Sixty years ago today, a new show aired on CBS. It was a strange show, and it wasn’t particularly popular with critics at the time. Many assumed it wouldn’t last long, and they were right: The show was canceled after only three seasons (79 episodes). Fast forward to
The first thing I'm doing is moving over things I've previously published elsewhere over the years (preserving original publication dates as best I can). Then I'll start writing new material!
I'm not sure I've ever been so overcome by emotion at the sight of an inanimate object. I am in Philadelphia for a workcation (I was asked to fly out for meetings Wednesday, but opted to take the rest of the week off and explore the
We all know that curiosity killed the cat. Right? Presumably, some cat somewhere stuck their nose where it shouldn’t have been and got dead, thus gifting us with this axiom. Or maybe it’s metaphorical. Maybe someone just decided a cat was the right scapegoat with which to teach
It was time to hit the road again and Tyler knew it. He always got almost a physical itch in the back of his mind when he’d been somewhere long enough. Sometimes, it only took hours. Other times, it could be months. Once, it was even a few years.
Today, April 23, 1933, is Taras Stefaniuk’s thirteenth birthday, though the occasion will be little noted and it’s unlikely he’ll have really anything to eat at all, let alone anything special. Ever since the Russians started collecting all the produce of his family’s farm near Fastiv
You’ve probably heard that every story has to have conflict, which is absolutely true. But many writers, especially less-experienced ones, make the error of assuming that conflict has to be some sort of epic struggle between black-and-white conceptions of good and bad. And, of course, there’
One of the most uncomfortable experiences I’ve had as a reader is trying to get through something written by someone who was trying to “sound smart” by using vocabulary artificially inflated by their use of a thesaurus. There are those who will tell you that good writing requires a
Kids, meet Moira. Moira is a person used to getting her way. She believes that, if people could just see her point of view—the undoubtedly correct one, in her opinion—they would realize she is correct and things would go her way. That she isn’t especially articulate bothers
Fictional settings can be as simple as a restaurant or as thoroughly developed and complex as a certain interstellar society. Whichever of those routes (or, more likely, some via media of your own devising), how you choose to set your story can deeply influence the story itself. Here are a
Coming slowly and groggily awake, Nate Sharpe realized he had a splitting headache and that he needed to piss, like, now. Rolling out of bed and stumbling into the bathroom, he fumbled around with the fly of his boxers until he was able to let flow and begin to relax.
The last time I saw my mother was fifteen years ago. I've never been able to forgive her killing my brother. Oh, she didn't "pull the trigger." But she may as well have. You see, my sweet baby brother committed suicide shortly after he
One Shots
This thing is like no bacteria I've ever seen. Cameron Fox, a twenty-year epidemiologist with the CDC had just arrived at the mobile lab that abutted the quarantine zone. Another doctor had pointed Fox to a microscope with a gram-stained slide under the lens. Despite decades
Writing Tips
Obviously, characters are important to any story. They're also my personal favorite element. One of my all-time favorite books is just a conversation between two people. No action, no world-building, just pure character. In your writing, whether you've got pontificating humans or a mostly