Archive for March, 2008
When It Rains, It Pours: How David Got His Groove Back
When it rains, it pours. We’ve all heard that a million times, and though it’s a generalization with no real basis in fact – it’s also true that when things get overwhelming, they only seem to get crazier. This year has been that way for me, so I figured I’d take a [...]
The Storytellers Unplugged Guide To Sex (Or Gender): Part Two
The View from the XX Set
by Justine Musk
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Writing is seduction, when you think about it. Seduction is to get inside someone else’s view of things and reshape it to your own, to lead them in your chosen direction, to compel them until they are exactly where you want them, whether it’s in your story [...]
The Skeleton Eater
Hi all, it’s been busy times at the soap factory, so I haven’t had time to do up a column for this entry. So instead I thought I’d share this kid’s horror story with you.
Skeleton Eater
By Edwin McRae
Let me tell you a little fairy-tale, one that you probably haven’t heard before, one that definitely [...]
Singin’ the midlist blues
Perhaps it’s just that I’ve been down with a majestic case of con crud for the last few days, and my positive vibes are finding it hard to cope with my cotton-wool-and-swiss-cheese brain right now. But for a while now I’ve been in something of a state, and that’s got nothing to do with whether [...]
How to Hack the System
The more I do it, the more I become convinced the writing, as an activity, is about learning to hack the wetware.
When you start writing, everything is easy–it’s the effect of what Richard Sennett calls “innocent confidence.” (I know, I know, I keep linking to that article, but I can’t help the fact that [...]
ICEBERG MEMORIES
By Wayne Allen Sallee
I keep wondering each time the 28th of the month rolls around exactly when I’ll be typing my piece without snow on the ground. Well, OK, its mostly hail today. The hard snow that eventually bounces into Indiana, once its banged off my huge, middle-aged nose a few times. [...]
In Memory Yet Black and Twisted
Memory hits in the damndest places.
Halfway across the Atlantic, for example. It’s the day after a business trip to Paris, and I’m bone-weary. The flight is full; no empty seats for stretching out this time, and the woman in front of me had reclined her seat into my lap even before takeoff. A coworker’s got [...]
Go To Come Back: Journal of a Caribbean Eaveswatcher
by Janet Berliner
This month, writing through a period of dreadful pain, I wrote my first children’s novel. Despite the obvious adversity, I thoroughly enjoyed the work. Apparently my editor did, too, given that She “couldn’t put it down,” called it a book for kids from eight to eighty, and sent a check at once.
I have [...]
Reckoning up the Luck
By Stan Ridgley
Quite often now – surely far more frequently than in early years when I dwelled in wiseass territory – I count my blessings.
What blessings might those be?
Immersion in a sparkling diversity every working day. Tickled by the delights of a thousand different worldly combinations of cultures and milieus, served to [...]
Crossing Genres, Part One (Left Coast Crime)
Being a cross-genre kind of girl myself, I seem always to be preaching to other authors to think more broadly about other genres their books might fit into, and about how to promote themselves in other genres. This kind of thinking and marketing is particularly important for authors in the horror genre because, [...]
