Tag: Writing

  • Lang Speaks

    Just stumbled upon Stuart Beaton‘s podcast featuring my old buddy Preston Lang. The conversation between the two is thoughtful and funny, a mirror of Lang’s writing. If you like noir, pick up The Blind Rooster; if you like crime fiction, it’s The Carrier, both released last year. As for this podcast: Do we really need a 90,000-word book…

  • “Writer’s Block”: You Don’t Have It

    I’ve been known to comment on various blogs: “I’ve never had writer’s block. I have no shortage of things to write about or the desire to write them. If I’m not writing, I’m chewing on it.” Ok. In January I blew through 20 chapters of a first draft. Four weeks and done, rough edges and all.…

  • Banned Reading

    Did you know that Popular Online Vendor X bans “distasteful content” from honest reviews of the very books they’d be happy to sell you? That’s right: reviews of books full of obscenities sold on their site won’t be posted if those reviews contain the same profane, immoral, or distasteful content as the product they want you to buy. I tried for two weeks to…

  • Peace Corps Writer Awards 2014

    Vote for your favorite Peace Corps Book of 2014. People in the Peace Corps community know well the agency’s three goals: To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served To promote a better…

  • To Bleed or Not to Bleed–(the Writer’s Question)

    I don’t plan on writing porn any time soon. Probably never. But this article from today’s New York Times Magazine, about the life of one prolific pornographer, had me thinking about what I write and how I write it. The piece helped me calibrate the struggle against my greatest bane: The lack of time. I’m a career man with a job…

  • Dundee International Book Prize

    Two weeks until the February 15th deadline for submitting your manuscript to this year’s Dundee International Book Prize. Curious about what floats their boat? Read last year’s shortlisted works: My manuscript Sea Never Dry, thick with crooked cops, fetish priests, Internet fraudsters, and orphans turning a buck off a West African e-waste dump, made last year’s cut. Read the excerpt below. Now,…

  • The Romney-Palin Ticket

    What if W. Mitt Romney is nominated as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016? And what if Sarah Palin joins the race? What if Mittens chooses Palin as his running mate? I give you their chit-chat: Palin: Who hijacked the term ‘Feminist’? A cackle of radicals who want to crucify other women with whom they disagree. M: I went to…

  • Review: Black River by S.M. Hulse

    This brilliant debut was released January 21: Beneath the surface of Black River, the taut debut by S.M. Hulse, flows the grey enigma of ultimate justice. The narrative forces  the reader to ask: Does a recidivist criminal capable of torture, yet claiming to have found Jesus, deserve parole? Or would such redemption be an injustice to the…

  • Peace Corps Retrospective

    A compilation of posts recalling my Peace Corps service in Malawi (1996-1998). Crossing Paths with Paul Theroux in Malawi I’ve always felt a strong connection Paul Theroux, due largely to our shared legacy as Peace Corps Volunteers in Malawi. When I expressed reluctance about taking an assignment teaching English there in the 90s, the recruiter suggested I read My Secret…

  • Review–Winterswim

    The following was published January 6 at Atticus Review. REDEMPTION UNDER ICE: A REVIEW OF RYAN W. BRADLEY’S WINTERSWIM The prologue to Ryan W. Bradley’s Winterswim strikes quick and brutal: a violent pastor, a forced conversion to Christ, a victim on a frozen lake in the arctic night. The pastor murders his young female prey by pushing her…