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, […]

In my prime, once again…

I’m 43 now. Nothing has changed, I suppose. It’s just a number. Some people obsess about turning older. As a kid, you want so bad to be an adult. As the years start sliding away, you want to be a kid again. To hell with that. I fought hard for these wrinkles–these gray hairs. Time […]

Blaster Pistols and Hokey Religions

I’ve been a bit radio-silent for a while, and for that I apologize. Just like I do every time I go radio silent, I suppose. This writing thing, I’m telling you people. It is not for the weak of heart or the lazy. It just isn’t. Between some tight writing deadlines, some pretty rigid (but […]

Art of the Follow-through

The wisdom goes, you can’t edit what you haven’t written. I know that as well as anybody. After all–I went a long time thinking I couldn’t write novels because I couldn’t stay focused for that long. Part of becoming serious about my writing was finishing pieces. Not just novels, not just first drafts of stories, […]