Category: fantastic points of ignorance
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Another Letter to the Literators: On Slowing Down and Drilling Deep
Dear Literators, I’ve got disagreeable news and wickedawesome news. The wickedawesome first: Business is picking up. I’m learning more about my craft than ever, and am even drawing up plans for massive collaboration with names bigger than my petty John Handcock. It’s a blast. Now for the disagreeable news: I’m running on fumes in my…
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Rabid and Danse Macbre
Over break, I started Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus and I must say it’s one of the most brutal pieces of nonfiction to cross my desk. Wasik and Murphy headed up a research team for years, digging into the origins of the disease that took down Old Yeller. (Sorry to…
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The Birds in the Floo
Last year, I rescued three jackdaws from out of my chimney’s vault One of their brothers’ body lay chilled in the midst of ash I carried them in gloved hands upstairs and out the window to the roof above my laundry room, gable for the world away from indoors I set birds three upon the…
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Shadowfell by Juliet Mariller
I must be on a Fae kick or something because I started Midsummer Night’s Dream in the same week as Shadowfell, which comes out September 11th, 2012 for any interested parties. Maybe it had something to do with the current political situation and the over saturation of dystopian fiction, but I really liked this book. Sixteen-year-old Neryn…
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Write the Breakout Novel
Thanks to Ellie for another great rec to write the Breakout Novel. For one, Maass promises no short cut. Hard work pays. For another, he shifts the blame for bad book revenue from the editors, agents, publishers and publicists to where it should be–on the author. If your story does not sell, you have no…
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Paradise Lost: Book One
Reading a Harvard Classic, journaling for an MIT open course, watching a Yale lecture. Buckle up, this is about to be the most literated fantastic point of ignorance yet. We’ll have a coffee shop version, an appetizer version and a full course meal for this puppy. Respond and dialog as soon as you want to jump…
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Fletching the Sandman’s Arrows
“What’s your name?” “Fletch.” “What’s your full name?” “Fletcher.” “What’s your first name?” “Irwin.” “What?” “Irwin Fletcher. People call me Fletch.” “Irwin Fletcher, I have a proposition to make to you. I will give you a thousand dollars for just listening to it. If you decide to reject the proposition, you take the thousand dollars,…
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“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
Recent Work Miscellany The following articles by yours truly will come out next month, this month or next year at this time: “To Prevail or ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Flak’” in Hollywood and Vine (article, May/June 2012) “Poker in the Pokey” in Poker Pro (article, June 2012)* “Stamping the Name” in Encounter (article, May 2012)…
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Breakfast of Champions, The Muad’dib & Hospital Visits
Thursday last I ventured with an older gentleman to some local hospitals. We called on the elderly and infirm in hopes to raise their spirits. This guy’s a pro—he’s been doing this for years, visiting sick people in the hospital, praying for any who request it, listening to them ramble about stories of the old…
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Why I Never Check the News
I can hardly regret having escaped the appalling waste of time and spirit which would have been involved in reading the war news or taking more than an artificial and formal part in conversations about the war. To read without military knowledge or good maps accounts of fighting which were distorted before they reached the…
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Zombie Church by Tyler Edwards
When I first glanced at the title Zombie Church by my man Tyler, I immediately recalled the part of Resident Evil 4 where all the monk zombies come out of the abbey grumbling in Latin, chasing you around the graveyard. Or was it priest zombies running out of a cathedral? In any case, the imagery…