52 Stories #7 – The Idiot President b...
The Idiot President was published in The New Yorker in October 2008. Set in a recently war-ravaged South American nation, the story describes the two month...
Culture\Crit
All things critical. General reviews, breakdowns, analysis
52 Stories #6 – Everything Ravaged, E...
It was a warren of a place off Coldharbour Lane with echoing stairwells and concrete floors. An oddly brutalist interior at odds with the Victorian fascia ...
52 Stories #5 – Yours Truly by A. M. ...
Here are some things that I would say. A list of sorries. A bucket of them. A penitent dumptruck, loosing sorry like a shoal of fish, not yet dead and flap...
52 Stories #4 – Sea Oak by George Sau...
This week, Sea Oak by George Saunders. You can find it in the collection Pastoralia or online at The Barcelona Review. They summoned me along with thirty ...
52 Stories #3 – The Labrador Fiasco b...
This week in 52 Stories: The Labrador Fiasco by Margaret Atwood. It is anthologised in Moral Disorder And Other Stories. It is also available online. S in...
52 Stories #2: The Juniper Tree by Lo...
This week in 52 Stories: The Juniper Tree by Lorrie Moore. This story was featured in The New Yorker – but it’s behind a pay wall. I have seen traces of it...
The Human Claim by Ali Smith
This week in 52 Stories: #1The Human Claim by Ali Smith. Some years ago I worked for a large US company in Silicon Valley. Eventually, I moved away from the...
Lunchtimes at the library
The recent #rememberingmylibrary hashtag has stuck with me, much in the same way that library memories themselves do. Libraries have a church-like aspect - w...
Ancient sports day: the mystifying sp...
Somehow the sports gene passed me by. It’s not that I don’t like exercise — I have to run at least every other day or I feel even more crabby and irritable...
Three kinds of short story (repost)
Despite having written a few and studied many more, I don’t think I’ve ever really come to grips with the grammar of the short story. It may be partly due ...
Three Good Things: despair and consol...
I’m starting an occasional series this week I’m calling Three Good Things. This is by no means an idea I’ve borrowed from a cookery writer. Absolutely not....
Starting a writers’ group
I’m the founder of a writers’ group in Salt Lake City that has 534 members called Just Write: Salt Lake City. Using Meet Up it was pretty easy to create th...
Analysing Boojum
I’m primarily working on a novel at the moment, but I’m also increasingly interested in the form and structure of the short story . I’ve taken to reading and...
Ancient sports days (Day 8)
Somehow the sports gene passed me by. It’s not that I don’t like exercise — I have to run at least every other day, or I feel even more crabby and irritable ...
From the craft books: Premise (Day 7)
“So, what’s it about?” This can be a strangely perplexing question when you’re sunk deep in the writing process. Sometimes the only answer available to me i...
You are about to read this post (day 3)
You are about to read a blog post about second person narrative address. The very phrase makes your eyes heavy and you wander to your bed and have a little l...
Tragedy and Celebrity (Day 2)
The Guardian reported yesterday on a speech by Frank Cottrell Boyce (winner of the 2012 Guardian children’s fiction prize and Professor of Reading at Liverpo...
Novel thoughts about Cloud Atlas
The stories of Cloud Atlas are accessibly written. They are, to use a pejorative term, readable. Each is a complete, albeit interrupted, tale and can be read...
SF and prediction
Last week I happened on an interesting Guardian blog piece by Jenny Rohn that discussed speculative fiction that ‘gets it wrong’. So I reflex-posted to Faceb...
Presently tense
I was going to call this post Present Tension.. but then I noticed an article by John August that has already taken the name. Drats. But with good reason, it...
Mind the gap: Catherine Brady and the...
There is no shortage of books about literary criticism and critical theory. There are also plenty of popular how-to guides for writers. Poking about Blackw...