Essay

Songs About Robots

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.
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John Milton, Rock Star

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.
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A Peripheral Glossary

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.”
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Why I Write

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.
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Will Poole’s Island

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.
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On the pleasure of attending book signings

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.
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The Devil Comes to Fargo

~ 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. 
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The Ides of April

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.
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