One of the things you get asked a lot, if you’re fortunate
enough to get your fiction into readers’ hands, is where your ideas came from. That
character, they’ll ask, is she someone you knew? What about the place, is it
somewhere...
My daughter and I are hitting the road tomorrow or really,
actually, the skies. We’re headed to the Midwest for the long weekend and I am
beyond excited. First stop: Chicago, one of my favorite cities and the setting
for the...
Readers (and publishers) have had
a long and ever-evolving relationship with short story collections. Stories
may seem best suited for the places you usually find them—magazines, journals, and
now, online sources. Short...
The last half of my usual run begins along a fairly busy, four-lane street. Ordinarily, I run in the morning, but the path is mostly shady all day. I run on the sidewalk; to my left—a small section of grass broken up by...
If it’s one thing writers love talking about, it’s books. If there’s another, it’s the writing process. This dialogue is what drives writers to conferences—finally, a group of people who can commiserate over an unwieldy...
"As soon as we express something, we devalue it strangely. We believe ourselves to have dived down into the depths of the abyss, and when we once again reach the surface, the drops of water on our pale fingertips no longer resemble the ocean from which they came...Nevertheless, the treasure shimmers in the darkness unchanged." ---Franz Kafka
