Another foot in a shoe has washed up on the Canadian coast. This is all you need to know about today. Instead, let me tell you about what I did on my summer vacation.

My wife knocked me awake around 11:30 last night, wearing a worried frown and fleeing the room. Of all the pleasant ways to be awakened, this is pretty damned low on the list. The living room walls were pulsing with red and blue light as I stumbled into the front of the house in my […]

Maybe it’s just Monday morning talking, but I feel like delving into dark territory. Did you ever daydream about where you’ll be and what you’ll do when it all falls apart? Call it what you will; global economic collapse, Armageddon, the big one, they’re all faces of the same nameless beast that lives in our […]

I had in mind several writing topics on which to blog today, but I put them all aside. Tomorrow, more talk of writing. Today, it’s fitting to pause and ponder the words of an inspirational leader on the 4oth anniversary of his death. The message is just as clear and relevant now as it was […]

Bruce Holland Rogers writes short stories. I’m not talking novella here, nor even a few pages. Think shorter. He cranks out three works of flash fiction per month, firing them directly into the email inboxes of his subscribers.

There’s a scene in my current novel that’s bedeviled me from the start. Twice now, I’ve started to write it, and twice it’s gone nowhere. It’s not a complicated scene; there are two characters (three if you count the dog - my stories always seem to have a dog) meeting in a run-down office. The […]

I love a neatly-pressed, crisp shirt about as much as anything. For years, I’ve found myself lapsing into a fantasy that there’s a machine into which I can insert one of my old wrinkled shirts, press a button, and in a cloud of steam it would open to reveal those razor-line sleeves and a perfectly […]

Let me preface this by saying that I’m a pragmatist when it comes to the creative process. Often, I hear friends talk about characters who want to do this, or refuse to do that, as if those fictional beings held the reins. I might give a knowing smile or nod, but down deep I’m thinking […]

I’ve been struggling with focus for a week. Maybe ten days. Okay, my whole life. While becoming a writer has been liberating in many ways, it has also highlighted how much trouble I have sticking to one task for any length of time. Each morning, I arise religiously at 5:30 and put on a pot […]

Where did you come up with that idea? If you write fiction, you’ll hear that question repeatedly over the span of your career. It was even posed to me once by a literary agent, someone you’d think would be too jaded to ask, after I pitched him the concept for The Big Spin. The temptation […]