I was scrolling trough my Kindle Highlights (you know you can see all your highlighted passages from Kindle books online, right?) when I came across the following highlights from The Exorcist. I don't remember highlighting anything from it but I read it at the beginning of the year so maybe that's normal. Horror has a … Continue reading Adventures in Unexpected Great Prose – The Exorcist
Nick Mamatas wrote a post on Facebook today about how writers can go about finding an agent. As someone who will hopefully start shopping a book around soon, this was a godsend. Straightforward, no nonsense. With Mr. Mamatas's permission, here is the post as he wrote it. This is *one* method of finding a literary … Continue reading Nick Mamatas’s Simple Guide to Finding a Literary Agent
I'm writing again. The following is a single-sentence paragraph that I think works, mainly due to the emotions involved. Let me know in the comments (no worries, this is first-draft material, so be brutally honest). The argument was mundane, a been-married-for-twelve-years banal tiff, a clichéd and overused disagreement between people who love each other, love … Continue reading Just a few words
Check. This. Out. Garden of Fiends is an anthology of addiction-themed horror stories from some of the genre's best and most promising writers (only slightly marred by including a story of mine). It's out in ten days but there's a discount offer available for pre-orders (or so the publisher tells me). Authors in the anthology … Continue reading Coming in Eight Days…
I saw the following on Toni Morrison's Facebook page. She's explaining where she finds time to write. "Very, very early in the morning, before they got up. I'm not very good at night. I don't generate much. But I'm a very early riser, so I did that, and I did it on weekends. In the … Continue reading Toni Morrison on Finding Time to Write
Do you ever read books simply for the prose? In an attempt to improve my writing I do this a fair bit and am now reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. It was there I came across the following description that, as it happens, is also the best written thing I've read all … Continue reading The Best Writing of the Week – Tender is the Night
Here's a short story I wrote in about 15 minutes at a drink-and-write event that Willona Sloan held at last year's Reykjavik Literature Festival. This is what 7 years of writing practice gets you. Enjoy. Windowsill Cowboy Thomas sat on his favorite windowsill in the living room and looked out at the sun set over the … Continue reading Windowsill Cowboy – Short Story
Richard Thomas is starting a new magazine. It's ambitious. The current state of publishing, for those of you who may not be in the trenches daily, is that most magazines pay about 1 cent per word for short stories. The good ones pay 5 to 6. Gamut, the magazine Richard Thomas is kicking up funds … Continue reading 10 Stories Richard Thomas is Soooo Tired of Reading
I'm reading Undertow Publication's excellent anthology Year's Best Weird Fiction Volume Two. It was there I encountered the following sentence, the first in the story Loving Armageddon by Amanda C. Davis: She presses her cheek to the center of his chest, listening to the beat of his hand-grenade heart. Now. Here's why I think this is awesome. There's … Continue reading The Best First Sentence of the Year?
When the moon was out, you could be aware of all the pieces of night—you could see all the things you didn’t see during the day, all the subtle little fragments that the world uses to join its wholes. When you read on your Kindle, you can higlight passages you like. You know this, right? … Continue reading It´s Official: When We Were Animals is Sublime.
