I did some more Wri'ing of my Na No this Mo. A new, and much worse, sample is up here; I'm about 2000 words short of where I'm 'supposed' to be, possibly because it's five days in and I've already lost interest in one of my main characters. Anyway, there it is, if you want to suck along with Mitch ( Read more... )

Boy, that NaNoWriMo site is just a hornet's nest of slow load times, browser incompatibility, busted links and non-working Flash and Java, ain't it?

Anyway, I got about 2100 words done last night. There's a sample up here. How y'all doin ( Read more... )

As readers of this journal who pay attention to my every cranky utterance already know, I hate National Novel Writing Month. It's cutesy, it cheapens fiction, it results in the creation of more novels when what we need is less, it makes everyone think they can be a writer, and it so rarely produces writing of good quality that the entire exercise ( Read more... )

Here is something everyone likes ( Read more... )

Speaking of my awesome girlfriend ninafarina, she is the mastermind behind the upcoming Twin Cities reading for LitPAC, a very worthwhile political action committee that aims to involve some of the country's best authors in the political process to raise money for progressive candidates. The event -- 7:30PM on July 20th at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis ( Read more... )

People who displayed bad form by dying while I was waiting to hear back from their people about an interview:

1. Hasil Adkins
2. Octavia Butler
3. Harry Lampert

- James Frey: less a violent, drug-addled roughneck than a dimwitted, compulsively lying frat boy. Readability factor: 2 ( Read more... )

Brent "Walter Peck" Bozell: rappers are dumb.

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Hey, my pal Claire Zulkey was on the tee vee yesterday! Check it out.

Having not read A Million Little Pieces, I have little to say about it other than the handful of excerpts on Slate were pretty stupid. I am enjoying, as Delia Ephron put it, people's apparently limitless capacity to be ( Read more... )

One of the nice things about being a semi-professional stuff-writin' guy is that people send you free things in the mail. I'm not much of a materialist, and as long as I have my awesome girlfriend and regular access to a hot shower, the only things I really need are food, books, movies, and music. Happily, I review all those things for money, and ( Read more... )

For the second year in a row, I have failed to win (or, for that matter, place or show in) the Imitate Harry Stephen Keeler competition.

I'm so embarrassed.