The Rorschach Test With Teeth
Someone on Twitter wished authors could be “mystical” again—writing stories that let readers project their own meanings without accountability. That’s not mysticism. That’s cowardice dressed in artistic pretension. My novels are Rorschach tests, but the inkblot has teeth. They contain explicit moral
Men Aren’t Eggs: A Love Letter to the Westmark Trilogy
Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark trilogy won the 1982 National Book Award, yet his Prydain series has 240,000 Goodreads ratings while Westmark has just 10,900—a 22-to-1 disparity. I’m a veteran who writes about war’s moral costs, and Alexander’s trilogy shaped how I understand justified violence and polit
Modern YA Is Failing Teenagers—I’m Stealing it Back
I queried *Doors to the Stars* to over two dozen agents. Zero full manuscript requests. My 11-year-old daughter stayed up all night devouring it. My 19-year-old son texted me at 2 AM about plot twists. But publishing professionals? Not interested. The book features a 16-year-old scavenger who discov
Ripping the Guardrails off Literary Genre Fiction
If content warnings function as marketing copy for you rather than deal-breakers, keep reading. I write dark, pulse-pounding literary genre fiction where characters fail people they love, moral complexity doesn’t resolve into easy answers, and consequences are permanent. Jasmine survives sex traffic
Publishers Are Using AI to Screen Manuscripts—And Great Books Are Dying in the Slush Pile
Publishers are using AI to screen manuscripts before human eyes ever see them. The result? Your Renaissance fantasy gets flagged for “misgendering” because your heroine is disguised as a boy. Your PTSD story gets rejected as “gratuitous violence.” Your satire about racism gets auto-rejected as racis
Write What You Love… To Market
Asking “should I write what I love or write to market?” is the wrong question. The writing world has manufactured a false binary that’s keeping writers from building sustainable careers. It’s not about compromise. It’s about understanding what you genuinely love writing and finding readers who are h
Transcending the Strong Female Character™ Trope
Not every strong female character is “woke trash”—but the lazy Strong Female Character™ trope deserves its criticism. Lisa Kuznak’s viral defense of heroines like Ripley and Sarah Connor sparked a crucial conversation: What truly separates inspiring warriors from one-dimensional girl-boss clichés? E
Using AI for Writing Feedback
Grok “beta reading” a scene from Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora is a perfect example of why you absolutely should not use AI like Grok for feedback on your writing.
Authors, Please Don’t Save the Cat
Plotting a novel using the Save the Cat method, popularized by Blake Snyder, can be inadvisable for several reasons, particularly
