Thomas Sullivan: LION LUNGS, DEMENTIA DOG & THE KILLER GARAGE DOOR

Maybe I’ll write humor today, you decide.

It is 4:41 AM and your sawdust-for-brains next door neighbor has just “unleashed” Lion Lungs – the hyper barking pooch – for his pre-dawn serenade.  Your spouse slumbers next to you, and if you move to the computer downstairs, there is a good chance you’ll wake the baby.  Better [...]

Thomas Sullivan: LION LUNGS, DEMENTIA DOG & THE KILLER GARAGE DOOR

Maybe I’ll write humor today, you decide.

It is 4:41 AM and your sawdust-for-brains next door neighbor has just “unleashed” Lion Lungs – the hyper barking pooch – for his pre-dawn serenade.  Your spouse slumbers next to you, and if you move to the computer downstairs, there is a good chance you’ll wake the baby.  Better [...]

Thomas Sullivan: STUDYING CORPSES TO LEARN CHARACTERIZATION vs. UNPLANNED LESSONS IN REANIMATION

You don’t have to read too many of my columns to know that I am an advocate of first-hand inspiration as opposed to letting one’s imagination do all the work.  No matter how good you are, standing pat on your knowledge and memory as you create whole worlds is a sure way to cheat your [...]

Thomas Sullivan: CHANNELING JACK KEROUAC or WHY WRITERS NEED TO GET OUT MORE

I hope you’re as uncomfortable as hell.  Nothing sucks like being too comfortable.  Four walls are comfortable.  6 feet under is comfortable.  Conversely, stepping outside your comfort zone is when you start to live, learn, grow.  If you’re a writer, you thrive on being uncomfortable.

Yet when Norwegian publisher Jan Fredrik Lockert invited me to speak [...]

Thomas Sullivan: NORWAY OUT-TAKES FROM A WRITER’S DIARY or THE GIRL ON THE MOUNTAIN

“I feel more like I do now than I did when I first got here…”

Yeah, that’s one of my stock nonsense lines, but this month it makes sense.  That’s because I’ve been hopping time zones for two weeks now and will continue to do so into April.  Have recently returned from an exquisite trip to [...]

Thomas Sullivan: WRITING WITH COYOTE PEE, THE WALTER MITTY SHUFFLE & METAPHOR MULTI-TASKING

Having spent most my life outside the box, I love being lost.  All right, go ahead, nod your head and smile sadly.  But I mean physically lost.  Like in a snowstorm in the woods.  To be lost is to shed all shackles, to erase the façades of society for a time and – if there [...]

Bachelor Number One: If You Were a Fish, What Kind of Fish Would You Be?

Finding Your One True Love During the Submission Process

Submitting your work can feel like plucking petals from a daisy — He loves me.  He loves me not.  It’s the ultimate dating game and actually, for me anyway, it’s sometimes more like He loves me not.  He loves me not.  He loves me not…  Well, I can [...]

Thomas Sullivan: HANGING AROUND THE STARTING LINE, SKIN IN THE GAME, & THEY'RE PLAYING YOUR SONG!

Janus, the Roman god of gates and doorways, has kicked off another January.  True, he is two-faced, looking forward and backward at the same time (you can’t sneak up on him!), but I like that.  It sort of shows the circularity of things.

By [...]

Thomas Sullivan: BLEEDING FRESH, MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY

Picture a carrara marble room whose fire pit blazes silver in its reflection on a curved glass wall which overlooks the Grand Canyon by day and tilts upward to magnify the universe at night.  The jaws of the black granite Sphinx in the center of the room open in a kind of Savonarola throne made [...]

Thomas Sullivan: DRAGON BURPS

If this column was a character in a novel, he/she/they/it would be schizophrenic.  Begin with the fact that a month after writing the first two paragraphs, I no longer remember where they were going.  Here they are:

This is for women.  Okay, men can peek.  I mean men like to peek at women, right?  But I’d [...]