn something new about the craft.

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How to Write Edgy Fiction Without Being Obnoxious

May 29th, 2019

The first time you read an edgy piece of fiction, I mean actually edgy, in the way that it makes you think of humanity/the world/yourself in a new light — it changes you on the molecular level. It adds new neural connections in your brain. I mean, everything does, but you know after reading this fiction that nothing will ever be the same again. These are the kind of books that make you walk around in an excited crush for days afterward. It's like falling in love. You see things differently now, and the understanding of what is possible has changed.

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The Great Game of Balancing Character and Plot

May 28th, 2019

Over the past six weeks, Game of Thrones fans have endured some of the most stressful 80-minute episodes of television ever created. Visually, the season was stunning, the acting was stellar, and once again Ramin Djawadi proved he’s an international treasure we don’t deserve. But despite the visual effects, performances, epic score, and heart-pounding action, the overall consensus—based on the slew of articles, petitions, memes, and tweets—is disappointment.

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