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Origin Stories: Breaking Down

[Here there be spoilers.] Breaking Down is one of the hardest things I've ever written. It touches on a lot of shit that reads to me like open wounds, and throughout the process of writing, then redrafting, then revising it, I frequently felt like I was executing the writerly version of that old game Operation; the story was a wide open body, all exposed nerve endings, and if I hit any note wrong it would sound an alarm. A friend of mine, who's only ever read the descriptions for my books, thinks I gave Molly a bad ride. (And, indeed, if

March 3rd, 2015|Categories: blog|Tags: , , , |

Reflections and Updates

My sincere thanks to recent commenter VC, whose comments reminded me I, y'know, have a blog. Don't get me wrong, I love blogging. Adore it. I've been writing on the web since before the word "blog" existed, and then I fought against it for years (coded my own sites with the HTML, thank you, just when stylesheets were hitting the scene). I don't self-censor as much, and I believe in reflection. The fiction I write is reflective, though sometimes I don't see the traces of myself in it until years later. Case in point. The New Born Year is shaping up

October 21st, 2014|Categories: blog|Tags: , , , |

Breaking Down: Excerpt

Molly slammed the door of the bedroom hard enough to shake the framed photo on the wall across from it. (The only framed anything on Will’s wall: a picture of him and Adam as children, hugging Donald Duck. Adam had a picture of the two of them hugging Minnie Mouse. White people, right? But the attempt at levity didn’t ease the tightness in her chest.) She allowed herself the brief dramatic satisfaction of throwing her body onto the bed. God. That really didn’t help. And she already had a headache. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.” The words were savage,

June 3rd, 2014|Categories: blog|Tags: , , |

Writerly Paralysis

I'm starting a novel. Oh. Well. I'm starting the second draft of a novel, but it's a rewrite-every-word draft, not a revision, really. This story? I wrote the first draft basically with my eyes closed. It was in some ways a very easy book to write: it came to me staring at a blank new document, and from a sparked idea to the last word typed I wrote straight through without detours or distractions. It took about two weeks. In other ways, it was terrifically hard to write, about hard things, and I'm afraid to revisit it because I have

March 28th, 2014|Categories: blog|Tags: , , , |