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Why were you posting during a hiatus?
Happy Epiphany! Or Theophany or Little Christmas … or Dizzy Gilespie’s birthday or New Mexico Day or the anniversary of the Four Freedoms speech … or whatever you’d like to celebrate. Or not. I’ve been...
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Having a long think
I’m out on a Saturday night, after having a long conversation with author John Austin, whose non-fiction short, “Planet Zero,” is now available in the critically acclaimed anthology Salaam Love:...
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Top Ten Posts (as of March 2014)
It’s been a while since I’ve taken a look at my stats. Today, I decided to peek. Looking at shorter time scales, of course, the stats are dominated by things I’ve posted on relatively recent viral...
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Winter’s End (We Hope!)
Here I am in the midst of another snow storm, days after the official start of spring, wondering if the Groundhog had a heart attack. I’m not going to just revisit the Game of Thrones meme—although,...
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Just a minor gripe for a Friday morning – Do people understand what they...
Scanning around my favorite lit blogs this morning, something occurred to me. The reason I usually skip the comments on the blogs I regularly read is not the usual internet comment peeve about...
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The minutiae of editing and squirrel nests – It’s not just about shifting...
I don’t often talk about the nitty gritty details of my editing process. I occasionally talk about the Big Picture stuff—like using archetypes to recognize what your muse is trying to say and imbue...
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The Mystery of the Ghost Towel
I was at the gym recently, finished with my run and getting ready for the showers when another guy was in the same locker corner, prepping for his shower. (No, it’s not that sort of story… read on.)...
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Can “Not That Kind of Writer” Be a Writer?
Good writing is not about a narrative. It’s about multiple narratives in relationship with each other, not only the narratives in the story itself but also the narratives in the readership that the...
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A confession about levels of writing
I’ve taken a new approach to the Readers Choice section of the web page. Instead of relying solely on comment requests to decide when to write/post a new chapter, I’m taking heed of hits. The gunpowder...
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Top Ten Posts (as of July 2014)
There was a gigantic spike in web traffic a while back, all of it a result of my piece on optimizing the DC Metro. The bump literally pushed 2014 to the Busiest Year Ever slot over two days in May! (I...
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How to organize your books at home
There’s no rule about how to organize your own book collection, but National Public Radio listeners had some interesting suggestions: [M]y presidential biographies … are all in the order that the...
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Reader question : Is High & Hard intended to be “cli-fi”?
… I read this [High & Hard : The War for the Cornerstone] during its first run here and just started getting into the second run at the new website. I was thinking about the dwarf chimneys...
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Reader question : What’s up with the torture in High & Hard?
All the talk about the CIA torture report reminded me of that story you had here about the spy torturing the woman in the tree. I didn’t see that scene any more, but I saw you were answering questions...
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My Top Ten list of writers
Everybody has their Top Ten lists. Sure, lists are a viral sensation in the Age of the Internet, but let’s not forget that Casey Kasem was counting down our Top 40 favorite songs for years in the Age...
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HBO is planning a miniseries about the guy who inspired Marshal Voight
If there’s such a sound as a man squee (maybe a roh-yeah?) I just made it. Actually, it did kinda sound like “roh-yeah!” Like the Kool-Aid man pumping out an extra rep at the gym. Finally someone is...
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The man who invented Palatino
When I took over as editor-in-chief of the West Virginia State student newspaper, The Yellow Jacket, I made two key changes to the format, intended to give the paper a sleeker look. First, I replaced...
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Living History : Four Captives in the 1700s
During King George’s War (1744-1748), a remarkable literary coincidence happened. Four British captives held together in French Canada kept journals of their captivity that were later published. Three...
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Just a minor gripe for a Friday morning – Do people understand what they...
Scanning around my favorite lit blogs this morning, something occurred to me. The reason I usually skip the comments on the blogs I regularly read is not the usual internet comment peeve about...
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A Vow of Unhelpfulness
The other day, I was discussing the concept of synchronicity with my co-workers. As first described by Carl Jung, a synchronicity is a coincidence that has no causal relationship but nevertheless seems...
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Tale of Two Snows
On 1 May 2016, the world learned that Jon Snow from Game of Thrones was still alive. On 1 May 1746, exactly 270 years earlier, the John Snow (a “snow” is a type of sailing vessel) was captured by the...
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