Finding Metaphor

Finding Metaphor

12:51 is the time my voice Found the words I sought Is it this stage I want? The Strokes I didn’t take poetry classes in college with a goal of publishing in mind.  I certainly never finished enough poems to fill a chap book.  The same could be said of...
Accountability

Accountability

Rachel Donnelly’s story arc opens with her sitting in her editor’s office waiting to corner him about an article she turned in days ago. Her investigation into the source of a chemical spill uncovered what amounts to textbook political graft. The city...
Calculating Mortality

Calculating Mortality

In my college days, I tore through Robert Heinlein’s catalog between semesters. The stories were entertaining, sure, but there was a common thread that Heinlein came back to time and again in his fiction that captured my attention. Narratively he had an...
Breaking up the Band

Breaking up the Band

We first see Jenna Donnelly onstage in an empty night club. Her band is meeting to practice days before a big show. She sits with guitar in hand and legs folded under her, playing for no one but herself. Her Strat glistened candy apple green under a single spotlight....
Blending Genre

Blending Genre

While wandering the labyrinth otherwise known as the query process (submitting letters and partial manuscripts to agents and publishers), I found myself facing the question of genre. Just what is this book? What audience would enjoy it? First and foremost BURIED BY...
The Opening Squeeze

The Opening Squeeze

If there was one section of the book I agonized over, it had to be the prologue. It’s not that the scenes there were difficult to write; it’s more that I kept circling back to the first few paragraphs to refine them. I thought it was taking a little too...