In my youth – a period which ranged from sometime before my teens to sometime after I dropped out of Washington University – I was a Marvel Comics fan. We need not recount the various titles I followed, because this post is about only one of those titles, only one member of the Marvel pantheon. [...]
Read / Write
I did try reading Liberal Fascism. I didn’t try as hard as I might have, to be honest. In the end, I realized that there are some books that just aren’t worth one’s time. And even though I am a blue fascist according to author Goldberg, I decided that some books aren’t even worth the [...]
Bide a while with me, child, and sit by the fire. I will tell you a story from the older days, a story of the witch Baba Yaga who dwelt in the forests of vast Russia. What’s that? You know of Baba Yaga, you say? You have heard the stories, told you as you sat [...]
Just thinking aloud on the musical question “So what does St. Louis need?” and coming up with a myriad of answers ranging from “more people” to “better schools” to “an enema.” Any of those responses is correct – some more than others – but none of them are intriguing me at the moment. “A web [...]
Upon hearing of the Allendale, South Carolina funeral home accused of severing the legs of a tall man’s body so that it would fit into a coffin, I was immediately reminded of a classic 1925 short story by H. P. Lovecraft. As the story appears to be in the public domain, I present it here. [...]
My story ‘Waitresses’ survived the first round of readings in the most recent Black Warrior Review contest, but not the second. “C’est la vie,” say the old folks. At least I got a year’s subscription for playing. BWR is a good magazine, so yay. Elsewise: Back to work.
Tee-hee! Got a rejection letter from the editors of a short story contest. Just now! It begins: Dear Philip Barron Followed immediately by: Dear (Author Name) Someone needs to tweak that mail merge function just a wee bit. That is all.
In emulation of Bitty’s participation in the Fourth Annual Bloggers Silent Poetry Reading, I present this 2004 post from the old blog: I will confess that poetry is not my native language – I gravitate more towards prose – but even I can recognize when verse sets off sympathetic vibrations within. The following work did [...]
Begin Steering the Craft (The Eighth Mountain Press, 1998) by iconic author Ursula LeGuin. The subtitle, please: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator* or the Mutinous Crew This will be the first thing of LeGuin’s I’ve read since The Dispossessed. The author approaches writing here as a craft rather than an [...]
