I’m tempted to write this one like a horror story, but that would miss the point. The boogeyman lived inside an old, disconnected furnace inside my great-grandmother’s house, just across the gravel road from my grandparents’ house. It wasn’t until just this morning that I realized her house was a mother-in-law house: probably because […]
My collection of kids’ short stories (under the pseudonym De Kenyon) is on sale at Kobo: get 30% off by using code: NEWYEAR30 at this link. You can also use the same code on a bajillion other Kobo books here. Quote from Richard Ayoade: “It feels completely inappropriate to try to persuade people to see [my
Lee’s Corner, population 3, marked on all car-trip-sized South Dakota maps at the corner of Highways 34 and 50. The farm lies a few miles straight north along the old Star Route road. In rural areas, a lot of the time the post office used to be a farmer’s wife in a station wagon driving from farm to
I wanted to write about my step-grandmother Chris, but I can’t, not as such — I’ve written about her twice now and have come up with little more than a physical description and a big mess. So instead let me tell you about the table at Grandpa’s house, which I hope will cover what I
Sometimes places strike me and they end up getting a kind of fantastic layer painted over them, although it feels more like I’m carving and discovering the true shapes underneath than adding something. Minneapolis, for example, is a noir fairyland constantly hovering on the edge of freezing. Fat flakes descend through the orange-and-green haze of
Submissions: 186. Acceptances: 7 (pro sales: 2). Fewer subs, fewer acceptances – but double the pro sales 🙂 Words written fiction: 552,436. Indie books/stories published: 5. Most of that fiction wordcount is ghostwriting; I finished five novels last year and started a sixth. Three of them were kids’ novels, and between 30-40K; the other
We moved back from Cheyenne when I was two — Dad got out of the Air Force and went back to the farm. The Farm. The older and further removed from the farm I am, the less saying “I grew up on a farm” means. Even Lee has no idea what it means to grow
This year’s reader goals: Research Complete a list of the top SF/F/H pulp works, begin reading selections (in progress). Keep up with Locus Online for new book-length fiction, so I’m not completely clueless on new releases this year. Find a good horror fiction review site for same. Reporting Write up a brief blog post with the best-of
Here are my recommendations, the creme de la creme of my 2014 reading. I slushed over a thousand stories last year, and read two hundred and fifty books. So stop hounding me to watch your favorite TV show. I don’t want to hear it. Each list is presented in no particular order. Short Stories: I
It turns out that when you retread your memories over and over again, they become less “your memory” and more “the memory of your memory.” After 9/11, some researchers went out and recorded people’s memories of the event, three thousand people’s worth. Eleven months later, they asked the same questions, and thirty-five months later. The memories were
