As a general rule, homeschoolers are good kids. (I say this with trepidation, waiting for the comments telling me I'm wrong because their brother's best friend's cousin's homeschooled neighbor became a serial killer.) But as a general rule, homeschoolers don't leave a path of destruction in their wake. They're more prone to correcting your Silmarillion [...]
Will I be unprofessional if I tell everyone to stand by until next week? Regardless, I’m doing it. Stand by until next week. I got nothing for you. A day will come when I’m prepared ahead of time with lots of great and timely posts (read: next week), but it is not this day. In [...]
Good morning, minions! Featured on today's smorgasbord of randomness is an assorted selection of PRETTY WORDS!!! Hannah Gaudette extended an invitation to participate in the single-line story challenge, which is, in essence, a glorified flash fiction dump. Flash fiction is fun. Thus, here I am. The idea is to choose 5 out of 13 genres [...]
I've written a terrible blog post. I would badger you with excuses about how I didn't mean to write a terrible blog post, but the truth is, that's exactly what I meant to do. You know how The Incredibles starts with Bob Parr driving to his wedding? His wedding, which is at night? And he's [...]
I have a personal grudge against the romance genre. To be fair, the romance genre never did anything to me, besides being a constant disappointment and a blight against humanity. I promised myself long ago that I would never, under any circumstance, stoop to the level of reading romance. Any other genre, sure, I'll try [...]
I wrote a book about caribou and death. (Literally.) I wanted it to be a fun, romping story about a Christmas world. Somewhere along the line those intentions went horribly awry, and became what I have now: 90,000 words of heavy prose and sad characters. Periodically I’ll hear things like “Your blog is hilarious, so [...]
Well friends, I did a thing. Back in January, Story Embers opened applications for a staff writer internship -- AKA killing brain cells and writing articles on a monthly basis. I saw the announcement email, thought, “hey, that's cool!” and promptly forgot about it. An hour later, one of my friends on the writing team [...]
Before you say anything, no, this is not a discussion about tropes. The internet has enough posts about “Top Ten Tropes That Are Totally Original!!” without me adding to the pile with my controversial opinion that enemies-to-lovers is a toxic model for relationships. I want to talk about something more fine-tuned. The small, specific story [...]
I owned a dog for three days. Completely by accident, I swear. I was driving home from work when mom broke the news. “Just so you know,” she told me, “we have a new addition at the house.” As she said this, I pulled into our driveway and was greeted by the shrill, vindictive yapping [...]
Last summer, I spent too much time by myself and subsequently fried my brain. Mom was in Canada for several months helping Anna with the baby. Dad was at work. I was in between jobs, writing a novel, and maintaining an internet fast until Mom's return. For two months, I spent the majority of my [...]
The Sarcastic Elf 