You know what’s worse than a family dinner? I’ll tell you: a fucking wedding dinner. Every random relative that you’ve ever encountered once, three millenniums ago, and whose existences are perfectly inconsequential to you but apparently primordial to the familial circle, reunited in the same room. Annoyance grated me as I observed people, whose blood was the only thing we had in common, hypocritically saluting … Continue reading Family Matters by Sarah Siham
Something has happened in the writing world recently. A sudden sea change in favor of the repetitious use of a particular four-letter word…describing characters’ utterances. Said. Where once it would have been unthinkable to see such lazy writing (and it is lazy, not “simple,” as many writers are fond of using as a defense), it’s now deemed the norm for “straightforward, unpretentious” writing. Writing that … Continue reading Says I: Against the Repetitive of Use of “Says” and “Said” in Prose
I felt powerless…and chickened out at what was supposed to be my defining moment. Instead, I was a coward who backed away five minutes into grasping destiny with a finger on the trigger. Methodically, I stripped the rifle with disgust, placing the parts neatly into the gym bag. I slung it over my shoulder and crossed the abandoned warehouse floor, taking the stairs in lieu … Continue reading A Sudden Change of Plans by Mike Lee
At 10:30, the receptionist at the front desk gave off the look of a mortician, heightened by her jet-black hair with the white streak in the bangs that evoked a mid-90s memory of one of the band members in Luscious Jackson. As well as what I realized decades ago: punk is not a uniform. Instead, it was a way of thinking—an attitude. The latter came … Continue reading The Princess of Morticians by Mike Lee
“Hello. Oh my goodness, ew. Strong Britney!” These were the words an on-the-verge-of-tears, twenty-one-year-old Britney Spears uttered while forced into doing an episode of Primetime on November 13, 2003 with Diane Sawyer. And oh, how strong (stronger than yesterday) she had to make herself in the years spent under a microscope that followed. The word “forced” vis-à-vis Primetime feels applicable because, as Spears tells it, … Continue reading The Woman In Me: Britney Spears Reckons With Exploitation and the Double Standard She Was Subjected to Her Entire Career
Try their search engine again. And again. Nothing? Okay, take a deep breath and calm down (has that ever worked for anyone?). You may have noticed this hits different than your multiple rejections from those high-paying literary magazines. Yes, it’s both crushing and damn insulting to realize your writing, your books—some that can be downloaded for free—have not been used to school our future robot … Continue reading You Just Found Out Your Book Was NOT Used to Train AI. What Now? by Max Talley
Last week Stephanie showed me the picture: young woman in a yellow sundress, dazzling smile full of teeth and expectation, small child in her arms. “That’s Mother with me.” “Decades ago…” “She hasn’t aged, Frank,” my girlfriend said dismissively. So when my administrative assistant told me Margaret Folsom Clark was in the showroom, I hurried out to meet her. Of course, I recognized her instantly. … Continue reading Drinks, Maybe Dinner by Paul Lewellan
As Lindsay Lynch (easy to misread as Lindsay Lunch on the book cover) does tell it, her drive to write the novel that became Do Tell stemmed from the media headlines that were percolating circa 2016 to 2017. And especially at the end of 2017, with the #MeToo movement being resparked (Tarana Burke had already coined the phrase and its meaning in 2005) amid Ronan … Continue reading Do Tell Is All About Showing…How The Past Is Prologue
As trouble in “paradise” inevitably keeps mounting for the Bradshaw/Shaw reunion, it was plain to see that things were already going to be majorly problematic when Aidan’s (John Corbett) ex-wife, Kathy (Rosemarie DeWitt), called Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) to arrange a little sit-down. Although she tried to tell herself (and her friends) it wasn’t weird, Carrie is no stranger to the uncomfortable revelations that arise … Continue reading On That And Just Like That… Moment, Or: Asking A Writer Not To Write About Certain People Is A Particularly Egregious Form of Censorship
Groups are interesting organisms. The entire cell has to open its mouth to begin endocytosis. Those not ingested, who sought entrance, are apt to resent the group. People amidst the cell hold similar perspectives on people outside the cell and of other cells. However, this does not prevent them from having independent ideas about elements not related to the group. To get into the cell, … Continue reading Group Rules by Peter Crowley
