SlushPile.net

This is what makes people question the media these days… Last Thursday, The Christian Science Monitor ran an article on the nature of self-publishing. The article, that interviews a self-published author, quotes a couple of industry experts, and details the obstacles that these authors face. My question is why anyone would consider this new information [...]

Read the full story

I really wanted to like this book. The author has great credentials, the subject matter is of particular interest to writers, and the reference materials are impeccable. But reading this thing was like the old spy movies where our hero is subjected to the drip… drip… drip… drip… drip… drip… drip… drip… drip… drip… drip… [...]

Read the full story

I’m utterly amazed how this can actually be used by a professional writer, in a professional magazine. This is something that we all have done, so don’t act like you didn’t, but usually we outgrow this after the first few stories. So I’m just shocked to see it in an otherwise decent story I read [...]

Read the full story

This heatwave is really starting to piss me off. Seriously. I’m beginning to take this personal like. I walk to work and by the time I get to my office, sweat is dripping off my face and pooling in my keyboard. But my grandma always told me to count my blessings so I think how [...]

Read the full story

I had no idea. All these years, I thought Cool Hand Luke was just a fantastic movie from 1967. I had no idea that it’s actually true and that Strother Martin’s character, The Captain, was not a prison warden but actually a Creative Writing Department Chair. You too? Well, you had it wrong, just like [...]

Read the full story

You all don’t need this, but its here, just to say we told you so. Writerisms: overused and misused language. In more direct words: find ‘em, root ‘em out, and look at your prose without the underbrush. am, is, are, was, were, being, be, been ‚Ķ combined with “by” or with “by ‚Ķ someone” implied [...]

Read the full story

Read the full story

[Originally posted on Friday, June 17] I’m sobbing as I type this because I just don’t think I can take anymore… I hoped and prayed that we had reached a point to where everyone would just shut-up about the whole thing and we could get back on with our lives. So the autopsy results for [...]

Read the full story

[Originally posted on Thursday, June 9th] No photo… I’m not wasting the bandwidth. As I wipe specks of my breakfast from my lips, and contemplate getting drunk at 9:15am, or maybe just jumping off the roof, The New York Daily News brings us this little bit of bile. Gossip columnist Lloyd Grove is hearing rumors [...]

Read the full story

[Originally posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005] I’m a big believer in doing justice to a story. If it needs 50 pages, then it should be 50 pages. If it needs 5,000 pages, then go to office supply store and load up on the paper. But having said that, am I the only one who [...]

Read the full story

[Originally posted June 8, 2005] I’ll have to go back and check the archives to see how many books I predicted would come out of the Michael Jackson trial. I know I did mention yesterday that the folks in jury deliberations must be honing their literary dreams as we speak. Well, now Associated Press reports [...]

Read the full story