“The world ended the way it always did (US dictator, WWIII), pretty much (clowns, Central Park), on a Tuesday.” That’s the beginning of my story “Strange Loop,” which was featured last week over at Daily Science Fiction. I wrote this little piece after I found myself lying awake at night due to the fact that The Man Who Sold the World … Read More
This Is Scripture
I have dabbled in New Age spirituality, Buddhism, and Christianity in my life, but my true religion is poetry. I converted to it when I was seventeen, at the Interlochen Arts Academy, where I was given a book called Contemporary American Poetry, the fifth edition. It is a book that contains multitudes—to me, it is a grimoire, a codex, a … Read More
Monday Muse: Ben Percy
In a recent essay for LitHub, Benjamin Percy shared his childhood love of genre books, subsequent shame in the face of the academic world, and his eventual reconciliation of the two into something uniquely personal. Substitute fantasy for horror, and every word of this essay might as well be my own. In sixth grade, I read anything whose cover art … Read More
Monday Muse: Froelich’s Ladder (Cover Design)
Jamie Duclos-Yourdon and I have a lot of things in common: we both live in Portland, we’re both members of the venerable writers group known as The Guttery, we both have debut novels coming out this fall, and we both have the same cover designer, Gigi Little. In fact, I like to think of Jamie’s Froelich’s Ladder (which launches August 1st) … Read More