A new year has arrived. Normally this is a cause for pausing and reflecting on everything that came the year before, the good and the bad, and setting goals for the next one to come. But after watching the world lurch hard to the right, watching thinly masked racists gain power as they threaten to…
We’ve nearly made it. We’ve past the marker for the beginning of the holiday season, that season of joy and family, love and friendship. Thanksgiving 2016 has passed us by, and we spent it with the kids and had a wonderful meal that Jennifer and I spent the day working on. She did more than…
It topped out at 135,000 words. But on Saturday morning I wrote the final words of my latest WIP, the novel Summer, and put it to rest. It’s cooling its heels in a folder on my drive now, and I will do my best not to revisit it until the holidays are over and 2017…
Yesterday was Halloween. At our house, we are on the wrong side of a very busy road where the speed limit increases to 55 mph, so we don’t get trick or treaters. That means we really don’t bother with the holiday since the funnest part of it isn’t something we get to enjoy. I do…
Just in time for one of our favorite holidays, I bring you my thoughts on horror. I know, you’re sitting on the edge of your seats already and breathing through your mouths in shallow little gasps to keep from fainting with excitement. I feel the same way! I was – and to some degree still…
Sitting here tonight with my babe listening to Pandora radio. Right now it’s an old R.E.M. tune, South Central Rain. The poor woman has to read some Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx for her upcoming next class, so I put on some classy 80’s alternative music to keep her happy. Ok… it was totally for…
I took part in my first National Novel Writing Month in November of 2011 (it may have been 2012, but the years blur together now and I’m unsure). At the time I had a first chapter and some rough ideas for a noir fantasy novel featuring a character named Ben Templeton, set in the 1930’s…
I set a goal just before New Years eve in 2015. I planned to write 350,000 words of new fiction. Not all of those words – probably most of those words – will ever get published, but it was a chance to build a daily writing habit into my life, stretch myself on a variety…
I hate buying new glasses. I’ve been essentially as blind as a bat since sometime in third grade when, in the space of a few months, I want from hiding out in the back of the classroom to sitting in the front row and STILL could not read the damned chalkboard. My teacher finally saw…
After many submissions and equally as many rejections, I’ve decided to publish this story here. Enjoy! “His stories died when he did, and are burned to ash. No story can survive the owner’s ending,” his mother said. Monkton watched the stars above as smoke from the dead fire drifted around the clearing in the…