Coming in 2018: A Bit of Joy & Hope

Earlier this week, I realized that I knew an inexcusable number of smart, weird, inventive, & creative people. People who create all kinds of art because they love creating art. Like me, most of them are grinding it out in the gaps between day jobbery. I felt with as much horror as is going on […]

2017 Bright Spots: 6 Favorite New Songs

If we’re being completely honest, 2017 was a pretty shitty year in a lot of ways for a lot of people. That said, there were some bright spots. And as we descend upon the death of this year with all the enthusiasm of Yeats’ “rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem […]

Twitter is a Tool

I used to have some variation on a certain conversation about Twitter from people who didn’t use it. They didn’t see the point. They’d tried it out, and couldn’t figure out why anyone would use Twitter. My explanation always amounted to this: Twitter is a tool. If you don’t need that tool, don’t use that tool. […]

A Cover Reveal & a Word About Representation

I’ve shared this cover on Facebook and Twitter the other day, but I was saving putting it up on my blog until I had a few minutes to talk about the book and representation. When looking at old blog posts, I found some talking about working in this setting, on this project, from April of […]

A Conspiracy of Feathers

When I created Anwat al Masewei over twenty years ago, I didn’t ever think it would bring me here. I was engaged to my second wife, an artist, and we had the idea to do a fantasy comic book. Something different. We created a few characters, she did a few drawings, and I sketched out […]

Descent into Dystopia: Cobalt City Edition

I know I’ve discussed the current Cobalt City novel RESISTANCE once or twice before. For new readers (or those with the memory of goldfish), RESISTANCE is the novel I started last November as a way to process what I saw as our country’s decline into fascism and straight up dystopia. I’d hoped to be finished […]

The Storm Haunts the Horizon

He hears thunder and steps outside, eyes on the horizon. He’s been hearing thunder. It’s been more frequent since November 8th. Still no storm. But it’s coming. If history has taught him anything, it’s that the storm is always coming. He shivers, rubs the goosebumps on his arms. Rubs his aching eyes. He’s been feeling […]

View from the Trenches–On Deep Edits

If you’ve been reading this blog for long enough, you’ve probably heard me talk about Of Rooks and Ravens, the big, weird fantasy novel set in the world of Ravensgate. If you have missed all the randomness about how the project evolved, that’s okay. It’s a Gothic high-fantasy with an ace/aro female academic forced by […]

In Memory of a Model Adult

When you’re a kid, there’s this concept of the “cool house” where everyone hangs out. I was fortunate as a teen growing up in Durango in that we had several such homes. Places where we could keep ourselves entertained in a what was, to many of my friends, a boring and sometimes downright hostile town. For […]

Travel: Writing Research

That’s the dream, right? Pack the bags and fuck off to some far-away place for an indulgent period of time to write, research, absorb your surroundings, and write some more. If you’re like me, and I expect many of you are, you rarely get further than the closest convenient coffeehouse or bar. But still the […]