I just returned from a writer’s conference in San Francisco (https://sfwriters.org/), which was a decent conference with fairly high-level sessions, not Bonehead 101 as so many of them are. I had four days in the Mark Hopkins hotel at the … Continue reading
Margaret Atwood cut her writing teeth on poetry and it shows in her novel, The Blind Assassin, perhaps too much. Her phrases are carefully constructed, a virtue in any writer, but Atwood’s choices often stand out as slightly too clever, … Continue reading
I spent a week in New York City attending a conference on how to pitch a novel to an agent or editor. Selling fiction is the least appealing part of the writing adventure. I write because I enjoy the thrill … Continue reading
This is a great book to help someone who wants to upgrade their reading fare from genre to literary fiction. It teaches you how to pay attention to meta-textual details such as themes, symbols, voice, diction, and story structure. Attention … Continue reading
Looking through my NBT (Next Big Thing) list, I find dozens of attractive ideas for a new novel. I notice many of them would fall into the category of “speculative fiction,” which I believe is mostly realism, but with some … Continue reading
Against Sincerity To frame a discussion of literary vs genre in marketing terms encourages cynicism, because marketing pretends discourse while designed only to separate you from your money. So let’s forget about how the distinction between literary and genre is used … Continue reading
Impressions of Horror Saterstrom, Selah (2004). The Pink Institution. St. Paul, MN: Coffee House Press. This experimental novel features four generations of Mississippi females from 1940 to the early 2000’s. They are shown in a set of impressions, poems, quotations … Continue reading