For about a year now, I’ve been struggling to revise a novella of mine. It has an interested publisher, and that publisher sent me some fantastic notes for kinks to work out in the story, but as I began tugging on burls in the knots I’d tangled, I realized how much more story there was to tell. AndContinue reading “The confidence of knowing your fictional universe”
Category Archives: fiction
DL Fowler and Abraham Lincoln
My late paternal grandfather was a deeply religious and compassionate man, had a tremendous and constant sense of humor, and stood six foot four and a quarter — the same faith, disposition, and height as Abraham Lincoln. Which is the reason I always felt an affinity for Lincoln: he reminded me of my Grandpa. Lincoln wasContinue reading “DL Fowler and Abraham Lincoln”
New publication
A handful of years ago, I was so taken with Hosho McCreesh’s poetry collection, For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed…, that I decided to write a story about one line from each of the poems. I eventually conceived a story cycle, each poem-inspired story set in the same ecological apocalypse, andContinue reading “New publication”
Booklist 2016 and my reading goals for 2017
It’s been another slow year in reading. I could make excuses — I spent the early part of the year mourning my grandfather’s death, and then we moved in the middle of the year, and I’ve been writing full-time since fall, and the election knocked the wind out of me — but they’re just excuses.Continue reading “Booklist 2016 and my reading goals for 2017”
Ruining a box to extract a treasure
Okay, that title is dumb. I didn’t ruin the box at all. (My wife even complimented the pretty shipping label!) But I did cut the box open, and there’s a story there. When my first book, Box Cutters — also a chapbook of short fiction — came out and I received my first copies in theContinue reading “Ruining a box to extract a treasure”
Here Is My Ruin / Here Is My Treasure
The title of my new chapbook, from Red Bird Chapbooks, is Where There Is Ruin. It’s a title I borrowed from a line by Sufi poet Mevlana*: “Where there is ruin, there is hope of treasure.” When I told my mother the title, she thought it sounded awfully bleak, and indeed the stories in this collectionContinue reading “Here Is My Ruin / Here Is My Treasure”
Holiday shopping, literature, and a thousand lights in the coming night
Usually, around this time of year, I tell you all the books I’ve been reading, or all the books I’ve been buying, or all the books in the past year or so by friends of mine, and I suggest you make your holiday shopping list from it. It’s a way to support literature and my literaryContinue reading “Holiday shopping, literature, and a thousand lights in the coming night”
Some observations as I enter my final week of NaNoWriMo 2016
When I began the first version of this novel a few years ago, I thought it was about one man, a character I named Sergeant Tom Cleaver. My mother-in-law had sent me a book of obscure Texas histories and real-life wild characters, and I read about one crazed man so violent and so charismatic thatContinue reading “Some observations as I enter my final week of NaNoWriMo 2016”
Creative Colloquy and the Tacoma writing community
Yesterday morning, I shared the news that I had a new story, “An Understanding,” at Tacoma’s literary site, Creative Colloquy. Last night, I was one of the four featured readers at Creative Colloquy’s monthly reading series. I read first, followed by Dianne Bunnell, Alec Clayton, and Kristine M. Smith. Because I wanted folks to bring a little web traffic to Creative ColloquyContinue reading “Creative Colloquy and the Tacoma writing community”
New publication
Wow, it’s been a while since I last used “New publication” as the title of a post! But I am thrilled to tell you all that I have a new short story out today, this one in my local Tacoma literary publication Creative Colloquy. It’s called “An Understanding,” and you can find it here. One ofContinue reading “New publication”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 