In 2007, this article made the rounds: Pearls Before Breakfast. It went viral. It was forwarded to me dozens of times. It was supposed to be inspiring. It pissed me off. There’s a certain privileged tone to it, see. It implied that people were so stupid not to recognize greatness Read more…
Last night I dreamed I was on a generational star ship modeled after a Russian palace. It was in disrepair, abandoned, and it was snowing in parts of it. I will never write this story. Okay, part of that is that it’s just a setting, not a real story idea, Read more…
I’m starting to learn how to add suspense to my stories. Something I often lack because I’m such a nut about being brief. Naturally, the way I think best about suspense is to look at it through the lens of poetry. Warning: The following contains POETRY COMPOSED IN A Read more…
Hey, New Yorkers! If you are in New York, I am, too! I’m attending the Asimov’s Magazine 40th Anniversary party at Housingworks Bookstore, 126 Crosby Street, 7pm on Thursday, April 13. I’ll be the one clinging to a dark back corner in abject social fear.
As a teen, I felt the agony of not fitting in. Advice from my peers didn’t help. “Dress how you want! But not in that!” I wrote many angsty teen poems about the tyrannical conformity of teal and pink penguins. I couldn’t escape ridicule for my clothes. I didn’t have control Read more…
So, there I was, in, what? Fourth grade? We were learning about instincts. Birds that could fly halfway around the globe to find exactly the same nesting site. Salmon swimming upstream without their parents to guide them to the pool where they were born! I raised my hand. “Why don’t we Read more…
I can trace the dawn of my writing career to Cinderella. The Disney movie. I saw it and was blown. Away. I had a perhaps uncomfortably enthusiastic appreciation for Cinderella’s abusive life at the beginning of the film. “The only thing that would make this better,” thought five-year-old me, “is Read more…