The Musicality of Water
Generally, I avoid books featuring fae, finding them too often derivative or pollyannish. Mississippi Missing, an urban fantasy laced with fae, came as rather a surprise. It neither demanded I know everything about the entire fairy world. Nor assuming I share a fan’s devotion to the intricacies of Welsh, Scottish, and whatever-all-esle mythologies. Sure, a […]
If It Were a Snake, It Would Have Bit You.
Daemons were not part of Philip Pullman’s original idea for the Golden Compass. And understanding this may have saved the novel I’m working on.
The New Normal is Pretty Much Like the Old, with Scratches
Scary as hell living in Brooklyn, the deadliest place on earth for Covid-19. For a few grim weeks.
Success is a Lousy Teacher
Success is a Lousy Teacher or, how success is reached by climbing a stairway built of failures
Out of the blueWhen the world turns upside down in an instant, where do you go from there?
The armed troops and the ID cards are gone now, but low-flying planes are still unnerving.
A Year After “the Event”
Resilience after 9-11—it’s about what happens in the mind as much as on the ground.
Could You Become a Monster to Kill One?
The layers are thick and deep in this story. Expect things to change. Often. Unexpectedly. Yet precisely the way they must. Once you know enough.
Killing Your Little Darlings
“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” —William Faulkner Yes, this post will be about wholesale slaughter. Of words, characters, and ideas. Of little darlings—all those great lines, tightly written paragraphs, wonderfully surprising sub-plots, or dashing characters that please the writer, but will bore, or worse, confuse the reader. I’ve never enjoyed […]
Revelations and Unexpected Shifts
knowing her as well as we do, having watched her survive her brutal childhood, pull off one audacious mission after another, we know this won’t last. Then, things get worse.