Thomas Sullivan: FINDING WOR(L)DS

Hey, you want to bug out with me?  You know, ditch this horrible, awful agony of trying to create characters, plots and settings?  I’ll tell you a secret.  When your imagination goes stale, you don’t have to put it to bed until it recovers.  In fact, that may be the worst – and certainly the [...]

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: 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 [...]

Contests? No contest.

Some of my best successes in submitting short fiction have been by winning no-fee [...]