Too Many Megaphones

This blog post is not me imparting wisdom. This blog post is me essentially asking for help.

Everyone is telling authors they need a platform, they need an audience, they need to leverage the Internet and social media. Right, okay. Consider me on the other side. Say I already have a considerable social media set up… [...]

I had a little list

I don’t know if everyone does it at a certain age in their lives, but sometime way back in the mists of time, when I was too young to know anything about the meaning of the word “impossible”, I wrote down a list of things I wanted to accopmplish in my lifetime.

It’s long since gone, [...]

Pain Grin, Again

Pain Grin Again

I hope this works tonight, I tried it earlier, but that’s the way the mop flops, baby. There’s no way of getting around trying to compose anything of true worth right now. Because I’m waiting for my unemployment funds to start back up, I couldn’t afford my meds for eighteen days. For the last [...]

Year’s End: Attack of the Sappy

I wrote and scrapped two essays for today’s post.

One was a recollection of a humorous holiday incident from my misspent youth, a long day’s sleigh ride into night playing Santa Claus on the disgruntled streets of South Philadelphia in halcyon days of 1985. But there’s more to it than just being chased around my Dad’s [...]

Stapelton .45 Calibre Wheelchair

A little light-hearted post-Christmas gift idea.

Many years ago, Adam-Troy Castro put together what he called the world’s smallest shared word horror anthology. He called it “Crazy Akbar’s House Of Pain” and allowed us each around a dozen lines for our contributions. His “About the authors” segment read simply “They’re weird.” You were one of [...]

Make a list

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I’m sure everyone’s out running around for last minute gifts today (umm, or snowed in…)  so I’ll keep this short.

But since it’s the season of lists (shopping lists, resolution lists…) – I thought I’d talk about another kind of list.

In my writing workshops and blog, I stress over and over and over again [...]

The map is not the territory

So I spent several hours today in a delivery room.

I was not, myself, having a baby. At the age of 38, with no romantic prospects in sight, I have high hopes that I have dodged this whole business of babymaking for this lifetime. It’s never appealed to me, and I’m finally old enough that random [...]

5 Principles to Remember as You Battle the Demons of Creative Procrastination

I’ve been practicing my starts. And I’m not talking about the opening paragraphs.

I mean, the actual act of sitting down and starting.

There’s a reason why people say that half the battle is showing up. People who want to write can be divided into two groups: those who actually do it, and everybody else.

I [...]

FORENSICS 124: WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE BUT WAY TOO MUCH TO DRINK

From a forensic standpoint, one might think it would be easy for a medical examiner to determine whether or not a person had drowned. Actually, drowning as a cause of death is not at all easily diagnosed. Finding a body with lungs filled with water would certainly seem to indicate drowning as a [...]