Tag Archives: fiction

Writerly Whining

I’ve just finished fixing galleys of an anthology story made juvenile and riddled with errors by the editors, who evidently don’t know to from too from two, among other horrors such as inserted exclamation marks, italicized words that are also … Continue reading

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Some Ripping Rip Snorters True and Otherwise

One interesting book I snagged recently at Half Price Books is Mysteries of Police and Crime: Victorian Murders by Major Arthur Griffiths. It is a facsimile of the 1889 edition. He was a prison inspector and deputy governor of Millbank … Continue reading

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Nightmare Days on Autumn’s Cusp: A Miscellany

There are days when love is not enough, when you need justice, too.  Those are the hopeless days when it’s best to hole up in solitude so you don’t hurt or kill anyone you might later regret having hurt or … Continue reading

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Not Ideas

it’s not your ideas ideas are a dime a dozen and unimportant. stop worrying about them. they are for trick fiction, for toy wind up stories. emphasizing or even noticing the “idea” is the most peurile skiffery imaginable. focusing on … Continue reading

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A Ficta Mystica Rumination

I’m glad to have discovered my Ficta Mystica sub-strata as the basis of most of what I write because it frees me to trope from dark to light without changing my approach to fiction. Encountering the Other and blundering into … Continue reading

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Plotting Courses, Charting Novels

“Plotting Courses, Charting Novels” They call it a plot by analogy to nautical charts. The navigators plotted a course. They knew where they set out and where they wanted to go. They planned a reasonable route. Along the way, however, … Continue reading

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A Review of Floating Staircase by Ronald Malfi

In Floating Staircase, Islands In the Stream by Hemingway, who is saluted overtly, Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, and Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs, echo like footsteps in an empty house. Flannery O’Connor’s shade flits by. There is a whiff of … Continue reading

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Quiet Kept

…More of what I’ve learned after thirty-five years of breaking and entering? First of all, there need be very little breaking if you’re alert to easy entering. People leave windows, doors, and garages open all the time. They forget to turn on security setups. They have big, friendly dogs socialized to meeting new people. A visitor to a dog can show up at all hours, they still love it…
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Witch Tree

…I told him this was a witch tree and that the spirit of a witch lived in it, and if he cut it down the witch would have nowhere to go… Continue reading

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King of the Sacred Lagoon

…As Compton dashed up the stairs to the weather deck, to see who had screamed and why, Lassiter headed downward a deck and along the central corridor. He reached the locked door, this time on his right, but had no need to use his key — the door was torn off its hinges. “Oh Sadie,” he said, following the slime trail… Continue reading

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