None of these twelve songs are about real robots — the self-propelled mechanical lackeys that vacuum our homes, deliver our packages, and show us the surface of Mars. But some of the songs do mock our fears of the little Frankenstein monsters we’ve created, or the bigger ones we might someday. Some are inspired by …
You think you know something about John Milton. He was blind. He was English. He was a Puritan. He wrote that interminably long poem about Adam and Eve, the one that literature majors perhaps still labor (or slumber) through. But did you know he was something of a rock star? In college, long before he …
Note: If you landed here because you’re curious about Amazon Prime’s series The Peripheral, welcome! I wrote this post a bunch of years ago about the novel the series is based on, and it prompted one visitor to call me “a slightly crazy reader.” Much of it remains accurate for the show, but I haven’t …
I write because I like words. The way they sound. Alone. In sequence. The way they mean things. How their meanings change, multiply, when collected together. I like sentences even better. I like to tinker with a sentence until it’s perfect. A perfect sentence is a crazy impossible dream. Like a perpetual motion machine, running …
Classic tales can–and should–be told and retold. Will Poole’s Island, by Tim Weed, feels like one of those stories: comfortable, like something you’ve owned forever, yet fresh, because you’re seeing it with new eyes, against a new backdrop. This short, elegantly written book is a coming-of-age adventure about an orphan struggling to find his identity …
Something I’ve been doing as I prepare to transition from “aspiring novelist” to “actual novelist” is attending a lot of book signings. I’m fortunate to live near a number of good independent bookstores, so there’s never a shortage of interesting writers passing through town. I’ve gone to these events on occasion over the years, but …
~ READ ABOUT MY FORTHCOMING HISTORICAL THRILLER: ONE DEVIL TOO MANY ~ How the deliciously dark FX mini-series combines elements of The Master and Margarita, Doctor Faustus, and Twin Peaks This week, Fargo finally gave us confirmation that Lorne Malvo is, in fact, the Devil. Not that it was necessary. In the first episode, Billy Bob Thornton’s grinning, …
I was born on the 102nd anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Exactly fifty-five years after the Titanic sank. A day feared and dreaded by Americans. Tax Day. April 15. The Ides of April. Lincoln and the passengers on the Titanic actually had their fates sealed on the 14th – the president received his bullet, and …
Sometimes in stories landscapes aren’t just for scenery. Take The Hobbit. Tolkien sometimes personifies landscapes, using them to signal turns in the plot. Old castles wear evil looks; Gandalf disappears. Stormy mountains become rock-hurling giants; Bilbo’s journeying band gets taken by goblins. Living landscapes serving as signposts to plot: fantastic! But landscapes do even …