Last night I went to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma to see my friend Kelly Luce read from her new novel, Pull Me Under. Kelly was in my workshop group at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in summer 2015; another fellow Sewanee alum, Jason Skipper, teaches at PLU and had organized Kelly’s visit to the campus. IContinue reading “Kelly Luce and a literary communion”
Category Archives: fiction
NaNoWriMo 2016: starting over
People have been asking me on social media if I’m participating in NaNoWriMo this year. Friends, former students, readers who liked my first NaNoWriMo attempt (Hagridden) — I even got a Facebook event invitation from NaNoWriMo executive director Grant Faulkner. I’ve told them all the same thing: of course I’m participating! Except, as I’ve done aContinue reading “NaNoWriMo 2016: starting over”
Tacoma’s Creative Colloquy doesn’t crawl, it PARTIES
Last Wednesday, I ventured into the heart of Tacoma’s Stadium District to experience as much of my new hometown’s creative and literary scenes as I could in a single night. The event was the second annual Creative Colloquy Crawl, a kind of literary and creative “pub crawl” through businesses in one of Tacoma’s coolest and most creative neighborhoods.Continue reading “Tacoma’s Creative Colloquy doesn’t crawl, it PARTIES”
The Girl in the Bayou
The other day, I heard a short snippet of a story on NPR about books with “Girl” in the title — books like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train. “I have talked to other crime writers that have been urged by various professional people in their life to put theContinue reading “The Girl in the Bayou”
Booklist 2015, and the power of my students’ writing
This is long delayed, but finally, I’m sharing my annual reading list. Not that it’s anything spectacular; continuing a trend, 2015 was an even lighter reading year than 2014 was — even when I count collected runs of comics issues as “books,” I’m down from 60 books to 42. This was partly because I set aside all reading in November to focus on draftingContinue reading “Booklist 2015, and the power of my students’ writing”
Quite So: David S. Atkinson talks writing, reading, and his new story collection
Last year at AWP, I bunked up with David S. Atkinson. We guzzled coffee by the gallon and talked books for three days. Of course, I was already a fan: I loved David’s first book, Bones Buried in Dirt, and he and I were both guests on an online reading series at the (now sadlyContinue reading “Quite So: David S. Atkinson talks writing, reading, and his new story collection”
Writing news
It’s been a busy several weeks, gang, which is why I’ve been relatively quiet lately. But a few cool things have happened since I last updated, and there are some more cool things coming soon: We’ve had not one but TWO issues of Jersey Devil Press go live: the special Sherlock Holmes issue (the coverContinue reading “Writing news”
2015 is a year of kickass women
I’ve been cleaning up my study this week, shelving stacks of books and bagging issues of comics, and as I’ve been working, I’ve noticed something: This year has given us a lot of amazing women in art to celebrate. Films, comics, books, television — women are kicking ass. Two of my hands-down favorite films this year were Mad Max:Continue reading “2015 is a year of kickass women”
Your 2015 holiday shopping list: books, books, and books!
It’s been a great year for books, y’all. And now that the crunch is on for gift-giving season, I wanted to share some books published in the past year by friends of mine! There is a LOT to love here — poetry, prose, anthologies, even a few adult coloring books! So I’ve included some blurbsContinue reading “Your 2015 holiday shopping list: books, books, and books!”
Setting aside Chekhov’s gun
I love Anton Chekhov. His sense of story rooted in character and culture has long held me spellbound, and I hold him as an unreachable ideal for what the best of short fiction can look like. He also had some terrific writing advice, probably the most famous of which was in favor of necessity in the details: “RemoveContinue reading “Setting aside Chekhov’s gun”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 