Bitter Greens – Salad Noir

I’d like to start by saying I know some weird, weird people. A challenge of sorts was laid down on Twitter earlier today by Twitternaut Georg Greg that read, “ALCOHOL – because no great story or song ever started with someone eating a salad.” Before I knew it, people were rising to the challenge. But […]

Re-re-re-polish or “How to Handle Rejection”

It’s a question that comes up after a certain amount of time in the writing experience. “As an author, how do you handle rejection?” Drinking. I suggest tea to calm the mind, or maybe some coffee to fuel the inevitable rewrite. If you prefer a beer and a shot of Wild Turkey while you kick […]

Behind the Curtain: “Cold Comfort of Silver Lake”

This week saw the release of Blood Rites: An Invitation to Horror from the most excellent horror publisher Blood Bound Books (Available in both print and ebook format although I’ve only linked to the Kindle). This is not my first publication with them. No, that would be Rock ‘N’ Roll is Dead which I’ve written […]

The Year Behind, the Year Ahead

It’s the end of year and it seems everyone is putting together a year-end retrospective. And why not? I suppose the end of the year is as good a time as any to reflect on what has come before and where things are headed now. I had anticipated the year to be focused on the […]

Step up off my kimono, dude.

*Amended after a bit of reflection and a few off-line conversations to help clarify. Thanks for your patience.* I had the good fortune this morning to be feeling guilty over a long gap in blog posts while in the company of my friend and fellow writer Nicole Feldringer. She knows that I’m one of […]

Theme Parking Lot

In my experience, a lot of English Lit teachers will talk about THEME like it’s this big hammer that the author uses to bludgeon a point home. I was always vaguely suspicious about that. For a while, I maintained that theme was something that people who didn’t write used to make sense out of things […]

Reinventing Thor

What if Thor was a Blaxploitation character in the mid-70’s? My brain asks these questions some times. Oftentimes, they turn into stories. In this case, I was contemplating the Cobalt City Timeslip anthology Timid Pirate Publishing was putting together. We had stories ranging from the early pre-history of the area up to modern, but no […]

Make Friends with Failure

As I start this post, I’m about ten minutes away from 2am. I tried to sleep. I really did. I can’t do it, somehow. For reasons I can’t really explain, I’m utter shit at sleeping lately. I’ll have a few successive nights of four hours or so, maybe less, then I’ll collapse from exhaustion and […]

Anatomy of a Story: Monkey Makes Five

Ever author gets asked this eventually. “Where do your stories come from?” Every story is different. This is the anatomy of my most recent, “Monkey Makes Five.” Those who know me probably know that me and puppets…we don’t get along. Really. The first time I saw the amazingly talented author and puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal […]

Recent Story Sales: Behind the Scenes

Anyone playing along at home might have noticed that I’ve had a recent run on stories getting picked up for publication. As of a few weeks ago, I’ve hit six for this year. A not-inconsiderable chunk of the credit for that sits with my writing group, the Wayward Writers. Not that we have a name, […]