Category: craft

Just finished rereading my favorite book of 2016, Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and I realized I’m kind of getting a shelf together, of books I come back to again and again. Books I can’t stay away from. Books that just hold more and more magic for me, each time through. I’ve heard that’s one definition of ‘literary’: a text that will keep unfolding and unfolding, the longer you look into it. I’d also add …

And, there may even be some commentary about story:

…

and it’s shaped like a book, one I’d never have guessed could be real. Thanks so much to Billy J. Stratton and all the contributors. Honored. Amazing. So cool. Clickable here.

And here it is in BookWorks, down in Albuquerque (thanks to Amanda Sutton for the snap):

And — it’s like a gnome, photobombing, yes? — here it is on Theo Van Alst’s shelf:

And here it is again, down at Fleur Fine Books, in Texas land:

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Looks like this is the second Stanley Hotel post I’ve done here (the first). This time it’s for teaching, though. Also? Every single place I go on CU campus—bulletin boards, monitors, displays—I’m looking back at me:

This is that click.

And, for the media fun, here it is on the front page of Boulder’s Daily Camera, here‘s the cover story in Westword, and here‘s some video and a write-up from 9News in Denver. I would say click “her…

Which is really probably my favorite thing in the world: a recipe-as-story, a ransom-note-as-story. glossary-as-story. Much etc—honestly, I want to compile them all into a big book of happiness. Anyway, this non-story story, it lines up quite well with Daniel Orozco’s “Officer’s Weep” story, from his Orientation collection (and . . . was it originally in The Atlantic? seems like).

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This post is not endorsed by facebook. Nor twitter. Though it is because of twitter I’m writing it. Just noticed I’m up to about 7100 tweets. So I did what any rational dude would do: opened my calculator app, multiplied “7100” by a guessed-at average tweet-length of 120 characters. Where that gets me is:

852,000 characters. So what I did then was open the latest novel I’ve written, which I’ve now pared down to 97K words or so, and did a cha…

For the thing I’m writing right now, I of course needed info. This is just for today and yesterday, too. Here’s the process:

• What’s a likely military-cargo plane out of the Middle East?  ➔ called my dad (retired USAF)
• Where’s John Wayne buried? ➔ asked Google
• How does a doctor get certified to perform surgery? ➔ facebook-mailed a doctor-friend (who’s also a writer)
• What other Road Rage-ish kind of stories are out there? ➔ texted a friend, ende

Of flash fiction, anyway. Just stumbled on this—I forget who it was for (maybe Christopher Rosales, the editor? maybe myself-only?), but I know what it was for: States of Grace. The little pocket-sized book I still can hardly believe I was lucky enough to get published. Not e-, not even on Amazon, I don’t think. And right after it was all set in stone, I started kicking out more of these short-shorts, of course. Because they’re maybe my favorite form of all. I should …

Was just on a panel about villains at Denver ComicCon—actually, my second villains-panel there—and then, just now, I went all the long way down to Alamo Drafthouse to see Footloose on the big screen for the first time in thirty-two years, then listened to the Sir Patrick Stewart episode of The Nerdist on the way back, and . . . it all left me thinking, I guess. About antagonists, and the building of them.

It’s Robert McKee who says that, when designing up your story, you alwa…

Makes me half-nervous, making fun, as I know you see your own frailties best in others. But still—well, I don’t like coffee, or beer, or fine dining. But I’m sure I’m a poser in some way all the same:

List of Things That Don’t Make You A Writer

When I moved to Austin, I was surprised to learn that every guy and gal hanging out at a coffee shop was a novelist, every barista was sitting on a few truly outstanding, and unpublished, literary masterpieces, and ev