Category: On Writing

  • When The Moon Hits Your Eye

    When The Moon Hits Your Eye

    If you love John Scalzi’s “voiciness”, this is a book for you. If you find Scalzi’s voice a little too glib, smarmy, and laced with pop-culture winks and nods—maybe not so much for you with this book. When The Moon Hits Your Eye (A title borrowed from Dean Martin’s hit That’s Amore) is the 2025…

  • Swing and a miss

    Swing and a miss

    First pass for The Kingdom of Nod. For every pass, a new query goes out that day.

  • Get set up for your run

    Get set up for your run

    As of this week, I’ve begun my run through the query trenches with my latest novel, The Kingdom of Nod. I don’t know who first coined the term Query Trench, but it feels right. No one is an expert in querying. There are those who were successful, writers who have been signed, and those who…

  • The Realists of a Larger Reality

    The Realists of a Larger Reality

    Is there a science fiction author more akin to literature than Ursula K. Le Guin? I can’t think of any. There are others that may rise to her level. Octavia E. Butler, certainly. One day, I think N.K. Jemisin will have that luster. I struggle to think of a male writer with the same claim…

  • Vonnegut on Writing Short Stories

    Vonnegut on Writing Short Stories

    There was a time when I was a wee lad and Kurt Vonnegut was not particularly famous, when you could make a decent living selling short stories to magazines. There were lots of magazines and lots of readers. There was no internet and people doomscrolled their newspaper in one sitting at breakfast. There were only…